great article (http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12585) from the libertarian perspective about the current left-right agreement on China's evilness. rooted, as always, in hypocracy, protectionism, and war mongering.
So the occassional mass-murder isn't even a tiny factor? Libertarianism departed from the Libertarian Party when all the Libertarians became too cool to make libertarian arguments for a libertarian foreign policy, and decided that it's easier to just pretend that no nations other than the US ever do anything aggressive.
Libertarians are all about being selfish and f**king over everyone else, then crying like babies when they get f**ked over. Its just resentment from Mommy making them share their toys when they were 2.
\
LOL at "Liberal War Mongers".
interesting read, Lester. On the one hand, I despise the repression and denial of civil rights that the Beijing crowd imposes on their people, particularly the brutal treatment of Christians. On the other hand, not picking fights you can't win is a generally wise adage - and we have our hands full fighting Islamofascists right now.
Just an interesting note on the topic, I was talking to a chinese friend last week about all this. And she was shocked I told her the Dalai Lama is well liked in the west. She described him as a terrorist.
I agree with the article. But to be honest about 2/3rds of the way through thought tl;dr >_>.
What annoys me about the new, popular, anti Chinese sentiment is it seems the majority of them don't even have the most shallow of understandings of the issue. And the smallest peices of infomation they do bother to collect seem completely polorised.
I guess it's a pointless step to understand what you protest >_>
tars- clinton bombed iraq for most of his presidency, invaded bosnia, bombed a sudanese pharmacutical factory and held the sanctions on iraq, killing thuosands.
most liberals voted for the iraq war authorization and virtually all of them voted in favor of last summers war in lebanon by israel.
and more recently, as the author describes, are the "humanitarian" calls for invasion of darfur and support of tibet against china, who we have borrowed a trillion dollars from.
pat buchanan and ron paul were AGAINST the Iraq war, Hillary, Lieberman, kerry and edwards were for it.
dave m- libertarianism was founded by austrian economists like Murray Rothbard and Ludwig Von Mises specifically against nearly all interventionism , even "good" wars.
"war is the health of the state" said randolph bourne. if you are against the state, war is your mortal enemy as the government grows, takes on more of a central role, drums up nationalism, and all sorts of coercians it would otherwise not be allowed to do.
libertarianism = anti war, anti state, pro market
indianismith- it is our mentality these days that we either subsidize things or ban them. like stem cell research "we NEED to have it, we NEED to ban it". let people who care about it pay for it and leave the government out of it.
You know, Lester, I do respect you and your willingness to put your opinions out there, even when they are unpopular and controversial. Hooray for free speech! :cheers:
But where you and I part company is at this point. I believe that the line from SPIDERMAN is true: "With great power comes great responsibility."
America is one of the most powerful nations on earth, and THE most powerful democracy. Sometimes it falls upon us to use that power to crush evil for the betterment of the whole world. Sometimes we misjudge and fail, but more often in the last century we have used our power well. We stopped the militarist Imperial Germany from conquering Europe 90 years ago, and we crushed two of the most evil regimes in the history of world in 1945, liberating millions and ending the agony of the Holocaust. We buried the Soviets in the Cold War, ending the deadliest dictatorship the world had ever known (Stalin executed more people, it is believed, than died in all of World War II) without resorting to a third World War that would have destroyed all humanity.
Heck, I still believe that toppling Saddam was a good thing, and will be viewed positively 100 years from now.
But, I still respect your opinion. If America had not had the gumption to act contrary to your philosophy, though, you might not be free to utter it!
I believe all of that is a fallacy. had Germany not had to pay through the nose after ww1 there never would have been a hitler. heck, if hitler had been admitted to art school there never wuold have been a hitler.
all of the statecraft of the 20th century led to all of the disasters of the 20th century.
and nationalism is sually a tool of the elites. in argentina the government was doing a bad job and wetre on the outs with the people. then came the falkland island crisis. All the sudden patriotism was everywhere and you had to fly the flag and worship the state or you were unpatriotic.
have you ever read "the discovery of freedom"? it's by rose wilder lane, who was laura ingells wilder's daughter. it was written when social security and the federal reserve and things like that were coming in to vogue. her, Garett Garett (that's his name) and afew others tried to fight it but lost.
edit here (http://www.mises.org/books/discovery.pdf) check out the chapter "the old world"
This is where you and I must part company, then. If you cannot acknowledge the evil of Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan and recognize the necessity of their defeat, we simply aren't speaking the same language, and further debate is useless (on this topic :lookingup:)
i
the question is do you believe man is free? I do.
