Questions based on a plain and simple reading of the US Constitution

quote:

---

That's right, because I don't agree that an undocumented immigrant is only guilty of a misdemeanor.

---

Do you know that you can easily (in New York anyway) find LOTS of "illegal" immigrants who actually served LEGALLY in the U.S. military?I think I have personally known these types of people in every state I have lived in. I have to think a little. I knew many in South Carolina for example. I know of many right now here in N. Y. City. Yup, I sure do. Right now.

quote:

---

Democrats in the south said when slavery ended

---

You also said Democrats caused welfare benefits to exist, which - in your opinion - should disqualify immigrants from having the right to come here (or something).Democrats also brought about forced segregation in 1896, which, among other factors, caused a "Great Migration" of blacks to leave the south for northern states from 1930 to 1970.But before slavery ended, the constitutional definition of what makes a citizen didn't cover people who were simply born here. That changed after the Civil War. The 14th amendment clarified language previously interpreted differently.There were major changes in the 1950s and 60s as well when it came to constitutional interpretation and clarification.

quote:

---

Undocumented workers often send money back to their home country. Many of them contribute to the economy in big ways all right, they bring in the illegal drugs. That you don't see the danger in these things parallels the carelessness of the Romans 2000 years ago.

---

I wondered that if welfare programs were ended, then would you find another excuse. Now drugs are an issue. If they were made illegal, would you still not be complaining and making further excuses to make your argument?Don't most economists agree that those who left the South for the North (in the Great Migration) made higher wages than if they remained? (Welfare aside)Also, the North became much larger (and richer) than the South because of the flood of immigrants from after 1800. In 1800 the population was under 5 million but it was over 75 million by 1870. The Irish settled in both the North and South, but Germans settled mainly in the North. Germans were anti-slavery. They settled in Western Maryland and helped flip that states position by the time of the Civil War. They settled in northern Virginia and that caused the split that resulted in West Virginia. Their settlement in the mountain chains that run down Tennessee and Kentucky too.ADDITIONALLY
(relative to your "movement of money out of the country" issues)Trump is placing a 25% (or 20%, I forget) tax on all imports coming into the country, so we will see how the destruction of foreign economies (like Japan) helps our finances. Nice to see how this $120 billion tax on Americans helps too. (Just like conservative estimates by the CBO show that removing all illegal immigrants will reduce the economy by 1.2% by 2020, while many think it is a good thing)We will see evidence of these claims that foreign people (inside and outside the U.S.) and their money somehow hurt us.You won't blame the shadowy "international bankers" when interest rates rise on our massive $20 trillion debt and we get a real disaster on our hands?Will you hold nationalistic policies responsible?Will YOU take responsibility for your own policy preferences becoming actual REAL WORLD policy and thus affecting the outcomes (for better or for worse)?

quote:

---

I'd be terrified to see how today's liberal atheists have re-written history to blame todays conservatives on the deterioration of morals, ethics and values that led to the fall of the Roman Empire.

---

The Roman Empire fell due to extreme intolerance.Less than 100 years after Orthodox Christianity was imposed.They ran people out faster than they could kill everybody.

I am presently not in possession of a computer and my phone is so small that I can't reAlly type much. I am Yauch a friends online which is larger but still tough. Little touch screen keys. World Book Encyclopedia ARIANISM Quote The Council of Council of Constantinople condemned Arianism as heresy in 381 and it quickly disappeared within the Roman Empire. But followers of Arianism remained active outside the Empire. Arian missionaries converted the German tribes of Northern Europe to Christianity during the 300s and 400s. After these tribes invaded the Roman Empire, they reintroduced Arianism. CLOSE QUOTE ...... Now in 395 the declining Roman Empire split in Eastern and western Halfs. The Arian Alaric invaded Italy in 401and took Rome in 410. This typing is too difficult but I can suggest that folks study the Persian invasions of Palestine from 614 to 638 and thehuge Jewish forces allied to invade Asia Minor and Syria. Western Roman Empire fell due to Syrian Christian forces supporting Arab Muslim invaders from within. Look at invasion of Egypt and Coptic issues. This is my last attempt to use phone. Later.

World Book Encyclopedia AFRICA. QUOTE AGermanic tribe called the Vandals invaded the empire during the 400s. The tribe followed an outlawed Christian belief called Arianism. The Vandals ended Roman rule along most of the north coast. END QUOTE. Now a new book. THE MIDDLE AGES VOLUME II. Quote. what Gibbon referred to as the world's great debate will never end because we lack the evidence for a real solution. For the whole period from the third to the ninth century there are gaps.... Too much of the research so far has been done by specialists in western history using the evidence of western Europe and viewing the problemthrough western eyes. For a truer perspective there must be greater focus on Arab and Byzantine evidence. END QUOTE. Now the context wasn't the fall of Rome here in the latter quote but the methodology applies equally. Rome ran out pacifists like Manichean's and more militant heretics alike. The latter were the bigger Problem.

