They did, in fact.

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"Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
-Joseph Welch

This statement is nonsense. Society by default has had a say, given the government is an organ of society and represents through the law, to an extent, the will of society. Given it's illegal, society has determined you cannot burn, starve, beat, or mistreat your children. People just don't think killing them some ways counts if a magical sky being says it's okay. I do. I am right. You're just wrong. It's as simple as that.

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You're confusing "society" with "government."

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

The two are interchangeable terms, in the macro sense. The government isn't some alien entity....it is the theoretical manifestation of the will of the people through representatives.

So, in a certain sense, yes, government IS the society, the people. Laws generally reflect what society is willing to abide by, and it changes over time, as it certainly should.

What in the world do you think government IS, Chan? Something fallen from space?

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

Not all governments are representative. Not all governments manifest the will of the people.

No, government is not society. If government were society, the American founding fathers wouldn't have intentionally created a very limited form of government.

It is something that attempts to regulate (or manipulate) society.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Okay. That's true. The American one, however, largely does. The pendulum always swings, even if it takes time.

The founding fathers are dead. Surprised you didn't get the memo.

Over time, people have asked, demanded, and have received more from their government than that absolute minimalistic, barest wisp of a "government" the founders made in the 1700s.

It's like you're in a time-warp or something. Cool with you to still count blacks as 3/4 of a person? Are there any reforms you think might have been positive, in the last 230 years? Or, is it all just terrible, and you're upset you can't wear a powdered wig in public anymore?

Damn straight. Society's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt it sure can't/won't regulate itself. And, everytime we've gone through a period of massive de-regulation, it's been messed up.

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

Nonsense! The American government for the last 150 years or so has represented the politicians and the lobbyists.



But the philosophies on which the government they founded endure.

No, the people have not asked or demanded that the federal government abandon the Constitution or to usurp for itself powers the Constitution doesn't give it.

The only reforms I might be willing to accept are some of the ones enacted LEGALLY through constitutional amendments.

The American government was at its best prior to Marbury v. Madison!

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Can;t say I'm fond of lobbyists, true. But this hypothetical,purist form you appear to espouse is rather primitive and ineffectual. (That may be your goal, of course)

We voted, didn't we? We knew exactly what Bush would continue to do.

The problem isn't so much the government, it's the people. If I had more faith in the people to be intelligent, self-regulating, engaged, responsible and self-sufficient, I'd be more inclined to agree with you on things. I think you assume a certain level of competency and savvy in people that I am not convinced exists.

Sure it was. I'm....gonna........back away, now.....

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

No, I am not. You just hacked my post part and took it out of context. This is what my post says:

"This statement is nonsense. Society by default has had a say, given the government is an organ of society and represents through the law, to an extent, the will of society. Given it's illegal, society has determined you cannot burn, starve, beat, or mistreat your children."

Next time, quote honestly. I didn't say society = government. I said government is an organ/institution of society. In our democratic republic, the government to an extent represents the wishes and will of the people, albeit indirectly. People, through the representatives, get and want to maintain laws. Laws against beating your children are on example. People want them, government makes them.

You tried to argue that government, but not society, has a say. In the context of what we're talking about, that's imbecilic to say. It IS the society's say expressed through the institutions of government. You seem to fall into the trap of treating the government as some separate magic being isolated from society and people, made of robots and aliens.

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Then you changed your post because I simply clicked on the quote button when I replied to your post! Don't you EVER presume to accuse me of misquoting you!

See above!

What I said was that you're confusing society with government.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."