Death of America

[lucasa]

[quote]hspder wrote:

Yeah! Like the Great Pyramids! The ones that were built by a peaceful, multi-racial, tolerant, democratically elected civilization, on the back of happy, prosperous, free workers!

Oh, no, wait…[/quote]

What a wild tangent. Comparing the building of skyscrapers to the ‘Egyptian Regime’ controlling the Jews that built the pyramids is about as valid as comparing the ‘Egyptian Regime’ to the ‘BP Regime’ and the Columbians or the Turkish-Kurds and Georgians or even Alaskans and all Americans. Apparently, Lord Browne learns well, I wonder where?

[hspder]

[quote]lucasa wrote:
What a wild tangent. Comparing the building of skyscrapers to the ‘Egyptian Regime’ controlling the Jews that built the pyramids is about as valid as comparing the ‘Egyptian Regime’ to the ‘BP Regime’ and the Columbians or the Turkish-Kurds and Georgians or even Alaskans and all Americans. Apparently, Lord Browne learns well, I wonder where?[/quote]

I wasn’t the one initiating the wild tangent – the fact that instead of attacking the person who went on a wild tangent in the first place, you decide to attack an obviously sarcastic remark just makes your bias equally obvious…

[hspder]

[quote]pookie wrote:
I’ve recently come to think the the US lacked an exit strategy in Iraq for one simple reason: They never intend to leave. Install a “friendly regime” and maintain a number of permanent military bases appears, to me, to be, and always have been, the actual plan. The region is simply too important economically to suffer disruptions from fanatic fundamentalists and petty dictators bent on annexing neighboring kingdoms.

lothario1132 wrote:
Welcome to my world. I’ve been saying this shit since day one. OF COURSE WE AREN’T GOING TO LEAVE. That’s like taking a hot chick out, spending all kinds of money on her, taking her back to her place, seeing her strip seductively in front of you, and then you walk out the door immediately afterwards.[/quote]

And here you are folks, here is the first and foremost reason why liberals will never, ever, EVER be in power in the US, at least not for any significant length of time.

We can’t agree with each other – much less tell people what to think. Instead of working as a voice who gangs up on however disagrees (like conservatives do – just look at this forum for plenty of examples where a liberal had to fight a myriad of conservatives – completely alone) we – the HORROR! – disagree with each other even more often than we disagree with conservatives. In fact, you often see liberals ganging up with conservatives against a liberal, like in this case, but very rarely conservatives ganging up with liberals against a conservative.

In this case, however, it’s perfect to make my point: it does completely void any claims that start by generalizing any leftist position on anything and proves, beyond any doubt, who the real believers in Free Speech and independent thought are around here.

Addressing your comments specifically: it’s a waste of time and money. To use lothario’s metaphor, the hot chick was never going to give it to you in the first place. She’ll just stab you in the back the moment you’re distracted.

And she wasn’t that hot in the first place.

[lothario1132]

No offense meant by my post, my fellow liberal agitator. It’s just that when we get in here and talk about steering the country as a matter of policy in re aggressors or enemies, I fail to see how a position of weakness affords us a damn thing.

And I hate to use the term “weakness”, but that’s what it is when you answer an act of violence with capitulation. Bottom line, we fucked up against Saddam back in the 90’s, and we continued the clusterfuck up until we forcibly removed his sorry ass.

So many guys think that the “first” Gulf War was such a resounding victory because it seems like we won it so fast and effeciently compared to so many other military engagements of modern times. You can look at stats of casualties, costs, time, etc., and think “Wow, we slapped Saddam like a bitch that owed us money,” but you’d be wrong, simply because of the outcome of it all was nothing short of complete failure to fix the problem to begin with. You don’t win World War 2 and then let Hitler continue to run Germany.

Now, keeping my thoughts above in context, can you see why I feel the way I do about the Iraq invasion? This has nothing to do with ganging up on anybody or liberal vs. conservative.

Let’s pretend for a second that Iraq had been a peaceful democracy or something reasonably similar. That means no overt supporting of terrorism, no blatant human rights violations, etc. Would there have been any reason to invade them? Would I continue to be hawkish about this matter?

There was a damn good reason to do what we did, and the fact that we are willing to stay at risk of life and limb of our citizens is just a testament to the importance of the operation and the continued value of the region.

So, no – she isn’t an ugly chick. And she gives awesome Iraqi head. And if we keep her all democratic and sexy, she just might swallow.

[NE2000]

hspder, I respect your education, but your elitism and condescension…not so much.

Both sides of the political spectrum have had the run of the parties for too long. The conservatives (I am a moderate one) went after Iraq as alarmists. Thing is, whether you like it or not, we are stuck with it. You can cry foul all day long, but that’s the way it is. Just voting the conservatives out of office because they screwed it up in order to punish them does not fix the past, nor is it necessarily in the best interest of the future.

The liberals have gone so far to the left, all the public hears is their shrill alarmism. Bush Bad, Fascism, Blood for Oil. Karl Rove. Okay, enough. Most Americans are numb to it now. What do the liberals have to offer to the public that is realistic and tangible and believable? Who do they have that’s believable? Mainstream media is clearly in the corner of liberals (except Fox, of course) and still the liberals cannot convince the American public that they are a viable option to the current government. The Democratic party has repeatedly put up crackpots and goofballs as their candidates, and the American public you look down on can see that and the don’t buy it.

