-1=e^ipi

Maybe because people design male clothes to fit males?...

See if they have a penis or the SRY gene? Do you need an intro to biology or something? I think these claims are too strong. Maybe someone just likes dresses because they like their shape or colour and the appearance when they wear them. Or maybe someone merely wants to defy social convention for the sake of defying social convention. If someone likes dubstep against social convention, are they now mentally ill? That would be ludicrous. Exactly. If there are no gender roles and people should accept themselves for who they are, then there is less need to change gender identity. I know people that would disagree with you on this.

But it doesn't. No. I am not society. I am 1 person.

People that care about separation of religion and state. I did not say ban. I said abolish. As in if they suddenly stopped existing. Those claims are very different from "If atheism is superior, then as per social Darwinism, it should have been adopted by the most successful societies, no?". Start with all of them. Indeed, most religious people are hypocrites that primarily cling to their religions for emotional and social reasons. If they were true believers & good people then they would try to tell others about jesus/allah/whatever in order to save them. My issue is with your claim that secular society isn't welcoming to moderate religious people.

There is always a need to combat delusions and claims without sufficient evidence. Lack of skepticism is unhealthy for society. As an atheist (I would even label myself a 'New Atheist'), I do not understand this position. If a religious person believes that they have truth about reality and that they can use this truth to save people from eternal torture, then why wouldn't they try to convert people? Should they not care about the infidels? "Canada is founded on principles that recognize the supremacy of God", "God keep our land", "in God we trust", "one nation under God". Tell me, how many presidents or prime ministers have been non-religious (let alone atheist)? 0? Maybe Thomas Jefferson? Oh but Christian revisionist history has long convinced people that Canada and US were founded as Christian nations. What deluded version of reality do you live under? Moderate religious people are the majority and hold the power in Canada. For the US, the moderates and the extremists are about equal in number.

I'm not sure I understand why 'we' should not occasionally divide people along religious and non-religious lines. People divide people into various groups based on age, sex, sexual-orientation, ethnicity, education level, languages spoken, etc. On the respect issue, just be careful about distinguishing between respecting an individual, acting respectfully and respecting a belief. Religion in general or any religion? Obviously some religions are very sexist, etc. and if those specific religions were abolished, society would have less sexism, homophobia, etc. I'm unsure how accurate this premise is. Perhaps individuals from these groups (women & homosexuals) feel marginalized enough that they would rather not have even greater marginalization by rejecting their society's religion compared to less marginalized groups (heterosexual men)? I do not think that larger marginalization necessarily implies a greater willingness to want even more marginalization. No... where have you read this claim? Who is making such a claim and why? It's not intolerance, it is unacceptance. There is a difference. There is a difference between an irrational believe and irrational behaviour.

Clearly the answer to this question is the patriarchy. The patriarchy prevents women from becoming atheists and atheists are clearly sexist against women. Because as you know, any difference between the outcomes of the sexes must be due to sexism and the patriarchy. /end feminist response Citation request. Yeah, this isn't a serious post.

