Originally Posted by eric cumis

Originally Posted by Amanda Wilcox'73

Yeah, that's nice. You still didn't read my post. I guess it must be true. Rednecks can't read. I know the Christian in you loves me Eric, but I am worried about what the conservative in you plans to do with a little old liberal like myself.

Chuckle!

While I don't harbor many ill feelings towards "rednecks", depending on the definition (didn't you just complain in another post that terms such as "liberal" were too ill-defined to use?), I doubt you would think to call me that if you knew me.

I was raised in one of the "bluest" cities in the North of our country, and currently reside in another of the "bluest" cities (even farther north). My parent's social circle was filled with PhD's from prestigious universities around the world who were frequent guests at our dinner table. While never exactly converting, I have been an active member of a Zen meditation community.

Amanda, people like you really need to get over their preconceptions about "conservatives". None of what you wrote above about them is particularly accurate or useful.

A conservative is someone who respects the wisdom of the past, and knows that some sad truths are universal and timeless, among which that periodically groups of crazy, evil men arise to attack us, and we must fight them and defend ourselves.

Why Eric, you flatter me by claiming premature victory. Because if I am a liberal, then you must be a redneck.
If there is indeed this pinko bias of which you speak, how will you prevent it in the future, for the sake of America? How do you test for liberality? A simple question? Interviewing of friends and family? Bugging people's offices? Do you deny someone a job due to their liberal bias?
Not in a free society I hope. So if you can't do anything about it, then why are we even discussing this? I guess this whole topic is a moot point.
And shouldn't you be getting along anyhow? Aren't you late for your HUAC meeting?

Originally Posted by eric cumis

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

This makes Iraq about as threatening as China was in ca. 1960, when they were seeking nuclear weapons and were led by a man who makes Saddam look like a choirboy.

In 1960, we did not consider the possiblity that terrorist groups could arise that would love to kill thousands of Americans without regard to any rational strategy, but solely to act out their religious fantasies.

After 9/11, we no longer can ignore that possibility.

And China is going to give them weapons?

Just exactly what are you arguing? Are you arguing that terrorists will never use a WMD in an American city? Never is a long time. 1996 is recent history. It's going to be a long century.

No, what I arguing is that state-sponsored terrorists will not use a WMD on an Amercian city.

As examples I pointed that Hezbollah, the #1 killer of Americans amongst state sponsored terrorist groups, stopped attacking the US after the US response to Khobar towers. For similar reasons Iraq stopped sponsoring terrorism against the US after 1993. Libya has also thrown in the towel.

The reason why we face less risk from state-sponsored terrorists is that the state cannot hide, they are always there, facing retalliation. Hezbollah will never set off a nuke on American soil because Iran and Syria will pay the price--and it will be a mighty high one.

The threat the US faces is from private terrorist groups, like al Qaeda, who have no state sponsor. Al Qaeda is self-backing, no state is "behind them". Thus, there is no state that "encouraged" (with the "big stick" and perhaps a carrot too) to reign them in.

Al Qaeda has backers, of couse, but they are private backers, largely citizens of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Eqypt. We cannot easily strike against them because the governments of all three countries are friendly to the US, they simply cannot (or will not) control their populations.

Taking down Saddam does nothing to reign in al Qaeda, nor does it prevent them from getting WMDs. Taking down Iran and Syria won't help with al Qaeda either--although it would help with Hezbollah--but as I've pointed out, we already have reigned in Hezbollah. Should al Qaeda obtain WMDs they will get them from private sources (like the Russian mob) not state sponsors.

Originally Posted by eric cumis

While never exactly converting, I have been an active member of a Zen meditation community.

Now that's interesting. I've never associated Zen Buddhism with a pro-war philosophy. Could you explain this?

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Originally Posted by eric cumis

While never exactly converting, I have been an active member of a Zen meditation community.

Now that's interesting. I've never associated Zen Buddhism with a pro-war philosophy. Could you explain this?

