The Demonization of the Opposition by SoupCatcher

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

An analysis I heard many years ago:

There is no Constitutional requirement for two, and only two, major parties in the US. The US has a two-party system, not to mention lots of pre-election rhetoric followed by a dearth of post-election follow-through, and an incompetent electorate, b/c it elects a king who can't be removed for four years. (Not only is the electorate sharply divided, it is, strangely, cynical and not very likely to vote.)

Other countries where the government can be voted-out of office at any time have parties that are less likely to make promises they can't/won't keep, and more likely to depend on coalitions to rule. That makes third, fourth (and beyond )parties more valuable, allowing for representation across the spectrum. It also keeps voters interested and makes for sharp memories, unlike in the US where the collective memory (and thus accountability expected of the politicos) seems to last about 6 weeks.

It made sense to me. I haven't found a better explanation for the dysfunctional US two-party system.

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Thursday, July 1, 2004 8:46 PM

THELION

If you're looking for the two extremes, you're looking in the wrong places--as mentioned above, both Republican and Democrat run somewhere toward the conservative side of the middle, perhaps Democrats less so than Republicans. There is a two party system in place mostly because the democratic system that is used in the United States makes it too hard to go against the grain, and the abuse of the media by both parties just makes things worse. It's clear that most politicians ignored the advice given in their college English courses on logical fallacies, and they tend to boil things down to black and white when the only color that exists is grey.
I know a lot of people are going to argue with me on this, but it's my belief that the democratic system used in the US is not sufficient for a society of our size, diversity (of both culture and opinion), or technological advancement, and it also seems more and more that our country's leaders are unqualified for their jobs, no matter how educated they are. I certainly wouldn't take my $3000 laptop to my lawyer if I needed it repaired, no matter how good of a lawyer he is. Why would we have an MBA making decisions involving scientific advancement? It don't seem right, is all.

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Friday, July 2, 2004 1:10 AM

We have a two party system for a number of reasons. First all, as memetic entities, if any third party starts stealing too many votes away from one of the two dominant ones, those in the dominant party start thinking "Hey maybe these guys have a point. Maybe we should adopt some of their platforms." And thereby regain lost votes, and undercut any potential third party.

Second, in a lot of cases, it is a binary choice. Should taxes go up, or down? Should guns be banned or not? Should abortion be legal or illegal? Is this idea right or wrong? Or even is this idea more right (correct, consistent with reality, functional) than that one.

Life or death, the two positions are mutually exclusive. Happiness and misery is the same. If you are one, that automatically rules out the other. And lets face it, this is what life is all about. Life and happiness and how to increase both.

Demonization, I hate to say I see primarily coming from the minority party. Not exclusively, but primarily. And I have to admit that makes me all the more glad they are the minority party. Because what that does to me is indicate a lack of logical argument. If you cannot argue logically, or even civilly, then I see that as a big indicator that your ideas are not consistent with reality nor will function as you expect. At best, that you do not understand your arguments sufficiently to explain them, defend them and have to use less rational and more emotional means of winning.

Take one meme that is out there. Bush = Hitler. There is a major bug with this statement in that such is considered an insult. People who insult dictators usually end up disappeared, dead, tortured, or worse. If the statement were true, such people who say it, would find themselves in a world of hurt, and quickly. Yet they don't. Therefore the statement is untrue, and provable by the fact that people actually say it.

There are many facets of our democratic process that upon further study, I find brillant. I know many want to change it, and lets be frank, almost all of them are out of power because they could not convince enough voters of the rightness of their ideas. The electoral college system especially is a brillant idea, born of comprimise, that ensures the voices of the farmers, the miners, and ranchers, get listened to almost as much as that of the urban office worker. Without it, the election would be decided by New York, California, and Texas, while the rest of the nation can go suck eggs.

The lack of minority party representation is not a bug, its a feature. With the first cross the post kind of elections we have, minority parties don't stand much of a chance. But then, does anyone ever consider that possibly the reason they are minority parties is that so few people disagree with them? Perhaps just maybe the people know better than so called self appointed elites, about what is best for this country and themselves.

What you have with our system is a reduced signal to noise ratio. Minority parties do not have much pull here. While in other countries, such minority parties can decide whether the government is viable, whether its minority positions (again, aren't they a minority for a reason?) get enacted and whether the government gets dissolved or not.

I know some people do not like the thought of not being listened to. Who does. But I think our system shows more faith in the electorate than many others. Our system, especially in Presidental elections, ensure that the candidates have to appeal to a broader base than only urban elites, or rural folk. It ensures that the people who create the food, mine the metals for the factories, cut the lumber, get a say in how this nation is run. Considering that city life would be impossible without the rural contribution, I don't see this as a problem.

If you are in a minority or third party, perhaps you are in a minority not because you are not being heard, but because you have been heard and folks have simply rejected your positions and politics. Perhaps its simply a matter of being wrong. Its not that they are "sheeple", or stupid. Most folks are pretty bright, with highly trained BS detectors. To say or act otherwise is highly insulting and ultimately self defeating. If you want my vote, calling me a moron, evil, a Nazi, or the like, ain't gonna get it. It ain't an argument, its name calling and its a lie. I know me. I know I ain't a Nazi, I ain't stupid, and I doubt I would be considered evil in most religions or moral systems. So not only have you insulted me, but you have made a series of factually inaccurate statements. Both reasons for ignoring you come election day.

When the minority party starts demonizing the majority party, it is actually a last desperate act of a failing institution. Too many of their policies are simply failures by any objective standard one can muster. That is why they got voted out in the first place. To think that such tactics would work, especially with the broad middle, is to invite defeat, frustration and further demonization. Its a negative feedback loop, and only hastens its demise.

Well probably not demise. Just as the Republican party underwent an evolutionary change during the Reagan years, the Democrats will do the same. Evolution works in politics just as it does in biology. Adapt or die.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Friday, July 2, 2004 9:52 AM

SPLIBERTARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
We have a two party system for a number of reasons. First all, as memetic entities, if any third party starts stealing too many votes away from one of the two dominant ones, those in the dominant party start thinking "Hey maybe these guys have a point. Maybe we should adopt some of their platforms." And thereby regain lost votes, and undercut any potential third party.

I agree that this is exactly how the system works today - it is how so many socialist and communist ideals have become mainstream today. However, this is also exactly what leads to the demonization politics Soupcatcher laments in the original post.

The two major parties have no underlying philosophical purpose other than victory. They scoop up random issues and special interests in the hopes of cobbling together a successful plurality. The purpose is to further themselves, not their ideas, because their ideas are constantly changing. Demonization is an inevitability when the only consistent distinction between the two parties is 'us vs. them'.

I would prefer a system where, if parties exist at all, they exist solely to further specific issues and ideals. Instead of building a coalition within a party, a coalition would have to be built between parties. Once the issues and ideals the parties are formed around are realized, the party would simply fade into obsolescence. In this type of system, people would be fighting for a shared belief, rather than against a shared perceived enemy.

Quote:
Second, in a lot of cases, it is a binary choice. Should taxes go up, or down? Should guns be banned or not? Should abortion be legal or illegal? Is this idea right or wrong? Or even is this idea more right (correct, consistent with reality, functional) than that one.

Binary choices are a construct. By presenting an issue in an either/or manner, any other equally legitimate possibilities have already been discounted. That does not mean they do not exist, simply that they have been ignored in order to further the presenter's needs.

For instance, "Should taxes go up or down?" presupposes that taxation is legitimate in the first place. It also presupposes that people have a right to property in the first place that a portion of it may be taken by the state.

Even if, as within our society, the vast majority do share presuppositions of any of the given examples of binary choices, the binary nature of the choices are only relevant if the range of choices themselves line up consistently and predictably on opposite sides. That is to say, those who believe that taxes should go down must also only think that guns should not be banned and that abortion should be illegal.

The fact that this is not necessarily the case, at least on an individual level, illuminates the prism of the liberal-conservative axis through which issues are so typically viewed.

If these issues are viewed along a different axis, for example a libertarian-authoritarian axis, the line up is decidedly different, and the necessarily "binary" nature of the issues, as well as that of the two party system as a whole, is apparent as an illusion.

Quote:

If you are in a minority or third party, perhaps you are in a minority not because you are not being heard, but because you have been heard and folks have simply rejected your positions and politics. Perhaps its simply a matter of being wrong.

Yes, and perhaps this little TV show I like so much got cancelled because it sucked.

Within the paradigm of the two party system, I don't think you can lump the minority party (better described as the 'opposition') with dismissively described "third" parties. The two major parties are different sides of the same coin and have indeed both had a chance to be heard.

The same cannot possibly be said for "third" parties, who get ignored by the press, excluded from debates with major party participants, and legislated into obscurity by both of the parties in power via prohibitive ballot access requirements.

Quote:
Evolution works in politics just as it does in biology. Adapt or die.

The two major political parties have adapted to survive. They change what they stand for, they change the laws of the country to maintain their combined political supremacy, and they resort to demonizing tactics when things aren't going their way. But what's best for the country, the survival of a particular political party, or the health of the political system overall?

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The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's better than what we've got now.
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Friday, July 2, 2004 2:34 PM

SIGMANUNKI

Quote:
Originally posted by splibertarian:
... it is how so many socialist and communist ideals have become mainstream today.
...

I'm from the outside looking in, but, what?!?

Quote:
Originally posted by splibertarian:

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The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's better than what we've got now.
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LOL

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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Friday, July 2, 2004 4:28 PM

ITSALLSHINY

Your points are well made and I too am proud that this board maintains civility better than any other board I've seen.

I want to interject a few observations on the subject. I'll also take this opportunity to soap my own box, thank you very much.

First of all, it seems to me that many people use hyperbole in an effort to point out the seriousness of the subject, whether it be politics or who left the dirty towel on the floor. It doesn't work very well as an arguing stance, but it is a very common tactic nonetheless.

Demonizing the opposition is just another example of this. By definition, anyone who takes any strong stance must care deeply about it. However, the problem with hyperbole is that facts and rationality tend to fly out the window in it's presence and the only thing that's left is strong emotions. But sometimes the facts themselves are almost too horrible to contemplate, even without the hyperbole.

Here's one such debate and my take on it:

On the one hand, we've got a group in power who are taking away a lot of the little freedoms we've grown up with -- like the right to privacy -- and they are using tactics that set our hackles up, like torture, denying due process, etc. to our enemies and even to some of our citizens -- and they are trying to put our highest law enforcement agency, the FBI under the aegis of the CIA, an organization that openly bragged in front of the Senate hearings (9/11) about operating with impunity against the laws of other countries. (How ironic and scary is that?) All of the above are facts. So, what's next? Are they gonna accuse me of terrorist ties, take away my bank account, hold me incommunicado and deny me habeus corpus, send me to another country to be tortured until I 'confess'? Yup, it's scary, and it would be way too easy to demonize them by saying they are using the situation to grab power. Someone on the opposite side might devalue such fears by saying that what they are doing is a small price to pay for 'the greater good'.

The fellows in the White House say they are doing all this to protect us from a potential terrorist attack like the ones we endured on 9/11. That was a terrible day and none of us ever want to see a repeat. We wonder, "Will some terrorist plant a dirty nuke in my office building tomorrow unless I support these guys in office? Am I going to say goodbye to my loved one in the morning and hear about his death from a terrorist attack in the afternoon unless they torture those guys until they spills all the beans?" Very scary. And no matter how many 'terrorist' plots are foiled, there is no way to know if there isn't another one we haven't uncovered yet. So shouldn't we take every measure at our disposal, even if it means giving up some rights, or using torture or the services of nations who use torture, if there is even the smallest chance that another plot will be foiled? Again it would be easy to demonize anyone who is too 'squeamish' to countenance such measures, if it is believe that personal safety depends on it. But someone in opposition to this stance would say that torture very rarely elicits useful factual information and such tactics may very well incite more terrorist attacks. They also might say that once our rights are taken away, it will be very difficult to get them back, and we fought hard for them in the first place. Our rights are what make us the civilized nation that we are, and they protect us from the very abuses that we condemn in other nations. And WE DON'T TORTURE PEOPLE!

Having said all that, I'll leave a fact to 'chew' on: Every evil human act makes it easier to act more evilly the next time and every humane act makes it easier to act more humanely the next time, both as a human and as a nation. So what are we doing to these people who are our enemies, and what are we doing to ourselves? Are we making it easier to dehumanize, humiliate, and torture other people as standard operating procedure? Will taking such a road make us 'safer' when other countries see us as willing to dehumanize, humiliate, and torture others? Are we willing to destroy what we stand for as a nation in order to prevent a potential terrorist attack? Won't such a road breed many more enemies? Won't meekly accepting having our own civil rights taken away from us make it more difficult to protest abuses when we witness them tomorrow within our own society? Will we be able to honestly face our own selves when all this is over? Can we turn this around, or is it already too late?