It is frustrating. I see the libs on this forum all the time pointing out all the negatives about the current administration. You really want to stick it to the conservatives? Identify some believable, liberal candidates that the American Public can have some faith in. Too bad the dems booted Lieberman; he was someone I may have voted for.

You can call it the Death of America. Wait until 2008. Things will be better. I doubt the dems will offer a candidate the Americans will trust. She has such a bad rep as it is. And I think the Republicans will settle on a moderate candidate with better domestic/social policy, Romney probably.

And by the way, since you are a citizen of this country, and people get the government they deserve, you deserve Bush as well as the rest of us.

Peace.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]hspder wrote:

I can change citizenship within a week and leave at any time. My family ties with Portugal allow me to do so.[/quote]

Ok, and here here is my favorite part:

I even have a lot of political incentive to do so: Portugal’s prime-minister is a longtime friend of mine (he’s a Social-Democrat and an Environmentalist, in case you’re wondering, and I brokered his deal with a Bay Area company to put one of the biggest and most advanced solar panel arrays on the planet in my family’s home town in Southeast Portugal).

Say it with me: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dongonnit, people like me”.

Is it not enough to say you could easily relocate? No, you must constantly brag about your perceived awesomeness, even when the context doesn’t require it. Do any of us need to know that you brokered some deal? Of course not - it has nothing to do with the issue we were discussing - and it is pathetic.

You act like a 13 year old with self-esteem issues vying for acceptance - and every time you try and clumsily interject your brilliance into the conversation when no one gives a damn, you take one more step to being a laughingstock.

But I digress; the thing is: I will rather die fighting for keeping America a true Democracy than to jump ship. And I say this from the bottom of my heart and with full conviction.

I’m not surprised to see that you are not willing to do the same…[/quote]

Of course I am, but if indeed real bona fide fascism, you can’t wage much of a fight from the confines of a concentration camp.

That means that you are either extremely stupid – and cannot grasp the concept I’ve mentioned above, i.e., that the fact that I do believe most Americans are insanely stupid doesn’t mean I don’t think they should choose their destiny, even if it is fascism – or you simply are spinning it to make your case against me. Which one is it?

Well, let me explain in a way that you will get. Democratic government - especially in the context of a constitutional republic - is premised on the idea that liberty is an important good and that if people are allowed to be free, usually they will churn out decent results for themselves. Therein lies a view of ‘progress’ that liberals (old meaning) could get behind. However, your position is that people are incurably stupid, so it stands to reason that Western democracy can’t possibly stand for the idea that liberty is a good engine for people’s happiness - after all, how often will these stupid masses actually accomplish anything ever that improves their lives? They can’t, definitionally - they are stupid. We could choose any government system we wanted - why would we affirmatively choose the one that allowed people to self-destruct in record time? Why? What is the philosophical justification for that form of government?

And if people get the government they deserve, why push for so much government intervention to save people from themselves? If they truly deserve unalloyed democracy, shouldn’t we just let them falter and destroy themselves without stepping in to do ‘justice’ on behalf of the downtrodden, oppressed, and generally unhappy?

Western democracy believes exactly the opposite - that people will generally do pretty well for themselves if you supply them the requisite liberty.

This is hardly full-proof of course - constitutionalism creates institutional checks against the excesses of democratic action with the understanding that liberty can devolve into license. But the general premise is there - free peoples will produce generally good results.

History supports this - yet it couldn’t possibly be so if you are right. Can people who are that stupid get that lucky that often?

I suggest not - I suggest people aren’t quite as worthless as you. You think people are ridiculously stupid, but Western democracy is predicated on the opposite of that. If we honestly thought people were that dumb, then it only stands to reason that letting them be free would produce disastrous results, and we would not grant that freedom as a matter of practical philosophy.

Mindless cattle IS entitled to self-government. I firmly believe so. It is their fundamental right. I have no intention or inclination than to force them to behave in their best interest. I’m not the one who likes playing God.

Good - so there is no reason for an economic interventionist state? Let the mindless cattle do as they please economically. The entire point of Social Democracy is to force people to behave in an interest outside of their own - you support that. This contradicts your entire point.

You want to play God all the time - you absolutely support the idea that the government should intervene and rescue people from their own interests. Will the real Hspder/Stuart Smalley please stand up?

The American people have idly stood by while their rights and liberties have been slowly stripped away from them.

Name one.

Maybe the American people is simply too stupid to realize that – and much like little children they simply do like being told what to think rather than making up their own mind.

Or maybe - unlike spoiled university professors - they understand that wartime creates a continuum of balancing security and liberty interests? Perhaps they know of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus (bad!!) and they also know there is an enormous statue of him on the National Mall (good!!)?

Perhaps they know that FDR put Japanese-Americans into internment camps during WWII (bad!!), despite the facts that left-liberals cite him as the greatest president of the 20th century (good!!)?

Maybe, just maybe, these ‘people’ - the really, really, really stupid ones - understand the difficult choices that must be made during wartime.

But please tell me, what civil liberty has been taken from you?

Want proof? Look at the most popular “news” programs; that are essentially about telling people what to think, rather than giving them the facts so they can make up their own minds. And the American people eats it all up like a kid in a candy store.

Yes, and are those ‘news’ programs from the right, from the left, or both? What does it say that young liberals most often get their news from the Daily Show? That is not an indictment of other news shows - it is an indictment of the people who choose to get their news where they do. But presumably, they are really, really smart (as only liberals are in your paradigm)?