This issue annoys me for a number of reasons. On one side you have the ultra-conservatives, who don't accept that some people do not identify with their biological sex and/or want to change themselves physically, and on the other side you have the ultra-progressives, who pretend that gender is entirely a social construct, try to deny any scientific basis of differences between sexes (i.e. deny that humans are a sexually dimorphic species) and advocate that young children that identify with another 'gender' go through hormone therapy. I have no issue if the boy wants to wear dresses or play with barbies or whatever (or if a girl wants to do 'male' activities); personally I am not a fan of the existence of gender roles. What is a bit concerning is that the parent wants to change the child's gender identity as early as 6 years old. Young children go through phases, do not properly understand what different genders mean, and do not understand the long term consequences of such actions (emotionally, legally, physically). The worst case is when some parents try to put their kids through pre-pubescent hormone therapy to change their sex. And even in this case, a child's sex on their birth certificate is useful to physicians when determining appropriate treatment. What if the child later in life needs urgent medical attention, but gets incorrect treatment due to confusion regarding the child's sex? Should the effectiveness of the healthcare system suffer just to appease a group of radicals that think gender is entirely a social construct? How is that different from religious parents that deny their kids medical treatment that goes against their religious beliefs? Anyway, my biggest issue is the ambiguity of the terminology. Some people consider sex and gender to be synonyms while other people claim that sex and gender are completely unrelated and distinct. I would prefer that people use more specific terminology such as biological sex vs gender identity to avoid ambiguity. In addition to this confusion, sex is not a binary. For the vast majority of people gender is a binary, but some people are Intersex and are neither male nor female. The gender binary isn't as simple as XX = female, XY = male. A person with XX and the SRY gene on an X is considered male while a person with XY and either no SRY gene or androgen insensitivity is considered male. In addition you have people with various conditions such as kleinfelter's syndrome that are clearly intersex. Personally, I think that Canada should legally add a 3rd gender to deal with intersex people but that is a different topic. Then you also have the transexuals, people that try to change themselves to the other biological sex. The biggest issue is that technology does not exist to change someone from male to completely female nor female to completely male. Maybe this technology will exist later this century but for today it does not. So if a transwomen claims they are 100% female or a transman claims they are 100% male, they are deluding themselves about reality. The transwomen does not have a uterus or ovaries and has the XY in most of their cells, while the transman does not have testicles and has the XX in most of their cells. I have no issue considering a transperson to be between the two sexes, but when people claim they are the opposite sex as their birth sex, that takes things too far. One thing that annoys me is something I call 'hypocrisy/inconsistency of progressives/leftists when it comes to gender roles'. On the one hand you have feminists (maybe I should use the term humanist) that argue that gender roles should not exist and are a product of the patriarchy. But on the other hand when it comes to someone that identifies with a gender role contrary to their biological sex, suddenly these gender roles not only exist but many leftists often encourage this behaviour. How can you have it both ways? Either the gender roles should exist or they should not. But for some people the gender roles exist only when it is convenient for their political ideology. Gender roles made a lot of sense for hunter gatherer societies. For hunter gather societies, gender roles were a convenient way to take advantage of comparative advantage: men have overall a biological comparative advantage to engage in hunting or warfare (with other tribes), while women have a biological comparative advantage to take care of children and perform various activities such as cooking and cleaning. To deny this is to deny the evolutionary history of humans. Of course when agriculture came, the gender roles made less sense. And in today's society gender roles make pretty much zero sense. To add to the issue, many cultures and religions in society emphasize and add to these gender roles (example: why is pink considered a female colour?). To me, the problem seems to be the existence of gender roles, which is a relic of our evolutionary past plus some influence from culture and religion. In the case of the article in the above, the problem to me is not 'males should not like dresses' nor 'society is unaccepting of males that identify as female', but rather 'gender roles that associate dresses with being female should not exist'. To me the child is not 'a female trapped in a male body' nor 'a male that needs their behaviour corrected' but rather 'a male who likes dresses'. Why should 'wearing dresses' be considered female while 'playing lego' be considered male for example? If gender roles don't exist, then most of these problems go away. Most cases of people having opposite genders and sexes will go away. Only a few cases such as intersex people, transexuals or people that physically want to change their genitals could be considered to have differing gender identities and sexes if gender roles stop existing. So maybe society should work to remove gender roles instead of this silliness? In extreme cases, you read about people changing their sex cause they felt like their were an 'man/woman' trapped in a 'woman's/man's' body. 'Oh I liked barbies, dresses & girly things so I had gender reassignment surgery' or 'Oh I liked sports, trucks & manly things so I had gender reassignment surgery'. Why should they have to change their gender to fit society's gender roles? Often such sex reassignment surgery is unnecessary, expensive, causes infertility, and is risky for one's health. Maybe the gender roles should change instead to fit this individual? Last thing I wanted to address was the issue of sex segregation in society when it comes to washrooms, sports, change rooms, etc. With people 'identifying' with the opposite sex and various non-discrimination laws, this segregation is coming under serious challenge. Perhaps society needs to rethink its sex segregation when it comes to these practices? For washrooms for example, one could argue that segregation makes sense because society can more effectively allocate resources to the specific individuals (urinals & female hygiene product dispensers). On the other hand, one could argue that no segregation has an economy of scale benefit plus it would make people of opposite genders more comfortable with each other over time (people would get used to it).

