Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

Not real funny. You should stick with the PoPD, that genre, at least, you have down.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

No. I'm actually just fucking with you. I was making an intentional personal attack b/c you've been displaying your stigmata from previous personal attacks all day. Is that irony?

I'd love to see McCain as our next president.

(Didn't race yesterday)

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

Gattigap:

You just don't get it. How many times do I have to say it? I am the epicenter of the world, and I am always right. How long is it going to take for you to come to terms with that reality?

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

Agreed. Why are they so ignorant? Is the failure of the union oppressed public schools? Or the kool aid?


http://www.richardames.us/files/05-0...stribution.jpg

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

Aww. I'm touched by your concern.

Still, "this type of comment is more appropriate for a PM. Please keep your board chatter to on-topical comments."

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

Ha. Now that was funny and ironic. An anti-whiff, indeed.

I am down with McCain, I think he needs a Jeb or a Frist to pull in the hard right and Frist is probably out. Plus I think Jeb plays better and helps solidify Florida.

Allende in Chile? Chavez in Venezuala? Putin in Russia? Mossadeq in Irag? The guy whose name escapes me in Guatamala or Hondurus in the 1950s?

Oh, and we didn't actually have the bomb after Nagasaki -- IIRC, that blast exhausted our stockpile. Given what we know about Klaus Fuchs, et al, Stalin may have known that, too. It would have meant permanent garrisons in Western Europe, and that act alone may well have resulted in a mutiny along the lines of what the French faced in 1917. (Don't think US troops would ever do that? Ever heard of the post-war "we wanna go home" riots on US military bases?)

Plus, I don't think that the American people would have tolerated it. For better or for worse, the Soviets were portrayed (even in the then-Republican media outlets like Time and Life) as our gallant friends and allies. It would be a little too 1984-ish to assume that our allies could instantly be converted into our enemies.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

In my mod role I am trying to police the content of the board, and thus that post was relevant to the whole board. The wheat needs to be separated from the chaffe as an example to the others.

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

Capt. Fishback would agree.




Oh, wait. You were talking about the Source Of Rights and other metaphysical shit. My bad, please carry on.

Not fair
 

No matter how outlandish and exagerrated something Penske says, he always gets a response from the left. His points are always addressed yet I often get ignored - why, why, why....

Because this got ignored, I thought I would say it again to see if it gets a rise out of anyone.

I believe that Jefferson's statement is true: "All men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain inaliable right, among these being life liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Unlike Jefferson himself, I believe this rule applies to all human beings on the planet earth. Including Arabs.

So when we are trying to help a country set up a government that will protect these rights, I believe that we are helping promote justice around the world. Arabs deserve these rights just as much as we do, and they are entitled to these rights just as much as we are.

When someone says you are trying to impose western values on these countries, I disagree. I think we are trying to impose universal values on these countries. People said it was naive to try and impose these values on the Japanese and Koreans. But it worked there because these values are not western they are universal.

A moral relativist might say that in Arab countrys these rights are not part of their culture so it is both arrogant and naive to think that we can impose a system to protect these rights. Hello Ty.

I believe these rights are universal and apply to all cultures and people. It is interesting though when you discuss something like female circumscission how all of a sudden liberals discover universal rights and don't think it is arrogant to impose such a right on different cultures. Hello RT.

What I also find hypocritical is when we are critisized for trying to impose these rights on another country, but when we do, and we don't impose 100% of these rights for practical reasons - in other words choosing 95% instead of Zero (like not giving women equal rights with men so we can get a constitution passed that protects most of these rights) then we are critisized for not insisting on 100% of these rights. If it is arrogant and naive to impose our system and values on these countrys, then isn't it better that we only impose on 95% of our values instead of a 100%. If we are not supposed to impose our values in the first place how can you complain that we have not imposed specific values.

Either morals or rights are universal, and we should try and spread them, or they are not, and we should not blink an eye when females are circumsized in foreign countrys or widows are thrown on funeral pyres.

Telling these countrys to stop mutilating their young women and killing widows is either an arrogant and naive attempt to impose our western values on these countrys or cultures or an attempt to promote an absolute universal code. You can't have it both ways folks.

Yes, Roosevelt was a little too comfortable consorting with the commies. Birds of feather.........

Not fair
 

There is no rebuttal. They hoped by ignoring it they wouldn't have to acknowledge the illegitimacy and emptiness of their own faux-ideology.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

Tell me if you would believe the following message:

"If you don't hold elections, we will bomb you into oblivion.

"However, if you do hold elections, we want them to be genuine and free and fair. It's okey-dokey with us if you elect someone we consider to be the enemy. Really! We love only democracy -- we are not trying to tell you who to elect."