Whew!

(Ref: Roots of Evil, The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Cambridge University, 1992, by Ervin Staub.)

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The Train Job

Sherrif: "Well, when a man learns the details of a situation like ours, then he has a choice."

Mal: "I don't believe he does."

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Friday, July 2, 2004 4:41 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Wow!

Well, it's going to be yet another full weekend and no time for the board - but this discussion gratified, impressed and informed me.

Thank you all for this refreshing exchange.

Rue

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Saturday, July 3, 2004 3:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by splibertarian:
The two major parties have no underlying philosophical purpose other than victory. They scoop up random issues and special interests in the hopes of cobbling together a successful plurality. The purpose is to further themselves, not their ideas, because their ideas are constantly changing. Demonization is an inevitability when the only consistent distinction between the two parties is 'us vs. them'.

This is partly true, but I think you miss the point. The 'scooping' up you are talking about is far from random. There is a method to their madness. Yes they desire to further themselves. But again, in order to do that, they have to have something there to offer the voters, a conhesive philosophy that the voters will think will work.

Their ideas change as a response to the new situations we find ourselves in, and new concepts and ideas embraced by the public. Because we live in the real world instead of some idealized version we create inside our skulls. This demonization, (which I argue is almost exclusively one sided) is not a result of the two party system, nor even the binary nature of most of the choices we find ourselves confronting. It is due to the inability of the minority party to make a case for itself.

Think about it for a second. Look at the word we are using here. Demonized. Demons are terribly dangerous and destructive forces. We use the term to denote actions that characterize one party as destructive, evil, generally bad for life and happiness of human beings. It denotes power and ability to change things.

If they had no power, there would be no complaint. We might call it "pixieizing" the opposition.

{We avoided the term "bunnification" with respect to Anya's memory] So one has to ask how they got such power in a democratic society. By appealing to the voters. They appeal to the voters by agreeing with their concepts, their perceptions of reality and how reality "should" be, (however that populace as a whole defines "should" what standard they reference it to) You think anyone can do that by simply cobbling together a bunch of random platitudes?

Your nick indicates that you are a libertarian. And it is evident that you are very certain of your philosophy and policies. If you can explain them in a simple and logical fashion, AND if you are right, you should have no problem convincing folks of the rightness of your beliefs. But you find it difficult and so you denigrate the two major parties as being nothing but "us versus them". You see no difference between the two, and frankly that is inconsistent with my own experiences and perceptions.

Because you are trying to make a case that is inconsistent with what I see with my own two eyes, your ability to sway me is extremely difficult. And that is why you feel the need to denigrate the other two. You are frustrated and feel nobody is listening. When the fact is, we've heard it, and have rejected it.

Quote:
I would prefer a system where, if parties exist at all, they exist solely to further specific issues and ideals. Instead of building a coalition within a party, a coalition would have to be built between parties. Once the issues and ideals the parties are formed around are realized, the party would simply fade into obsolescence. In this type of system, people would be fighting for a shared belief, rather than against a shared perceived enemy.

And I would prefer to be the king of Londidium and wear a shiny hat. But it ain't going to happen. The reason being, is that people are free to associate and form whatever political parties they want, for whatever reason they want. The only way to enforce such a system would be to use force.

The other problem is you talk about ideals but that has nothing to do with reality. Reality does not care what you think it is. It is what it is. Reality governs the consequences of your actions, and what you want, intend, mean, all that mental effort is irrelevant to those consequences. You want to advance an ideal, great. But what if that ideal is erronous, does not correspond to reality, or simply does not work? You'll end up with a mess on your hands.

Communism and socailism were two such ideals that were advanced, were tried, and simply don't work as expected. A great deal of work has gone into the whys and wherefores of those failure. Yet their advocates for the most part thought they were right, that they would work, that the bloody, deadly mess that resulted would not happen. They were wrong, but they did not know that at the time.

Quote:
Binary choices are a construct. By presenting an issue in an either/or manner, any other equally legitimate possibilities have already been discounted. That does not mean they do not exist, simply that they have been ignored in order to further the presenter's needs.

For instance, "Should taxes go up or down?" presupposes that taxation is legitimate in the first place. It also presupposes that people have a right to property in the first place that a portion of it may be taken by the state.

This is actually a good example of where ideals meet the real world and ends up road kill. Government performs a useful function and in order to do that, they need funds and resources. In order to garner the benefits that a government can provide, the concept of an irresolute property right has to fade. I think it would be great if taxation was voluntary, (or perhaps tied to voting rights) but as it has never been tried, and has the risk of essentially negating or destroying any such benefits, weakening defenses against enemies to the point that society would collapse, I am not willing to run that risk.

You see taxation as theft. But you don't mind the cops down the street, with their cars and radios. You don't mind having a strong military to protect and defend your rights and freedoms. You don't mind the laws on the books that at least give pause to all those would be murderers and theives that would steal and kill you, I can't find the argument too convincing.

And no, private police forces don't appear to be a viable option either. I can see that without that monopoly on coercive force granted the government, you end up with a monopoly of force anyway, in the hands of whatever despot has the biggest guns and the will to use it.

Ideal are all fine and good, but Ideals are what are constructs. Hopefully those constructs are based on reality, but sometimes, not so much. Ideally you can have a perfect world. In the real world however, such is not the choice.

[As a great Yogi once said, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is"]

Quote:
That is to say, those who believe that taxes should go down must also only think that guns should not be banned and that abortion should be illegal.

Not sure what the complaint here is. The fact that one might have to prioritize one's values? That one might have to deal with disagreements and simply vote for the side with the best even though it ain't perfect? Welcome to the real world.

Quote:
If these issues are viewed along a different axis, for example a libertarian-authoritarian axis, the line up is decidedly different, and the necessarily "binary" nature of the issues, as well as that of the two party system as a whole, is apparent as an illusion.

Its a construct, and unless you are using those words to mean something different than I understand them to mean, I think you are missing the point.

All philosophy, morality, economics and politics are mental "maps" of the very and sometimes all too real world we live in. They are mental constructs. Again, hopefully these are built based on our sensory data that reality presents us with. But that data is not often complete, nor perfect. Sometimes the amount of data is staggering, so one constructs groupings and generalizations in order to simplify one's inner "map", in order to simply think and be conscious. In that simplification process some details have to be dropped.

Unfortunately, situations change, and that dropped or missing data turns out to be important, rather than trivial. Sometimes quite often, the map does not resemble the territory. And sometimes the maps are even internally inconsistent.

The key point is that these maps, these ideas of how things should work, quite often fail to work as expected in the real world. Trying to conflate the two, the map and the territory, is a big problem. And dismissing someone else's map as "illusionary" simply because you can't get enough folks to buy your own illusionary map, that is not an effective argumentative technique.

Quote:
Yes, and perhaps this little TV show I like so much got cancelled because it sucked.

Good line, but I think you have to see the obvious difference between the life and death issues we are discussing here, and the subjective tastes in entertainment. I don't get bungie jumping, and would never do it. I don't tell people it sucks, I allow for a difference in tastes, especially when it comes to something as trivial as television. I love Firefly, and think its a great show. But I recognize that such is my opinion, and that there is no objective means of determining what is, and is not great art.

Quote:
The same cannot possibly be said for "third" parties, who get ignored by the press, excluded from debates with major party participants, and legislated into obscurity by both of the parties in power via prohibitive ballot access requirements.

And again, that is because most folks disagree with you. Most folks have heard of the libertarian party. And while many of their ideas seem nice and all, they don't seem to be functional. I touched on private police forces above as one example. I have read several of their election platforms and some of it, (such as the 94 plank concerning open borders) strikes me as incredibly foolhardy and suicidal as a culture. It practically invites invasion by more aggresive nations, and changes to our culture that appear detrimental in the extreme. As well as contrary to the very concept of liberty.

Like it or not, without the hand of Big Brother government, some folks would be perfectly willing to break contracts, rob, kill, rape, do whatever they wanted, without any regard for your rights. A monopoly on the use of coersive force is inevidable, so it appears to be much better to put that monopoly into an institution that is responsive to a broad electorate, rather than allow it to congel in the hands of a few tyrants and dictators.

Quote:
The two major political parties have adapted to survive. They change what they stand for, they change the laws of the country to maintain their combined political supremacy, and they resort to demonizing tactics when things aren't going their way. But what's best for the country, the survival of a particular political party, or the health of the political system overall?

Sorry, but the answer is neither. You present a false dichotomy. What is best is the preservation and furtherence of the life and happiness of the American people. The rest are just means to those ends. While life and death are binary choices, no matter how you want to deconstruct it, happiness is more of a spectrum. People differ in what makes them happy. Some folks like bungie jumping. Some folks juggle geese.

People differ in their ideas how best to maximize that life and happiness. And sometimes that means figuring out what is possible, what will work, working out the conclusion based on reality. What comprimises might be necessary in order to achieve the best possible world. You are not going to satsify everyone, nor get complete agreement. Especially if you are dismissive of their concerns in order to preserve your intellectual purity.

To be frank, and not trying to be insulting, reading through your response again, I think you have proven my point. You complain, dismiss and, (dare I say it?) demonize the present two major parties. Yet you do not present a feasible alternative, nor workable, nor logical argument why yours would be better. You are part of a third party for a reason. It is NOT that people have not heard of you. They have heard, and have said "no thanks."

An unyeilding demand for ideological purity, an inability to comprimise is part of the problem. Its a turn off, it makes folks think you are insulting them. It reduces your credibility and makes it just that much harder for people to agree with you. By demanding the whole loaf, by refusing to settle for half, you end up on the outside looking in.

I know that is frustrating. But its a problem with tactics primarily. Its a self enforcing feedback loop you get stuck into. As you feel more and more ignored, your voice gets more strident, your charges get more outrageous, your rhetoric more dismissive. And people listen to you less and less. Which creates more frustration inside yourself.

There is a lot of issues I find myself in agreement with the Libertarians. But there are many that I do not, or see as simply not workable. That fail to take into account that we are not building idealized universes in our skulls, but trying to to live, to exist in the very real world we live in.

Many of the issues I find I agree with, have already been co-opted. While the party I am affiliated with may not be perfect, I see it as more so than the rest. We'll see what the nation as a whole thinks come November. I think I am right, and so do you. Even the election won't determine which of is right, which of our solutions is workable, or just more so than the other. It will tell us what the electorate thinks. But it is reality itself that determines what is right, what is true and what works.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Saturday, July 3, 2004 3:41 AM

Good post. I think this may be another factor involved in the demonization. Fear. We live in scary times, in some respects far worse than the Cold war. At least then we knew who was the enemy, and we also knew that they were not suicidal nut jobs. They could be detered.

Everyone is familiar with the Ben Franklin quote. But it misses something important. Sometimes it is necessary to give up some freedom in order to not get killed. We give up the freedom to fire our guns indiscriminantly, but we all benefit by not getting shot by a stray bullet. All in all, it is a cost benefit analysis, just like everything else in life.

You ask the rhetorical question about whether it is going to be worth destroying the nation in order to save our lives. But you miss a couple of things. First off, the prison abuse scandal is just that, a scandal that is being dealt with. The soldiers involved are being court marshalled, and this was all being handled by the military courts long before we ever heard about it, or saw one picture. Rummy's famous torture memo outlined exactly what methods could be used, and they are almost all rather minor, like giving prisoners MREs instead of the regular cooked meals. Yes, handing an unlawful enemy combatant the same meals we feed our troops in the field is one of the "torture" methods approved.

Will such torture breed more enemies? I don't know that it is relavant. What we want is for them to not try to kill us. They don't have to love us, they can go ahead and hate our guts. But if they try to kill us, they have to know that it ain't a good idea.

The torture issue keeps coming up, and yet no word is mentioned about the kind of enemy we face. These are people who slaughter innocent civilians and cut their heads off for recruiting films. That is the nature of terrorism. I would find your remarks more credible if I thought for one moment that they might be directed at the enemy.

Nothing that we have done can compare to the horrors suffered by the Iraqis under Saddam. The rape rooms, the industrial plastics shredders. When we find someone abusing prisoners, we put them on trial, like has been done. Saddam promoted his torturers, paid them well for their 'service'.

They hide in mosques and shoot at our soldiers. We avoid firing back because those are holy sights to those same terrorists. They turn their mosques and sacred graveyards into armed camps, and we are demonized for breaking down a wall to stop morter attacks on our soldiers.

What are we doing? We've spent several billion dollars rebuilding Iraq, fixing up not just the bomb damage we caused in removing Saddam, but repairing decades of neglect by Saddam. We gave the country back to its people, and letting them try their former dictator for his crimes. Now if you cannot be proud of a nation that does that, I don't know what else to say.

