As for your other point, Prof, it is clear that people in the Middle East do not value the freedom and democracy they have been given. They have a different set of values. It was naive of Bush etc. to expect the Iraqi people to be grovellingly grateful for giving them our system of freedom. They should have been left to find their own, if they deserved it.
[/quote]
Which is why our failure in this will add up in the history books as being a colossal loss of life over a very vain project. The people over there don’t think like us. They didn’t grow up watching Saturday morning cartoons and getting excited over Christmas morning. They don’t “want” what we want. Their desires, like most humans, will be based on what they have been exposed to. We can’t run over there, throw an Americanized system on them, guide them into our own way of thinking and then expect it to actually work. It won’t and THAT should have been thought out more instead of racing to war over WMD’s that no one ever saw. I don’t understand how politics has replaced the common sense I would expect to see in this issue.
All of this leads us to many years of Iraq-occupation with our fingers in the pot of their forming government. I wonder if Pat Tillman’s parents have recovered yet from being lied to about how their son was killed even though the truth was actually readily known?
It couldn’t. We don’t even have peace in our own nation so how the hell are we going to give it to anyone else? It implies that our own current system is very far removed from providing “peace and freedom”. We have more restrictions being thrown on us daily, most in the name of “saving the kids”. [/quote]
OK, I was right with your reasoning here, though we obviously come to some different conclusions on specifics. However…
[quote]Professor X wrote:
I was watching the news tonight and one woman was filing a complaint because her pharmacist (at a CVS drug sture) would not fill her order of birth control pills because he says he doesn’t believe in restricting birth in any way. He says this as if God has decreed that no woman should ever be on birth control pills. The fact that he is now allowed to do this speaks very loudly to me that we are very much at war right here at home. It is simply a war using less guns but still an effort to outwardly control everyone who doesn’t think the way someone else does. [/quote]
Whoah there. What happened to all the concerns about restrictions on freedom? The fact he is ALLOWED to hold his own opinions, and that TV stations are ALLOWED to air it, or even that he is ALLOWED to speak it? Or that he is ALLOWED to simply refuse to take a simple economic action with which he disagrees? If CVS wants to let him do it, that’s up to them – and if he has his own pharmacy and doesn’t want to sell certain products, it should be completely up to him.
THat’s why we have a free market – so that someone else can do it if he won’t and there’s a market for it.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
In fact, we have made even more of a mistake by claiming many of our own actions are now because of morals and some “righteousness” that you supposedly have because of religion. Even Jesus never forced anyone to do anything. It was always a choice. It amazes me how so many seem to think that choice should be removed and everyone should be forced to act a certain way. God never intended that.
How is that for mentally jerking off?
[/quote]
Yeah, how dare people have their own religious views and actually argue for them. They should all have yours instead…
Instead of wasting your time with ‘bringing freedom’ go and rid the world of poverty, try and create dialogue and dont allow nations to become alienated from the world.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
Damn, some religious folks are even more uppity than I give them credit for! LOL You’d think that the pharmacy would fire him for refusing to sell their merchandise or something…[/quote]
The bad thing is, there is protection against that due to a change in state laws that allow a pharmacist to refuse prescribing a drug based on moral issues. They showed the man in church preaching and then interviewed him. He doesn’t believe in abortion and states that he won’t carry any other contraceptives either. I found it stupid that I may not be able to get medication for future patients because the pharmacist at a Walgreens might not like my choice of pain medication and may be personally against Vicoden because he has moral issues with narcotics. What got me more than anything was the religious connection. There are women all across the country on birth control pills that, if reliant on that one small town Texas store, would simply have babies for the rest of their lives or avoid sex until death.
This war of morality has gotten out of hand.
For the record, CVS mailed the woman her pills immediately and apologized stating that they don’t share the same views of that pharmacist.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Whoah there. What happened to all the concerns about restrictions on freedom? The fact he is ALLOWED to hold his own opinions, and that TV stations are ALLOWED to air it, or even that he is ALLOWED to speak it? Or that he is ALLOWED to simply refuse to take a simple economic action with which he disagrees? If CVS wants to let him do it, that’s up to them – and if he has his own pharmacy and doesn’t want to sell certain products, it should be completely up to him.[/quote]
The difference is the care of that patient. If this were a life and death situation, I would rather a pharmacist not argue my choice in medication based on nothing but his religious stance. If this were a random matter concerning a store owner, you would have an obvious point. This man states he is willing to lose his job over this because he doesn’t believe in abortions. I personally think it has gotten out of hand when your treatment of patients becomes based on your own religious beliefs.
Scenario:
A doctor has a woman whose life is in danger on his operating table. If he aborts the baby, it saves the mother’s life. If he keeps the baby, the mother dies. What does the doctor do?
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
Elkhntr1 wrote:
Yes, what are you implying by saying all of the world was free and democratic? Utopia?
To think you are going to reach somepoint where the whole wide world lives in peace and harmony seems a bit naive.
Naive? Perhaps. I’m not saying that this is going to happen, I’m just mentally jerking off right now.
Think about it though, Elk. How else could world peace ever happen?
[/quote]
I am by no means a wise old sage, but your comment for me brings to mind a Bhuddist saying… Life is suffering and when you accept this you suffer less.
My interpretation is there are always going to be problems to deal with and accepting this and dealing with them is going to be more healthy then not accepting it, and always being dissapointed with unrealistic ideals or goals.
I like the John Lennon “Imagine” reference… Imagine no religion (Muslim or Christian) it’s easy if you can!
