Those humorous Founders.
 

The first coin of the US:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Fugio_cent.jpg

I sense a double entendre :)

Pete

Yeah, except in modern times even the righties can't mind their own business for anything. They want to run peoples lives right down to what we do in the privacy of our own homes. They won't be happy until everyone is marching to their tune. This is another of life in Americas great ironies. That those who scream about individual choices and freedom the most seem to be the ones who are least tolerant of things that fall outside of their ideological box.

Dave

Yep. Consider for a moment that the word "secular" has taken on a negative connotation here by the Right Wing, yet they're the first insisting on the need for secular governments in the new Mideast. To me, Pat Robertson and his ilk are a greater threat to my freedom and well-being than the Muslim Brotherhood.

QFT, indeed he is.


Carl

Loooooove how you guys steer away from things like this :)

Pete

That was rather humorless of me. Sorry 'bout dat.

Heck finn, you dont' have to apologize to me! :grin:

Pete

Btw, I thought it was funny. I'm sure the founders were dead serious (although it's attributed to Franklin, I can't help but see a little smirk on him in my minds eye :))

Pete

I do too. I was thinking the same but you beat me to the punch :D

I believe I steered straight into the heart of it, not away from it at all.

And, I agree. It does appear to have that Franklin humor...

Dave

WORD.

Dave

The moral code enforced during the founders' time was much stricter than ours.

Pete

Not necessarily "enforced" as simply what was expected behaviour, yet I am willing to bet that there were proportionally as many "out of wedlock" babies then as now.

One of the things that a study of genealogy will show you is that the more things change the more they stay the same.

Wasn't that piece offered by the Franklin Mint?

Regards,

D-ray

It would be nice, I'd like to pay my taxes with it lol.

Rob, I remember slowly coming to the realisation that everyone alive before the 1970s wasn't a prude :)

But there was a very clear line between public and private, and 'good' was always held up in public. And the divorce rate, and where were all the jails back then?

Pete

As for jails they sold opium in drugstore back then, now they toss you in jail.

Ah, for the good old days, opium, horsecrap in the streets, and bad teeth :D

Pete

Franklin Mint turned out some pretty good rekkerd collections.

Chas

I like the back too, although it's a little plain:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nt_reverse.png

If you're lucky enough to find one it can be worth over 10 large. Then you can find some more franklin mint records :)

Pete

Interesting, 13 links in the chain.

I think you right there. I also believe that you comment "Not necessarily "enforced" as simply what was expected behaviour" is where we have strayed badly. It's hard to have a sense of expected behavior when nothing is expected and all behavior is measured by degree.

Shoot, Pete. If eveyone minds their own business, how are you going to legislate morality and shut down the shops selling porn? If government stays out of our lives, people might smoke pot, hire hookers and decide they're athiests. That won't do.

Local, Eddie, local. Not handed down from on high. Hence the saying :)

There's some intrigue and scandal behind this penny:

"The contract was awarded to Jarvis who had given a $10,000 bribe to William Durer, the head of the Treasury Board. Jarvis was required to produce some three hundred tons of Fugio cents. He was able to obtain about thirty tons of copper from the government to begin coining with the proviso he would pay the government for the copper through his coining operation. Jarvis had Abel Buell make the Fugio dies. He then put his father-in-law, Samuel Broome, in charge of the minting operations and went to Europe in search of copper and assistance. Jarvis sought the assistance of Matthew Boulton, owner of the Soho Mint in Birmingham, and others, but without cash up front, Jarvis was unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Broome used much of the federal copper to mint about three and a half million 1787 Connecticut coppers, which were lighter in weight and thus more profitable than the Fugio's. In the end Broome made only about 400,000 Fugio cents (about four tons out of the 300 tons of coppers they had been contracted to produce) which were sent to the U.S. Treasury on May 21, 1788. "

http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColC...gio.intro.html

Pete

Got it. Freedom means you're free. Unless your neighbors don't want you to be. So that whole slavery thing didn't work out the way it should have. Follow that line of logic and it was just fine for the folks in Berkeley to kick the Marine recruiters out of town. You would call me a liberal, but when I lived there I was downright conservative. Guess it would be okay for cities to outlaw guns too.

What do you do when every city, town and county outlaws something that should be legal? Or a city with a lot of Muslims legislates daily prayer to Allah? Or is it only okay to mandate prayer when it’s Christian prayer, like in the public schools?

Hey, maybe Berkeley can pass a law welcoming illegals to their town. Local, Pete, local.

I respectfully mention that perhaps you need to learn what it was exactly the revolutionaries fought for. Sure wasn't federally protected porn shops in every city.

Pete

Was it federally protected persecution of homosexuals? Man, freedom is a pain when *everyone* gets it. Maybe we should just give the freedom to the "right" people. Come on Pete, wink, wink. You know who I mean.

What you think is right, or me? Why don't we have hardcore porn on broadcast TV?

Pete

Because that evil FCC has banned it. Federal busybodies.

That's actually a really good question. What gives the government the right to license the air? If I have money, want to build a transmitter and do whatever I like with it, what business of the government's is it?

I'm actually not joking about that- it's a really good question. I'm not saying I'm in favor of porn on broadcast TV, but the case has been made that the cable guys have an unfair advantage because they can put what they like on TV. The argument has always been that people have to pay for those channels, but the over the air stuff is free. Really? Where are they giving those TVs away? And why is basic cable subject to the same rules? We pay for that.

It's kind of a mess and hodge podge of laws that really shows the messed up ideas people in this country have about this kind of material. Everyone says it's terrible, but the Playboy channel isn't going out of business, just the newspapers.

Our own Sherlock Holmes. That detail passed me by.

I assume you would prefer being compared to Holmes than to Monk, although I kind of prefer Monk - more humor.

Regards,

D-Ray

And probably just as many "light skinned" black babies too.......................

Dave

Don't kid yourselves. Sex was taken much more seriously...

but of course you couldn't use abortion for birth control. A shame?

And there would've been a lot less kids with multiple parents as well.

The FCC? Airwaves are public property, as such we may regulate them to our taste. TV stations are businesses that practically by definition cross state lines.

But I was pointing out that we don't have a difference in kind, only in degree.

Pete

Sex taken seriously? Ask Sally Hemmings, oh she is dead, oh well.

Regulating the airwaves is necessary simply because there is only so much bandwidth between DC and green light. It is not only necessary to regulate it nationally, but also internationally as well or there would be absolute chaos. That is why there are two UN bodies, CCITT and CCIR which are (or were) acronyms for the French names. A few years ago it was changed to ITU-T and ITU-R (International Telecommunications Union - Telecommunications Sector (telephone and telegraph) and Radiocommunications Sector, with the latter negotiating international use of the radio, television and other spectrum

Te, he, he...........

I tend to believe that people are people, whether it's 1780, 1880, 1980, or 2011.

Despite all of the hullabaloo, the one constant is human nature.

Wouldn't you agree, Rob?

Dave

Amen to that brother.

Perhaps, but Sally was scandalous. And once again there was a clear line between public, and private/adult. This morning, I happened to catch on the radio that folks have been saying that a popular singer had 'crotch to mouth' relations with a coupla pop singer men.

So she tweeted, yeah, and a lot more besides. This makes her a hero. With our kids mind you.

Pete

Ignoring the verbiage, I thought you meant it looks like the Sun has popped a boner.

So we should outlaw twitter too?

They're hearing just as bad or worse at school Pete.

Actually, I'm okay with outlawing Twitter. I never got Twitter.

I've never twooted :)

Pete

She was also a "mulatto". Venture a guess who her Daddy was?

Dave