You can try to maintain your freedoms while they are trying to kill you, but it doesn't work in the real world of suicide bombers and hijackers that crash their planes into buildings. You are gonna have to submit to that airport screening, have you luggage gone through. The potential for disaster, for death and destruction is simply too high to allow you to just hop a flight like we did in the old days. Again, cost benefit analysis. Dead people ain't free to do anything.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Saturday, July 3, 2004 8:45 AM

ITSALLSHINY

This is terrific -- we're rehashing here most of the issues. I was only able to address a few of your positions, but we can't do everything all at once, can we?

I've heard over and over again that what they do is so much worse than what our military did, and that's true, but that's just missing the point. It doesn't sit well with me when I hear anyone using such comparisons as justification for acts of evil, because then we're just talking about degrees of difference. To reiterate, it has been pretty clearly shown that we learn by doing, and that doing evil makes it a whole lot easier to do greater evil the next time. (See "Roots of Evil, Origins of Genecide and Group Violence by Irvin Staub.) Whether or not it was the worst evil ever committed on the face of the earth or not, the acts carried out in the Abu Ghraib prison were evil -- the prisoners were humiliated, dehumanized, and by the internationally-accepted definition of torture, they were tortured. Any position that makes what they did semi alright is in itself evil, because it whitewashes it. I am ashamed when I hear the argument, "But they did a whole lot worse than we did!" Sounds like a 13 year old boy trying to justify punching out his little brother for stealing his bike. We have more moral maturity than that, don't we? One evil doesn't justify another, does it?

As for the memo you referred to, it's about getting around the strictures against torture. An act doesn't need to be justified ahead of time unless the intention is to carry out the act. So, you tell my why such a memo was written in the first place? Before you answer, please refer to the Newsweek article from June 8 reprinted in it's entirety below.

In the Abu Ghraib prison we see where such intentions logically lead, as "harsh methods" were carried out. The only difference between Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (or the many secret detention facilities for that matter) is that we actually heard about it in pretty graphic detail. The CIA operatives who were directing interrogations at Abu Ghraib were directed there by Rumsfeld from Guantanamo because, in his opinion, the interrogations at Abu Ghraib weren't producing results fast enough. It doesn't take much intelligence or imagination to connect A (the memo outlining intention and pre-justification for torture) with B (the acts committed in Abu Ghraib prison) in this case, and there is no doubt in anyone's mind that what went on there was torture. This is hardly a case of feeding prisoners MRE's!

As for "It's just a case of bad apples at the prison," please be aware the White House General Council, Gonzales wrote back in 2002, "One key advantage of declaring that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections is that it substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act." Why concern yourself with the possibility of war crimes prosecution unless you are planning on commiting acts that could reasonably be construed as war crimes? (See Newsweek online article, dated May 19, entitled: "Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings. Could Bush administration officials be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result of new measures used in the war on terror? The White House's top lawyer thought so.") Again, connecting A to B is simply child's play here, and it would take an act of willful blindness not to see it.

Here's a longish quote from the Gonzales memo to the President, dated January 25, 2002: (By the way, most legal experts are appalled at the legal advice given to the President by Gonzales in this memo.)

"[Denying the right of protection under the Geneva convention to al Qaeda and the Taliban,] substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441).
"That statute, enacted in 1996, prohibits the commission of a 'war crime' by or against a U.S. person, including U.S. officials. 'War crime' for these purposes is defined to include any grave breach of GPW or any violation of common Article 3 thereof (such as 'outrages against personal dignity'). Some of these provisions apply (if the GPW applies) regardless of whether the individual being detained qualifies as a POW. Punishments for violations of Section 2441 include the death penalty. A determination that the GPW is not applicable to the Taliban would mean that Section 2441 would not apply to actions taken with respect to the Taliban.
"Adhering to your determination that GPW does not apply would guard effectively against misconstruciton or misapplication of Section 2441 for several reasons.
"First, some of the language of the GPW is undefined (it probhibits, for example, 'outrages upon personal dignity' and 'inhuman treatment'), and it is difficult to predict with confidence what actions might be deemed to constitute violations of the relevant provisions of GPW.).
"Second, it is difficult to predict the needs and circumstances that could arise in the course of the war on terrorism.
"Third, it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not appply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

----------------------------------------------

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Updated: 6:31 p.m. ET June 08, 2004
June 8 - A memo classified by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 explores ways of conducting interrogations in the war on terror that would allow guards to evade future prosecutions for torture. In a series of minutely argued points that appear designed to evade restrictions on abusive interrogation techniques, the memo concludes that “excessive force” is illegal only when it is “malicious and sadistic.” It also argues that treatment of prisoners should be defined as torture only when "the infliction of pain" is an interrogator's "precise objective."

The March 6, 2003 draft memo from the Defense Department, which was obtained in part by NEWSWEEK, is titled a “WORKING GROUP REPORT ON DETAINEE INTERROGATIONS IN THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM” and explores numerous legal defenses for acts that might be construed as torture. (Click here to read the memo). It was first disclosed by The Wall Street Journal on Monday. Along with several other memos to come out of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel—two them previously disclosed by NEWSWEEK—the 56-page DoD memo is believed to form the main basis for legal arguments justifying intense interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay. Some of those methods were later believed to be adopted for use at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

It is not clear to what extent the memo’s arguments eventually became administration policy. But a number of these arguments appear to provide a clear basis for many of the detention and interrogation practices that the Red Cross and witnesses allege were used against the Taliban and Al Qaeda as well as Iraqis. Among these practices were the selective removal of clothes and food, limiting a prisoner’s access to light, and forcing a prisoner into “stress” positions for long periods of time.

Perhaps the most striking part of the memo is its argument that the president, as commander-in-chief, is not bound to observe international laws against torture, or even a 1996 U.S. law enacted to comply with the U.N.-sponsored Convention Against Torture. “In order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign, [the U.S. law prohibiting torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority,” the memo says. “In light of the President’s complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the President’s ultimate authority in these areas.”
Some legal scholars contacted by Newsweek were appalled by what they called the unsoundness of such arguments. “There is little jurisprudential basis for this,” said Scott Horton, a well-known human-rights lawyer based in New York. “It is arguing the president’s unilateral right to interpret the law, unrestricted by the views of Congress." Philip Heymann of Harvard Law School added: “The country has a right to expect far better from the [government] lawyers who are responsible for keeping the president’s actions legal.” Attorney General John Ashcroft, grilled at a congressional hearing on Tuesday over this and other memos, said, "This administration rejects torture."

The memo also dwells heavily on the legal standard a potential future prosecutor would have to meet in order to prove that guards were engaged in torture. The memo concludes, for example, that because Section 2340 of the U.S. anti-torture law “requires that a defendant act with the specific intent to inflict severe pain, the infliction of such pain must be the defendant’s precise objective,” as opposed to “general intent.”

The memo also spends much time exploring legal arguments that the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishment,” and the “due process” provisions in the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments, are limited in their applications to interrogations. Citing the stricture against cruel and unusual punishment, for example, the memo argues that guards must show “deliberate indifference” to a prisoner’s fate. It also cites approvingly a court case from 2002 that finds “a prisoner alleging excessive force must demonstrate that the defendant acted ‘maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.’’’

“It is not enough for a prisoner to show that he has been subjected to conditions that are merely ‘restrictive and even harsh,” the memo concludes. It notes that the Supreme Court has established that an Eighth Amendment violation means ‘only those deprivations denying “the minimal civilized measures of life’s necessities.”

Only in a last section called “Considerations Affecting Policy” does the memo note that the Army Field Manual 30-15, setting out basic doctrine on intelligence questioning, states that interrogation techniques are to conform to international law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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Monday, July 5, 2004 10:23 AM

HKCAVALIER

Wow, Drakon, I can't believe some of the things you've posted here! I'm really surprised that no one has given you much of an argument yet. I guess it falls to me then.

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
...in a lot of cases, it is a binary choice. Should taxes go up, or down? Should guns be banned or not? Should abortion be legal or illegal? Is this idea right or wrong? Or even is this idea more right (correct, consistent with reality, functional) than that one.

Life or death, the two positions are mutually exclusive. Happiness and misery is the same. If you are one, that automatically rules out the other. And lets face it, this is what life is all about. Life and happiness and how to increase both.

You act as if these things you say are universally acknowledged and self-evident. I know a lot of philosophers and biologists who will be glad to know that the mysteries of Life and Death have been plumbed.

Happiness and misery are mutually exclusive? So there are no happy moments in prisons and no miserable moments when you're in love? One doesn't have to take the bitter with the sweet? Anybody ever let you in on the whole "shades of gray" concept? Choices are only binary when you make them binary.

You say the question is "Should taxes go up or down?" but is that the real choice? Seems to me the far more relevant question is, whose taxes go up or down? But that's not a choice we're given. Basically, the question has been reduced to "do we lower the taxes of the rich or not?" (Put a couple hundred rich people in a room and see what they agree to do.

) Even if the poor actually got a tax break (through the tireless efforts of the Poor People's Lobby, naturally), in the end, and with all the social programs that get slashed to make all these tax breaks possible, the poor in this country will always get the short end of the stick. The last two Republican administrations have merely replaced "tax and spend" with "don't tax and spend anyway."

How 'bout abortion: legal in all cases? legal after the second trimester? legal in cases of rape or incest? legal for minors as well as adults? legal without parental consent?

Should guns be banned? How many people think there should be an absolute, across-the-board ban on guns? Not even Ralph Nader takes that position. As far as I've seen it's always been about what kinds of guns will be legal, to whom, and how accessible will they be. Why do you want to simplify these issues out of existence, Drakon?

If your sympathies lie with the current administration, I can see how you might consider these issues to be binary, because that faction wants to lower taxes continually as we spend in excess of 3 billion dollars a month on the war; they want abortion to be made illegal in as many cases as they can get away with; and they want guns to be legalized in as many cases as they can get away with.

But these extremist views do not define reality, Drakon.

Quote:
Demonization, I hate to say I see primarily coming from the minority party. Not exclusively, but primarily. And I have to admit that makes me all the more glad they are the minority party.

First of all, you'll remember that a majority of voters actually voted for the other guy! Bush does not represent a majority in that respect. But, of course, we don't have a pure democracy in this country. It's a little more complicated than that, as you know.

Quote:
Take one meme that is out there. Bush = Hitler.

That's a cheap, cheap shot, Drakon. For every "Bush = Hitler" you show me I've got a "Liberals = Communists" and an "All liberals hate America and support terrorism" to boot. Over in another thread (Surreal World Event Discussions) I can even show you a fellow who compares Al Gore to Hitler! It was Bush himself, who said, "If you're not for us, you're against us." What do you think that means, Drakon?

Also, that Hitler comparison comes from the radical fringe, while the idea that questioning Bush's policies is treasonous comes from members of the administration itself!

Quote:
If you are in a minority or third party, perhaps you are in a minority not because you are not being heard, but because you have been heard and folks have simply rejected your positions and politics.

This part really creeps me out, Drakon. I suppose you'd have a leg to stand on if all "minorities" were ideological in nature, but an awful lot of "minorities" are actually minorities! So, in your view, if the majority (heterosexuals, f'rinstance, or white people for that matter) wants to deny equal rights to a minority (gays who want to get married, f'rinstance or blacks who want to vote) then that's just great, because the rights of the minority just didn't matter enough to enough people. Adapt or die, I think you said. (Kinda like assimilating the Native Americans, right?) Well, I hope you're boning up on your spanish, Drakon, 'cause pretty soon, white people will be the newest minority in this country.

Quote:
When the minority party starts demonizing the majority party, it is actually a last desperate act of a failing institution.

Oh, my gawd! Demonization of the opposition is practically a Republican trade mark, since Reagan. "Evil Empire" ring any bells? How 'bout "Axis of Evil?" What about all that loony anti-French crap from two years ago? Or the afore mentioned: "If you're not with us, you're against us?"

There is an insidious and pervasive equation put out by Bush supporters that those who oppose Bush oppose America and those that hate Bush, hate America. When the ruling faction defines reality in such absolute terms, is it any wonder that our discussions deteriorate into demonization and invective?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Tuesday, July 6, 2004 9:34 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Sorry to bump this up with an aside but:

Quote:
Politicians: they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their
clothing - and if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order.

reminds me of an old joke (those who remember it know just how old it is)

A berserker leader is exhorting his mob: How many time do I have to remind you - it's rape, pillage and THEN burn ?

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Tuesday, July 6, 2004 4:45 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

I still think the US system is an unintended consequence of the Constitution, which results in an unaccountable two-party system.