Zen Buddhism: Gained its name from the Japanese
pronunciation of Chinese word for meditation, "Ch?an."? It was
introduced into Japan in the end of the 12th century.? Zen
Buddhism was especially suited to the needs of the samurai because it emphasized
simplicity and disciple, rather than scholastic studies, and its stress on
hard physical labor to discipline the mind and body reinforced the code of
bushido.? Thus Zen became the predominant sect of the warrior class
of Japan.

Feudal Japan



btw, PBS has a 3 hour program on Japanese isolation from foreign contact with the Portugese to Perry (tonight on my PBS channel). Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire in their Empires series.


P.S.
Zen and the Art of Divebombing might be of some value. HTH

Okay, Mr. Saari. But consider this also:

"Build rather than destroy.
Avoid rather than check.
Check rather than hurt.
Hurt rather than maim.
Maim rather than kill.
For all life is precious nor any can be replaced."

Originally Posted by Amanda Wilcox'73

Here's a null concept for you. The invasion is over. The Bush Good vs. Saddam Evil analogies are spent. The issue is about who is competent enough to lead. I don't think Bush is.
The issue of this forum is "is the media liberally biased."
I don't believe so. I believe the media is beholden to the corporations that own most of it. If they lean one way or the other on some bone the elites in this country throw peasants like you or I to argue over - like abortion or gun control - it doesn't really make a difference.

The above view is itself an example of a liberal outlook. "The corporations are the real problem."

I don't know what liberal means. When does liberal become radical? is it radical to like the environment and not want to see it destroyed?

Nobody wants to see the environment destroyed (except perhaps for a handful of madmen who literally don't think rationally). The debate is not pro-environment vs. anti-environment, but about what the threats are, how best to deal with them, and how to balance them against other, equally important, goods.

What do I associate with the word "liberal" - easy going, open minded, normal, unencumbered by misconceptions.

What do I associate with the word 'liberal' - well-meaing, naive, dreamy, authoritarian, out of touch with reality, driven by profound misconceptions.

There are some liberal/radical nuts out there. I have liberal arts educated friends who are slaves to their textbooks and professors. Who judge every sentence to see if it is clean and non-racist, sexist, offensive. To me -those aren't really liberals.

For practical purposes, they are liberals. They're just extremist or fringe liberals, just as people like Reverand Wildmon was fringe right-wingers.

Which brings us to..."Conservative" - uptight, rigid, no fun, etc.

Also describable as well-meaning, basically realistic, self-disciplined (at least in theory), adult, in touch with reality.

Every trait can be described positively or negatively.

I personally don't trust conservatives because their forebears put this country through a communist witch hunt in the 1950s and 60s.

The Soviet threat was deadly real. McCarthy was an exception, not a typical anti-communist, and today the home McCarthyism is on the Left, as was demonstrated by the obsessive feminists, the obsessive PC left, and the environmentalist movement.

As George W. Bush said "you are either with us or you are against us"
Spoken like a true conservative.

No. It was spoken like a true Boomer. We're going to see steadily more of that over the next 20 years, from all factions and views, liberal, conservative, environmentalist, capitalist, feminist, traditionalist, as the Boomers assume leadership positions, we're going to see a steady increase in hard lines, 'with us or against us', and 'do it or else'.

Unless, of course, the Strauss & Howe theory is totally wrong.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

[





The threat the US faces is from private terrorist groups, like al Qaeda, who have no state sponsor. Al Qaeda is self-backing, no state is "behind them".

Nonsense. They have extensive, albeit indirect, state backing. Afghanistan and Iraq were among the states who backed the overall network, and many of the 'charities' and other cash sources that al Queda and the rest of the network draw upon operate through various state connections.

Al Qaeda has backers, of couse, but they are private backers, largely citizens of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Eqypt. We cannot easily strike against them because the governments of all three countries are friendly to the US, they simply cannot (or will not) control their populations.