Oh, and by the way ? I share seats on busses and trains with many working people with BO problems every day. So do many of my liberal friends. San Francisco’s Muni system is also BO bonanza, in case you want to come by and try it. It is the conservatives around here that continuously try to block any attempt of diverting Sales Tax to funding more and better public transit, and refer to it as “cattle cars”.

I expected you would try and qualify that. Amusing.

By the way, the next time you sit beside one of the lower-caste, untouchable types - say a dockworker - you should inform him how ridicilously stupid he is.

It would surely have tried harder – Bush is barely trying and, at every step of the way, prioritized millions of other things first. It is CLEARLY pretty low in his list of priorities, and everyone should be asking him and themselves why.

Nonsense - the Left won’t even call the enemy by its name. That is precisely why some prominent liberals have broken ranks. If you mean to tell me the Left would try harder to get OBL and his ilk, you are just being intellectually dishonest.

“The Left” is a big tent – I, for one, make no apologies for Bin Laden nor his ideology. If anything I have been previously attacked – left AND right – for advocating solutions that were too aggressive.

So is the ‘Right’, but does it stop you? It is a useful abstraction. Follow along.

Again, “the Left” is a big tent – and are you really saying it is possible to actually do worse than this administration has done in the past 6 years?

Is this a serious question? You don’t think it could have been worse? Geez, you are detached from reality.

I’d pull out of Iraq tomorrow, even if it means looking bad. It’s not like America’s image can get any worse at this point. Let them all kill each other. While they are at it, they won’t be killing Americans.

And you would put more lives at risk. Image, in the normal sense, is not important. What is important is what message would be sent to enemies - if they think they can break us, it will embolden them. Forget looking ‘bad’ - will we look like OBL’s ‘weak horse’? Weakness invites aggression.

WISE? Do you really think there’s anything WISE about this administration’s foreign policy?

Despite my criticism of Bush - and I have plenty - yes, the current approach is wiser than the Left’s appeasement approach.

And just in case you decide to continue to pretend that all the Left thinks the same about foreign affairs, and/or I haven’t been clear enough before: I truly believe that, with regards to the Middle East, there are only two options: leaving them alone – truly alone, including, but not limited to, completely eliminating any dependency on their goods, oil included – and letting them all kill each other, or go in guns blazing and nuke the heck out of them. There’s no middle ground here, no compromise, no diplomacy, nothing; you cannot negotiate with people that blindly follow dogma.

Option One would never happen - if the Arabs decided to eliminate the Persians, you think the liberals of the world would allow it? Do you think that the UN - depending on the actors - would turn a blind eye to it? So you would scrap all the treaty laws of the UN that guarantee security arrangements when one country attacks another?

I like it! Do you?

You are naive to even suggest it.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]NE2000 wrote:
hspder, I respect your education, but your elitism and condescension…not so much.[/quote]

Interesting.

And by the way, since you are a citizen of this country, and people get the government they deserve, you deserve Bush as well as the rest of us.

Well, the caveat is that Hsdper is not one of the stupid people he sneers down his nose at. He can’t explain why one person is irredeemably stupid and one person isn’t - he only knows that Hspder is not a stupid person and everyone else is.

[Headhunter]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
hspder wrote:

I can change citizenship within a week and leave at any time. My family ties with Portugal allow me to do so.

Ok, and here here is my favorite part:

I even have a lot of political incentive to do so: Portugal’s prime-minister is a longtime friend of mine (he’s a Social-Democrat and an Environmentalist, in case you’re wondering, and I brokered his deal with a Bay Area company to put one of the biggest and most advanced solar panel arrays on the planet in my family’s home town in Southeast Portugal).

Say it with me: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dongonnit, people like me”.

Is it not enough to say you could easily relocate? No, you must constantly brag about your perceived awesomeness, even when the context doesn’t require it. Do any of us need to know that you brokered some deal? Of course not - it has nothing to do with the issue we were discussing - and it is pathetic.

You act like a 13 year old with self-esteem issues vying for acceptance - and every time you try and clumsily interject your brilliance into the conversation when no one gives a damn, you take one more step to being a laughingstock.

But I digress; the thing is: I will rather die fighting for keeping America a true Democracy than to jump ship. And I say this from the bottom of my heart and with full conviction.

I’m not surprised to see that you are not willing to do the same…

Of course I am, but if indeed real bona fide fascism, you can’t wage much of a fight from the confines of a concentration camp.

That means that you are either extremely stupid – and cannot grasp the concept I’ve mentioned above, i.e., that the fact that I do believe most Americans are insanely stupid doesn’t mean I don’t think they should choose their destiny, even if it is fascism – or you simply are spinning it to make your case against me. Which one is it?

Well, let me explain in a way that you will get. Democratic government - especially in the context of a constitutional republic - is premised on the idea that liberty is an important good and that if people are allowed to be free, usually they will churn out decent results for themselves. Therein lies a view of ‘progress’ that liberals (old meaning) could get behind. However, your position is that people are incurably stupid, so it stands to reason that Western democracy can’t possibly stand for the idea that liberty is a good engine for people’s happiness - after all, how often will these stupid masses actually accomplish anything ever that improves their lives? They can’t, definitionally - they are stupid. We could choose any government system we wanted - why would we affirmatively choose the one that allowed people to self-destruct in record time? Why? What is the philosophical justification for that form of government?

And if people get the government they deserve, why push for so much government intervention to save people from themselves? If they truly deserve unalloyed democracy, shouldn’t we just let them falter and destroy themselves without stepping in to do ‘justice’ on behalf of the downtrodden, oppressed, and generally unhappy?