If I rummaged around enough, I could find several mathematical analyses showing a 'winner take all' vote results in the least representative outcome. Drakon's position that it's all binary and it should be all binary and that is the best system, is, well, not backed-up by anything except personal opinion. (Yet at the same time Drakon thinks the Electoral College, which specifically subverts a binary function, is real genius ...)

In addition there's a lack of ongoing accountability. So it's not a critically damped system - there's too much lag-time in the feedback. That makes for all sorts of election promises being made that will never be kept. And during a reign (term in office), things get done that probably wouldn't fly in a parliamentary system.

Both factors create a potential for an out-of-control system.

I think the framers tried to avoid these limitations by having a three-branch government. However, should one party take control of three branches at once, there is no limit left.

Because of an unintentional devolvement to a two-party system, an 'us vs them' mentality does take over. B/c the 'winning side' gets so much power, there is a severe struggle to win. People vote against as much as for. And demonization starts.

I agree that parties pick up advocacy groups solely with the intent of winning, but I also agree that each party does offer something to that group. It's just that people are schizophrenic. How else can you explain comfort with a party that embraces mutually exclusive positions: supporting Christian values, personal arms, war, and the death penalty, and opposing stem cell research and choice? (Or as I've heard, the Party where 'Life is Sacred until it's born'.)

An aside to specifically address another of Drakon's points: I was angered to repeatedly read that the minority does the demonizing. It was Bush who said "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html. Exsqueeze me ???!! Is that not demonizing par excellence?

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Tuesday, July 6, 2004 7:30 PM

Quote:
In addition there's a lack of ongoing accountability. So it's not a critically damped system - there's too much lag-time in the feedback. That makes for all sorts of election promises being made that will never be kept. And during a reign (term in office), things get done that probably wouldn't fly in a parliamentary system.

That's a really good point, Rue. I realized after reading the responses to my initial post that I should have been more clear that I was using the ideal of a two party system, rather than the current incarnation we have, to set up the demonization argument (that it is in the best interest of our country to think of those on the other side of the aisle as opponents instead of enemies because power may shift back one day; that it seems a lot of political discourse these days falls into the enemy category, rather than the opponent).

I've been holding off a few days on responding to Drakon's long post because there was just so much there. Fortunately, HKCavalier and Rue addressed many of the points that I would have. My main disagreement with Drakon is that I just don't buy his statement that demonization comes from the minority party. I could give you examples from many different sides, some currently in power some not. The cause of the demonization is not simply the absence of power and feelings of futility. One factor seems to be the belief that those who vote differently than you are morally wrong. Binary thinking could be a contributor to that. Another is just a general lack of respect.

To kind of go off on a tangent: I don't have to like someone to work with them effectively. I do need to respect that they are competent, have the same overall goals that I do, and the motivation to work to achieve those goals. Whether or not I would do the work the way that person does is immaterial. The only thing that matters is if the job gets done.

So how to bring that back to politics? I'm not sure. How do you convince people that attacking those who would do things differently, but have the same overall abstract goals as you do, is not a good thing?

I'm only talking about things on the level of the citizen, who I am convinced share the same abstract goals that I do: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, equality, opportunity, etc. It's only in the way we would achieve those goals that there are differences.

Am I convinced that most career politicians share those abstract goals? Well, that's for another thread.

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

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Wednesday, July 7, 2004 12:17 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ItsAllShiny:
This is terrific -- we're rehashing here most of the issues. I was only able to address a few of your positions, but we can't do everything all at once, can we?

Completely understand. Time is short and I would assume you have an actual life, apart from the net.

Quote:

I've heard over and over again that what they do is so much worse than what our military did, and that's true, but that's just missing the point. It doesn't sit well with me when I hear anyone using such comparisons as justification for acts of evil,

It is not a justification. There are several problems as noted with the coverage of the war, and we are only getting part of the story. And that is the point.

Which is most upsetting to you personally, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, which as noted was discovered, investigated, and at present being prosecuted by the military? Or beheading of civilians as an act of policy by the enemy? To me it is a mark of the differences that excesses committed by our troops, get ratted out and punished, by our troops. Yes, the enemy does far worse, AND is exempt from critism or condemnation. That is the real problem for a lot of folks, both in and out of the military.

There appears to be a willingness to see all US troops as baby killing marauding thugs, and ignore the fact that when the military discovers such incidents, it corrects them and punishes those guilty of them. Whereas the other side, its "their way" or "their culture" or "its really our fault in the first place". They get a pass for doing far worse. And that is the problem.

Quote:
Any position that makes what they did semi alright is in itself evil, because it whitewashes it.

Again I look at it from a cost benefit analysis. Does whatever was done to those prisoners, did it result in them giving up information that would save the lives of our troops, or Iraqi civilians? You might fear what it will turn you into, and may want to compare it to some abstract intellectual standard, but sadly, we don't always have that luxury.

[There is an exception. In the report, one prisoner was raping another one. As punishment, he was taken out, stripped naked, and photographed with the word "Rapist" mispelled scrawled on his body. This is one of the examples of torture given. Sometimes such humiliation is required in order to keep one prisoner from raping another prisoner.]

You have to decide how much your life is worth, and how far you will go to protect and defend it. Now a lot of folks put a very high price on their own life. And will do whatever it takes to stay alive. Even if that means dressing up Arab men in women's panties to get them to talk.

Quote:
"One key advantage of declaring that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections is that it substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act." Why concern yourself with the possibility of war crimes prosecution unless you are planning on commiting acts that could reasonably be construed as war crimes?

You also have the worry, due to the inability of the government to come out with an open declaration of war with terrorist suspects clogging the judicial system. Not so much a concern as to the US carrying out war crimes, (Which again feeds into that whole "the military is just a bunch of kill crazy thugs" stereotype) but with terrorist attempting to use our freedoms and rights against us. Just like they used our hospititality and general welcoming nature to come over here and train as aircraft pilots.

Also in this day and age, lets face it, war is considered a crime by somebody. And to a large extent they have a good point. War sucks. People die, things get blown up and destroyed. And there are a lot of nations and ideologies that see even reacting in self defense as a crime. Someone tries to kill you, trying to kill them right back is considered a crime to many. So the fact that the White House got some legal concouncil before the war, and during it, that just seems like a prudent idea to me. The fact the legal opinion did not come the way you wanted it to, that is another matter. Obviously you disagree.

Another point that should be noted, there is no international referee to guard against violations of the Geneva convention. And the guys writing it up realized that. Which is why it is self policing in one way.

Lets say you and I are at war. You commit a violation of the Geneva convention. I turn around and do unto you as you have done unto me. By the terms of the Geneva convention, your actions are a war crime, yet mine are not. Why? As childish as it may sound, you started it. That voided the agreement right there, and any further actions by me don't count.

Without that provision, the Geneva convention would never work because it could never be enforced. There are benefits to both sides in fighting a war "nice", by complying with the convention. But if one side violates it, and the other side is the one that gets punished for 'war crimes' then it lets bad people win. It rewards the very actions you are trying to stop.

You reward someone for taking an action, he'll do it again. That is not what you want. Which is why our troops who have been involved in torture are being courtmarshalled. Since the Taliban, and Al Qaeda are not signatores, nor even making token acceptance of the Geneva convention part of their actions, they are not covered by the Geneva convention. That is the way the convention works. That is the international law as it stands.

And that is the way it has to be. This is a war, and these folks want to kill us, or enslave us into their version of Islam. Personally, I prefer allowing women to drive and wear bikinis in public if they've a mind to. I can always shut my eyes if they are doing something I don't like. (Unless its the kill me kind of stuff. But that is another issue) They don't care for international law, the Geneva convention or to put it bluntly, anything that even remotely appears to be consistent with any moral system I have seen. (Maybe Nietzsche, but even then its a stretch)

This is not something that can be calmly discussed and debated in open court. I wish it could be, but we have to deal with the reality at hand, rather than pretend things are different than they are. They don't care for our courts, except as a tool to use against us. Against you.

Now, it upsets you that such a memo or discussion was even considered. But you have to ask yourself a more important question. Is the memo correct in its interpretation of the statutes and treaties mentioned?

The fact that the President was considering and reviewing all available tools at his disposal in this fight, I see as rather prudent. His job, the primary job of government is to protect and defend this country, meaning you and me. And I don't want a guy who would avoid using what is legally available, (or worse, not even consider what is legally available and what is not) and getting us killed in the process. Perhaps you do, and perhaps there are many others like you. We'll find out come November one way or the other.

You don't like war, hey, who can blame you. I don't either, and I doubt many sane people love war. But sometimes war and all its excesses are less destructive and less terrible than many alternatives.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Wednesday, July 7, 2004 2:30 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Wow, Drakon, I can't believe some of the things you've posted here! I'm really surprised that no one has given you much of an argument yet. I guess it falls to me then.

Are you surprised that I actually wrote it, or that I hold different beliefs from your own?

You can give it a try. If my ideas and opinions offend you so much, you are perfectly free to ignore them. But if you are going to argue, you have to present an actual argument. A connected series of statements to establish a proposition. Certain rhetorical approaches simply don't work. And that is just life.

Quote:

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
...in a lot of cases, it is a binary choice. Should taxes go up, or down? Should guns be banned or not? Should abortion be legal or illegal? Is this idea right or wrong? Or even is this idea more right (correct, consistent with reality, functional) than that one.

Life or death, the two positions are mutually exclusive. Happiness and misery is the same. If you are one, that automatically rules out the other. And lets face it, this is what life is all about. Life and happiness and how to increase both.

You act as if these things you say are universally acknowledged and self-evident. I know a lot of philosophers and biologists who will be glad to know that the mysteries of Life and Death have been plumbed.

I am sure that they will be much enlightened by the fact that if you are dead, you are not alive. And if you are alive, you ain't dead. Somehow I think most people recognize this instinctively, without being told by me, you or anyone else.

Quote:
Happiness and misery are mutually exclusive? So there are no happy moments in prisons and no miserable moments when you're in love? One doesn't have to take the bitter with the sweet? Anybody ever let you in on the whole "shades of gray" concept? Choices are only binary when you make them binary.

First off, tone. You need to work on that. You are coming off smarmy which I doubt is your intention.

Second, while I am very familiar with the concept of "shades of grey" I don't see it as generally as useful concept as some would like it to be. You are either alive or dead. You are either happy (overal and in general) or even the little upsets and disputes wreck even the happiness you feel in prison. That is my experience. If yours differ, you need to point that out.

Too often "shades of grey" is palmed off for an excuse to inaction. Unfortunately, even inaction is an action that has consequences. Those consequences are either benefitical or detrimental to you, and/or others. Usually an action will have many consequences, some good and some bad. But generally speaking, you can compare the bad with the good, and get some measure if overall the good is worth the bad.

So while I am familiar with the concept, I don't see it as being that useful, nor even that applicable. And I expand on my comments about happiness later on. Happiness is separate from life and death. (You can live regardless of whether you are happy with your life or not) and is subjective. That creates its own challenges.

Quote:
You say the question is "Should taxes go up or down?" but is that the real choice? Seems to me the far more relevant question is, whose taxes go up or down?

Even admitting that the 'real question" is whose taxes, its still the same basic question here. Should they go up, or down. You are simply narrowing it to one subset or another.

Which gets into the question of why taxes exist in the first place. I agree with those who say the sole purpose of taxes is to fund the federal government. Period. That the government should not be in the business of wealth redistribution, or social engineering. Which, lets face it, is what you are talking about when you start discussing limitations on the question of who gets taxed how much.

Now, you want a completely fair system, the only way to do that is really with a poll tax. But politically and for other philosophic reasons, this won't work. Poor people ain't got no money, and so taxing them too much ain't much of an option. You see the rich as having lots of money, and see no reason to simply take it from them. I see plenty of things wrong with that idea, especially if we are to reject the poll tax idea above.

A tax on income is essentially a tax on production. If Joe produces more than I do, he pays higher taxes than I do. He makes more money than I do, so he can afford it. But, he can only spend his money once. If he uses it all paying taxes, he ain't creating new businesses, hiring more workers, buying stuff that is made by other businesses employing other workers etc. In short, he can't pay taxes and turn that money around and create more wealth.

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in the end, and with all the social programs that get slashed to make all these tax breaks possible, the poor in this country will always get the short end of the stick.

I would suggest that awaiting a government hand out is giving nothing but the short end of the stick anyway. The problem is that if you pay for need, you get need. You don't get ability to satisfy those needs. And in essence that is all these government hand outs do, pay for need, not ability.

There is an economic problem that is about to become painfully apparent with Social Security in the next few years. The boomer generation had a lot of members, is about to retire, but did not have enough kids to replace them in the work force. Which means more social security dependents relying on fewer tax payers to fund their living standard. This is a big problem.