Quote from: indianasmith on March 28, 2008, 07:35:47 PM
You know, Lester, I do respect you and your willingness to put your opinions out there, even when they are unpopular and controversial. Hooray for free speech! :cheers:
But where you and I part company is at this point. I believe that the line from SPIDERMAN is true: "With great power comes great responsibility."
America is one of the most powerful nations on earth, and THE most powerful democracy. Sometimes it falls upon us to use that power to crush evil for the betterment of the whole world. Sometimes we misjudge and fail, but more often in the last century we have used our power well. We stopped the militarist Imperial Germany from conquering Europe 90 years ago, and we crushed two of the most evil regimes in the history of world in 1945, liberating millions and ending the agony of the Holocaust. We buried the Soviets in the Cold War, ending the deadliest dictatorship the world had ever known (Stalin executed more people, it is believed, than died in all of World War II) without resorting to a third World War that would have destroyed all humanity.
Heck, I still believe that toppling Saddam was a good thing, and will be viewed positively 100 years from now.
But, I still respect your opinion. If America had not had the gumption to act contrary to your philosophy, though, you might not be free to utter it!
Didn't I hear this in a John Wayne film? :wink:
I've made it a point to keep out of political or religious threads in this forum as it's usually a great opportunity for things to blow out of control real fast. That being said I have to take issue with a few points in your post Indiana.
Quote from: indianasmith on March 28, 2008, 07:35:47 PM
America is one of the most powerful nations on earth, and THE most powerful democracy. Sometimes it falls upon us to use that power to crush evil for the betterment of the whole world.
There's an awful lot of evil going on out there. That it's fallen on us to crush it only in places that offer a geopolitical prize or involve resource conerns is just coincidence? An extrapolation of manifest destiny to cover questionable military adventures around the globe has the net result of squandering any good p.r. our better efforts as a people may have earned. The last few years should have been clear enough proof of that for anyone. If not, the hundred years prior have plenty of similar instances.
I'm also at a loss to understand how I'm expected to buy the "crush evil for the better of the whole world" rhetoric when in one breath our leader thumps his chest about our determination to ensure freedom for Afghani women then in the next confirm his dogmatic obsession with curtailing the freedom for women to do with their bodies as they please
in our own country. Sounds like pots and kettles to me.
Quote from: indianasmith on March 28, 2008, 07:35:47 PM
Sometimes we misjudge and fail, but more often in the last century we have used our power well. We stopped the militarist Imperial Germany from conquering Europe 90 years ago, and we crushed two of the most evil regimes in the history of world in 1945, liberating millions and ending the agony of the Holocaust.
I think success/fail tallying is never going to yield an accurate answer...just too much of it that's based on perspective or bias. Did we win in Korea? Did we win in Viet Nam? Did we win in Central America? There is no definitive answer for these that I know of.
What about Afghanistan in the 80s? Some people actually hold that effort up as a laurel in our "toppling the Soviets" cap. Yeah, too bad the shortsightedness of it guaranteed blowback. And we got it in spades, didn't we?
We were a little late to the Kaiser's party as it was. I think you might be overstating America's role in that fiasco just a little bit. With the second world war, Lester's right about the Austrian corporal. Weimar Germany was a breeding ground for the germs of unrestrained aggresive nationalism. Sure, everyone's heard the song about the harsh Versailles Treaty(it's the "Don't be ridiculous!" of the causes of WWII sitcom), but their implimentation was a significant factor.
A whole forum could be devoted to the analysis of the maelstrom out of which the NSDAP rose alone, so it's pointless to mention much, suffice to say our preordained role in it's being checked was hardly canon in the 30s and early 40s. In fact, the US was as obnoxious about the plight of the victims of Nazi ideology(the jews being the largest segement) as other nations. And don't even get me started on the papacy.