To me, threatening a country with nuclear annihilation if they don't hold elections just maybe suggests you are willing to interfere with the political process.

And, of course, what if you find that the election was tampered with (like, say, Marcos in the Philippines.) Do you nuke the country then? Or only if you decide you don't like the beneficiary of the tampering?

As were noted leftists Winston Churchill, Lord Beaverbrook, Henry Luce, and Bob Hope.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

Sorry, Turd-blossom, but your stories don't necessarily rise to that level.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

I'll take the bet, although I am not sure why you get odds. She is the frontrunner for the dimwit nomination and given the last two election cycles she should start off the race with at least 50M votes, which gives her about an even up shot.

We should put it writing though, because if she wins you will need some proof to show the executor of my will.

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

Y'know, spouting this load of crap on the same day that you advocated threatening the USSR with nuclear annihilation unless Stalin agreed to free elections makes you sound....

Well, like Penske without Photoshop.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

The thing is, I had to read that three times before I was sure you were joking.

Refresh my recollection, did Churchill argue for a harder line at Yalta and get shot down by the leftie or am I confusing that with a scene from one of the Hope-Crosby Road movies?

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

And the other 58,999,998 American Patriots are standing right behind us, ready to bring the bomb to bear on the oppressive infidels abroad.

Not fair
 

You muddy the waters.

You want this to be a battle between good and evil, between right and wrong. It's not that simple.

One system of thought holds that the greater good is served by serving the greatest number. Stalin embodied that.

Another holds that the greatest good is what serves ME. That was Saddam, among others.

A third holds that each individual is properly his own greatest value.

Until you can point me to a burning bush that screams out "Pick the third choice! Pick the third!", I'm left to believe, simply, that we all need to fight for what we value.

For me, and, I'm guessing, for you, that would be the right of each individual, even those ignorant brown peoples in funny foriegn countries, to have a say in their fate. I suspect that we both would cross a street to stop a bully beating up a child. We would reject objections of "that's all he knows", or "sure, you stop the beating now, but what do you have to replace it?" as meaningless drivel. But, that's not some higher law at work - that's just our own individual choice.

Thankfully, I'm guessing that the choices we make, and the values that we hold, make us more effective in this continuing battle than the people in the first group, and our numbers and resolve make us more effective than the people in the second group. Logically, I think we eventually win, because our philosophy is more conducive to life and happiness for all.

Might makes right, I guess, in a Randian sort of way.

Like Webster's Dictionary, we're Moroccan bound.
 

No, Sir Winston was the one who tried to cut a "sphere of influence" deal with Uncle Joe at Yalta, trading Poland for Greece.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

That's silly.

I might say "if you don't allow your subjects to take part in the decision-making, and continue to kill them in great numbers, we are going to depose you and your co-thugs, and then step back and let your subjects choose how they want life to be."

I can't believe that you think we're forcing Iraqis into something. We stopped the guy beating up the little kid. In doing so, we haven't forced the little kid into anything.

Was Allende a communist? I thought he was a socialist. He may have been a communist but he definitely did not run as a communist. Same with Chavez. I don't think Chavez ran as a communist. I know Putin did not run as a communist and he is not a communist. Wasn't Massadeq in Iran? And I don't think he ran as a communist either.

I know who you are referring to in central america in the 1950s but again I think that guy ran as a socialist.

Actually I think we had a few left, and we were definitely in massive production. May have take a few months. Didn't we leave Garrisons in Western Europe.

I agree with you on this. Sidd just asked me if we should have. I don't think it would have been politically reasible for the reaons you mention, but it would still have been the right move.

The are endowed by their creator with certain inalieable rights......
 

So what you are saying is I need to brush up on my photoshop.

Like Webster's Dictionary, we're Moroccan bound.
 

He had no choice at that point but to cut the best he could under the circumstances, he knew the senior partner in the Atlantic Coalition was mentally incapacitated. It doesnt' undercut his history of warning of the danger of trusting Stalin and his sadness and disgust at the sell out at the end of the war.

Not fair
 

About ten years ago, I used to think that way. But now I subscribe to the unversal moral code craziness. I was going to explain why, but realized that it would take a few pages and I am lazy. So as long as our interests line up what the hell..

Not fair
 

It's like the NYT Select. Only works for those who are already True Believers.

For Penske. Cuz I'm too lazy to PM and someone else might find municipal dog laws interesting and I'm still staying away from this place.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

2.

So maybe someone already posted this . . .
 