Western democracy believes exactly the opposite - that people will generally do pretty well for themselves if you supply them the requisite liberty.

This is hardly full-proof of course - constitutionalism creates institutional checks against the excesses of democratic action with the understanding that liberty can devolve into license. But the general premise is there - free peoples will produce generally good results.

History supports this - yet it couldn’t possibly be so if you are right. Can people who are that stupid get that lucky that often?

I suggest not - I suggest people aren’t quite as worthless as you. You think people are ridiculously stupid, but Western democracy is predicated on the opposite of that. If we honestly thought people were that dumb, then it only stands to reason that letting them be free would produce disastrous results, and we would not grant that freedom as a matter of practical philosophy.

Mindless cattle IS entitled to self-government. I firmly believe so. It is their fundamental right. I have no intention or inclination than to force them to behave in their best interest. I’m not the one who likes playing God.

Good - so there is no reason for an economic interventionist state? Let the mindless cattle do as they please economically. The entire point of Social Democracy is to force people to behave in an interest outside of their own - you support that. This contradicts your entire point.

You want to play God all the time - you absolutely support the idea that the government should intervene and rescue people from their own interests. Will the real Hspder/Stuart Smalley please stand up?

The American people have idly stood by while their rights and liberties have been slowly stripped away from them.

Name one.

Maybe the American people is simply too stupid to realize that – and much like little children they simply do like being told what to think rather than making up their own mind.

Or maybe - unlike spoiled university professors - they understand that wartime creates a continuum of balancing security and liberty interests? Perhaps they know of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus (bad!!) and they also know there is an enormous statue of him on the National Mall (good!!)?

Perhaps they know that FDR put Japanese-Americans into internment camps during WWII (bad!!), despite the facts that left-liberals cite him as the greatest president of the 20th century (good!!)?

Maybe, just maybe, these ‘people’ - the really, really, really stupid ones - understand the difficult choices that must be made during wartime.

But please tell me, what civil liberty has been taken from you?

Want proof? Look at the most popular “news” programs; that are essentially about telling people what to think, rather than giving them the facts so they can make up their own minds. And the American people eats it all up like a kid in a candy store.

Yes, and are those ‘news’ programs from the right, from the left, or both? What does it say that young liberals most often get their news from the Daily Show? That is not an indictment of other news shows - it is an indictment of the people who choose to get their news where they do. But presumably, they are really, really smart (as only liberals are in your paradigm)?

Oh, and by the way ? I share seats on busses and trains with many working people with BO problems every day. So do many of my liberal friends. San Francisco’s Muni system is also BO bonanza, in case you want to come by and try it. It is the conservatives around here that continuously try to block any attempt of diverting Sales Tax to funding more and better public transit, and refer to it as “cattle cars”.

I expected you would try and qualify that. Amusing.

By the way, the next time you sit beside one of the lower-caste, untouchable types - say a dockworker - you should inform him how ridicilously stupid he is.

It would surely have tried harder – Bush is barely trying and, at every step of the way, prioritized millions of other things first. It is CLEARLY pretty low in his list of priorities, and everyone should be asking him and themselves why.

Nonsense - the Left won’t even call the enemy by its name. That is precisely why some prominent liberals have broken ranks. If you mean to tell me the Left would try harder to get OBL and his ilk, you are just being intellectually dishonest.

“The Left” is a big tent – I, for one, make no apologies for Bin Laden nor his ideology. If anything I have been previously attacked – left AND right – for advocating solutions that were too aggressive.

So is the ‘Right’, but does it stop you? It is a useful abstraction. Follow along.

Again, “the Left” is a big tent – and are you really saying it is possible to actually do worse than this administration has done in the past 6 years?

Is this a serious question? You don’t think it could have been worse? Geez, you are detached from reality.

I’d pull out of Iraq tomorrow, even if it means looking bad. It’s not like America’s image can get any worse at this point. Let them all kill each other. While they are at it, they won’t be killing Americans.

And you would put more lives at risk. Image, in the normal sense, is not important. What is important is what message would be sent to enemies - if they think they can break us, it will embolden them. Forget looking ‘bad’ - will we look like OBL’s ‘weak horse’? Weakness invites aggression.

WISE? Do you really think there’s anything WISE about this administration’s foreign policy?

Despite my criticism of Bush - and I have plenty - yes, the current approach is wiser than the Left’s appeasement approach.

And just in case you decide to continue to pretend that all the Left thinks the same about foreign affairs, and/or I haven’t been clear enough before: I truly believe that, with regards to the Middle East, there are only two options: leaving them alone – truly alone, including, but not limited to, completely eliminating any dependency on their goods, oil included – and letting them all kill each other, or go in guns blazing and nuke the heck out of them. There’s no middle ground here, no compromise, no diplomacy, nothing; you cannot negotiate with people that blindly follow dogma.

Option One would never happen - if the Arabs decided to eliminate the Persians, you think the liberals of the world would allow it? Do you think that the UN - depending on the actors - would turn a blind eye to it? So you would scrap all the treaty laws of the UN that guarantee security arrangements when one country attacks another?

I like it! Do you?

You are naive to even suggest it.[/quote]

Scorekeeper’s Update:

Thunder 2, Hspder 0.

[ChuckyT]

"But I digress; the thing is: I will rather die fighting for keeping America a true Democracy than to jump ship. And I say this from the bottom of my heart and with full conviction. "

This sums you up. You say that we are sinking to fascism in one post, and then in the next say you would die to fight against fascism in the US.