Quote:
How 'bout abortion: legal in all cases? legal after the second trimester? legal in cases of rape or incest? legal for minors as well as adults? legal without parental consent?

Are you asking my opinion, or what the law is?

The purpose of a law against murder is that serves as a means of protecting folks against murder. We have exceptions, such as self defense. And we also recognize legally death as a result of unintended consequences, and call that "Manslaughter". But to the victim, it does not matter. They are still dead.

The abortion issue is pretty divisive, and really kind of secondary to the topic at hand. To me, it seems the purpose of any anti abortion law is to protect the life of the fetus. And here is where it is problematic for a lot of folks.

If left to develope normally, the odds are that such a fetus will be a baby, a human being, with all the rights and protections of any one of us here. Despite its limited mental capability, or physical capability for that matter, it will be a human being. And I don't think we want to get into mental or physical tests of humanity before we decide whether it is ok to murder some folks.

When does life began? One side says at conception. The other side, well, I am not really sure. And to be frank I don't know myself. But I do know this. If you kill an innocent, that is classed as murder, unless you can claim self defense. Who the parents are, what their relationship to each other was, that is a secondary issue. You kill it, and its a person, you have committed murder.

If the first side is wrong, then I don't see that as a harm or a foul. If it is right, its murder (again, except for self defense). At present I have no way of telling which side is right, and I feel a lot better erring on the safe side and simply abolising it, with the sole exception being to protect the life of the mother. (And even then, its her choice alone. I speak as a father when I say that.)

Yes, I can see the other side's opinion, which to be brutally frank, I see as incredibly selfish. I am aware of all the horror stories of people who had kids they didn't want, and back ally abortions and such. But still you are talking about killing what is potentially an innocent baby. And that is tough to stomach.

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Should guns be banned? How many people think there should be an absolute, across-the-board ban on guns? Not even Ralph Nader takes that position. As far as I've seen it's always been about what kinds of guns will be legal, to whom, and how accessible will they be. Why do you want to simplify these issues out of existence, Drakon?

I see them as simple. Whether I want to simply them or not is irrelevant. Again, this is not an effective debating tactic. (Rhetorical questions in general are not effective, as if your opponent answers them, you are stuck.)

I see a purpose to the Second Amendment in that it protects the life of the individual, and therefore I don't see how you can declare what another person can and cannot do to protect himself. You ain't me, and it is not you that has to suffer for the effects of what you ban me from owning. And that I see a big problem.

Now, if you can prove that I am a danger to myself or others, then you might have a case. And if you look at the various gun bans, it is completely independent of the owners, of their intentions, feelings, what have you, independent of whether they are a threat to you or not. You want to ban things, and assume that will fix the problem with no determental consequences. Consequences that would render such a ban actually make things worse than what we have now.

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If your sympathies lie with the current administration, I can see how you might consider these issues to be binary,

Thanks for your sympathy, but I think you got it backwards. I think what I think. At present the present adminstration agrees with most of what I think is true, and therefore I side with them. The opposition party, I see as disagreeable to me on a number of policies, and therefore I cannot support them.

You want a complete policy statement from me, this is neither the time nor place for it. I can see how you would want things to be more grey than they are. A feeling I can somewhat sympathize, but I do not see as reflecting reality. What I, or you, want is irrelavant in the larger scheme of things. Again, we have to deal with what we have, what reality is.

Or else we'll never get to where we want to go.

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But these extremist views do not define reality, Drakon.

Labeling my views as extremist does not invalid them, or is it much of a convincing argument. It is a meaningless insult. An adhomenim, or its close cousin. A contentless statement of nothing but your opinion.

Which weakens your credibility and makes it harder for me to take you seriously. It does not bring about the desire to continue this discussion with you, or give you further chances to persuade. I can simply ignore you.

And in you, this will do what? Create frustration at not getting your message out? The desire to simply blow me off as one of those 'extremists' who should not be listened to anyway? You want to debate me that is all fine and good, but to what purpose? Is it to convince me of the errors of my way, or to isolate me from other readers?

By just blowing your opponent off as an 'extremeist' you weaken your own ability to convince, and make yourself look bad to the audience when it gets pointed out. In short, it backfires. Not a good idea.

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That's a cheap, cheap shot, Drakon. For every "Bush = Hitler" you show me I've got a "Liberals = Communists" and an "All liberals hate America and support terrorism" to boot.

You seem to be taking this more personal than I would expect in a civilized discussion. And if you had actually read what I wrote, which was to the effect that the "Bush=Hitler" meme is an example of a self refuting statement, perhaps you would be less defensive.

There are many similarities between communism and present day liberal political theory. The discussion of taxes, and the idea of class warfare to be two notable ones you have brought here. (Also discussion of the gun ban is problematic for liberals in this regard as well.)

And when you have self identified liberals come out and state they hate America, wish we would get "a million Mogadishu" in Iraq or Afghanistan, I am sorry, claiming you love country, even though you want to see its people killed, it just does not work. It does not make sense.

And whether you like it or not, if you are not supporting our operations with regard to the war on terrorism you are helping the other side. Whether that is your intention or not, is beside the point. Due to the political, economic, military and technical might of this country, the only way we can lose, is by giving up. A policy that has been highly recommended by some members of the opposition. Giving up helps the terrorists who want to kill us.

So, while I see how the Bush=Hitler meme is a self refuting statement, I do see supporting evidence for the concepts you propose as coming from the Republicans. In which case, it is a matter of calling thing what they are. You may see it as demonization, perhaps its more of that grey area stuff you were talking about before

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It was Bush himself, who said, "If you're not for us, you're against us." What do you think that means, Drakon?

Why are you asking the opinion of someone you have already classed as an extremist? You've already demonstrated you don't much care for my opinions or thinking, you have no respect for opposing views. So why ask?

Since you did, I note the context of this statement was in reference to the war on terrorism. And I think I answered that already above. Whether it is your intention in your dissent of the war to aid and abet the terrorists is irrelavant. Does your actions help the US, or does it help the terrorists defeat the US? If we were simply to abandon the war, to not fight, will they stop as well? I don't see that as happening.

You may oppose the war for all kinds of good and noble reasons, many of which I might even agree with. But again if someone is trying to kill you, you gotta stop them or end up dead.

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If you are in a minority or third party, perhaps you are in a minority not because you are not being heard, but because you have been heard and folks have simply rejected your positions and politics.
This part really creeps me out, Drakon. I suppose you'd have a leg to stand on if all "minorities" were ideological in nature, but an awful lot of "minorities" are actually minorities!

What are you going on about here? We are talking about political parties, that is the context of this discussion. If you are trying to infer some sort of racism, or bigotry, in my postings, then frankly you are failing miserably in your approach. You want to drop context here, then it makes it difficult to have any kind of discussion with you.

And again, I know me, and I know what I wrote (well a lot of it anyway.) I know the context of the discussion, and I felt that having to add a lot of adendums, qualifiers and the like to each and every word, would be a waste of time and bandwidth, as well as appear condesending to the smart people who might be reading this.

You want to talk about minorities as in race or sexual preference? What the heck does that have to do with this discussion here? This wandering of yours, this grasping at straws does not do your case any good.

Look, I am a minority. I am a single individual. While I have many characteristics in common with a lot of folks, it does not change the fact that I am a unique individual on this planet, Just like everyone else. Everyone is a minority, but not everyone is a political party vying to be elected by the population as a whole.

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When the minority party starts demonizing the majority party, it is actually a last desperate act of a failing institution.

Oh, my gawd! Demonization of the opposition is practically a Republican trade mark, since Reagan. "Evil Empire" ring any bells? How 'bout "Axis of Evil?" What about all that loony anti-French crap from two years ago? Or the afore mentioned: "If you're not with us, you're against us?"

Again you like to ignore context.

The "Evil Empire" was in reference to the Soviet Union. Oddly enough, one of my co-workers came from Moscow, and I got to ask him about this specific statement last month. His reply "pfffft. We knew that."

You call it demonization. But you can only do so without referencing it to whether the statements are true or not. Once you look at those statements, you see that for the most part they are true statements, accurate reflections of reality.

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There is an insidious and pervasive equation put out by Bush supporters that those who oppose Bush oppose America and those that hate Bush, hate America. When the ruling faction defines reality in such absolute terms, is it any wonder that our discussions deteriorate into demonization and invective?

First off, nobody gets to define reality. Not even Albert Einstein. Reality is what it is, regardless of who is in office. All we can do is describe and explain it, and come up with mental models that mimic reality enough to be useful in what we want to (physically) accomplish.

Listening to several lefty pundits declare we deserved 9-11, hope for a million Mogadishus, that we would lose this war against people who would kill us, (you included) and/or change American society so completely as to be unrecognizable, its hard to come away with the sense that they do love America.

In short, whether the administration wants to say it or not, the evidence is in front of a lot of people. Bush ain't Hitler. Whether Gore is or not, well, we may never find out. But there are commonalities between many of the minority party's policies regarding economics that is closely paralleled to those of communist regimes around the world. There are commonalities between the actions exhibited by many on the political left and those who hate America for other reasons.

Now it appears to me you are attempting to justify demonization. Well if that is your cause, I can't support it. Its one thing to call a shovel a shovel. But if you are going to make charges against another person, or political party, its gotta stick. That means presenting fact, evidence, and argument. Rather than simple name calling. It can't be so outlandish, and so contrary to fact that most people laugh it off, or just hide their sharp instraments and let you rant on.

And you can't just blow off your opponent as an extremist, a Nazi or anything like that. Especially when it is plainly obvious that the best such charges could be is literary hyperbole, but false none the less. You don't agree, that is one thing.

But name calling or demonization is another altogether. In short (too late) its an ineffective and counterproductive tactic. Your opponents knows its a lie, and so do a lot of folks who know your opponent. If you lie and they know its a lie, you've made an incredulous statement. You have revealed yourself as either an idiot, or a liar, and neither of which carries much credibility. It makes it harder for people to pay attention to you.

So you don't get the votes, you don't get into power, you don't get to enact your policies, you are constantly isolated and marginalized, because you do not argue effectively. And that has got to be frustrating I know. But it is a product of the tactics used, not a fault that lies elsewhere.

If you are arguing that you are justified in demonizing Republicans, those on the political right in general, or even me specifically, I won't stop you. Never interrupt an opponent who is defeating himself for you. But I ain't going to listen to you, or consider your views much. You have already given me ample reason to blow you off, just as you have done me. So you need another line of approach or attack. If this is all you got, you got problems.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Wednesday, July 7, 2004 3:00 AM

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Originally posted by rue:
I still think the US system is an unintended consequence of the Constitution, which results in an unaccountable two-party system.

I would disagree with this strongly, in that both parties are trying to capture votes. Without the votes, they are out of power. And it does not matter how many parties you have, a lot of the major issues do boil down to binary choices.

In the recent governor's recall election in California, there were some 130 odd candidates. Yet with the exception of a very small few, most of these candidates had no hope of appealing to enough voters to actually win. And a lot of voters realized that, and did not want to 'waste their vote' on someone who would just lose anyway. So in the end, despite 130+ candidates on the ballot, it boiled down to a two party race anyway.

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If I rummaged around enough, I could find several mathematical analyses showing a 'winner take all' vote results in the least representative outcome. Drakon's position that it's all binary and it should be all binary and that is the best system, is, well, not backed-up by anything except personal opinion. (Yet at the same time Drakon thinks the Electoral College, which specifically subverts a binary function, is real genius ...)

When you get around to actually doing the analysis, let me know. Until then this is an unfounded and irrelavant comment. As for the electoral college, yes, I do see the brillance in it. I see that straight democracy is too often "3 guys voting to pee in the corn flakes of the other 2 guys." And that is not a system that I want, nor should you.

[As I point out in another post on this thread, we're all minorities of one. We have just as much risk of being one of the two guys with corn flakes they can't eat as the other 3 doing the voting]

Right now, our higher population densities are consentrated in a very few states. California, New York, Texas. If you are from any of the other states, the last thing you want is Congress voting to pee in your cornflakes. Nor do you want a President of the entire United States selected by just those high populace states, especially considering the economic interdependence between city and rural dwellers.

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I think the framers tried to avoid these limitations by having a three-branch government. However, should one party take control of three branches at once, there is no limit left.

But this ignores just how that single party CAN gain control over all three branches. And that is at the ballot box. The only way any party is going to get a majority in either house of Congress is if people elect them to that office. Its on a more individual basis, but the concept is the same.

And you don't get votes without appealing to the voters. It really is that simple. You don't get power unless the voters approve of you, and your policies.