I’m reading all this and it occured to me the only people who will take democracy seriously are the ones who want it and fight for it themselves. Forcing democracy upon people who don’t want will surely end badly.
Democratic nations will still wage war against each other–to argue that they won’t is naive and shortsighted. As long personalities and opinions differ there will always be confilct. The best we can do is try and stop the growing dispartities between the classes thoroughout the world.
How do we do this? I don’t know. For starters we could make sure people had enough to eat and that abuses against ethnic minrorities are stopped. We could quit giving aid to monarchies and dictatorial regimes. How is it okay to support a country like Saudia Arabia because they have oil (IMO: because we are self serving) yet go to war against one of their neighbors because they have (or thought the had) WMD? Should we not be invading Iran then?
Conflict has nothing to do with how people are governed it has to do with power.
As things stand, I cannot imagine a world where people will not try to either accumulate power and to inflict their judgment of appropriate behavior on those they have power over.
Being a parent is having power. Sometimes you make a bad judgment, and inflict a minor tyranny on your child. It is natural.
What do children do? They rebel against this oppression. They wear dorky clothes, they get tattoos, they screw people you will not like, they quit school and pursue a life of aimlessness.
I know, this doesn’t seem related to the topic of warfare.
However, it is. As long as one person, or one group, believes it can impose its will on another person or group, there will be conflict.
It is only a matter of time and scale before the conflict is called war. It may be a fight, a divorce, a two party electoral system, a civil war, a religious war, an ideological war, but it will be war.
How do we get world peace? We get everyone to give up the notion of control. Who does this first? Not us, or we’ll be run over by those who don’t.
Anyway, just thoughts, not trying to dump on anyone or anything.
You know Loth, I can think of a group who had a similar thought as you founded by Carl Marx. The only way to have total utopian peace would for everybody to be the same like drones in a bee hive.
Isn’t freedom supposed to foster individuality, if so you are going to inherently have conflict at some point with that.
I fear you are going to have to wait for the rapture for total harmony.
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I’m reading all this and it occured to me the only people who will take democracy seriously are the ones who want it and fight for it themselves. Forcing democracy upon people who don’t want will surely end badly.
Liftus,
Are you referring to Iraq?
If so, see recent elections.
Between 60-70% of eligible voters participating sound about right?
Beats the hell out of us (aka…original Democratic state).
[quote]JeffR wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I’m reading all this and it occured to me the only people who will take democracy seriously are the ones who want it and fight for it themselves. Forcing democracy upon people who don’t want will surely end badly.
Liftus,
Are you referring to Iraq?
If so, see recent elections.
Between 60-70% of eligible voters participating sound about right?
Beats the hell out of us (aka…original Democratic state).
JeffR[/quote]
Oooh, great…Then why don’t we get the hell out of there so no more of our own soldiers get hurt? I mean, you are implying that they are ready to have complete and total control of their own government, right?
Between 60-70% of eligible voters participating sound about right?
Beats the hell out of us (aka…original Democratic state).
JeffR
[/quote]
I’m referring to every country we have gone to war with over the spread of democracy (i.e., containment of communism).
Show me an Iraqi that has taken arms against his former goverment without pay and I will agree with you. Democracy does not mean voter turnout–it mean people rule themselves. Iraq has yet to make one decision outside of U.S. pressure.
"I’m referring to every country we have gone to war with over the spread of democracy (i.e., containment of communism).
Show me an Iraqi that has taken arms against his former goverment without pay and I will agree with you. Democracy does not mean voter turnout–it mean people rule themselves. Iraq has yet to make one decision outside of U.S. pressure."
"I’m referring to every country we have gone to war with over the spread of democracy (i.e., containment of communism).
Show me an Iraqi that has taken arms against his former goverment without pay and I will agree with you. Democracy does not mean voter turnout–it mean people rule themselves. Iraq has yet to make one decision outside of U.S. pressure."
You know of course, that people don’t do many things FREE of pay. That’s silly.
Did you really mean that about “not one decision outside of the U.S.?”
I’ll let you think on that, then re-type a correction.
If not, I’ll be happy to educate.
JeffR
[/quote]
You are bonkers. Tell me these are not uniforms suppled by the US before the US invasion of Iraq. glogalsecurity.org? Ummmm…yeah I get most of my propaganda from greenpeace.org. My point Iraq did not overthrow it’s own govrenment–we did. Iraq has not made one decision on it’s own, period.
As for your other point, Prof, it is clear that people in the Middle East do not value the freedom and democracy they have been given. They have a different set of values. It was naive of Bush etc. to expect the Iraqi people to be grovellingly grateful for giving them our system of freedom. They should have been left to find their own, if they deserved it.
Which is why our failure in this will add up in the history books as being a colossal loss of life over a very vain project. The people over there don’t think like us. They didn’t grow up watching Saturday morning cartoons and getting excited over Christmas morning. They don’t “want” what we want. Their desires, like most humans, will be based on what they have been exposed to. We can’t run over there, throw an Americanized system on them, guide them into our own way of thinking and then expect it to actually work. It won’t and THAT should have been thought out more instead of racing to war over WMD’s that no one ever saw. I don’t understand how politics has replaced the common sense I would expect to see in this issue.
All of this leads us to many years of Iraq-occupation with our fingers in the pot of their forming government. I wonder if Pat Tillman’s parents have recovered yet from being lied to about how their son was killed even though the truth was actually readily known?