There are a number of flawed arguments/claims here, but either they have been debunked by other posters or they aren't worth me responding to at this point. I'll add to the conversation that many similar topics were discussed in this thread: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/23095-does-progressive-racism-exist/ Though that thread mostly discussed the issues of the quality of immigration, rather than the quantity of immigration. However, this current thread is mostly discussing the quantity of immigration. In my last post in the progressive racism thread, I said: Basically, my position is that Canada (or most developed countries for that matter) should choose an immigrant distribution which maximizes the quality of the immigrants (and by quality I mean primarily how much economic activity they will generate in their life time minus their costs, plus other factors such as the effect of family members, charitable giving, etc.). Our immigration system is actually fairly decent at doing this relative to most developed countries, but improvements could be made (such as giving points based upon source country to account for differences in human capital quality between countries, points to discourage religious extremism, more emphasis should be placed on immigrants obtaining employment when they enter the country, and less emphasis on family immigration). After immigrant distribution is optimized, the level of immigration should be determined based upon the trade-off between short run depletion of the capital stock and the long run benefits of economies of scale (where long and short run effects are compared using and appropriate interest value). I.e. you take the value that maximizing the Net Present Value of Canada's economy per capita. Now I will admit that I'm not against some immigration being for 'charity' purposes, rather than 'economic' purposes (i.e. some refugees). But the vast majority of Canada's immigration should be done for 'economic' purposes, and I would prefer that others in this thread distinguish between immigration for 'charity' purposes with immigration for 'economic' purposes and please do not pretend that they are the same thing. Also, in these threads, people tend to focus on absolute values of GDP rather than GDP per capita and I find that this is unhelpful in these discussions.

I never claimed that the British crown has no legal authority. Just that the authority is questionable and not absolute. Who am I (or anyone else) to say that the British Crown, the American Constitution, the Pope, or the crazy homeless guy across the street who claims that he was abducted by aliens and is in fact the lord-emperor of this quadrant of the galaxy, has no legal authority? Again, your question does not make sense to me. Perhaps you could more clearly define what you mean by 'live by'. The only laws I need to live are the physical laws of nature (Newtonian laws of gravity and motion, Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, Einstein's general relativity, Schrodinger's equation, etc.). By 'live by' do you mean how someone lives by the Bible or lives by Islam? Or do you mean an authority that allows me to live because it has a gun to my head and it is kind enough to not shoot? Or do you mean what protects my property rights? I never claimed the right to live anywhere. I live in Canada because I was born in Canada and have not moved or died yet. Who is 'they'?

All legal authorities are questionable. If we took the legal authority of the British Crown to be absolute, then wouldn't that make the USA and all laws passed by the USA illegal? Your question does not make much sense to me. Why does one need an authority to live by? I live in Canada because I was born here (of course no one chooses where they are born, not that I am complaining or anything).