Do you understand that you have a situation from 400 to 600 when the Pope marked arians for death while various local emperors were the hated Arians themselves NOT TO MENTION MUCHrOMAN POPULATION. WHat was the adhesive NoNukes has to deny that this was in effect the insurmountable PROBLEM

It seems that nobody here understands that population was on the severe decline in the time before 410 and it only got much much worse after. I don't know how to do quotes on a phone, plus typing is very hard. Web surfing is harder too. I will back up my claims with sources that pagans Manichean's and Ariana were expelled after 380 but somehow I think the evidence will be lost on this group. Monday perhaps

Notice that Theodoric expressed agreement with Jar when he told me my Roman Empire stuff is off topic. AMAZING since I initially only posted a small post of a few sentences, in response to Marc, then was attacked in no less than 3 posts by Theodoric and NoNukes. They have kept posting ever since. Even after post 136 and the Theodoric avreement click. Amazing. Just amazing. I always considered much complAining around here to be sneaky and tactical but this is blatantly obvious to the extreme.

Faith it is mainstream for historians to attribute the losses of the 7th centuHHafizheretic century to heretic Christians getting fed up with persecution by their Orthodox mastersTTheat that doesn't mean people here know it though. To

I will start a thread that fully and decisively makes my case. sometime.

quote:

---

I expect you'd like to show that Christianity itself had a lot to do with the fall of Rome.

---

I don't accept that Catholics and Protestants are anything but anti-Christian. The "Pagan Roman Empire" before Constantine tolerated the real Christians (and even Catholics were tolerated mostly). Circumcised Jewish Christians were tolerated before 313 in the West and 325 in the East. They were an old faith that wasn't required to worship the Roman Gods.380 was a turning point against (the non-Catholic)Christians.Here will be a few quotes to show what I am getting at.First an old (flawed view). From the old Cambridge Ancient History.

quote:

---

It has often been alleged that Christianity in its political effects was a disintegrating force and tended to weaken the power of Rome to resist her enemies. It is difficult to see that p310 it had any such tendency, so long as the Church itself was united. Theological heresies were indeed to prove a disintegrating force in the East in the seventh century, when differences in doctrine which had alienated the Christians in Egypt and Syria from the government of Constantine facilitated the conquests of the Saracens. But, after the defeat of Arianism, there was no such vital or deep-reaching division in the West, and the effect of Christianity was to unite, not to sever, to check, rather than to emphasise, national or sectional feeling. In the political calculations of Constantine it was probably this ideal of unity, as a counterpoise to the centrifugal tendencies which had been clearly revealed in the third century, that was the great recommendation of the religion which he raised to power.108 Nor is there the least reason to suppose that Christian teaching had the practical effect of making men less loyal to the Empire or less ready to defend it. The Christians were as pugnacious as the pagans. Some might read Augustine's City of God with edification, but probably very few interpreted its theory with such strict practical logic as to be indifferent to the safety of the Empire. Hardly the author himself, though this has been disputed.
J. B. BURY

---

He is talking about the post 380 period

quote:

---

As soon as he came to Constantinople Theodosius began expelling the Arians, who had hitherto been in possession. The Aryan bishop, Demophilus, left the city (Socr., V, 7; Soz., VII, 5), St. Gregory of Nazianzus undertook the administration of the diocese. In January, 381, the prefect had orders to close all Arian chapels in the city and to expel those who served them. The same severe measures were ordered throughout Theodosius's dominion, not only against Arians, but also in the case of Manichans and all other heretics. However Sozomen says that the emperor "made severe punishment by his laws but did not carry them out, for he did not wish to punish, but only to frighten his subjects, that they might think as he did about Divine things, And he praised those who were converted of their own accord" (Church History VII.12). In 381 the Second General Council was held at Constantinople under his auspices (Socrates, Church History V.8; Sozomen, Church History VII.7). In 383 he attempted a conference at his capital between Catholics and Arians, with a view to reconciliation; but no result was obtained (Socr., V, 10; Sozomen, Church History VII.12). In the same year Gratian was murdered at Lyons (25 Aug.) and Clemens Maximus usurped the imperial title in the West (383-388). Theodosius acknowledged the usurper on condition that he would allow Gratian's brother, Valentinian II, to reign in Italy. In 387 Maximus broke the contract and expelled Valentinian, who fled to Theodosius. Theodosius brought him back with an army, and defeated and executed Maximus at Aquileia. Valentinian II now reigned in the West until 392. It was also in 387 that Theodosius showed such tolerance in the affair of the statues at Antioch (see JOHN CHRYSOSTOM).