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It's just that people are schizophrenic. How else can you explain comfort with a party that embraces mutually exclusive positions: supporting Christian values, personal arms, war, and the death penalty, and opposing stem cell research and choice? (Or as I've heard, the Party where 'Life is Sacred until it's born'.)

Ever ask someone to explain it to you? Opposition to abortion and stem cell research are kind of linked. And while there is a general agreement that life is sacred, there is also seen that some folks are dangerous. They kill people. And either you protect and defend yourself against them, by whatever means works, or you die.

If that means killing the person who is trying to kill you, oh well, sucks to be him. He won't kill anyone ever again. And it is his actions that condemn him, not his simple unrequested presense in the womb of a woman who doesn't want it. I see a world of difference here. Again, its that context thing that keeps biting folks on the rump.

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I was angered to repeatedly read that the minority does the demonizing. It was Bush who said "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html. Exsqueeze me ???!! Is that not demonizing par excellence?

I have explained this elsewhere in another post. No, this is not demonizations, this is a statement of fact. The terrorists do not care about your politics beyond whether it helps them or not. They would just as soon kill you, as me. You may have value to them as a "useful idiot" to use one term, but after that, they will still put you against a wall, just like they will do me.

Sadly, remaining neutral is not a viable option. Not because Bush says so, not because of anything the American government or either party declares, but because of the enemy we face. They see us all as decadent. They see us all as cheating to get all the goods and prosperity and happiness and long lives that we have. [In part they may have a point, in that we don't play by their rules. And if you don't play by their rules, that can be defined as cheating.]

They don't respect neutrality. They want the entire world under their thumb, under their version of Islam. If you are neutral, you are not helping our side, and that helps theirs. Whether that is your intention, whether you would be horrified to find that out or not, is beside the point.

There is a famous line that goes something like "All that evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing." Sadly, in the world we live in, this is true, and there is no getting away from it. I wish it were otherwise myself, and can sympathize with many who feel unfairly tarred. But reality is what it is.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Thursday, July 8, 2004 12:52 AM

I wanted to expand on my comments abotu binary choices. I see several different sets, and some of the posts here have been very helpful in illustrating them.

I used the example of taxes, should they be raised or lowered. One poster countered that he questioned whether they should even exist at all. And offered as a proposal to do away with taxes. And I started to argue that I don't see such as a viable option, for reasons you have probably already read, and if not, are irrelavant to this post.

Because what did not occur to me at the time, was that my opponent in that particular discussion had not proven whether there were not binary issues. But had simply provided a different set of binary options. Do we get rid of taxes, or not?

Again, another binary choice. Any time a proposal is made, the options are to accept, or reject that proposal. After that is settled, we can get down to details about what modifications, alterations or changes are needed in the original proposal, or if the thing should be tossed out altogether. But still with each change, or even tossing out, it comes down to a binary choice. Do we incorporate this change or not? Do we toss it out or not?

Another poster asked about "taking the bitter with the sweet" and I kind of blew past it at the time. (I am a slow typist, and long winded when I do type, if that makes any sense, and there is a time factor involved.) What I failed to bring up effectively is that yes, there is bitter and there is sweet. BUT, I take the view that you add the pluses, subtract the minuses and then look at what you got overall. Do things come out in your favor, or not? So again it reduces back to a binary choice.

Some consequences I don't like, but sometimes that is simply the cost of doing the things you want to do done. Sometimes its worth it, sometimes, not so much.

Also, something that Republicans painfully learned in 92, is that if you have two candidates that are almost, but not quite, advocating principles and positions you agree with, you have to vote for the candidate with the greater appeal to the rest of the population. Otherwise, you end up splitting your votes between those two candidates, and allowing the guy you least wanted in office to win.

Some of us voted for Perot, and we all ended with Clinton. Some voters in 2000 voted for Nader, and we all ended up with Bush. So sometimes you have to settle for half a loaf, because going for the full loaf means not getting anything at all.

Also, some appear to see things on a more absolute scale than I do. To me, the central question regarding any policy proposal is "Will this make things better, or worse?" We can quibble about definitions of better and worse, and in some respects there is a large element of subjectivity going on. (I.e dependent on a specific individual.) So again, I weigh the benefits, against the risk and detrimental results and make my choice accordingly. But in the end, it comes down to a binary choice. "Is this better, or worse" than we had before.

To a large extent, most policies issues come down that way. You compare the likely consequences of a proposal to what you have, and are likely to have, as a result of the policies that are in place now. Will this change be better, or worse. Even if the new policy is not perfect, even if it does things you might not like, you still have to look at whether the benefits outweigh the detriments compared to what is in place now.

Rarely is it a question of whether this or that policy is perfect, acheives some idealized standard of perfection, or 1000 percent efficiency, without no costs nor detrimental consequences. It is usually a comparison between what you have now, and what you are likely to get as a result of the change.

I think I understand where all this "grey area" stuff comes in. Like I said before, it seems more an excuse to inaction rather than a helpful or useful concept. In my experiences, with enough thought, you can boil down most questions of politics into binary or at the very least, a small number of options and choices. That is useful, because it allows a decision to be made.

Elsewhere, I have come across the concept of the decision loop. Starting at the top, you have sensation, what your senses provide as raw data to your brain. Next, you have perception, where you assemble these various sensory data sets into a conhesive internal mental model of the universe. You take this model and do "off line simulations" with it, asking yourself "if I do this, what does the model say will result?" Based on this mental process, you decide and take a physical action. Turn a switch, respond to a post, whatever.

After that point, after you take action, consequences result from that action. Those consequences are dependent solely on your actions. All the mental processes that went into making the decision have no bearing whatsoever on the outcome of those actions. Reality, physical reality governs the outcome of our actions, not our intentions, feelings, desires or what have you.

Those consequences can be seen, sensed, which provides new data to be incorporated into your mental model. And so the loop goes on and on, feeding back on itself.

The problem I see it with "grey areas" is that it locks up this decision loop. It jams it, somewhere around perception, and it makes it all the more difficult to make a decision, or to act. But the 'verse keeps rolling along, and inaction is the equivalent of an action in that it also results in consequences. The world does not stop so we can sit down and think about things for a moment. It keeps moving, and either our minds do, or we suffer for it. Both physically as well as mentally.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Thursday, July 8, 2004 5:43 AM

You've asked which is most upsetting, and my answer is that I'm upset by both equally. The problem with making comparisons of degree is that we're demonizes the enemy, making him less than human, and therefore easier to commit acts against him that we wouldn't ever countenance otherwise -- that's the point.

Yes, I know that is what the enemy is doing to our people, too -- demonizing us and making us less than human in their own eyes so that they can commit acts of attrocity against us, like beheading our soldiers and dragging the bodies of our soldiers through the streets. It sickens me. I want us not to become them. This is not just "abstract intellectual standard" -- when we start acting like thugs, we become thugs.

Torture produces very little usable intelligence -- ask the guys at Gitmo who know. What it produces is baseless witch-hunts. If you're torturing a guy, he'll say anything to stop the torture. If the torture is bad enough, he'll sell out his own grandmother. I'm not convinced that even a single life has been saved by torturing dubious information from the prisoners. Can you give me the name of a single person who's life has been saved?

Please watch out for using hyperbole -- it weakens your argument and it's just plain silly. No one sees all US troups as "baby killing marauding thugs." In fact, I've never heard of a single soldier called a "baby killing marauding thug," much less all of them.

Causing a person to believe his genitals will be ripped off by a vicious dog attack or hooding him, putting him up on a box with hands outstretched and attaching electrical wires, making him believe that if he drops his hands or fall of the box he will be electricuted, or beating them, in several cases, to death -- these are the acts of torture I'm talking about. You can't say that this is not torture, no matter how much you would like us to believe they only made them dress in women's panties.

Your argument re: not punishing the guilty is a straw-man argument. No one is saying that the guilty should not be punished, certainly not me. I'm just saying don't torture people and act in accordance with the rules of war. These rules protect our people. By breaking these laws, we are alienating every civilized country (those who would otherwise be our allies) and encouraging our enemies to act with impunity as well.

You've stated that you are concerned with suspected terrorists clogging the judicial system if we allow them protection under our rights. We're mixing apples and oranges here, but I'm glad you brought it up anyway. In Iraq and in Gitmo, the issue is the treatment of prisoners and the question is whether or not they are covered by the Geneva convention. In the United States, the question is whether or not persons arrested are entitled to Habeus Corpus and the due process of law. Although these are very different, they are related issues. I'll address them separately.

RE: the Geneva convention: Article 5 states, "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal." What 'competent tribunal' has determined that these detainees do not fall under such protection? Until such a tribunal meets and determines that these people should not be protected, any acts committed against them in contradiction of the Geneva Convention may very well be war crimes that may be legitimately tried by the international courts.

I'll get to the issue of the Geneva convention in a moment. First, the issue of due process of law in the US. I'm personally more afraid of our rights being taken away from us in the name of protection, than I am of being inconvenienced by clogged courts. Please do a little research on what happened in Argentina after WWII. There were terrorist attacks. The government started restricting rights to protect the public. They started picking up and torturing suspected terrorists, and that led to witch-hunts, which led to thousands of people taken, tortured and murdered by the very people who were set on protecting them by these very methods. In the end, 30,000-40,000 people were murdered by their own legitimate government and many of them have never been accounted for. These suspected terrorists included priests and nuns, pregnant women, you name it, before it was all over. Before you say that could never happen here in the good old US of A, look at the similarities and the way things went down. I assure you, the fact that we've started taking the exact same steps they did in the name of protection will chill you to the bone if you have any sense at all.

You argue that we should give all our support to the president and let him do what he needs to do to protect us. Those who want to give all our trust to the very people who are willing to take away our rights and commit attrocities against human beings, much as you've stated, scare me so much more than any terrorist. A terrorist can take down a few, even a few thousand, but a leader without the moral understanding of the consequences of his acts can take down hundreds of thousands, even of our own people, in the end if he has the support of the masses. Those who won't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Let's pray there are more people like me out here than like you so I won't have to live through that! Because I'm predicting that if things continue down the course they are going, one day in a few years, a post like this one will tag me as a terrorist, I'll be picked up and "disappeared" for saying anything bad against what our government is doing. And someone else will say, "But it's for our own protection!"

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Thursday, July 8, 2004 11:50 AM

SPLIBERTARIAN

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
...

I used the example of taxes, should they be raised or lowered. One poster countered that he questioned whether they should even exist at all. And offered as a proposal to do away with taxes. And I started to argue that I don't see such as a viable option, for reasons you have probably already read, and if not, are irrelavant to this post.

Because what did not occur to me at the time, was that my opponent in that particular discussion had not proven whether there were not binary issues. But had simply provided a different set of binary options. Do we get rid of taxes, or not?

Ok, you're getting a little closer to what the point I was apparently unsuccessful at making clear was, but still not quite there.

This thread had been focused on generalities of partisan politics, not about debating specific policy issues. I was not attempting to make any argument about whether taxes are legitimate or not. I was not addressing whether I felt taxes were necessary or not. I doubt anyone cares what I think about taxes in the context of this discussion.

I was merely trying to point out how the binary nature of the question leaves out other, equally legitimate and debatable points of view. I included not only the idea that taxes are not legitimate in the first place, but also the very different point of view that there is no such thing as personal property and that everything is under control of the state. These are not either/or questions, they contrast with each other as well as the 'some taxation' point of view.

My hope was to illustrate how the question itself had already determined that those other points of view were not legitimate. There is immense power in framing the questions that are to be debated. We've all seen the power of that in biased political surveys where the questions themselves are skewed to a particular answer.

Yes, issues are most frequently presented to us as binary choices, but it is important to keep in mind that many of the options have been artificially eliminated before the question is asked - as a way to maintain power.

There is a common piece of parenting advice for raising toddlers. When getting a toddler dressed in the morning it is recommended that a parent offer the child a choice between two acceptable options (presenting a binary choice), rather than simply asking them what shirt (of all the shirts they own) they wish to wear. This way, the toddler feels like they are in control of what they are wearing, while in reality the parent has maintained control over the child's outfit.

In light of the original topic of this thread, the binary choice created by the two major parties contributes to the demonization between them, because as the public notices, "Hey, why not the green shirt?" the major parties are forced to ratchet up the rhetoric in order to keep voters from jumping ship completely. They say, "Forget that we don't address issues that are important to you - look at the evil monster that will be in control if you vote your conscience!!!!" (And just look at the venom aimed toward Ralph Nader.)

The argument that the two party system is an inevitability because most issues are binary issues also loses its relevance when you realize that there is often no connection between the different issues that the two major parties use to define themselves. In fact, there are many issues that the two parties agree on, and therefore do not even bring up.