It's not hard to see the zeitgeist of the time and realize that without the attack on Pearl Harbor(and incidentally, Hitler's declaring war on the US as part of the tripartite pact), the average American had little understanding of what was really going on Europe, let alone interest in signing up to give their lives in the struggle there.
It's also vital to remember who our strongest ally was in defeating Germany. Erstwhile, to be sure, but an ally nonentheless, Russia is often consigned to the same politically useful role of boogeyman/joke/target, the way another vital ally, France, has usually been (and without
them our nation would most likely have been strangled in it's crib). Of course, the Germans(or more approrpiately, Hitler)did themselves no favor by opening fronts on every side humanly possible. Without the chewing the Red Army gave the German forces(after taking a bit themselves), Overlord may well have been a Market Garden.
If I even have to say that our efforts around the globe 1942-1945 were necessary or just, then you're just looking to snipe. The most important learning experience I've ever had in my life has been the countless conversations I've had with my wife's grandfather who fought all over the damn Pacific. He still bears the physical scars of combat, the emotional scars of death up close and, just as defining, the racist scars of a war waged in totality between two very different cultures.
I have a great respect for folks in the armed services. I, myself, had wanted from an early age to be a B-52 pilot, but a conspiracy of open-heart surgeries that rendered me 4-F kept me from that particular avenue of serving my country. The idea, in my country now, that knowing the history of my country and being objective about it and it's place in the larger scheme of world history is somehow unpatriotic makes my heart sink. And to be honest, like any other jingoistic one-liner, "If you like freedom, thank a vet" leaves a crummy taste in my mouth. To be frank, the last vet I believe I should personally thank for preserving my freedom fought in WWII....and I did thank him numerous times...personally. I actually believe it's patriotic to
not confuse appreciating the service rendered in, say, cold war chess moves like Korea or Viet Nam, with some altrustic rampart defense of the homeland from invaders. That these engagements have bettered the situation of some people in these locales is beyond question(then again, so is the severe damage done to some!), but only when applied to the abstract and ultimately futile cold war machinations of MI complex do these wars even involve the American people.
A few weeks after VE day, think tanks were already concocting just how we could knock the Soviets out of the global game....by wiping a few of their cities off the map! "Dropshot" and it's human corollary Curtis LeMay tried to sell the efficacy of "the only safe Soviet Union was a smoking, radiating one!" to a nation convinced that mom, apple pie and your virginal little sister were only one Red Dawn away from oblivion.
which leads to....
Quote from: indianasmith on March 28, 2008, 07:35:47 PM
We buried the Soviets in the Cold War, ending the deadliest dictatorship the world had ever known (Stalin executed more people, it is believed, than died in all of World War II) without resorting to a third World War that would have destroyed all humanity.
I don't know if you noticed the Politburo with their shovels right alongside Reagan and all the other cold warriors. They were notoriously ignorant of the 5 P's and their nation suffered for it.
Though Stalin did cark before the cold war really got up some steam, everything you mention about the man of steel is on the money. And I agree, there are alot of folks in this country who just don't get how, when it comes to the unimaginable scope of death involved, Stalin could be said to have had his finger on the trigger more so than even Hitler. In the end though, it's splitting tyrannical hairs. Besides, like Rasputin, I don't think mere humans could kill Stalin. He had to be consumed from within by the vile fires of hatred and fear. One still has to account for the practicality of alliance with him concerning the Third Reich, over the moral obligation to censure him. Very murky waters to be sure. He was already understood to be a bloodthristy tyrant
before he became Uncle Joe. This is also relevant to our dealing with the other menacing mustache of the twentieth century, Saddam Hussein. I don't know about you, but when my nation's leaders ask(and expect) me to practice short-term memory loss in the service of patriotism or to gloss over short-sighted foreign policy chicanery, I have to balk.
The four and a half decades of the cold war(going by the most common timeframe used) involved more sabre rattling and brinksmanship than outright aggression. The idea that the Soviets were just waiting for a chance, that one moment of fleeting superiority, to pulverize us has been discounted for some time. The American leadership and strategists had, of course, wasted no time in providing the game, and an increasingly red scared populace, with phantom fears like bomber gaps, missle gaps, etc....all the way up to the horrific garbage trotted out by Reagan and his cadre of lunatics about fighting and winning a nuclear war!