Well, then why are you on the internet typing? There are at least 100 million Republicans and conservatives out there, the majority of them armed. Republicans and conservatives control every elected branch of the federal government. The armed forces are overwhelmingly conservative and Republican. What are you waiting for?

It’s easy to make claims like you did when you know deep down they’re at best nonsense, and at worst filthy hyperbole. I say filthy because if we accept your claims to be intelligent, then you are a dishonest, piece of shit, no-perspective-having, spastic, shrill, lying, hyperpolitical, hypochondriac, nasty little girl for comparing Republicans GWB voters or any other American (who isn’t a card carrying neo-nazi), to fascists.

You will never be tested on your defiance of the American fascists because they don’t exist. No one is coming to your door to take away your family to the camps. You know it or you would not speak up, because you would be afraid that they would take away your stanford cubicle and then what would you be left with? How could you lord it over everyone if you were the smartest guy in unemployment?

You’ve never risked even being uncomfortable in your entire life, and now we’re supposed to believe you’d give up your job and take to the hills to defy the fascists? (And given the position on armed citizenry taken by the people that you vote for, what were you planning on fighting with? Rocks?)

Or would you just die for your beliefs? Pin a note to your corpse in the concentration camp piles saying: “My poor America, dying for you was the best I could do? I hope they read this note and stop.”

You are a perfect liberal, and therefore quite demonstrative of why no one trusts your kind when there are serious matters – life and death – on the line. Because when things get tough, you will not come up short: you won’t show up at all.

[BostonBarrister]

I think totalitarian fascism has been defined down if all that it takes to implement it is a string of speeches from a President who can’t be re-elected in 2008 that are critical of those who disagree with him…

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I think totalitarian fascism has been defined down if all that it takes to implement it is a string of speeches from a President who can’t be re-elected in 2008 that are critical of those who disagree with him…[/quote]

Nailed it.

[pookie]

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

Scorekeeper’s Update:

Thunder 2, Hspder 0.
[/quote]

Your contributions to this discussion are fascinating! But do you think you could trim the quoted text a bit so that we don’t have to scroll down over all that text again?

Thanks.

[thunderbolt23]

Here is a good example of modern liberals’ being out to lunch on the great question of confronting our enemies, by a self-professed liberal:

[i]TWO YEARS AGO I published a book highly critical of religion, “The End of Faith.” In it, I argued that the world’s major religions are genuinely incompatible, inevitably cause conflict and now prevent the emergence of a viable, global civilization. In response, I have received many thousands of letters and e-mails from priests, journalists, scientists, politicians, soldiers, rabbis, actors, aid workers, students ? from people young and old who occupy every point on the spectrum of belief and nonbelief.

This has offered me a special opportunity to see how people of all creeds and political persuasions react when religion is criticized. I am here to report that liberals and conservatives respond very differently to the notion that religion can be a direct cause of human conflict.

This difference does not bode well for the future of liberalism.

Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I’d like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years ? especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world ? specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that “liberals are soft on terrorism.” It is, and they are.

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world ? for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a “war on terror.” We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.

Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb ? and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government “assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;” 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.

Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.

I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world’s Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.

Given the mendacity and shocking incompetence of the Bush administration ? especially its mishandling of the war in Iraq ? liberals can find much to lament in the conservative approach to fighting the war on terror. Unfortunately, liberals hate the current administration with such fury that they regularly fail to acknowledge just how dangerous and depraved our enemies in the Muslim world are.

Recent condemnations of the Bush administration’s use of the phrase “Islamic fascism” are a case in point. There is no question that the phrase is imprecise ? Islamists are not technically fascists, and the term ignores a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists ? but it is by no means an example of wartime propaganda, as has been repeatedly alleged by liberals.

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.

Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.

We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.

Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren’t.

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.

To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization. [/i]

It's real, it's scary, it's a cult of death

[hspder]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
You act like a 13 year old with self-esteem issues vying for acceptance[/quote]

And I am the Stuart Smalley? Who’s trying to play the therapist here?

I didn’t address the Stuart Smalley quip before because I honestly thought you were connecting the dots – but now I’m starting to doubt it.

So you’re basically repeating a Bill O’Reilly quip, which consists of “confusing” Al Franken with his creation, Stuart Smalley, but you can’t figure out that, it is a caricature, and, hence, the character is not really, well, me – or him? Are you really that much of a Bill O’Reilly wannabe?

The reason I play a caricature is precisely for the same fundamental reason Al played his – because people respond strongly to it – if I just play myself around here, and stick to the science, I usually get no response; however if I add a few over-the-top remarks around it, people will respond, and react.

Conservatives in particular, who are ever annoyed by the elitist prick character (for some reason) or the Stuart character (it annoys Bill, so it must annoy all his audience!). Nothing new there, it’s Internet forums 101 – the fact that I have to explain it to you is what is amazing here.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Of course I am, but if indeed real bona fide fascism, you can’t wage much of a fight from the confines of a concentration camp.[/quote]

Yeah, because all Fascist regimes have “concentration camps”, right? And all members of the political resistance movements were in them.

