Serious ignorance

From Facebook:

I'm not sure if this is serious stupidity or rampant ignorance since pretty much everybody knows it is the US CONSTITUTION that begins "We the people.."

Well, everybody except this idiot.

The Phrase "we the people" is totally absent from the Declaration of Independence.

Which would be something this person would know if he actually read either document, which he obviously hasn't.

Neither has he understood either one for their historic and legal significance. And I am not patient enough to try to educate this person since he is a lost cause for any intellectual pursuit.

I would be pretty sure that things like ablative absolutes would seriously go well beyond this person's intellectual capacity.

Again, why I don't bother with the average gun loon. This clown is pretty typical for the intellectual level of a gunloon.

Of course, Gunloons will more than eagerly foist their ignorance upon one.

Ignorance isn't bliss: it's really fucking annoying.

Quote of the Day

I may have run this one before, but it's pretty right on for the US's cult of ignorance:

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov

And before your make stupid comments about ME being the ignorant one:  remember that one is not really allowed to give legal advice unless one is a member of the bar.  In fact, it is against the law to put oneself out as a lawyer or engage in the unqualified practise of law.

On the other hand, I have on more than one occasion shown that you have taken things out of context from legal decisions.

But, you know more about the law than I do.

Quote of the day:

The thing is, shameless lying and ignorance works surprisingly well as a debate tactic. It’s hard to argue with someone who not only has signaled that he doesn’t care what the truth is but is downright proud of how little he actually knows. Such a person is not amenable to being educated. Once the pretense of really caring one way or another about what is right and what is wrong has been abandoned, all avenue of discourse is shut down.

Source

Molon Lame

Thermopylae comes up a lot for two reasons: 1) Xerxes asked the Spartans to give up their weapons, and 2) Zack Snyder's 300 gives members of the "patriot" movement hard-ons that could burst a carbon-fiber condom.

Guess what, the attributed utterance of "molon labe" may not have even happened at all!  According to Stephen Hodkinson, BA, PhD, FSA, Professor of Ancient History and Director of the Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies at the University of Nottingham: the phrase didn't appear in extant writings from close to the time of the Battle of Thermopylae.  We only know the phrase from the writings of Plutarch, which come from about 580 years after the battle:

Finally, some comments on the “molon labe” phrase ascribed to Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. It does not appear in Herodotus’ account, written in the later 5^th century, which records the witty sayings of another member of the 300, Dienekes. Neither does it appear in accounts of the battle deriving from Ephorus, who wrote in the 4^th century and who himself drew upon a contemporary poem about the battle by Simonides. To my knowledge, the only appearance of the phrase in all the ancient evidence about Thermopylae is in a work by Plutarch, writing in the early 2^nd century AD: the Apophthegmata Lakonika (Sayings of Spartans), which is part of Plutarch’s Moralia. It is no. 11 out of fifteen sayings ascribed to Leonidas.

Professor Hopkinson later clarified in an email:  

As far as we can currently tell, many of [the Spartan sayings] were probably invented in the late 4^th or early 3^rdcenturies BC, at a time when Sparta had ceased to be a major international power and became instead an attractive source of moral examples for the new and rising Hellenistic schools of philosophy. However, the late 4^th or early 3^rd centuries BC is still 150-200 years after Thermopylae, a long time after the event.

In sum, the historical authenticity of the phrase “molon labe” is uncertain.

Of course, you can have all the facts on your side, but no one will care if it isn't an interesting story. The ignorant will chose an interesting story to the facts any day.

See also:

• Did Sparta Exercise Arms Control In Its Society?
• “Molon Labe” Was Uttered By An Arms-Controlling Tyrant
• 6 Things Gun Lovers and Haters Can Agree On--especially item number 2