If you really believe that that backing is not tacitly encouraged and aided by states or factions within state apparats, I've got some ocean front land in Nevada to sell you.
,

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Originally Posted by eric cumis

Situations involving great danger that is easily averted are commonplace in life. A faulty water heater which could explode and burn the house down may be repaired in a day, for example. A serial murderer may be apprehended by one man.

You are ignoring detection. A serial murderer is dangerous precisely because he cannot be easily detected, not because once detected he is formidible.

Since Saddam's regime killed roughly 70,000 of his own people per year,

This shows that Saddam's regime was dangerous to the Iraqi people. It says nothing about his danger to us.

He was a threat to us because we left a war against him half-finished in the early 90s. It was only a matter of time until that unfinished business burned us, one way or the other.

Originally Posted by Amanda Wilcox'73

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

International law is a null concept.

Then I guess the Free Trade of the Americas Act signed in 2001 is null, as is 1994's North American Free Trade Agreement.

Both of which will be honored as long as the signatory nations consider it to be in their self-interest to do so, and no further.

All Al-Qaeda operatives in the United States on faked student visas can rest at ease, knowing that international law is a null concept, and therefore all visa regimes imposed on by states, are optional frivolities.

That isn't international law, it's national. There are some customs and agreements in place about how such things are handled, but if a soveriegn nation with a serious military decides to disregard those customs, there's nothing that can be done.

The European Union better do something to deal with its pending crises, as all international law has become a null concept. How can they share one currency, or travel from state to state without passports? I don't know how they do it. They must be really adept at dealing with these kinds of situations.

The EU is well on it's way to being a sovereign state. Today, it's in a 'gray area' between an association of nations and a state, and the Europeans can't quite decide which they want it to be. But the rules and procedures of the EU can't really be characterized as 'international law' in the same sense that, say, UN resolutions theoretically are.

That said, there is a recurring fear in Brussels that if one of the Big Three (Britain, France, and Germany) ever perceives their national self-interest to be seriously, fundamentally in conflict with adiding by EU rules, they'll let the EU 'go hang'. This is an especially deep-rooted fear with regard to France.

The recent action of France and Germany in basically unilateraily tearing up the the EU's 'stability and growth pact' has exacerbated just those fears. Pressure is growing on the European Commission to apply penalities, but because they are the 'big boys', the Commission isn't sure it has the ability to do anything meaningful against them.

Now that I think of it, Tibet's claims to sovereignty are bogus, as are the Palestinians to statehood. In fact, if all international law is a null concept, no recognized nation should really exist anymore.

Tibet's claim to sovereignty, and the PLA's claim to statehood, can be argued either way in moral terms. In practical terms, they lack the power to assert their claims, which is what counts when the chips are down, at least in the short-term (the next few years or decades).

They may have pretty flags and songs, but since all international relationships - for example, rules against double taxation are out of date, then it's really up to the discretion of the authority to decide who pays what, because the entire court system has no need to exist.
Why would an ambassador even have to produce credentials at their embassy in a foreign country?How would a nation use the WTO to open up another nation's markets?

In each of those cases, the deciding factor is power. National law is a practical concept partly because it rests on a system of community morals and norms that are accepted as legitimate and binding by the majority of that community, and partly because it is enforced.

International law lacks two basic necessities that effective national systems possess (those national systems that lack either soon stop working too).

1. The international system lacks any sense of real, functional community, and thus a recognition of genuine moral legitimacy. The 'international community' is a fictitious concept, as the UN itself acknowledge in a report called "Our Global Neighborhood". The world does not share the common values and common accepted standards of right and wrong that define a national community.

2. The international system lacks any meaningful enforcement authority, and will continue to lack such for the foreseeable future. If a small power violates 'international law', the major powers can enforce obedience or exact some sort of punitive response...sometimes. When they can, they don't always choose to do so, for their own reasons.