​

During all his reign Theodosius took severe measures against the surviving remnants of paganism. In 388 a prefect was sent around Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor for the purpose of destroying temples and breaking up pagan associations; it was then that the Serapeum at Alexandria was destroyed (Socr., V, 16). Libanius wrote a "Lamentation" about the destruction of the fanes of the gods (peri ton leron, ed. R. Foerster, Bibl. Script. Gr. et Rom. Teubner). In 391 Theodosius refused to allow the Altar of Victory to be restored in the Roman Senate (cf. Gibbon, "Decline and Fall", xxviii).
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Theodosius I

---

Now 5 myths covered by the Washington Post

quote:

---

Five myths about the decline and fall of Rome

​

By Nathan Pilkington

​

December 2, 2016 
Nathan Pilkington is a lecturer in the department of history at Columbia University.

​

Nathan Pilkington is a lecturer in the department of history at Columbia University.

​

The rise of Donald Trump supposedly heralds the decline of the American idea, according to many of his critics, who’ve taken the opportunity to compare this moment to the fall of Rome’s republic in 31 B.C. or its empire in the 5th century A.D. Any historian is happy when their period of study comes into vogue, but these requiems leave a false impression of Roman antiquity and the causes of its greatest crises.
....
[Myth 5 and Gibbons popular b.s.]

​

In his monumental study The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon famously proposed that Christianity sparked a decrease in civic duty and a corresponding unwillingness to sacrifice for the empire in its period of greatest stress, ultimately leading (along with barbarian invasions) to its collapse. Because of the widespread acclamation accorded to it, both at the time and by later generations, Gibbon’s work has had unusual longevity.

​

But no modern scholar believes Gibbon’s thesis, if only for the simple fact that a Christian Roman Empire in the east survived the Germanic migration and lived on as the Byzantine Empire for nearly another millennium. Gibbon was also aware of the fact that the Goths were Christian, but he chose to ignore this when assailing the Roman Empire for its adherence to a new faith. All parties at the end of the Roman Empire were Christian.

​

https://www.washingtonpost.com/...77-b608fbb3aaf6_story.html

---

Gibbon is responsible for so many lies and confusion. I don't have time to disambiguate.See page 378 for J.B. Bury offering contradictions to his earlier claim that there were no Arians in the Empire and that do
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/...ts/secondary/BURLAT/11*.html

quote:

---

4. Persecution of Heresy

​

The persecution of heretics was more resolute and severe than the persecution of pagans. Those who stood outside of the Church altogether were less dangerous than those members of it who threatened to corrupt it by false doctrine, and the unity of the Catholic faith in matters of dogma was considered of supreme importance. "Truth, which is simple and one," wrote Pope Leo I, "does not admit of variety."108 A modern inquirer is accustomed to regard the growth of heresies as a note of vitality, but in old times it was a sign of the active operation of the enemy of mankind.

​

The heresy which was looked upon as the most dangerous and abominable of all was that of the Manichees, which it would be truer to regard as a rival religion than as a form of Christianity.109 It was based on a mixture of Zoroastrian and Christian ideas, along with elements derived from Buddhism, but the Zoroastrian principles were preponderant. This religion was founded by Manes in Persia in the third century, and in the course of the fourth it spread throughout the Empire, in the West as well as in the East. Augustine in his youth came under its influence. The fundamental doctrine was that of Zoroaster, the existence of a good and an evil principle, God and Matter, independent of each other. The Old Testament was the work of the Evil Being. Matter being thoroughly evil, Jesus Christ could not have invested himself with it, and therefore his human body was a mere appearance. The story of his life in the Gospels was interpreted mystically. The Manichees had no churches, no altars, no incense; their worship consisted in prayers and hymns; they did not celebrate Christmas, and their chief festival was the Bma, in March, kept in memory of the death of their founder, who was said to have been flayed alive or crucified by Varahran I. They condemned marriage, and practised rigorous austerities.110