We were actually in a greater danger during those years in the early 80s than we were with the Cuban Missile crisis. In 1962, it could be trusted that both the American civillian leadership(not so much the chiefs) valued human life and knew a nuclear war was a lose/lose proposition...so did Kruschev. (Though I won't discount that fear of a coup in the USSR would have been a real concern) In the early 80s, Reagan, Weinberger and Co.
(tm) not only believed a nuclear war was not all that much a problem when dealing with such satanic folks as russians, but that such a war was fightable to an acceptable outcome! "With enough shovels..." Remember that line? I do. All you need is a hole, a spare door and some dirt. With enough shovels, America would triumph. Somewhere down in storage I have an old phone book from New York state that included the FEMA guidelines and emergency route info should commies start pouring through the Fulda Gap and we end up facing Herman Kahn's unthinkable. The very architects of the latest foolishness are children of that amazing time in our history...Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz(both Scoop Jackson acolytes) cut their teeth with the actor in the oval office.
While I wouldn't say your thoughts are wrong, I feel they misportray the issues as having been so white hat/black hat. From a human perspective, the last century was a mess. There were plenty of times were one can get a sincere chill from the pride of saying "This too, is America". Yet, just as often, one can see the instance in film, read the letter home, feel the scar under the shirt or hear the exhausted reminiscence and be reminded that even our nation has made some, at best, muddle-headed moves. At worst, catastrophic.
Plus you have to admit, Indiana, that if that line from SPIDERMAN is applied to us, then we've let Uncle Ben down pretty badly, haven't we? :bluesad:
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Whew...Lastly, and to the point of this thread(Oh yeah :wink: ) Holding sponsors of the Olympics up to any standard of moral obligation is silly. They've never been capable of it before, so why now? Any 'move' they made to appear righteous would be hollow and simply done to preserve their own marketability. Same goes for politicians. End of story. Even suggesting some kind of force be applied in this scenario is asinine, yet not surprising. So commenting on the usual response one can expect from Washington, one party or the other, should hardly be considered bias. This is what they always do. And the more impotent or irrelevant they become, the louder the barking. My aunt's chihuahua does that. I can only hope Bush doesn't end up p**sing on my floor too.
Someone wants to make a stand? Let it be the athletes. Let the American athletes first and foremost. They should boycott. Show the world that, contrary to the impression of being a bunch of ethically lazy, xenophobic rednecks we've given the world for the last 6 years, they actually understand and take comfort in the principles our songs and commercials brag about endlessly. I want to be shown that these hopefuls treasure principle over the lure of monetary endorsements and adulation. Imagine the signal that would send to see them live up to all the rhetoric about just what these games are supposed to be in the spirit of. Ya know...Mankind and s**t?!
NOTE: Sorry about the length of this...not to mention that all was said in the spirit of frankness. No acrimony was intended at all. I'm a bit passionate about some of this stuff and Jeez, I'd hate for this to be some alienating move. For myself, this has made me a little grumpy about humankind. I'm gonna go take a nap and then watch some MEGAFORCE.
I am runmning late and don't have time to give this thoughtful post the full response it deserves, but I must comment on this -
"I'm also at a loss to understand how I'm expected to buy the "crush evil for the better of the whole world" rhetoric when in one breath our leader thumps his chest about our determination to ensure freedom for Afghani women then in the next confirm his dogmatic obsession with curtailing the freedom for women to do with their bodies as they please in our own country. Sounds like pots and kettles to me."
How is it in this country that you can be FOR equal pay for equal work, AGAINST sexual discrimination and sexual harassment, and appoint a woman to the highest ranked cabinet position that there is . . .
and yet, if you oppose unborn children being cut into pieces and sucked into sinks, you are against women somehow? Women have the right to do as they please with their bodies - but when a tiny heart starts beating in the womb, the right to life - a right enshrined and protected in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - has to be taken into account. Why is it that abortion has become the SOLE litmus test of feminism in America? with the level of contraceptive technology available today, why do we INSIST that women must have a right to murder unborn children in order to be truly free?