If a major power decides it doesn't like a given rule, or that it disagrees with the interpretation the other powers apply, there's really nothing anybody else can do bar going to war.

.
Thanks for keeping us posted on the status of the world Kudos to you!

Yes, that is the status of the world as-is. It's no matter to me whether you like it that way or not, I certainly don't like it. But it's the way things are, and there's nothing that can be done about it in the short term.

Originally Posted by monoghan

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

The New York Times does a big fat mea culpa on its prewar coverage.

The mea culpa is very narrow because it relates only to reports that were inconvenient in light of today's political climate. No mea culpa about reports of the quagmire in the troop advance caused by the sandstorm, nor the exaggerated projections of expected deaths, nor expected starvation, nor the faux looting scandal, or any of the other anti-administration reports that did not come to pass.

The NYT is still arguing that Durante should retain his infamous Pulitzer prize for his deceptive and fake coverage of the USSR during the intentional famines, even though nobody claims today that he wasn't faking his reports. They actually argued that rescinding the Pulitzer for the false coverage would be akin to Soviet tactics in creating 'unpersons'. The fact that he was lying in his coverge doesn't mean the coverage shouldn't be given a Pulitzer prize!! :lol: :twisted:

So this 'apology' is actually pretty much in-character for the Times.

Originally Posted by eric cumis

No one now disputes that the Bush administration turned out to be correct that the regime would fall quickly, even when many people at the time predicted that conquering Baghdad would be like another Battle of Stalingrad.

Many of those same people now claim they didn't say that at the time, even though they did. For that matter, I still remember all the talk of how nobody could beat the Afghans in their mountains, and how the war was turning into a quagmire (the magic word!), 2 days before the fall of Kandahar.

Originally Posted by Witchiepoo

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by Witchiepoo

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by Kiff

HC, we were supposed to be the good guys. That's why Abu Ghraib is freakish. It destroyed that illusion.

No, it didn;t, because it wasn't and isn't an illusion!! What they did does NOT reflect, overall, on America, it reflects on them! That's the truth that the media is trying, very hard, to deflect attention away from.

Americans don't get to decide whether or not their actions reflect on America. The only opinions that matter are those of the Iraqi people, and those aren't too good right now.

Is that actually true, at least based on this? What I've been hearing is that a lot of Iraqis are so used to Hussein's way of doing things that they don't quite see why this is such a big deal to Americans (Iraqis in the street, that is, as opposed to the leaders of the insurgents, who have made a much more in-depth study of our way of thinking).

I guess nobody in this country knows what the Iraqi people really think, but we should probably try to find out instead of jumping to conclusions based on our political leanings.

There have been some attempts at polling in Iraq, but I don't trust any of the results of them. The country is too unstable, the fall of Hussein too recent, and the pollsters too inexperienced with Iraqis, IMO, to make the results even partially trustworthy.

I do note that the reports coming in on the liberal and conservative media outlets don't jive with each other, which is to be expected. The reports I'm seeing and hearing from returning military personnel don't exactly match either, but what we're getting from returning soldiers tends to be more optimistic, or less disastrous, than what's going out via the estabishment media.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by eric cumis

No one now disputes that the Bush administration turned out to be correct that the regime would fall quickly, even when many people at the time predicted that conquering Baghdad would be like another Battle of Stalingrad.

Many of those same people now claim they didn't say that at the time, even though they did. For that matter, I still remember all the talk of how nobody could beat the Afghans in their mountains, and how the war was turning into a quagmire (the magic word!), 2 days before the fall of Kandahar.

These front page headlines ran in the New York Times:

• A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam
  October 31, 2001, Wednesday
  
  Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word "quagmire" has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad.
  
  Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not...
  
  Bush's Peril: Shifting Sand and Fickle Opinion
  
  March 30, 2003
  
  Mr. Hussein seems to have decided that he can turn this war into Vietnam Redux. He appears willing to take casualties and to give away territory to gain time. Over time, his strategy implies, he thinks he can isolate the United States and build a coalition of third world nations.

