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Recently, oral arguments were heard regarding a case about license plates and the first amendment. The Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has challenged a rejection of their proposed plate that had images of the Confederate flag.
The Texas solicitor general argued that, "Messages on Texas license plates are government speech ... [because] Texas etches its name onto each license plate and Texas law gives the state sole control and final approval authority over everything that appears on a license plate.”
Please share your ideas/comments on this case or your views on vanity plates in general.
Story: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-supreme-court-confederate-license-plates-20150323-story.html
Case: http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2014/2014_14_144
What a vanity plate is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity_plate
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday April 05 2015, @07:32PM
American and Caribbean plantation slavery were also a genocide. One that lasted for more than 6 or 7 years.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday April 05 2015, @07:47PM
American and Caribbean plantation slavery were also a genocide.
Let's not belabor the point. Frojack is already penitent. And besides, Arbeit Macht Frei!
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday April 05 2015, @08:05PM
Jahwohl. :-)
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Monday April 06 2015, @08:33AM
So say we all...
That is all.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Sunday April 05 2015, @08:14PM
American and Caribbean plantation slavery were also a genocide. One that lasted for more than 6 or 7 years.
In large part that is true of South America. Their economic theory was to work slaves to death. They worked their way through about 12 million [theroot.com]. Mostly used in mining and other dangerous work.
In North America, only about 388 thousand slaves were imported, and the southern plantation owners theory was to breed the rest in-country. They could get useful work out of ten year old kids. And having kids around made slaves less likely to rise in rebellion. Although some histories suggest wanton murder of slaves, that was neither the norm nor economical in the North American experience. It was quite common in South America, because as soon as a slave couldn't work in the mines they were useless.
The Genocide aspect of Slavery Trade rested mostly with the African tribal warloards that captured and sold entire rival tribes into slavery.
Slave merchants had no mercenaries running around Africa gathering slaves. It was all done by paying some local chieftain by the head. They got paid for the slave and got to keep the lands they depopulated. A double win for them. There was a great deal of competition to be a slave provider.
When international Slave Trade was banned in 1820 it pretty well spelled the death knell for the South American mines, but no so much in North America.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday April 06 2015, @02:40AM
Another important difference between the African slave trade and what we now term "genocide" is that the capturing of slaves in Africa was not done with the purpose of destroying the culture of the captured people, but rather sheer profit. And indeed, the cultures that lost many to the slave trade still survive to this day in Africa.
By contrast, the stated policy goal of Andrew Jackson was to kill every American Indian in North America if he could. The stated goal of the Holocaust was to kill all Jews. The stated goal of the Rwandan genocide was to kill all Tutsis. And there are many other examples of this particular kind of depravity.
So yes, the slave trade and slavery were terrible. But it was not, according to the usual definitions, a genocide.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.