I don't care if I lose all my 120 karma points on this, it needed to be said. Freedom of choice should not supercede the inalienable right to life.
Personally I don't think any truly democractic nation should have anything to do with China. It's still an oppressive Communist dictactorship last I looked that will easily use its might and propoganda machine to hide its many evil atrocities committed upon those still oppressed. What about the recent treatment of the Tibetian people? Since when was any of that tolerable? Apparently these days money and greed means turning a blind eye to almost anything.
I wanted to take a minute to address some of the points that were raised by Soylent Green in his lengthy post. It's funny - I really do come here to talk about the cheesy B-movies I love, yet invariably I get drawn into these lengthy threads about religious, political, and moral issues. I guess one of the reasons I enjoy those discussions here so much is that this community seems to be able to disagree without resorting to name-calling and flame wars.
Soylent, I know that history is very complex, and that America is far from perfect. However, given the world we live in, I would rather live here, in the USA, than under any other government or administration in the world. One reason I am proud to be an American is because we, as a nation, for the last hundred years or so, have made a determined effort to let our foreign and domestic policy be dictated not JUST by self- interest but also by a sense of right and wrong. Sometimes that has worked out well, sometimes it hasn't, but I think, as a nation, America sincerely tries to do the right thing for the most people most of the time. That being said, we are also capable of being shortsighted and jingoistic. But, let's look at the examples you mentioned in your post.
First of all, yes, we don't intervene everywhere in the world where evil deeds are being done. National interest must also play a part; that is why we will never put a large force ashore in Africa to stop the constant barbarism and slaughter that seem to make up so much of that continent's way of life. We tried it once, in Somalia, and the locals just hated us for interfering, and the left that had cried out for us to DO something reversed those calls in a hurry when American boys started dying. As much as we might despise the bloodshed and wrong that takes place there, for the moment we have no pressing national interest in Africa. Also, to be honest, I don't think our presence there would make any difference. The natives would quit killing each other just long enough to turn their weapons on us, then go back to self-slaughter as soon as someone yanked our troops out.
But I do believe in good and evil as absolute concepts. I think that most of the time, when people go on and on about "shades of gray", they are deliberately trying to muddy the clarity of the issue in order to justify their own behavior! But, I digress.
Back to WWII - of course the treaty of Versailles created the conditions that made Hitler's rise to power possible. Had the English and French actually listened to Wilson and made the treaty less vindictive than it was, Hitler would have had a much harder time achieving that power. But does that make him any less evil, or his defeat any less pressing a necessity for the free world? He was bent on short-term conquest of all Europe, and long-term world domination. As for the Japanese, their conquest of China, launched in 1937, was as immoral as any act performed by any nation. 200,000 civilians were brutally murdered by the Japanese army in Nanking that year, AFTER the city had surrendered. Opposing those two powers was the only responsible choice our nation could make, both in terms of morality and in terms of self-preservation. Many of the American people were frankly too ignorant and short-sighted at the time to see that, but thank God President Roosevelt was not.
Of course, crushing Hitler meant that we would have to side with Stalin for a time. As Winston Churchill said in 1941: "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would try to find a few kind words to speak for the devil." Stalin was one of the most evil men who ever lived, no doubt. However, Hitler wanted to conquer the world in his own lifetime. Stalin was just as ambitious, but more patient. We were using a long-term ideological enemy to fend off a short-term, more dangerous ideological enemy.
Once Hitler was defeated, the U.S. did make an honest attempt to get along with the Soviets, even offering to rebuild Eastern Europe with the Marshall Plan. But Stalin's brutal repression of democracy in Poland and his siezure of Eastern Europe left no room to doubt where he stood. You seem to have a certain distaste for the Cold War, but in the end, it was a necessary struggle. You discount the expansionist nature of Soviet-style communism, but the fact is that the long-term goal of the Soviet Union was the destabilization and ultimate overthrow of all the Western democracies, particularly the U.S. The fact that the Soviets were still agressive and expansionist is clearly demonstrated by their multiple offensives AFTER America's defeat in Vietnam. In ten years, they attempted to move into Afghanistan, Angola, and Central America. NOT to oppose them would have been not only immoral but also to ignore our own national interests. Yes, there were many ugly things done during the Cold War - I certainly am not trying to justify McCarthyism - and we had to accept some pretty unsavory allies. But in the end, the defeat of the Soviet Union was a moral necessity. By the way, I don't know how much you've read about Reagan, but the man was not an advocate for nuclear war. The highest goal of his life was to eliminate nuclear weapons forever, hence his obsession with "Star Wars" technology to make them obsolete - and his offer to Gorbachev to share that technology once it was perfected, in order to make them obsolete for both sides. Reagan's "Second Cold War" of the 80's was risky, but necessary, and it achieved its goal.