Then, of course, the awful reality begins to set in at the New York Times, the famed news print of record...

• Dash to Baghdad Leaves Debate in Dust
  
  WASHINGTON, April 4 ? Even by the standards of the Third Army's headlong dash across France under Gen. George S. Patton in World War II, the allied invasion of Iraq has accelerated with stunning speed in less than a week.
  
  No less remarkable has been the transformation of the political atmosphere at home and, to a lesser degree, abroad. The dramatic, lightning-like thrust of the tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, their way eased by the devastating application of air power to the Republican Guard, has taken the political heat off President Bush and his hard-nosed Pentagon boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Pretty amazing the flip flops these folks do, eh? :wink:

Originally Posted by TrollKing

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

In some ways, that's the essence of my complaint. The press is not so much investigating as they are spinning. See my post upthread about questions they could have asked Bush during his press conference, and didn't.

could you do me a favor and provide a link? i was raised by televisions and don't have the attention span to go a-hunting. :-)

Better yet, I'll repost my post [the original can be found on this thread, on page 8]. This is in reference to the President's press conference of a few weeks ago, not his appearance on Monday last (which I didn't see and so can't comment usefully on).

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by Amanda W.

If all it takes is asking difficult questions from authorities to be liberal, then I've got news for you, that's not being liberal - it's being a good journalist.

That's just it, they aren't asking 'hard' questions, they're asking 'leading' questions, designed to produce a hoped-for answer, or to preclude an answer they don't want to get.

I didn't see GWB's speech today (5-24-04). But in his last press conference, there were all kinds of hard questions, perfectly legitimate ones, that the reporters could have, and should have, asked. For ex:

"Mr. President, the projected cost of the Iraqi operation has risen steadily since the inception. Why is that, and is there any hope that the cost will level off?"

"Mr. President, many of your own party and political allies have complained of inadequate border security and border control, especially on the southern border. What are your plans to address this, or do you consider their worries unfounded?"

"Mr. President, many in Congress have complained that your administration has kept them ill-informed of events, to the point that they are unable to properly execute their Constitutional duties with regard to war policy. Do you have a response?"

"Mr. President, do you have a general guideline when it comes to the balancing the needs of democratic openess with the needs of security?"

I could easily come up with many more, more specific and more relevant than anything they asked in that conference. All they ended up asking about was variations on "Why won't you apologize and admit we shouldn't be in Iraq?!" They weren't asking questions as a reporter seeking information, they were attempting (clumsily) a hostile cross-examination in hopes of 'leading the witness'.

A couple more perfectly legitimate questions they could have asked Bush:

"Mr. President, the Patriot Act has been likened by many of your political opponents to a direct and dangerous violation of basic civil rights. Would you care to respond to their view by addressing what safeguards your administration has taken to prevent abuse of the powers in the act?"

"Mr. President, numerous civilian contractors have been entrusted with considerable discretion in the field in Iraq, and perhaps will be elsewhere in the near future. Do you have any plans for ways to assure accountability among these contractors, who are after all not subject to standard military discipline?"

"Mr. President, the view has been expressed that the presence of signficiant numbers of females in active duty combat positions may be creating serious discipline problems in the armed services. Do you consider this to be the case, and if so, what is your plan to deal with the matter, or to eliminate the misconception?"

There are lots of good questions they could have asked, questions that could be phrased respectfully and still be honest, uncowed journalism, and questions that could have shed light on real and serious considerations of security and national policy.

But they decided it would be more fun to spend all their available time trying to get him to apologize, with voiced references to Clarke, IIRC. :twisted:

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by Amanda Wilcox'73

Here's a null concept for you. The invasion is over. The Bush Good vs. Saddam Evil analogies are spent. The issue is about who is competent enough to lead. I don't think Bush is.
The issue of this forum is "is the media liberally biased."
I don't believe so. I believe the media is beholden to the corporations that own most of it. If they lean one way or the other on some bone the elites in this country throw peasants like you or I to argue over - like abortion or gun control - it doesn't really make a difference.