Post #90. Look, i'm not creating a false dichotomy here. If there are two positions (A & B ) and B is (not A) then it logically follows that one of the two is true and the other is false. Good, you stated it. This statement implies that people CAN own land based upon where their ancestors are from (notice how I had the can in there and never stated always). So you agree with the premise that people can own land based upon where their ancestors are from (where as I disagree with it). I'm trying to simplify everything? I'm the one trying to bring the complexity of human migrations into the discussion to challenge the concept of first nations owning land in the past based on where their ancestors are from. Yeah, except in this case most of the 'First Nations' descend from people who were not in the Americas first. Also, I dispute the idea that people own land based upon where their ancestors are from. So premise that 'no one has ever disputed it' is false. And again it gets very complex with different populations displacing other populations as I have explained in earlier posts. Melville island was first visited by British people for example. Do the Americans own the moon because they were the first people to visit the moon? See, this is still all dependent on the concept of 'First Nations' owning land based upon where their ancestors are from in the first place. Because one cannot cede rights and ownership of land to another group of people unless that first group had the rights and ownership in the first place. This is one of the reasons why trying to morally derive property rights is problematic. This is why I take the position that property rights exist because they are useful (they incentivize productive behaviour) and they should be determined pragmatically not morally. Really? Do I need to find you videos of someone like Manitoba Grand Chief Jack Dysart or Pam Palmater stating otherwise? Many first nations and non-first nations people in Canada think that the First Nations used to own the land based upon where their ancestors are from and that it was 'stolen' from them by the Europeans. Ownership, rights to land. Call it what you want. It is still based on the racist notion of where one's ancestors are from and ignores the complexities of human migrations thousands of years ago. 'Trying to show'? It is fact. And they relinquished their rights 'when they left'? Where did these people leave to? They didn't leave, their populations were completely replaced (i.e. in many cases the people were killed off through genocide). A lot of human history has cases of new populations coming in and completely replacing older populations. Having different tribes or races of humans living peacefully side-by-side is only a relatively recent phenomenon and for most of human history was not true, especially for hunter-gatherer societies. The Australoid peoples were the first inhabitants of Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, South East Asia, China, most of the Americas and many other parts of the world, but now they are limited only to Australia and the island of New Guinea; what happened to the other Australoids? They were replaced by genocide. No, I don't agree with the concept of people owning land based upon where their ancestors are from period. So I do not think that the Dorset people originally had 'ownership' or 'rights to land' or whatever you want to call it in the first place. Things like 'ownership' and 'rights to land' should only exist because they are beneficial to society because they incentivize productive behaviour, help avoid situations like the tragedy of the commons, etc. They shouldn't exist because 'someone's ancestors lived in this area a few thousand years ago'. So you are saying that if another group of people, say the Japanese, come along and perform genocide on all of the Inuit until their are no Inuit left, then the Japanese now are the rightful owners of say Nunavut? Yeah, somehow I'm not convinced by the concept that those that perform genocide become the rightful owners of the land of the group of people that were genocided.

You really like changing the context in which I make my comments in, don't you? The context was that you were saying how the fact that laws/treaties related to Indian issues that were created 100's of years ago have been upheld up until the present somehow gives more legal legitimacy to those laws/treaties. This is of course nonsense as is the example I gave with the house. In the context of treaties and First Nation issues, we aren't talking about 2 states that went to war or 2 different legal systems/frameworks. All of these agreements were made under the legal framework that today give us Canada and ultimately depend on the legitimacy of the British crown to make them. I do not understand the purpose of these character attacks (as well as earlier ones). I used the 3rd person in that case for the sake of clarity. You are trying to read into some hidden intent from my wording where no hidden intent exists. I think we have a misunderstanding over the context under which I was responding to your claim about 'this being just like the US right to bear arms'. I was under the impression that we were talking about how all laws ultimately depend on the legal authority under which they were created and that laws being followed from then until present does not change this. But if you wish to change the context and interpret what I wrote to me saying that the treaties are nothing like the right to bear arms, then obviously my comments will be out of place. Did you not see that I had 3 question marks, followed by a '(not sure...)', followed by a statement that merely restated my position and did not claim that you claimed that I wanted to 'cut them off cold turkey'? My apologies but the punctuation in your sentence ' You realize that cutting them off cold turkey would only cause riots which is why I would suggest taking the more literal meanings of the treaties as this would create a phase out program rather than a cold turkey one. ' was extremely poor / non-existent so I was unclear one your meaning (hence the question marks and not-sure). Could you please use correct punctuation and good grammar in the future? Please refrain from unnecessary character attacks.

It's all relevant to current issues... So now you are saying that the First Nations had ownership over land based on where their ancestors are from? Or do you mean 'territory' or 'rights to land'? It seems that you will keep changing your wording to avoid admitting that you agree with the idea that people can own land based on where their ancestors are from. But at the same time you want to neither agree or disagree with the premise that people can own and/or have rights to land based upon where their ancestors come from? I'm sorry that doesn't logically make sense. If you think that first nations can own and/or have rights to land based upon where their ancestors come from THEN you think that people CAN own and/or have rights to land based upon where their ancestors come from. First Nations are a subset of people/humans. See this is a big problem. Most people in Canada don't know the history of migrations to Canada and how humans spread to the Americans. They don't understand how over the past 100,000 years humans started to leave Africa and spread across the globe (some mixing with Neanderthals). They don't understand that history was filled with migration after migration after migration. With some populations displacing or killing the original populations. They don't know that most of the First Nations do not descend from the original inhabitants of the Americas. They do not understand that the Chinese were not the original inhabitants of China, that the Japanese were not the original inhabitants of Japan or that the English were not the original inhabitants of England. Accountability Now, why are you so afraid to admit that the whole concept of people owning and/or having rights to land based upon where their ancestors are from is nonsense? And you would be wrong in your baseless assumption. The Inuit descended from the Thule, who came to Canada & Greenland from Alaska between the 11th and 13th centuries. They displaced (i.e. killed off) the Dorset people who descended from the first inhabitants of the Arctic Archipelago & Northern Greenland. Note that both the Thule and Dorset people descend from the Paleo-Eskimo people who came to North America 3,000 years ago by crossing the Bering Strait. Note that the Thule actually arrived in Canada and Greenland AFTER the vikings did (the vikings were also the first inhabitants of southern Greenland). The inuit call these Dorset people Sivullirmiut and "according to legend, the First Inhabitants were "giants", people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit, but who were easily scared off.". Maybe this will help you. From page 5:

No.. the fact that the laws were made during an immoral time was used as a counter argument against a claim/counter argument that you made: "They're the same people that made many other laws we have so I don't really question their authority" Strawman argument. I never had that 'first point'. Sigh, I've explained why your argument is nonsense countless times; I'm not sure why I even bother to give such a nonsense argument a response. The validity of a law ultimately depends on the validity of the legal framework in which it was made since it was that legal framework that allowed any future people. But you don't seem to understand that and somehow think that just because some people at a future date do not change a law and uphold the law that the law's legitimacy no longer depends on the initial conditions under which it was created. Here, I'll give you an analogy to help you understand: - My great grandfather 'owned' a house 100 years ago - When my great grandfather died he gave the house to my grandfather - When my grandfather died he gave the house to my father - When my father died he gave the house to me - I am currently living in the house - One day it is discovered that my great grandfather did not own the house but infact stole the deed from a guy called Mr. Smith and murdered Mr. Smith 100 years ago. - John Smith, who is the great grandson of Mr. Smith and is the sole descendant of Mr. Smith claims ownership to the house. Who owns the house? Me or John Smith? I would argue John Smith but by Accountability Now's weird interpretation of the legitimacy of laws, I would own that house because for the past 100 years people thought that I and my descendants owned the house. It is nothing like the US amendment to bear arms. That law is still in effect because it didn't have an expiry date, the legal framework under which that law was changed hasn't been challenged, the law was introduced legally through that legal framework and no one has bothered to modify the law since. Now if for example it was found that the people that introduced that law in the first place did so illegally (by not getting approval from both houses for example) and no one noticed until today, despite the fact that the right to bear arms has been enforced for a very long time, it would no longer be law since it wasn't introduced legally in the first place. Strawman argument again??? (not sure...) I have never claimed to support a position of 'cutting them off cold turkey'. And I don't understand how this is a good response to my comment that our justifications are different. Justification != what should be done. Seriously? Every time you have mixed up 'laws' and 'legal authority' I have responded and quoted what you said and said that laws != legal authority. Are you seriously going to pretend that you have not done this? Do you not read my posts?

So you want to neither agree or disagree with the premise that people can own and/or have rights to land based upon where their ancestors come from? Do you not see the relevance of such a premise when it comes to the discussion of native issues? Also, my statement was conditional, which means I did not assume if you agreed or disagreed with the premise (which is why I kept asking). Could do you please define what you mean by rights in this context? Also, could you be more specific in how much land around these tribes these rights encompass (i.e. what is the radius of 'land rights')? For example, did any group of native people in Canada ever have 'land rights' over http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melville_Island_(Northwest_Territories_and_Nunavut)?

It's not my premise because I don't agree with it. If you do not disagree that a group of people can own land based on where their ancestors come from, then you agree with it. Which means that burden of proof is on you. But here is the thing. If a group of people relinquished their sovereignty and rights to the land, that means that had that sovereignty and rights to the land in the first place. In which case how did the natives obtain the rights to the land to begin with? I thought that you position was that the natives do not have 'rights to the land' now, but they had then in the past. In which case I ask why did those rights to the land exist in the first place hundreds of years ago (before they were ceded). 1. you are still strawmaning my position even after I said countless times that I have never used the fact that the treaties were made during a time at which other immoral laws were past to justify my claim that I was skeptical about the authority of those that made the laws to make those laws. My justification was always that authority that made that law was unelected, did not earn the position by merit, the idea that someone can make racist laws that affect people hundreds of years in the future is very questionable, and the legal framework that gave this authority any power is based on the winners of the Normal Invasion of 1066 imposing their will. Yes but the justification I use is different from the justification that you use. Your the one who keeps quoting me and mixing up between when I say laws and when I say legal authority.