In short, yes, America has occasionally made a muddle of things, but it has generally done so in an attempt to do right, and in the big picture, has succeeded more often than it has failed. On our current attempt to fix things overseas, the jury is still out. But I for one think that Uncle Ben wouldn't be that disappointed with all we have tried to do. Thanks for your thoughtful and well-written post!
QuoteTHE most powerful democracy
just fyi, Eurozone now has a slightly larger economy than the US
Quotecrushing Hitler meant that we would have to side with Stalin for a time.
the ruination stalin caused makes that argument impossible for me personally to make. he's STALIN!! tgermany was very sophisticated in the 20's, moreso than probably the rest of the world in many respects. the communist empire went on for most of the 20th century and it's brutality was deeply engrained in the people out of fear.
but I'm not intersted in debating ww2, it happened and we won. i think these are different times. post cold war, I don't see the purpose for a cold war size military and that's the bottom line.
the world is a big scary dangerous place and it always will be.
As much as a few of ya like to talk about this stuff, you should almost have your own political subfolder here :) I could see some of ya as kinda-like the game show hosts lol.
Number 1 - Just because some drug addict with a radio show calls Clinton, lady Clinton, Lieberman, et al "Liberal" doesn't mean they are. The Clintons are moderates, and Lieberman is supporting John McCain because he's drank the conservative Kool-Aid after 9-11.
Number 2 - Peace-keeping missions are a different child all together than invading a country because the leader has a mustache or whyever we invaded Iraq this week.
Number 3 - none of which has a switch to do with China's human rights violations, which should be dealt with economically but it won't happen because big business - the very big business who libertarians worship - won't give up 1.5 billion potential customers. Instead, you got Google and Yahoo blocking access to information and handing over other information to the Chinese government. What do they think they are, US telecom companies? The one good thing about China's rush to modernization is it will increase transparency in their government and their excesses will become open humiliation. Thanks to their stupid obsession with face, that will result in the operators of the humiliation being brutally dealt with. Thus the guy in charge of food inspection for export gets executed, Tibetian rioters get gunned down, and horror movies are banned. China's desperate attempt to be a grown up country is making them look more and more like the people who sit in the front row of church but then go home to their brothel/crack house.
But if this thread continues to have abortion posts I'm out of here because there is nothing that's a bigger waste of time than talking about abortion on the internet. Nothing.
I never ding anyone Karma for political reasons, and I have only dinged two people and that was because they were annoying for other reasons.
"Just because some drug addict with a radio show calls Clinton, lady Clinton, Lieberman, et al "Liberal" doesn't mean they are. The Clintons are moderates"
No kidding! Especially one who gets busted with viagra coming back from the Dominican Republic (referring to Rush)...wonder what he was doing there with those drugs? Anyway, I always find it amusing how the right defines the left and people just listen and accept that...like they're ever gonna try to be accurate.
We can play that game too. I should start my own radio show and pull the ol' fallacy of equivocation error and define every conservative based on the most backward, toothless, racist, sexist, bible-thumping, high-school diploma-hatin', sibling-sleeping hick I can visualize/read about and label them all gansters and harp on them about their beastiality. Point is that radio shows like Rush, Hannity, and Savage (well, Weiner is his real name) are about entertainment and infuriation, not education or accuracy. Fox likes to feed hate news with one hand and smut with the other (while the former gets to accuse "libruls" of the latter).