But, what the heck:

Amazon has everything!

http://mrsun.us/2005/10/miers-smoking-gun.html

I was joking about Putin, although I think that he's as much of a communist now as he was when he was in the KGB. And Mossadeq *was* in Iran (we put the Shah back after we took him out) -- that was a bad typo.

As for whether any of those people were actually Communists, who can tell? Party labels are meaningless -- I think that the official name of the "communist" party in Poland during the Cold War period was something like the "United Workers Party."

There was a massive demobilization after V-J Day. Not sure on the numbers, but we went from millions to a few thousand very quickly. But not quickly enough for the remaining troops, who rioted. In David Hackworth's book "About Face," he talks about the miserable morale and fighting condition of US troops in Europe between 1946 and 1950 or so (he joined the army as a 16 year old, and served in Trieste in that time period).

Maybe.

Like Webster's Dictionary, we're Moroccan bound.
 

I know Poland was a big deal for Churchill because Poland was the reason England entered the war. They took on Hitler to protect Polands sovereignty. But I think FDR convinced Churchill that they could trust uncle Joe when he promised free elections in Poland.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

You might say that. But I wasn't responding to what you might say; I was responding to what Spanky actually did say:


Now, maybe by "annihilation" he meant "we will depose you and your co-thugs," but I doubt it -- the A-bomb was not exactly a surgical nuke that could be used to take out only the Kremlin.




I don't believe that. We didn't threaten to nuke the country -- again, I was responding to Spanky's point, not yours.


But the "guy beating up the little kid" analogy is more than a little strained. So you cross the street to stop the guy -- any decent person would. But then what? Do you keep the kid in your house, and prevent the guy from getting him back? Do you shoot the guy in the head and tell the kid to elect new parents?

If our primary motivation in going into Iraq had been to spread democracy -- something I think you and I disagree on, but not a discussion I think we need to rehash -- then I would acknowledge that this was a valuable and noble goal.

But I would still view it as a mistake, given the distance between the goal we have accomplished and the costs we have incurred. We had already stopped the guy from beating up the kid -- through no-fly zones and crippling of the military. But we went a whole lot further than that, deciding that we should in fact bring the kid over to our house to live with us, until he could choose new parents, while fighting off his relatives.

Maybe you feel this was worth it -- fine. But you seem not even to acknowledge the cost -- 2000 American lives and counting, how many thousands of innocent Iraqi lives we don't know, etc. And yes, maybe you can justify those deaths because of the benefits a democracy would bring Iraq, if we actually get to see one -- but isn't that simply taking the "the benefit to the many is more important that the costs to the one" view that you claim to hate so much?

Merde! I spent two and half years of my life rewriting the Seattle Dangerous Animal Code to address the due process that it lacked in the exact manner that Houston's does. And at the end of the excercise, the City Council Beeyotch [EDITED ON REQUEST OF AND IN DEFERENCE TO ANOTHER POSTER WHO TOOK OFFENCE TO THE USE OF A SLANG WORD FOR FEMALE GENITALIA] Jan Drago, who supposedly is the "dog friendly" City Council member, gave us the big F.U.

I heard more stories like that than I can count on my ten fingers. And middle class and below people who forced to face the prospect of either spending thousands of dollars to appeal the siezure or sign off on the city/county killing their dog.

The only thing to do is stock up on the guns, as needed, and be ready to take your dog out of the jurisdiction when they come. don't ever voluntarily comply with a turnover of the dog, unless you want it to die in captivity at the hands of the state.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

See my response to Bilmore. What he is saying is not what you said. To use his strained analogy, your proposal was "stop beating your kid or I'll blow up your house with your family inside."

x

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

Easy Cowboy:

Stalin after WWII. For sure we should have said pull the Red Army out of every other country save Russia. If not, we drop A-bombs whereever we think Stalin is. We keep dropping until the Red Army pulls out.

Option 2 - Stalin Step down or we will keep dropping bombs if we hit you. It he doesn't step down, then it may or may not be a good idea to follow through with our threat.

Stalin was originally Hitlers ally at the beginning of the war, and the Soviet Union had a history of aggression very similar to Japans.

I think Stalin's government was just as bad, and as dangerous as the Japanese government, and posed an even greater threat to world security.

I don't see any problem if we had treated the two governments just the same.

As for Iraq I agree with Bilmore's analysis.

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

All we did was take away the falthers baseball bat, but he was still using the tire iron. One kid, the Kurds, may have gotten away, but the other two kids (Sunnis and Shiites) were being beaten senselenss

Differing Concepts of Justice and Freedom
 

Sorry, man. This second-group-of-people response is just meaningless drivel.

If you have the courage to swing away at that bee's nest* it'll all work out in the end.

Gattigap




* One of bilmore's favorite authors. Reg. requ'd