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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 aristarchus on Monday April 06 2015, @04:24AM
Hey, Fro,
Since I know you put some thought into your posts, I appreciate the interposition. But look up the definition of genocide. It is not a matter of individual fatalities, it's more a matter of the destruction of a people. So you could increase their numbers, to your profit, I might add, and still be committing genocide. Second, racism, which seems to be a recurring topic here, and I can only suspect that is because of a heavy American presence. Chattel Slavery has existed as long as humans have had any political structure. It is only in the Modern period that so-called "race" has had anything to do with it. Greeks were slaves to Greeks, and to Persians, and even to Israelis if they were lucky (ancient times, I refer to here). But with a race-based slavery and doctrines of racial superiority and Social Darwinism, things change, and not for the better. That is why slavery in the Americas is at least as bad, if not worse, than any inhumanity ever done by some people to another. And the costs still remain. Your revisionist history misses the point. And it was you that called "Godwin"? Oh, the huge manatee!
(Score: 5, Touché) by frojack on Monday April 06 2015, @05:22AM
But look up the definition of genocide. It is not a matter of individual fatalities, it's more a matter of the destruction of a people.
I just did that.
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
Using a new age definition of genocide, or stretching the definition, really isn't helpful. Sort of like throwing the word "toxic" around too glibly as is all too common these days. The killing of people based on some national or racial basis is KEY to the definition of genocide.
There never was any intent of "destruction of a people" here. There wasn't a plan, to do so, and it didn't happen.
Those groups sold into slavery (sold by their own brothers) were not wiped out. They persist today both in Africa and in America.
The slave traders looked at it like they were buying cattle. (Or so they claim). They had no reason to want to their source of income to be wiped out.
The only people with animosity toward the enslaved were the enslavers, neighboring tribes, land coveters, historical rivals, or petty tyrants, almost certainly of the same ethnic stock as those they sold.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 06 2015, @05:48AM
Frojack! You are better than this! First, you could have used the definition of genocide under international law, which is kinda, you know, correct? Second, those who held persons in bondage because of skin color were certainly not doing so out of humanitarian concerns. It just made it easier to spot the runaways, like our own Runaway1956! Black? Must be a slave! Certainly you have seen the recent movie. And you may have heard of the Dredd-Scott decision of the Supreme Court?
And perhaps the entire group from which slaves were taken were not wiped out. But that reveals two things, again. Genocide does not have to be successful to be genocide, and secondly, you can commit genocide on a portion of a people. I suggest you take a look at policy toward Primal Peoples in Canada as an example. The fostering of native children to detach them from their heritage is an act of genocide, even if it only happens to one child.
New age definition? No, the definition, under international law. The ground has shifted beneath your feet, as Obama put it in his Inaugural address. Best to recognize this before you fall down and find out that after all, you are a racist. Maybe an accidental racist, but a racist nonetheless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @06:45AM
Frojack is of the modern conservative mindset which thinks race is not a social construct. If race is pure biology then a "captive breeding program" can't be genocide because the biology is preserved despite the fact that the identity of the people is eliminated.
> New age definition? No, the definition, under international law.
It would help if you actually cited that definition.
"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/whatisit.html [genocidewatch.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @07:03AM
Race isn't a social construct. You're thinking of culture. Killing an entire race of people will typically destroy their culture entirely as well, but one doesn't need a specific skin color or have a certain heritage to share the same culture.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 06 2015, @08:04AM
Poor Tejas, so far from God, and so far from God. I am not a racist because I don't understand what race is? WTF? Well, now I say let them have the "special" plates. Between those, the "truck nuts" and them "rolling coal", we will know who to have to drones target.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @09:31AM
> Race isn't a social construct. You're thinking of culture.
Hhhm. There are thousands of scientists who disagree with you. [nytimes.com]
For example, Craig Venter, [wikipedia.org] the first guy to map the human genome, said ''Race is a social concept, not a scientific one."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @02:56PM
They can disagree all they want, but the definition of the word says otherwise:
If they say that race is a social construct, then they're using a different definition for "race" than the one that exists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @04:33PM
> They can disagree all they want, but the definition of the word says otherwise:
Typical dictionary pedant doesn't actually check the dictionary:
race: [oxforddictionaries.com]
1.2 A group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.
example: "They sought to weld the country's diverse ethnicities into a Brazilian race defined in historical and cultural terms."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @09:36PM
And that definition a subset of the definition I used:
This is the generally-accepted definition of the word and what most people think of when they hear it - specifically referring to distinct physical characteristics. There's also 1.1 and 1.3 that further clarify it, still agreeing with the premise of definition 1.
Like I said, the definition of the word, what most people think of when they hear it, says otherwise.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 06 2015, @08:37PM
Hmmm, first you tell me to look up the definition.
I do so, I post it.
And sure enough you reject it.
Now you want to reject my sources and substitute your own, from a body of law which you deem to be superior, but which is the prevailing law exactly NOWHERE.
Next time you demand I look something up, but fully intend to honor exactly ONE pet source, just save everybody the time and effort, and post your only acceptable source ahead of time.
Further, slavery didn't choose blacks because their color made them easier to find when they ran away. They already had a population readily at hand that they could have chosen for that - American Indians.
They chose blacks because of the utterly perverted belief among slave holders that they were sub-human, and undeserving of protection, and utterly uneducated, had no government in their country of origin (indeed no countries).
This wasn't a north american decision, slavery was rampant in the world at that time, and just about every slave holding countries chose people of this nature.
Slavery in north america was never genocide, either in effect or intention. It was a violation of the very principals the country was founded on, and the Northern states should have just rejected the Southern demands and formed a union without them, as many northern delegates had argued. History has proven this believe would have been the better choice.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 07 2015, @04:17AM
Hmmm, first you tell me to look up the definition.
I do so, I post it.
And sure enough you reject it.
Predictable, ain't it! But it is still your own fault. Where did you get that particular definition? Dictionary (dot) com? Citation needed! It was your snide remark about "new age definitions" that brought it up. And you may not be aware that, yes, the United States is a signatory to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, passed in 1948. Treaties such as this have a standing on par with the US Constitution, according to the US Constitution. So its definition of genocide is in fact the correct definition under United States Law. Period. Vulgar usage might differ, but that is hardly relevant. And I might suggest that you take a look at the United States reservations to signing said Convention. Yep. Racists!