So if you do not disagree with the premise that a group of people can own land based on where their ancestors are from, can you please indicate a group of people that owns land based on where their ancestors are from and indicate the land that they own? If you want to consider 'rights to use land' and ownership as completely different then fine. Though some would argue that ownership of land is simply having a set of 'rights to use land' and that 'rights to use land' is a form of partial ownership. But anyway, even with a change in terminology my questions still stand. Are you saying that a group of people has 'rights to use land' based on where their ancestors are from? If so, how does one determine which land someone has 'rights to use' based on their ancestry? See I can believe in the flying spaghetti monster, but it doesn't mean it exists. Even if natives from hundreds of years ago believed that they had 'rights to land' does not actually mean these 'rights to land' actually exist. You need to prove that they exist. So please prove that these rights exist. I do not have a tail as I am human and was not born with a weird spinal deformity. And stating that my justification is flawed doesn't make it flawed. I responded to your so called 'counter argument', but if you wish to ignore that and just claim that you have disprove my justification then what can I do? No, I do not drink. How do you not understand this? There is a difference between 'laws' and 'legal authority'. 'Laws' can be questioned in many different ways, one of the possibilities being poor 'legal authority'. You are questioning the law for a reason other than 'legal authority' (i.e. you think that the interpretation of the treaties by the courts is false). And i'm not saying that the treaties shouldn't be honored. I'm saying that the treaties shouldn't be honored BECAUSE they have some sort of indisputable legal authority. They should be honored BECAUSE if a government doesn't honor them you will have riots, protests, blocking of resource developments, and most likely violence and deaths. They should be honored for practical reasons, not because they have some indisputable legal authority that we should never question. See for some people, justification for a claim actually matters. And for the umpteenth time, you refuse to acknowledge the difference between a law/treaty and the legal authority of that law/treaty. Geez, I am sorry for taking what people mean literally. In such discussions/debates where people often misinterpret each other or perform strawman arguments it is important to avoid ambiguous language and take what people say literally rather than what you think they mean. But apparently it's my fault that you choose to use ambiguous language. Why did you not just use strange if you meant strange? And in general you seem to like ambiguous terminology and you like to confuse meaning to hide behind a veil of ambiguity. It is why you try to confuse legal authority with authority with moral authority with legality with laws.

I think that AC is trying to say that anecdotal evidence is insufficient for him to support your claim and that statical evidence is preferable.

If you go back to page 4, you will see that your original claim was only restricted by time period, it wasn't restricted by nation or geographical area. If you wish to change your position, then that is fine. But please be more clear.

Is this ANOTHER one of your famous misinterpretations? What I actually said was: Accountability Now, on 31 Jan 2014 - 6:13 PM, said: I never said that THE LAWS regaring First Nations should not be questioned (but don't let me stop you from making your strawman). How do you have so much reading comprehension fail? How is 'the authority of those that made the laws' the same thing as 'the laws'? You are confusing the fact that laws can change with the concept that the legal authority of a law depends on the legal authority of previous laws and on the legal framework in which those laws are created. Those individuals could only be elected because there was a legal framework & laws that said they could be elected. So the legal authority of any laws they pass depends on the legal authority of the framework & laws which allowed them to be elected. Perhaps a new senator was only elected because a new electoral district was created. So the legal authority of laws created by this senator depend on the legal authority of the senator which depends on the legal authority of the law that created the new district, which depends on the legal authority of those that made the new district into law (so previous senators). And you can keep going back until you get to the American revolution. And who is to say those that imposed the declaration of independence had the legal authority to do so? Some could consider the American revolution illegal and that instead America should belong to Britain and not be independent. The point is all legal authority is ultimately imposed by force. Why not? Are you imposing an ad hominem fallacy on yourself? Funny? I find it sad. But if other people being beheaded simply for having different beliefs amuses you then that says a lot about your moral character. And people do question it... they are just beheaded shortly after. Oh look, cultural relativism. Wait, is your position now that their past authority shouldn't be questioned because it doesn't need to be questioned since it is unnecessary to question in order to change the law, or is your position still that their authority shouldn't be questioned because their authority is absolute? Those are 2 different positions.