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Also, some appear to see things on a more absolute scale than I do. To me, the central question regarding any policy proposal is "Will this make things better, or worse?" We can quibble about definitions of better and worse, and in some respects there is a large element of subjectivity going on. (I.e dependent on a specific individual.) So again, I weigh the benefits, against the risk and detrimental results and make my choice accordingly. But in the end, it comes down to a binary choice. "Is this better, or worse" than we had before.

This is a good explanation of why you choose to go along with the binary system. When I ask the same question, the answers are often "worse" and "more worse", which leads me to look outside of the binary system. There may be times that following my conscience will lead to victory for the "more worse", but sometimes things have to get worse in order to get better.

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Thursday, July 8, 2004 5:16 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

basic definitions

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/List%20of%20voting%20systems
%20topics

voting

http://www.constitution.org/voting/voting.htm

instant runoff

http://www.fairvote.org/factshts/irv.htm

other voting schema

http://accuratedemocracy.com/

There's much information for anyone who cares to read.

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Thursday, July 8, 2004 10:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by splibertarian:
Ok, you're getting a little closer to what the point I was apparently unsuccessful at making clear was, but still not quite there.

...

I was merely trying to point out how the binary nature of the question leaves out other, equally legitimate and debatable points of view. I included not only the idea that taxes are not legitimate in the first place, but also the very different point of view that there is no such thing as personal property and that everything is under control of the state. These are not either/or questions, they contrast with each other as well as the 'some taxation' point of view.

I do see where you are coming from. I disagree strongly still. At best, you can say that it boils down to a small number of potentialities, as far as policies and ideological positions go, but that does not mean its an open ended argument, so full of "shades of grey" that folks are paralysed into inaction. Nor does it mean we continue the argument till the end of time.
Its not that a lot of opposing views are rendered invalid or "illegitimate" by any existing power structure. What is occuring is, as I was trying unsuccessfully to point out, people hear these proposals and reject them already. The minority ideologies have been heard, and simply turned down by the majority of voters. That is why they are minority positions. They ain't got the people to support them.

Its not because the system is rigged against them, nor voters are toddlers, or sheeple. People are pretty smart, and usually don't need marching orders from any existing power structure. Its not because even though those proposals would work, they are rejected as "not being invented here" type of thing. A lot of folks do think about these issues, and reach conclusions about them. Even folks in both of the major parties look for new ideas and such to bolster their own ability to weld power.

Part of the problem is that folks have no responsibility to justify their rejection of a political policy. You may never know why they rejected you. For some of the more militant, angry, and fanatical groups, the problem is even worse, in that folks may not even feel safe discussing their reasons for rejection. If they think you are nuts, they simply won't listen nor tell you why they won't listen to you.

You want to blame this on the two major powers. But not long ago, the Libertarian party ran a candidate that was blue. He had been taken, what a lot of folks percieve as a quack medical cure, and because of that, his skin turned blue. Folks laughed, some even tried to listen to what he said. But his action conformed to a perception of a crazy person, one disconnected from reality at the outset, and that made it extremely difficult to take him and his policies seriously.

Now you can chalk this up to an irrational bias all you like, but how do you deal with it? Do you blame the stupid voters for their prejudice? Or do you find a different spokesman, a different means of making your arguments?

It is nice to think that we are right and everyone else is stupid, ignorant, bigoted, or what have you. To refuse to see failure as our fault, and blame some external source. Imagine conspiracies against your views and your party. But it does not garner support, nor does it fix the problem. In fact, it can actually make things worse.

You think you are right. Well, so do a lot of other folks. You cannot coerce them into siding with you, especially in a democracy, and especially with secret ballots. That means you have to rely on persuasion. If you don't do a good job of persuading people, you have to look internally to fix it. Looking externally, at things that, even if true, you cannot change, is useless.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Friday, July 9, 2004 12:22 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Honey:
You've asked which is most upsetting, and my answer is that I'm upset by both equally. The problem with making comparisons of degree is that we're demonizes the enemy, making him less than human, and therefore easier to commit acts against him that we wouldn't ever countenance otherwise -- that's the point.

Exactly. But you have to ask yourself how much of this is our doing, and how much of this is the enemies doing? If you are cutting the heads off of folks, parading mutliated corpses around town and the like, I would argue that you are making demonizing yourself. You are demonstrating the risks and threat you pose to others. And that is the real issue.

We don't attack friends, nor innocents. We don't go to war without cause, or reason. I say this as human beings in general, rather than Americans specifically. I am sure that Saddam had his own reasons for invading Iran during the 80's and Kuwait during the 90's. He saw them as threats, or at the very least, having something he wanted.

You don't want us to become thugs, and yet you seem to gloss over the very simple and higly relavant fact that before any of us knew one thing about the prison abuse scandals, the military had already taken care of it. The personel invovled were transfered away, and many of them were being processed through the court marshall system, before the pictures became public. Thugs don't do that. And has been pointed out by a few Iraqi bloggers, such "torture" was a day in the park under Saddam, and such perpetrators would have been promoted, rather than prosecuted. So I don't think that danger is all that real.

As for the "baby killing" comment, sadly I have heard just such verbage come from one of our local "peace" demostrators. I know it does not reflect the views of the majority of the anti-war crowd, or at least their spoken rhetoric. (What goes in the mind, well, I ain't a mind reader.) But it is a meme that is out there, and it damaging to those same 'peace' protestor's position.

And again, you have to look at exactly who these prisoners were. They have been described as "High Value Targets", in other words upper eschalon members of Saddam's government and the present insurgency. These are not innocent folks you are worried so much about.

As for breaking the rules of war, you have a point in that adherence does minimize the risk and threat to our people, as well as innocents. However, if one side refuses to follow them, and uses those rules to kill you, you are still dead. You can complain about it being unfair, but if it works, and you are dead, there is not a lot you can do about it.

I am all for the Geneva convention. But I also realize that sticking to it can actually hurt us, get our troops killed if the enemy refuses to follow it. Launching mortar attacks from protected sites like mosques, hiding behind civilians while you snipe at our troops, these are clear violations of exactly those rules of warfare. So I would be far more comfortable if your rage were more directed at them, than us.

And as I pointed out before, if one side refuses to follow the convention, the convention itself become null and void for BOTH parties. The first one to launch an attack from a mosque is guilty of a war crime. The destruction of that mosque, (or just one section of an exterior wall to the grounds of said mosque) to stop that attack is NOT a war crime as defined by that very convention. Even though it may be a protected site, it loses it protection the second armed forces start using it for military purposes.

Quote:
I'm personally more afraid of our rights being taken away from us in the name of protection, than I am of being inconvenienced by clogged courts.

As well you should be, and its not that I consider this a baseless concern. But if the rules keep you from protecting and defending yourself, if you have to waste resources to help those who want to kill you get away so they can do it again, then the rules don't work.

Your trying to make a legal argument here, and seem pretty intent that the proper proceedures are followed. Now I can see this as because you see it as the best means available to ensure things don't get worse. You see the rules and proceedures as a form of protection, as necessary, always.

I see danger in that too. OJ got off scott free for capital murder. I still think he did it, from what I have seen and heard of that case. I was very surprised that he got off. But, even if the charges are true, OJ only killed 2 people. These terrorists would kill thousands, have killed thousands of us. There is an order of magnitude here that makes me question whether such proceedures are going to be effective, if we can live with any mistakes the system might make. As well as whether those resources could not be put to better use elsewhere.

War and civilian life are two different things, that operate under two disparate and often conflicting sets of rules. And we are dealing with an enemy that does not appear to care what the rules are anyway. We are in this for very high stakes. We've had war declared on us, and either we treat it as warfare, or we risk losing. And that I see as extremely bad, far worse than any possiblity of us becoming thugs.

Or to put it another way, I am more concern with the results rather than the proceedures. If the proceedures get us killed or cause us to lose, I see that as pretty bad. In normal peacetime, the costs and risks are far less, and we can, well, live with the occasional miscarriage, even as bad as it may be. But in this war, the costs of such failure is way too high.

Quote:
You argue that we should give all our support to the president and let him do what he needs to do to protect us.

Yes I do make that argument for a number of reasons.

1) I realize that in this modern age, with 24 hour news channels and satellite TV, that some information cannot be widely disseminated among "just us Americans". Telling us, tells the bad guys as well. That can (and already in some instances has) had a negative effect on our ability to prosecute this war. So if its a choice between not being told, or getting our troops killed, and us losing this war, I would rather opt for not finding out till its all over. That means someone has to have access to the available information, analyse it, figure out what to do next, and do it, without my direct involvement and sometimes without my knowledge. That is life.

We don't have the information he does. We CAN'T have the information he does without comprimising our ability to fight and win.

2) We are the most powerful nation on earth, militarily. Which means that the only way we can lose this, is if we give up. I see that meme out there, that we should just quit this war, leave the Middle East on its own, and not get involved. That is the policy some are pushing. Us giving up, helps the terrorists. Whether you like it or not, whether it is your intention or not, is beside the point. Disunity on our side tells their side that they are winning. So I don't see it as an effective tactic.

Quote:
A terrorist can take down a few, even a few thousand, but a leader without the moral understanding of the consequences of his acts can take down hundreds of thousands, even of our own people, in the end if he has the support of the masses.

I don't see George Bush as that kind of a man in the slightest. And after warning me about hyperbole, I find I must insist you heed your own warning. This is really nothing but exactly the demonization we've been discussing.

I am thinking you are talking about the Patriot Act, and have heard a lot of the hyperbole coming from opposition to that act. What a lot of folks I find don't notice is that there is nothing in that act, no power the government did not already have with regards to other crimes, such as racketeering. You still need a court order, and judicial review. Nothing there has changed, except that powers that were given to the government to fight organized crime, and deal with evolving technology, are now applied to terrorism investigations. (Well, also intelligence and law enforcement are better able to communicate with each other legally, which I see as a good thing as well.)

That war is messy, bad and destructive, I won't argue against. You are concerned about loss of civil rights, for yourself as well as terrorist. I am more concerned with not getting blowed up by those terrorists, and as far as I am concerned, if they have no respect for my rights, I see it as incredibly self destructive to be concerned about theirs. Graveyards are peaceful, and rights mean nothing if you are dead.

Even if you were right, (and I don't think you are) and your rights were threatened, you still got a big problem because of the fact those guys, the terrorists, want to kill you. They are a far bigger threat to your rights than anything the present administration could do, even if they wanted to.

Even if it was your guy in the driver seat, I don't see him being able to do things much differently. There is a war on, one that was declared on us, regardless of the law or morality or any other abstract idealized notion of the way things should be. They simply ain't that way.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Friday, July 9, 2004 5:09 AM

BARNSTORMER

Drakon,

Well said. Well said indeed.

Am I a Lion?... No, I think I'ma tellin' the truth.

BarnStormer

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Friday, July 9, 2004 6:44 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Drakon, I think that your viewpoint is restricted by "either/ or" thinking. For example, you pose the choice:

Quote:
But if the rules keep you from protecting and defending yourself

forcing the discussion into an "either/or" mode (you can have only protection OR freedom but not both) without exploring the vast middle ground. And while it's true that I can mentally construct situations where that would be the case, I don't think it reflects ground-truth. Furthermore, if I were to take your position to it's extreme (sacrificing any liberty for total security) it would quickly devolve into an Orwellian nightmare. What I think it really comes down to is how much liberty are we willing to sacrifice for how much security.

Oddly, I think my discussion problems with you and others (Jasonzz, Finn, Wulfhawk, Drakon) is that while you all think that you're realists, in fact you're idealists (in the philosophical sense). You use words like "life" "liberty", "freedom" and "capitalism" as if they pointed to some ideal thing that is only imperfectly reflected in the "real" world. In other words the definition becomes the thing, and the actuality isn't real. But definitions (except mathematical ones) always have fuzzy edges and gray areas. To point out what I mean, please try to define for me what you mean by "LIFE".

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Friday, July 9, 2004 9:28 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Hoping for a reply. I know it seems arcane, but I hope y'all humor me because I think this is THE reason why we can never seem to reach a conclusion!

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Friday, July 9, 2004 5:29 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

SignyM,

Your insight is brilliant. I'm still considering that nobody (Drakon et al) is so consistently evasive unless it is purposeful. But maybe you are right and the more charitable, and meaningful, explanation is there is such a pervasive blind-spot in their thinking they CAN'T get the obvious. Even when it's put plain in front of them ...

In any case, while a 'same to you !' reply to this post wouldn't surprise me, I don't think you will get any reply to yours. Which is too bad, b/c as little as I fathom your interest in dissecting issues with them, you seem like an honest person who sincerely means the invitation.
Aside from that, I think you posed a basic and important question.

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Friday, July 9, 2004 5:51 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Yes, I sincerely mean the invitation. I had what sure seemed to me like a flash of insight!