​

The laws against the Manichees, which were frequent and p379 drastic, began in the reign of Theodosius I. The heresy was insidious, because the heretics were difficult to discover; they often took part in Christian ceremonies and passed for orthodox, and they disguised their views under other names. Theodosius deprived them of civil rights and banished them from towns. Those who sheltered themselves under harmless names were liable to the penalty of death; and he ordered the Praetorian Prefect of the East to institute "inquisitors" for the purpose of discovering them.111 This is a very early instance of the application of this word, which in later ages was to become so offensive, to the uses of religious persecution. When the government of Theodosius II, under the influence of Nestorius, made a vigorous effort to sweep heresy from the world, the Manichaeans were stigmatised as men who had "descended to the lowest depths of wickedness," and were condemned anew to be expelled from towns, and perhaps to be put to death112 (A.D. 428). Later legislation inflicted death unreservedly; they were the only heretics whose opinions exposed them to the supreme penalty.

​

Arcadius, at the beginning of his reign, reaffirmed all the pains and prohibitions which his predecessors had enacted against heretics.113 In most cases, this meant the suppression of their services and assemblies and ordinations. The Eunomians, an extreme branch of the Arians, who held that the Son was unlike the Father, were singled out for more severe treatment and deprived of the right of executing testaments. This disability, however, was afterwards withdrawn, and it was finally enacted that a Eunomian could not bequeath property to a fellow-heretic.114 Thus there was a certain vacillation in the policy of the government, caused by circumstances and influences which we cannot trace.

​

The combined efforts of Church and State were successful in virtually stamping out Arianism, which after the end of the fourth century ceased to be a danger to ecclesiastical unity. They were also successful ultimately in driving Nestorianism out of the Empire. The same policy, applied to the Monophysitic heresy, p380 failed. Marcian's law of A.D. 455 against the Eutychians was severe enough.115 They were excluded from the service of the State; they were forbidden to publish books criticising the Council of Chalcedon; and their literature, like that of the Nestorians, was condemned to be burned. But in Syria, where anti-Greek feelings were strong, and in Egypt, where national sentiment was beginning to associate itself with a religious symbol, all attempts to impose uniformity were to break down.

​

The severe measures taken by the State against the Donatists in Africa were chiefly due to their own fanaticism
[see link for more]

​

---

See this.

quote:

---

The Battle of the Frigidus, also called the Battle of the Frigid River, was fought between 5—6 September 394, between the army of the Eastern Emperor Theodosius I and the army of Western Roman ruler Eugenius.

​

Because the Western Emperor Eugenius (though nominally Christian) had pagan sympathies, the war assumed religious overtones, with Christianity pitted against the last attempt at a pagan revival. The battle was the last serious attempt to contest the Christianization of the empire; its outcome decided the outcome of Christianity in the western Empire, and the final decline of Greco-Roman polytheism in favour of Christianity over the following century.

​

Battle of the Frigidus - Wikipedia

---

I'm having trouble finding the 376-382 war against the Goths but Goths ended up being settled in Rome in large numbers and they were Arians.Also Rome fell in Spain and France around 415-420 and Africa fell in 430. Arianism was a major cause of conflict as Catholics outlawed it but after 430 there was freedom in the Empire.The Theodosian Emperors outlawed Arianism and were fanatical about it. They got worse and worse. from 380 to 455.I'll make a better case in a new thread. it will be a lot longer. And have lot of quotes and sources showing the incredible Gothic presence in the Western Empire plus have quotes showing the Arian issu to be important.

My point is related to your link from post 139. That link claimed that the post Constantine or 313 Roman Empire brougbt freedom to Christianity which should, by now, be seen as a lie. It brought persecution AND persecution AND more persecution to Christians. Hence the reason for the 395 splitting of the Empire. I also reject the idea that the German immigrants werabscessv savages who weren't supporttheaoc I can't type I keep getting words deleted

"a lot of this number have nothing to do with the fall of the Western Empire " -PaulK ***************** "But the west took quite a beating too, and I bet you didn't know any of this" -Faith- ****** ******************* Actually Justinian and rTheordia (Byzantine Emperors ) financed bigoted wars against the Arian kingdoms, in the former Western Roman Empire, by stealing slave ransom money from Byzantine citizens around 530 AD . The Barbarians won their lands back but there was severe damage. ******************* THE ORIGINS OF THE MIDDLE AGES by Bruce Lyon (W. W. Norton ) "Despite the German conquests with their turmoil and new political arrangements, no new civilization arose because the Germans were generally willing to partake of the Mediterranean and the unity upon which it depended.. ... after 600 Italy lay prostrate with the Ostrogothic kingdom destroyed by Justinian's unfortunate attempt to reconquer the West, that all the lands ringing the Mediterranean, except for some in southern Europe, we're under Arab dominion "Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.