No...your position from the start was this: -1=e^ipi, on 31 Jan 2014 - 6:04 PM, said: Wow... clearly you do not comprehend the difference between a claim and a position. A position can consist of a baseless claim, or it can also be a claim plus justification. The reason you strawman my position is not because you misrepresent my claim, but because you misrepresent the justification I use for that claim. The fact that we still have laws and treaties in place today today doesn't demerit the legal legitimacy argument against the original authorities than created the laws since the legal legitimacy of those elected officials descends from the same original authority. Maybe I'll try to make this clearer for you. No person, state, country or organization has (nor ever will have) absolute legal authority to make laws. Why you ask? Because the legal authority of those laws depend on the legal authority of the legal framework in which they are created (be it the Canadian parliamentary system, the American republican system, etc.). And the legal authority of the legal framework either descends from a pre-existing framework (Canadian legal framework was created from the British legal framework), in which case you can keep going back until you reach the original legal framework, or the legal framework was imposed by force (American revolution, French revolution, Chinese civil war, etc.). And who gave the people who imposed the initial legal framework the authority to do so? God? No. No one did, the people who won the military conflicted imposed their will by force. So you and Jacee can continue with your bullshit claims about how the legal authority of the racist laws shouldn't be questioned, or whatever. But it won't make for a convincing argument if I'm skeptical of the legitimacy of those authorities in the first place. Furthermore, the burden of proof should be on you and Jacee to prove your claims about the absolute legal authority of the treaties, charter, constitution, etc. rather than on me since I appear to have the more reasonable null hypothesis. Now if you want to redefine legal authority to mean 'legal authority within its legal framework' you could do that but then legal authority would mean the same thing as legality, so what is the point?

Sigh, your statement: "I agree with you but you should ask a Native if they are Canadian. Remember....they like to deal with us Nation to Nation." doesn't magically make your other statement : "They consider themselves sovereign nations who should be dealing with Canada on a nation to nation basis." not ambiguous. If you want to not be misinterpreted, do not use ambiguous statements. So you disagree with the premise that a group of people can own territory based on where their ancestors are from? So now you claim that the Natives had rights to the lands, but your previous statement was that they did not own the land. Could you please tell me what these 'rights to the lands' are and how they are morally justified?

Your comment does not demerit what I have said. Do you or do you not retract your following claim?: Again with the same strawman argument? See above & stop misrepresenting my position. That helps the discussion. Thanks.

Yes, I do not understand why people cannot comprehend this notion. Legality != Morality. I know what a strawman argument is. Now this is why you are committing one: My position isn't that the authority of the people who made the laws is questionable because some of the laws they made are immoral. My position is that the authority of people who made the laws is questionable because of other reasons (not being democratically elected, not earning the position through merit, the questionability that people can have authority make laws the affect unborn people 100's of years in the future, the questionability that anyone has the authority to make racist laws, etc). You are strawmaning my position because you are misprepresenting my justification for why I have my position. The reason I stated was because it was a response to Because you were implying that the authority of those that made the laws regarding first nations issues should not be questioned because they made other laws that you have no problem with. I provided examples of laws made by the same people that made the laws regarding first nations issues that you would strongly object to so that you would question their authority (which would force a retraction of your statement). Nonsense. The authority of all laws depends of past laws which created the framework for the future laws to be created in the first place. And you can trace that authority all the way back to some armed revolution or someone imposing the original laws by force (American Revolution, French Revolution, Norman Invasion of 1066, etc.). Why does the pacifist constitution of Japan have any authority? Because Japan lost WW2 and the constitution was imposed on them by the United States by force. Saudi Arabia has a law that stands today that says that apostates should be beheaded. Do you not question the authority of that law? Perhaps it might be useful to distinguish between moral authority and legal authority? The only ridiculous position is your position to not question the legal authority of the law. The legal authority of all laws is questionable because all laws descend from authorities that took power by force. The immorality just means that the laws have no moral authority. The legal authority is questionable because of other reasons (see above).