As far as the China/Tibet situation: I dunno - it's either an oppressive communist regime as Tars described or back to the ultra-right wing theocracy it used to be. Not sure if one extreme is really better than the other; sounds like either would suck. Extreme left and extreme right wing authoritarian governments suck either way. I call for moderates to balance that $h!t out.
all interventions are allegedly "humanitarian" and they all have the same result: disaster. mogidishu, bosnia, iraq, liberal democrat. they are all us playing the worlds police and leaving people far worse off than when we came.
did clintons "liberal" missile make the sudanese pharmacutical plant bombing less of a mistake? did his coninuatin of sanctions that killed thousand of iraqis become more nice because he also favored social programs that liberals like.
and don't even get me started on joe lieberman. He is as close as we have to a communist. whteher it's wars in the middle east, high taxes, late trimester abortion, open borders, to trying to ban vilent video games, there is no measure of state power he isn't enamored of and no aspect of our traditional culoture he doesn't want to extinguish. he literally hates freedom
Yeah no one likes that turncoat, Lieberman. I hear his favorite color is red! Word is that he hates grammar just as much as freedom!
:bouncegiggle:
he's not a turncoat. he's always been anti freedom
Quote from: lester1/2jr on April 01, 2008, 09:08:53 AM
all interventions are allegedly "humanitarian" and they all have the same result: disaster. mogidishu, bosnia, iraq, liberal democrat. they are all us playing the worlds police and leaving people far worse off than when we came.
That is a horrible opinion, and I rarely say that about someone's opinion.
There have been plenty of humanitarian interventions that were for very good reasons. If you have one group of people, with guns and power, killing another group of people - then just sitting back and watching is awfully hard to agree with. I am uncertain about why you believe Bosnia was a disaster. Heck, I am uncertain why you think Somali was a terrible disaster. If anything, the problem with Somali was that not enough was committed (by the UN, or us, your choice) to enforce a stable environment. The worst part about the battle that resulted in a movie ("Black Hawk Down") is that it screwed with our resolve to deploy forces to stop genocide.
Africa has had several conflicts over the years that killed countless numbers. It's awful that more was not done to stop all that bloodshed. Ditto on what happened in Cambodia. When you have a country going to Hell, especially one with a root in ethnic and/or religious beliefs, averting that much bloodshed takes a huge amount of effort. You are talking about changing "inertia" in many ways. It takes force and weight.
You need forces on the ground to enforce order, you need to rebuild or maintain the existing infrastructure, and you need time for everyone to settle the heck down.
Quote from: clockworkcanary on April 01, 2008, 09:23:41 AM
Yeah no one likes that turncoat, Lieberman. I hear his favorite color is red! Word is that he hates grammar just as much as freedom!
I usually avoid these threads for my own reasons, but man, you are funny! LOL! :bouncegiggle: :thumbup:
QuoteYeah no one likes that turncoat, Lieberman. I hear his favorite color is red! Word is that he hates grammar just as much as freedom!
I don't get it. honestly. are you saying he doesn't vote the way i said he did? check the records, he has voted yay on all of those and far far more.
andrew- I really don't see how our national defense purposes were served in somalia or bosnia. I don't see how getting in between factions who have been killing each other for thousands of years, since before there ever was a united states, is in anyones interest. and there is always a reason why it didn't work "oh we should have used more troops" if we had they would have said "of we shuold have used less troops".
sure there are interventions that make sense, such as helping out after the tsunami and we could probably have prvented the rwandan genocide, but the more political/ statecraft oriented interventions end up using all the troops and goodwill we've accomulated to lend such a helping hand. what would we do today if there was another genocide in rwanda? pul troops out of iraq?
how about darfur? another oil rich muslim country? I guess if you liked mogidishu that would be just fine but include me out
Quote from: Allhallowsday on April 01, 2008, 01:03:03 PM
Quote from: clockworkcanary on April 01, 2008, 09:23:41 AM
Yeah no one likes that turncoat, Lieberman. I hear his favorite color is red! Word is that he hates grammar just as much as freedom!
I usually avoid these threads for my own reasons, but man, you are funny! LOL! :bouncegiggle: :thumbup:
Heheheh thanks!
"I don't get it. honestly. are you saying he doesn't vote the way i said he did? "
Heheh no Lester - you take me far too seriously; I wasn't addressing that. I was just doing my part to demonize him even further, with his favorite color being red and all.