Stop backpedaling. You said what you said. You’d run. Own up to it, and realize the French – which you and your conservative friends like to ridicule – at least had people with more balls to stay and fight the Third Reich (which was far worse than simply Fascist regimes like Salazar’s, by the way) than you do.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
However, your position is that people are incurably stupid, so it stands to reason that Western democracy can’t possibly stand for the idea that liberty is a good engine for people’s happiness - after all, how often will these stupid masses actually accomplish anything ever that improves their lives?[/quote]

Democracy doesn’t intrinsically promise that liberty is a “good engine for people’s happiness”. You’re grasping for straws. It just holds that it’s a necessary condition, not sufficient. Very different.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
They can’t, definitionally - they are stupid. We could choose any government system we wanted - why would we affirmatively choose the one that allowed people to self-destruct in record time? [/quote]

Full liberty is called anarchism, and nobody ever chose it, because, indeed, people would self-destruct. The fact that we need government and that quality of life indexes and satisfaction levels are higher in welfare states proves my point: people DO need the government to take care of them in order to be happy.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
And if people get the government they deserve, why push for so much government intervention to save people from themselves?[/quote]

Because people also deserve a chance to be helped – but only if they choose to accept the help.

Of all people, I would have thought Christians would get this concept. The fact that they don’t still surprises me. But only slightly.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
If they truly deserve unalloyed democracy[/quote]

Never said that. Whatever it means – again you’re confusing democracy with anarchism. Very big difference.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Western democracy believes exactly the opposite - that people will generally do pretty well for themselves if you supply them the requisite liberty.[/quote]

So, you’re advocating anarchy?

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
This is hardly full-proof of course -
constitutionalism creates institutional checks against the excesses of democratic action with the understanding that liberty can devolve into license. But the general premise is there - free peoples will produce generally good results.[/quote]

So, what you’re saying is that we should give people some rope, but not enough so that they will hang themselves with it?

How is that in collision with what I’m saying? Isn’t it exactly the same, and we’re just arguing amounts of rope?

You also think people are too stupid to govern themselves effectively – only anarchists think otherwise. There’s no gray area here. People are either smart enough or they aren’t. And we both agree they aren’t, don’t kid yourself.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
History supports this - yet it couldn’t possibly be so if you are right. Can people who are that stupid get that lucky that often?[/quote]

You’re telling me that human History shows people doing smart things often?

That’s insane. Or ignorant. It’s so far out that I don’t even know what act of stupidity, atrocity, or genocide I should begin with… even in which continent. Pick one, any one, and I’ll start from there… The only time humanity made the right decision is when it had no other choice. Unless there’s a big “do this or perish” sign above the right choice, people will always pick something else ?- that is precisely why the GOP likes to play the FUD card; they simply attach the “do this or perish” sign to THEIR choices and people, as always, follow suit.

Fortunately the large sign was attached to the right choice a few times; unfortunately that’s why people chose it.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
people were that dumb, then it only stands to reason that letting them be free would produce disastrous results, and we would not grant that freedom as a matter of practical philosophy.[/quote]

Is it that hard for you to comprehend the concept of giving even stupid people a chance to let themselves be helped, but not ramming it into their throats?

Again, as a Christian, you should get that.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Good - so there is no reason for an economic interventionist state? Let the mindless cattle do as they please economically. The entire point of Social Democracy is to force people to behave in an interest outside of their own - you support that. This contradicts your entire point.[/quote]

It does not. I’ll repeat it again because you keep missing it: even mindless cattle still should be given a chance to be helped, but only IF they want to accept that help. Basic premise that should not be hard to understand.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
You want to play God all the time - you absolutely support the idea that the government should intervene and rescue people from their own interests. Will the real Hspder/Stuart Smalley please stand up?[/quote]

You keep repeating yourself, so so will I: they should intervene and rescue people if they want us to. If people want a government that will help and rescue them, they should get it. If they want a government that sits back and watches them self-destruct, they should get it too. It is not my job to force people to have the government I think it’s best for them – it is just my job, as a scientist, to tell them what my work tells me would work best – and their decision to take it or leave it.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
The American people have idly stood by while their rights and liberties have been slowly stripped away from them.

Name one.[/quote]

You really need to stop drinking the Bill O’Reilly Kool-Aid.

If you don’t see by now the large pink elephant in the room, I can’t help you. It’s just in front of you – many people in this forum have given specific examples, I will not repeat myself or them. Professor X, for example, has written about it until he turned blue (no pun intended). Eventually he realized ?- as I did ?- there’s no point in trying to make you see it. You’re clearly too comfortable with the pink elephant to notice it.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Or maybe - unlike spoiled university professors - they understand that wartime creates a continuum of balancing security and liberty interests? Perhaps they know of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus (bad!!) and they also know there is an enormous statue of him on the National Mall (good!!)?[/quote]

The fact that you compare the two situations is an insult to Lincoln and to this nation. The geo-political situation is dramatically different. There are NO parallels. Comparing a (pseudo-)war on terror to the American Civil War is so fundamentally imbecile that I feel stupid by even acknowledging you said it.

Again, many others have responded before to that incredibly moronic talking point and I’m not going to honor it with a repetition.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Perhaps they know that FDR put Japanese-Americans into internment camps during WWII (bad!!), despite the facts that left-liberals cite him as the greatest president of the 20th century (good!!)?[/quote]

The American people asked him to do that; as much as my Japanese American friends hate hearing that, they were a target of the wrath of stupid Americans, and FDR had to do the only Democratic thing – as horrible as it was.

He had to do something much worse with regards to the racial lynchings in the South, for exactly the same reasons.
And many black Americans haven’t forgiven him for that – and I fully understand why; if it had been my family, I would be very pissed off too. But, still, he really had no choice.