The above view is itself an example of a liberal outlook. "The corporations are the real problem."

Could be. But does that make me a "liberal"?

What do I associate with the word 'liberal' - well-meaing, naive, dreamy, authoritarian, out of touch with reality, driven by profound misconceptions.

Wouldn't it be great if you would accept that liberals didn't exist? Think of all the free time you'd have back!

Also describable as well-meaning, basically realistic, self-disciplined (at least in theory), adult, in touch with reality.

Every trait can be described positively or negatively.

Conservatives put people in jail for life for selling weed, but they mean well. Conservatives will have a teacher tell you that Noah packed two of every kind of animal onto his ark and that Eve was created from Adam's rib in science class, but they are realistic and in touch with reality. Conservatives will not let the fact that they used to work for major energy companies and go duck hunting with one another get in the way of business, because they are so self-disciplined.



I care about very little. Gun control? Don't care. Gay marriage? Don't care.
Liberal media? Don't care.
Is the New York Times ludicrously liberal? Yes.
Is the New York Daily News constipatedly conservative? Absolutely.
The real dilemma as I see it is that as an American I feel I have no influence upon anything.
In fact, I feel less a citizen, and more a ward of the state as I have no legitimate place to go. I feel that my elected officials do not care about my well-being, and in particular, use our pain and suffering to get the better of us. So really, there is no hope. Therefore, I am not espousing any cause. I no more a subscriber to Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman's insane censorship nor to Paul Wolfowitz and Henry Hyde's insane paranoia.
They can all swing. That makes me neither liberal, nor conservative, and thus a thorn in the side of your black and white dichotomy, John Birch.

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by eric cumis

No one now disputes that the Bush administration turned out to be correct that the regime would fall quickly, even when many people at the time predicted that conquering Baghdad would be like another Battle of Stalingrad.

Many of those same people now claim they didn't say that at the time, even though they did. For that matter, I still remember all the talk of how nobody could beat the Afghans in their mountains, and how the war was turning into a quagmire (the magic word!), 2 days before the fall of Kandahar.

These front page headlines ran in the New York Times:[list]A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam
October 31, 2001, Wednesday

Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word "quagmire" has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad.

Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not...

Thank you! I was looking earlier for just this sort of corroboration of what I remembered. 8)

"...and our word for today is 'quagmire'." :twisted:

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Yes, that is the status of the world as-is. It's no matter to me whether you like it that way or not, I certainly don't like it. But it's the way things are, and there's nothing that can be done about it in the short term. I could be phoning my Mom, but instead I'm hunting liberals

The basic principle really is that we are all descended from primates.
Therefore nothing we do should be taken any more seriously than Any Which Way But Loose. While you make a wonderful Alan Thicke-like host on this edition of Animal World, I think in all honesty that you are quite a nationalist. You try to put off the blame for that on "the way of the world" but you could have been a circus clown or a check out girl. Instead you turned into some weird hybrid of a fascist with ideals of democracy. You made that choice. For you everything boils down to an individuals loyalty to his or her nation. If it didn't, then you wouldn't have such a faith in your beliefs. Yet again, by relying on blocks like nations, you fall back upon the us vs. them, black vs. white traditionalism that is common to both conservatives and liberals in America.
Some of us don't live in the continental United States. I believe 3 million Americans live overseas. The movement of people is fluid, as are their customs and traditions, languages, and the like.
I prefer not to think in boxes. I think that without them, you would be deeply lost.

