I imagine the wobbly will quite happily let the farmer go and get a representative of the US government for him to fight. Likely he will have naturally moved on before such a representative responds to 'someone is enjoying my shade against my will!'
It's a sad world we live in when "sitting in the shade" is called a crime - and imply that it's bad people aren't getting 'caught' for such trivial things.
I mean, if we're talking about absurdity of points, you are saying that a single travelling poor man sitting in the shade is something that is worthy of invoking the power of the federal government to combat.
"sitting in the shade" is not the crime; trespass is the crime.
The concept of private property is useful enough on the whole that governments are willing to enforce it, and leave discretion for right-of-access to the owner of said property. This allows the property owner to assess people in terms of risk they pose to said property and either grant or deny access.
If said farmer has had problems with transients damaging his property in the past, he will certainly appreciate the right to deny access, with the power of the government backing the decision.
but the real owner isn't me, it's the United States government - Locke1689, 5 hours ago
I am not an American, but I've been online for nearly 20 years now, and I've seen a lot of US politics pass under the bridge. I've never seen anything that goes contrary to the notion that 'the United States government' is 'the federal government [of the US]'. The two terms are used interchangably in online discourse in my experience.
If I am wrong in this, can you please provide me with some links to explain how 'the federal government' of the US is a different entity to the 'the United States government'. I'd be very interested to read them, because it would be a very curious oddity in the way politics are described over there. Does 'the federal government' operate at a higher or lower level than 'the United States government', or do they operate in parallel? It's an intriguing concept.
The fact that you're arguing over the synonymous/non-synonymous semantics of two phrases, rather than actually refuting locke's main point, says a great deal about your argument.
Can you please point out Locke's 'main' point, because it seems he's danced around a few topics to me.
If you're talking about the parent of my last comment, it should be abundantly clear that I'm saying 'no, you did', which is directly refuting his point, with a quote, no less. The rest was a bit of poetic license called 'taking the piss'.
What the hell? I hope you're not an American -- if civics and government class has so failed our students i would be extremely disappointed.
The government of the united States is exactly that, ranging from the lowest town council member to the President. You do understand the concept of sets and subsets, right? The federal government is a subset of the government. That's why it has that additional qualifier.
That's OK, I don't buy your attempt to be seen as educated on the topic.
Your post is basically, "I don't really know anything, but I sure do read a lot of blogs." If you're actually interested in US govt. & politics open a first year textbook. The Constitution (and amendments) quite clearly describe the subdivision of governmental powers into 4 different areas: the legislative, the executive, the judicial, and the states.
Nice rebuttal: "Oh, it'll say it in this physical resource that you won't have access to".
Looking through google for 'the United States Government', most of the results refer to the three branches, but describe other powers as falling to the states as a different entity, if they're described at all. Certainly if you look at news sources for terms like "called on the United States government", they're all federal-style issues, not state - state issues tend to be specified as such.
You may also want to change the leading paragraph of the Wikipedia article, since it's peddling the "I don't really know anything" viewpoint, given how powerful WP is as a source.
So, as I asked, do you have any reliable, definitive resources I can actually access, or are you content to just call me uneducated with a lazy, hand-wavy dismissal? I'm happy to be proven wrong, but not in the lazy way you're going about it.
'James Madison asserted that the states and national government "are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers."'