If the American people were equally standing behind Bush, and his approval ratings showed a clear majority support for his actions, trust me, I wouldn’t be even 10% as critical of him as I am. I would point my guns exclusively to the real sole culprit: the American people. Having said that, a great part of the American people is still complicit – for still voting on his party AND not demanding impeachment – so I have the moral obligation to criticize them too.

In the meantime, no president can ever be chastised for doing what the people tells him/her to do, as long as s/he gives them the option to do the right thing. And we all know FDR didn’t really, deep down, want to ignore the lynchings or to send Japanese Americans to camps – he did it against his conscience, but did it anyway because he was a true Democrat – in all senses of the word.

Very different from Bush’s motivations, which are purely along the lines of the “it’s my way or the highway”, in true fascist form.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Maybe, just maybe, these ‘people’ - the really, really, really stupid ones - understand the difficult choices that must be made during wartime.[/quote]

The choices had to be made BECAUSE people were stupid. If people weren’t stupid, Lincoln wouldn’t have needed to do what he did; neither would FDR.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Yes, and are those ‘news’ programs from the right, from the left, or both? What does it say that young liberals most often get their news from the Daily Show? That is not an indictment of other news shows - it is an indictment of the people who choose to get their news where they do. But presumably, they are really, really smart (as only liberals are in your paradigm)?[/quote]

Again, tripping through your own argument.

Let me explain it to you really slowly:

a) I said before I believe 90% of people are dumb beyond hope. Knowing that more than 10% of the US population is liberal, that means some liberals are dumb too. No argument there. As I also said before, some people make right choices for the wrong reasons.

b) If you add up the audience of conservative infotainment shows vs liberal infotainment shows you’ll see that the former have far more audience than the latter – so much so it is not proportional to the conservative/liberal ratios.

c) If you look at statistics, you will see that far more conservatives get their news exclusively from infotainment than liberals do. Statistics indicate that, in fact, the majority of liberals, like me, get their news from at least three sources, daily.

d) The Daily show is, by far, the most bipartisan infotainment show on TV. Jon Stewart regularly attacks Dems as much as he does Republicans. He does happen to make fun of Bush A LOT, but you can’t blame him for that; even many Republicans hate him these days. So, if any smart person had to pick one infotainment show as one of the sources,
The Daily Show is by far the least biased choice.

And my bonus Stuart Smalley entry, just for your enjoyment:

e) I know both Olbermann and Maher personally (I was in LA last week and actually had dinner with both of them) and we disagree on many things – especially Maher, with whom I have had some pretty heated arguments with regards to both Israel and immigration.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
By the way, the next time you sit beside one of the lower-caste, untouchable types - say a dockworker - you should inform him how ridicilously stupid he is.[/quote]

Blue collars are some of the smartest people in this country – it is the Republicans who continuously attack them, as “collateral damage” of attacking the unions, going as far as accusing them of being a bunch of lazy asses for wanting social benefits. How dear they.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Nonsense - the Left won’t even call the enemy by its name. That is precisely why some prominent liberals have broken ranks. If you mean to tell me the Left would try harder to get OBL and his ilk, you are just being intellectually dishonest.[/quote]

Am I? Or are you? Please give me an example of a foremost Democrat defending that we shouldn’t try harder to find OBL. Seriously. A concrete example, rather than fear-mongering.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote
So is the ‘Right’, but does it stop you? It is a useful abstraction. Follow along.[/quote]

The right is much more united in their goals, because they tend to follow along and not worry too much about ideals or – gasp! – independent thought. I addressed that in my other post, and there are many examples everywhere.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote
Is this a serious question? You don’t think it could have been worse? Geez, you are detached from reality. [/quote]

Again, examples are in order. Give me an example of a policy that was defended by a prominent Democrat that would have been worse than going in BUT screwing it up royally – and why.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote
And you would put more lives at risk. Image, in the normal sense, is not important. What is important is what message would be sent to enemies - if they think they can break us, it will embolden them. Forget looking ‘bad’ - will we look like OBL’s ‘weak horse’? Weakness invites aggression.[/quote]

That would be true if we were talking about a rational enemy AND we were making any kind of progress in Iraq.
Neither is true. They will not be emboldened by us pulling out, at least not more than they are by their constant victories – on the contrary; if we pull out they will have to deal with internal clashes, the lack of leverage to recruit people (if the “big bad enemy” is gone, what binds them together?) and that not only will help them realize who their true enemy is – themselves – it will keep them busy for another 1,300 years.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote
Despite my criticism of Bush - and I have plenty - yes, the current approach is wiser than the Left’s appeasement approach.[/quote]

What “Left’s appeasement approach”? Yes, some leftists claim a “motherly” approach, but that is hardly a universal “Left’s appeasement approach”.

[Stuart]
I had that very argument with Maher and Olbermann and, trust me, neither of us is an appeaser. Might have to do with all of us being (genetically) Jewish, but we’d like to think it’s not.
[/Stuart]

[Elitist prick]
Now that I use the tags, do you finally get the joke? I mean, if it works for computers – who are dumb as nails – it must work for you…

And yes, there were Jews in Portugal. Surprise! Yes, because I have no doubt you were too dim to have realized by now I was Jewish (the clues were all there, you know).
[/Elitist prick]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote
Option One would never happen - if the Arabs decided to eliminate the Persians, you think the liberals of the world would allow it? Do you think that the UN - depending on the actors - would turn a blind eye to it? So you would scrap all the treaty laws of the UN that guarantee security arrangements when one country attacks another?[/quote]

So now suddenly liberals and the UN are effective at diplomacy. So diplomacy works when it’s convenient for the conservative talking points, but not when it’s not? How nice.