Originally Posted by Amanda Wilcox'73

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Yes, that is the status of the world as-is. It's no matter to me whether you like it that way or not, I certainly don't like it. But it's the way things are, and there's nothing that can be done about it in the short term. I could be phoning my Mom, but instead I'm hunting liberals

The basic principle really is that we are all descended from primates.
Therefore nothing we do should be taken any more seriously than Any Which Way But Loose. While you make a wonderful Alan Thicke-like host on this edition of Animal World, I think in all honesty that you are quite a nationalist.

Yes, I am a strong nationalist. For good reason.

Instead you turned into some weird hybrid of a fascist with ideals of democracy. You made that choice.

You need to check out your dictionary. I've posted nothing in any way indicative of fascism or sympathy for such.

For you everything boils down to an individuals loyalty to his or her nation.

No, and once again you demonstate your basic lack of understanding of me or the things I stand for. I am a nationalist because:

1. I am an American, and I recognize pragmatically that what happens to me and my family and loved ones can not be separated from what happens to America. That isn't good or bad, it just is.

2. I am sufficiently familiar with history to recognize that America is probably the best hope the world has, even yet, for avoiding disaster in the upcoming 4T. Europe is mired in demographic and culture stasis, the Third World is a chaotic disaster in many areas, and the West derives most of its current vitality and creativity from America.

3. I am also sufficiently familiar with history to recognize that, contrary to the pc view sometimes taught today, nationalism has been basically a good thing in the last few centuries. It's brought more good than evil, when it's properly recognized as being the desire to make one's nation a better, more civilized, and more secure place. Liberal democracy came of age hand-in-hand with nationalism, and continues to require it in order to thrive.

Some of us don't live in the continental United States. I believe 3 million Americans live overseas. The movement of people is fluid, as are their customs and traditions, languages, and the like.
I prefer not to think in boxes. I think that without them, you would be deeply lost.

Amanda, everyone lives in boxes of one sort or another, nobody operates independently of the cultural, social, religious, and political matrix in which they live and move.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Yes, I am a strong nationalist. For good reason.


No, and once again you demonstate your basic lack of understanding of me or the things I stand for. I am a nationalist because:

1. I am an American, and I recognize pragmatically that what happens to me and my family and loved ones can not be separated from what happens to America. That isn't good or bad, it just is.

2. I am sufficiently familiar with history to recognize that America is probably the best hope the world has, even yet, for avoiding disaster in the upcoming 4T. Europe is mired in demographic and culture stasis, the Third World is a chaotic disaster in many areas, and the West derives most of its current vitality and creativity from America.

3. I am also sufficiently familiar with history to recognize that, contrary to the pc view sometimes taught today, nationalism has been basically a good thing in the last few centuries. It's brought more good than evil, when it's properly recognized as being the desire to make one's nation a better, more civilized, and more secure place. Liberal democracy came of age hand-in-hand with nationalism, and continues to require it in order to thrive.

Originally Posted by John Laughland

And, as in Hobbes, the creation of order out of chaos was something which occurred ex nihilo. There is, in the neo-conservative view, no natural order in international relations. Order must be deliberately created in order to exist. Neo-cons, in other words, commit precisely the mistake of ?constructivism? which Friedrich von Hayek so brilliantly analysed an attacked. In particular, the neo-con revolutionaries ? for it is as the heirs of Jacobinism that they are rightly understood[vi] ? denied, in effect, that it was natural for the world to be divided up into different states. George Bush has repeatedly said that American values are the values of the whole of humanity ? ?right and true for every person in every society? [vii] true for all people everywhere,? and that the end of the Cold War showed that there is ?one single model for national success?.[viii] Under such conditions, it is obvious that there is no real room for national sovereignty.

Bush, indeed, has proved to be as hostile to the concept of national sovereignty as his predecessor, who fought a war (over Kosovo) specifically to show that ?universal human rights? should trump the existing rules of the international system. His friend Tony Blair has given two speeches saying why the rules should be changed, not changing his tune between the two American presidencies.[ix]? Above all, Bush and Blair both regard the war on terror in exclusively moral and even religious terms, never in political ones. By definition, therefore, they do not consider their enemies to be legitimate. They depict them instead as criminals by definition, and it is because they criminalise the enemy that enemy captives, such as in Iraq, are treated as convicts - simply in virtue of the fact that they have fought.