But really, I don't know how the voting record you mentioned has to do with a specific economic system ...perhaps you meant "Totaltitarian" or "Authoritative" rather than "Communism" specifically, but then they are definitely correlated heavily (as Fascist governments do many of the same things you mentioned).
At any rate, it's hard to swallow ol' Indie rocker Joe being a commie when I'm sure he embraces Capitalism just like any other American plus he's constantly polishing ol' McCrypt's knob. It's just that whole "commie" demonization thing reminds me so much of the 80s (and prior era) that I found it a little funny.
ok. Yes i agree red bating in 2008 is ridiculous. I wasn't saying he was part of a "conspiracy so vast", I jsut meant he always votes for spending bills and bills that give the state more control.
Quote from: indianasmith on March 30, 2008, 02:06:19 PM
In short, yes, America has occasionally made a muddle of things, but it has generally done so in an attempt to do right, and in the big picture, has succeeded more often than it has failed. On our current attempt to fix things overseas, the jury is still out. But I for one think that Uncle Ben wouldn't be that disappointed with all we have tried to do. Thanks for your thoughtful and well-written post!
Sorry, I've been very overwhelmed with family issues. This thread topic(and all it's peripheral subjects) are very difficult to discuss to begin with. Put the discussion in an environment where you have only cold, naked words and a few vague smiley faces, and the talk can get very tense and misunderstood. Without the inflection of human voice, conversations like this can(and, as you correctly maintain, on the internet often do) spiral into catastrophe.
I want to thank you, Indiana, for your courteous replies and your general efforts to maintain both decorum and reason. Like you, after this past few days, I sort of expected that my karma might have taken a serious hit as firstly, the subject matter was particularly frank and on a topic most have very strong feelings about...and secondly, it was a kind of a Spalding Gray(with a side of Dennis Miller-lite snarky allusions) run-on that may have made more sense when I wrote it than when it was read.
I have to kind of smile when I think about just how different our viewpoints are on some serious subjects. I suspect underneath however, we are both sincerely motivated by the drive to have a community in the immediate and a nation at large where that is not something to be feared, dreaded, avoided or
most importantly, stifled. And
THAT is what I was raised to consider being an American was all about.
Interestingly, as to the subject of this thread(Oh yeah! :wink: ), apparently Hillary Rodham(btw, why does everyone continue to refer to her using the Rodham?...Everyone knows who she is! Is there a Bizarro Hillary Clinton we should all keep our eyes peeled for?)Clinton has suggested Bush have the US boycott the Olympics
Opening Ceremonies. Well, that's a start. I just don't understand exactly what kind of point that would really make. It's one instance and one that carries very little substance in the scheme of the whole Olympics games.
I know it's a bit of a harsh(and more honestly, easy from my position of not being an athlete expecting to compete there) suggestion, but I still think a boycott would send the clearest signal. And if it were the folks who were actually to compete who did the boycotting and not the posturing politicians who instigated it, it would be a clarion call to the world at large. A beacon of hope for the countless folks under one heel or another that there are people out there, people who have, relatively speaking, everything handed to them, who
do put being a fellow human being above all else.
(Ugh, I'm too much of a romantic sometimes.)
ps...I do get a kind of mythic chill in thinking about the determination to carry the Olympic torch around the world to China and the efforts to stop or extinguish it. The symbolic power of both sides of that struggle almost make me misty. I can envision a kind of torch "underground", the flame passed from one depot to another. The hopeful souls keeping kindled the sincerity of the symbol. While all the while, just as sincere folks comb the Earth looking to salvage it from what they see as a corruption of it's integrity (the French skating judges notwithstanding :wink: )and an exploitation of the honor of hosting the games.
Why didn't we see this kind of vocal outcry in 1936? :question:
Quoteboycott the Olympics Opening Ceremonies.
this strikes me as exactly the type of empty gesture you'd expect from washington. Either go or don't go.
Boycotting the Opening Ceremony is enough of a gesture to embarrass China further without punishing the athletes or injecting politics into the actual sporting events part of the Olympics.
I guess each person can interpret it differently.