Wake up and smell the coffee. They would do nothing. When it happened before, they couldn’t really stop anyone until it was too late to be effective. And most of the killing would be internal – and, as the genocides in Africa prove, when it’s internal to a country without natural resources, nobody gives a rat’s ass.

Hence my condition that we’d have to cut our dependency on Arab oil first.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
You are naive to even suggest it.[/quote]

Whoa! For a moment I thought you were going to say “it is unacceptable for anyone to think that”. Boy, that was close!

[hspder]

[quote]NE2000 wrote:
hspder, I respect your education, but your elitism and condescension…not so much.[/quote]

You remind me of a story told by another GOP strategist that went on The Daily Show the other day.

He said that when Bush was running in 2000, many focus groups showed that people had the perception that Gore was elitist and condescending. However, they decided not to pursue that attack, and rather go for the “he’s a wimp” approach.

Why?

Several reasons:

a) The also believe the American people is in fact stupid, in fact too stupid to realize they were being played with the usual “follow us or perish” strategy that has been, bar none, the most tried and proven and has always, worked, 100% of the time. So why risk it and try something that hasn’t been proven to work with the stupid American populace?

b) The reason people like Al Gore and Hilary Clinton are accused of being elitist pricks is a mixture of self-doubt and self-fulfilling prophecy (people WANT to believe they’re elitist, rather than accepting they are simply smarter than the average American). It is not based on reality, i.e., they’re not really elitist pricks. So the strategy would be in fact very likely to backfire, since if they were being called on that, it wouldn’t be too hard for them to switch gears and manage the perception without betraying their fundamental beliefs.

[quote]NE2000 wrote:
You really want to stick it to the conservatives? Identify some believable, liberal candidates that the American Public can have some faith in. Too bad the dems booted Lieberman; he was someone I may have voted for. [/quote]

So you don’t vote Democratic because they lack a good car salesman, and would rather vote on buddying totalitarians than on somebody who lacks the ability to trick people into trusting them blindly?

[quote]NE2000 wrote:
And I think the Republicans will settle on a moderate candidate with better domestic/social policy, Romney probably.[/quote]

Fell for that once, with the subject of today’s Powerful Image – Arnold. Never again. ANY Republican will ALWAYS fall behind the party line, which is fundamentally based on their self-interest, not the American people’s. That’s what unites them, what binds Republicans together: their thirst for power and self-interest in achieving and maintaining it.

That same GOP stategist, in the end of the interview, confessed that if he had to decide between working on the best strategy to “fix” things in Iraq and working on getting the soccer mom vote, he would pick the latter. I kid you not – it’s recorded for posterity.

I’m willing to bet good money most conservative americans who saw that are now thinking “how honest of him” rather than focusing on the enormity of the statement.

[quote]NE2000 wrote:
And by the way, since you are a citizen of this country, and people get the government they deserve, you deserve Bush as well as the rest of us.[/quote]

Can’t argue with that. Doesn’t mean I can’t complain about it – because I did not vote for him.

[hspder]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Here is a good example of modern liberals’ being out to lunch on the great question of confronting our enemies, by a self-professed liberal:[/quote]

Do you actually READ the things I write, or do you just repeat O’Reilly’s musings irrespective of whatever I say?

Let me repeat it for the last time: liberals disagree with each other. A LOT. To some extent, we are own worst political enemies. However, that only proves how committed we are to democracy and thinking on your feet – rather than blindly following the party talking points – and we are, in fact, far more trustworthy: we do not need the opposition to force us to question dogma and take rational approaches to problems as they come; we will question ourselves, seeking the best approach for every problem – even if that means being at each other’s throats every once in a while.

Some people will say that paralyzes us when faced with extremely complex situations – but the fact remains that the alternative – making the wrong choice 100% of the time, like Bush does – is much worse. Yes, because doing the wrong thing is invariably worse than doing nothing.

[hspder]

[quote]ChuckyT wrote:
You’ve never risked even being uncomfortable in your entire life[/quote]

How on Earth can you make such a statement? Do you know me? What do you know about my life? Seriously.

Basically, you have no idea what you’re talking about. I am not going to continue to honor your rant – which is basically a series of statements of what you WANT to believe, irrespective of reality – with further response.

[nephorm]

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Scorekeeper’s Update:

Thunder 2, Hspder 0.
[/quote]

Honestly, though, is there a scenario in which you would “award” a point to Hspder?

[hspder]

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I think totalitarian fascism has been defined down if all that it takes to implement it is a string of speeches from a President who can’t be re-elected in 2008 that are critical of those who disagree with him…[/quote]

Yeah, 'cause his speeches are of no consequence – neither is his (probably successful) attempt at blackmailing our legislators.

Nor is the fact that his popularity INCREASED during that same week.

Yeah, right.

[Headhunter]

[quote]nephorm wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Scorekeeper’s Update:

Thunder 2, Hspder 0.

Honestly, though, is there a scenario in which you would “award” a point to Hspder?[/quote]

Hmmm…I suppose if he stopped the elitist BS, or he could demonstrate that its moral to sacrifice the individual to the group, that its moral to force some group (such as capitalists) to carry the burdens of all the rest of us, that the largest group decides what is right or wrong and that makes it moral,…a whole laundry list. But since he doesn’t understand what a capitalist is, since he doesn’t understand that a man’s life and his work are SACRED, I’m thinking it’ll never happen.

Good point though. Like always, Neph, you make me think, and IT HURTS!!