...
Above all, it is Bush?s religious and apocalyptic vocabulary which is so striking. Having said that American values are universal values, Bush has also said that America is fulfilling a divine mission. He is, as such, the direct inheritor of that long tradition of American Messianism which includes John Winthrop, Hermann Melville and Woodrow Wilson.[x] Bush has said that American incarnates liberty, that ?liberty is Heaven?s plan for humanity? and that America?s enemies are the enemies of liberty. The logical corollary of this is that they are the enemies of humanity and, as such, not human themselves. With the President of the United States de-humanizing his country?s enemies in this overt way, is it any wonder that Lyndie England treated her captives like dogs?

?The rot starts at the top?
All News is Lies

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

There are lots of good questions they could have asked, questions that could be phrased respectfully and still be honest, uncowed journalism, and questions that could have shed light on real and serious considerations of security and national policy.

But they decided it would be more fun to spend all their available time trying to get him to apologize, with voiced references to Clarke, IIRC. :twisted:

Those were all good questions, HC. The press gaggle is too lazy to ask them. Pity.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

What do I associate with the word 'liberal' - well-meaing, naive, dreamy, authoritarian, out of touch with reality, driven by profound misconceptions.

Authoritarian....

Are you familiar with the four-quadrant "political compass" model? They describe "left libertarians." Many liberals who post on this site identify themselves as such. I'm one of them.

Conservatives:

Also describable as well-meaning, basically realistic, self-disciplined (at least in theory), adult, in touch with reality.

Adult? Are you saying that people automatically become more conservative as they get older? I don't think that's true for everyone and for every issue.

There is at least one spark of vitality-Cultural Creatives.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

There are some liberal/radical nuts out there. I have liberal arts educated friends who are slaves to their textbooks and professors. Who judge every sentence to see if it is clean and non-racist, sexist, offensive. To me -those aren't really liberals.

For practical purposes, they are liberals. They're just extremist or fringe liberals, just as people like Reverand Wildmon was fringe right-wingers.

Not exactly. Marxists are not liberals, never were and probably never will be. They can be conservatives (e.g. in the former Soviet Union), but not here in the US. Some of Marxist thought has been adopted by liberals, but not all.

Similarly, libertarians are not conservatives, never were, and probably never will be. They once were liberals. Some of libertarian thought has been adopted by conservatives, but not all. Some is still retained by modern liberals.

Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59

Marxists are not liberals, never were and probably never will be. They can be conservatives (e.g. in the former Soviet Union), but not here in the US. Some of Marxist thought has been adopted by liberals...

• The difference between those who believe in political and individual freedom and those who favor the police state is now considered too fundamental to be denied-except by the embattled bloc of the invincibly self-deluded-Henry Wallaces. Yet the performance of American liberals and labor during 1945 and 1946 was generally shocking. Instead of backing the non-Communist Left as the group in Europe closest to the American progressive faith in combining freedom and planning, the CIO for example, maintained a disturbing silence over foreign affairs; and altogether too many liberals followed Communist cues in rejoicing at every Soviet triumph and at every Socialist discomfiture. The Wallace Doctrine of non-interference with Soviet expansion prevailed in these years. -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1948)

Given that the pro-Wallace folks, who denied "individual freedom" and were "those who favor the police state," retook center stage among liberals like Schlesinger in 1972, it does appear "Some of Marxist thought has been adopted by liberals" is putting it rather mildly. Thus "generally shocking" has lost it ability to shock at all anymore.

I recall another scheme with four categories: Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Populist. The point is, a mere Liberal/Conservative spectrum is just too limited to describe the range of ideology/proclivities out there.