But, maybe I'm wrong! I'd sure be happy to find out!

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Friday, July 9, 2004 8:27 PM

Quote:
In light of the original topic of this thread, the binary choice created by the two major parties contributes to the demonization between them, because as the public notices, "Hey, why not the green shirt?" the major parties are forced to ratchet up the rhetoric in order to keep voters from jumping ship completely. They say, "Forget that we don't address issues that are important to you - look at the evil monster that will be in control if you vote your conscience!!!!" (And just look at the venom aimed toward Ralph Nader.)
splibertarian

This explanation for the abundance of vilification from both sides resonates with my experience. It's much more logical than just saying that those in the minority are attacking because they feel powerless. I'm not sure how you'd categorize the fallacy. It's probably a combination of red herring, appeal to emotion, ad hominem, and maybe some more that I've missed since it's been so long since I took that particular math class. But it is a smoke screen designed to obscure something.

There were a couple of other things I wanted to address that came up in the course of this thread.

Thanks for posting those links Rue, especially the basic definitions. It reminded me of just how little political theory I learned in many years of private high school/liberal arts college/research I university education. Although, as an engineer, I guess I am just expected to design things and not think about implications

.

And thanks, Signym, for your analysis of Drakon's argument. It really does go back to the ends versus means debate. To borrow an often-used phrased, I sincerely believe that certain ends preclude certain means. (the Malcolm X - by any means necessary* - versus the Gandhi - nonviolent resistance). I'll ignore for the moment a lot of the assumptions that have led to us being in Iraq (that Saddam would provide al Queda with WMD to use against our country) and use the current party line - that we are liberating the citizens of Iraq from a tyrannical dictator and instituting a democracy to serve as an example and help stabilize the region (I'll also ignore for the moment whether or not this should be our job as a country). IF this is indeed why we are there, then I don't believe we can accomplish this by setting aside international law. If the goal is to establish democracy then you cannot do this by using undemocratic methods.

This is the same reason why we should not be limiting our freedoms to combat terrorists. The message this sends is that we don't trust our system enough to continue to use it in a time of threat. That we pay lip service to freedom, but when push comes to shove that freedom really just gets in the way. Sure it would be easier to control this country if the police and various agencies had more power, but it wouldn't be the same country.

Now I'll just zig in a completely different direction

. How viable an option is torture anyway? I keep going back to the inquisition. According to all the confessions, there sure were a lot of witches in Europe. Eventually, people will tell you whatever you want to hear to get you to stop hurting them. So any information you obtain using torture has to be suspect. If you know enough to know that someone is telling the truth then you probably know enough to not even have to torture them in the first place.

So that's enough rambling for now...

* In all fairness, the Malcolm X quote is usually presented completely without context. The speech that this comes from is titled "The Ballot or the Bullet" and is a very interesting read.

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

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Friday, July 9, 2004 8:48 PM

PURPLEBELLY

Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
So any information you obtain using torture has to be suspect.

Torture will extract the information the torturer expects, true. That is why those who analyse information extracted by torture must exclude that information from their analysis. In turn, those who arrange torture to be used must ensure that a sufficient number of innocent people are tortured so that the information expected by the torturers can be statistically identified.

I'm not being judgemental here. Just saying that the torturing of innocent people is not an unavoidable by-product but a deliberate intention.

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Friday, July 9, 2004 9:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by PurpleBelly:
I'm not being judgemental here. Just saying that the torturing of innocent people is not an unavoidable biproduct but a deliberate intention.

My first thought in reading this was, "At least they're using solid experimental design." My second thought was, "I feel dirty."

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 1:11 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Furthermore, if I were to take your position to it's extreme (sacrificing any liberty for total security) it would quickly devolve into an Orwellian nightmare. What I think it really comes down to is how much liberty are we willing to sacrifice for how much security.

You are right, that this is a danger. I recognize that. But we end up looking at each proposal individually, seeing how they affect security and freedom and deciding whether we draw the line here, or over there. Whether we impliment it, will it work, or not?

You do have a tough time convincing me otherwise, because I find it an effective means of living. Boiling problems down to as small as possible components, boiling issues and questions down to their fundamentals. You can bring up a lot of these issues, and I can defend my position on most of them. I spent far too much time on mid watches and owl shift.

By saying that "Well its all grey" I don't see that as being better. I see it as worse. It paralyses, it prevents decisions and actions. The world still rolls along and sometimes if you don't decide, don't move, it runs right over you.

Quote:
Oddly, I think my discussion problems with you and others (Jasonzz, Finn, Wulfhawk, Drakon) is that while you all think that you're realists, in fact you're idealists (in the philosophical sense). You use words like "life" "liberty", "freedom" and "capitalism" as if they pointed to some ideal thing that is only imperfectly reflected in the "real" world. In other words the definition becomes the thing, and the actuality isn't real. But definitions (except mathematical ones) always have fuzzy edges and gray areas. To point out what I mean, please try to define for me what you mean by "LIFE".

Grin, we can have an interesting discussion about the interplay between the ideal and the real someday. Maybe in another thread. You may be right, that I might be an idealist. But I do think it is a set of ideals that are based on the real world, how real people function in it. And on what actually works.

Idealism has led to the concept of communism being a workable model for politics and economics. Reality is much different, totalitarian control of the economy of a large population is simply impossible, and inefficient. Which is why it naturally leads to Stalins and Hitler and Pol Pots and whoever else comes down the line, asking for total and arbitrary power in order to "do it right". That is also why it leads to bigotry, anti-Semitism or anti-whoever the scapegoat is. Since the system fails, since the system cannot work (information problem) the guys in charge would lose their phoney baloney jobs unless they were able to convince the populace that the fault is not in their theories, but because of the machinations of some other.

As for defining Life, this is an example of such interplay. I am sticking with the pure biological stuff when I talk about that. Granted there may be cases where it might be a bit murky. Those cases are fortunately rare. You are either alive, or dead. You may be asleep, you may even be in a coma, kept alive by machines. But you still have a functioning brain, as determinable externally, usually, by EEGs. Your heart is beating, your brain working, you are moving around, talking, posting stuff. That is signs of life. If any dead people can do those kinds of things, please speak up.

The key point here is that Life, unlike Happiness, is objectively verifiable. Your heart stops, your brain stops. You are dead. Last I heard, you have about 6 minutes before the impact of death becomes irreversable. Having no recollections of being dead, I can't say conclusively.

Happiness is a bit trickier. This is more subjective, not only in the sense that such cannot be observed or determined without assistance from the subject, but also it is an internal thing. Where are you happy? Inside your skull. That happiness may be the result of external (to your skull) activities, but since I ain't a mind reader, I am stuck with asking you if you are happy. You can say you are, or are not. Again, since I cannot compare your statement with the reality the statement is about, I have no way of confirming nor refuting your statement.

Different things make different people happy. Some folks juggle geese. Go figure.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 1:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Yes, I sincerely mean the invitation. I had what sure seemed to me like a flash of insight! But, maybe I'm wrong! I'd sure be happy to find out!

Time is an issue, as are other life's necessities. Just because I don't respond immediately, that does not mean a thing. I do have a life, such as it is.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 1:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
And thanks, Signym, for your analysis of Drakon's argument. It really does go back to the ends versus means debate.

Why do you do, well, anything? Why do we think and breathe and live and all the stuff that we do? We do it to achieve a particular purpose or goal. When it is dark, we hit the switch. Because we want the light to come on. We don't flush the toilet and expect it to have the same effect.

This is what I think you are missing. You don't get to pick the consequences of your actions. Reality does that for you. You pick your actions based on your mental model of reality. If that model is accurate, you should get what you expect to get. If your model is flawed however....

Quote:
If the goal is to establish democracy then you cannot do this by using undemocratic methods.

Funny, I don't think Washington, or Jefferson would have agreed with you. This nation was founded in revolution, and I don't think you can call that democratic. There was a lot of support for the British at the time, but their opinions were overridden. Whether that was by a majority, or simply an elect few, that is more an issue for historians. The fact remains we did not vote the British out, we kicked them out, by force.

In an idealist world, that would be great. But we live in the world we live in, and have to deal with folks who don't give a damn about international law, UN resolutions, the Geneva Convention, or anything of the like.

And when you really think about it, how is a law enforced? It is not done by the agreement of the criminal. Heck if the criminal agreed with the law, he would not be breaking it would he? You have to use force, coercive force, whether he, or really anyone else, agrees.

And besides which, what you are saying cannot happen, is happening in Iraq, even as we speak.

Quote:
This is the same reason why we should not be limiting our freedoms to combat terrorists. The message this sends is that we don't trust our system enough to continue to use it in a time of threat. That we pay lip service to freedom, but when push comes to shove that freedom really just gets in the way. Sure it would be easier to control this country if the police and various agencies had more power, but it wouldn't be the same country.

If freedom means the freedom to get blowed up, well, I'll pass.

Look, people are free. You don't have to agree with me, or even listen to me. You don't have to respond. I can't make you think one way or another. Nor can I even determine objectively whether you do or not. I would have to accept your word on it. Its part of that not being a mind reader thingy again.

But there are some actions that we decide that maybe its not such a good idea to do, in general. Murder, robbery, rape, talking during movies, and we have systems and institutions that, by their very nature, deny folks the freedom to do just that. Some are taboos, and punishable by public disaproval. Some are laws, and can include removal from this plane of existence. We allow these restrictions on our personal liberty, because without it, we ain't got any at all.

You appear to see freedom as an end unto itself. I see life and happiness as the end all of it all. What I do, what I say, what I think, what I decide, how I act, all of these are supposed to make me live longer and healthier. So far its been working. I am happier with less rules. But if the choice is getting through the airport line slower, or getting blowed up, well I have to go for the former over the latter. Freedom, even happiness don't mean a thing if you are dead.

As long as I am alive, I can get back, fight back for my freedoms, and the other things that will be condusive to a long and happy life. But if I am dead, well, that is it, game over.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 1:40 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Hello Drakon, I'm on the "sleepless" shift! to discuss further the difference between "realism" and "idealism", you said...

Quote:
"Boiling problems down to as small as possible components, boiling issues and questions down to their fundamentals...

...Life, this is an example of such interplay. I am sticking with the pure biological stuff when I talk about that. Granted there may be cases where it might be a bit murky. Those cases are fortunately rare. You are either alive, or dead. You may be asleep, you may even be in a coma, kept alive by machines. But you still have a functioning brain, as determinable externally, usually, by EEGs. Your heart is beating, your brain working, you are moving around, talking, posting stuff. That is signs of life. If any dead people can do those kinds of things, please speak up.

So boiling things down, your fundamental definition of an alive human is a "functioning brain" determined by EEG. How functional does the brain have to be? And, can you determine if someone is dead without an EEG?

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 1:53 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Soupcatcher, I'm glad you liked my post. But, soemwhere along the line I falied to make the leap that went from "idealism" to "ends versus means".

I have a couple of thoughts, neither may be reflecting the connection that you made. This first is

a) The "ends" are definitional absolutes (like "freedom") that are unaffected by, and justify, any "means".

b) Taking that one step backwards, even applying the concept of "ends" and "means" in their ideal sense allows us to separate the processes... a separation that may not be justified in real life.

Is either one what you're talking about??

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 2:30 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
You have to use force, coercive force, whether he, or really anyone else, agrees.

(Wince) Hmmm.. care to rephrase that?

Quote:
Look, people are free

Define "people". Define "free".

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 3:42 AM

WICKD

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
Demonization, I hate to say I see primarily coming from the minority party. Not exclusively, but primarily. And I have to admit that makes me all the more glad they are the minority party. Because what that does to me is indicate a lack of logical argument. If you cannot argue logically, or even civilly, then I see that as a big indicator that your ideas are not consistent with reality nor will function as you expect. At best, that you do not understand your arguments sufficiently to explain them, defend them and have to use less rational and more emotional means of winning.
[END QUOTE]

With all due respect, there is plenty of demonization from both sides. If you don't see much demonization coming from the right, you have either never seen Fox News or don't recognize demonization that is "friendly fire."

Michael Moore (a demonizer himself) is currently getting demonized. Richard Clarke was demonized when his book was published. John Edwards was being demonized by the Bush campaign within hours of his selection being announced. Demonization of the Clintons has been a going on for more than a decade.

Are the liberals without sin here? Absolutely not. Demonization has been a cottage industry in politics for over two decades now, and it isn't going to get better until folks on both sides of the aisle tell their own to calm the tone of the debate.

Wick D

No matter where you go; there you are.

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 10:55 AM

Please don't mistake a strong position for "rage." I feel no rage regarding these issues, only strong concern.

I should have stuck with the word "dehumanizing" in my posts. In saying they make demons of themselves by their own acts, you are missing my point. Many people would agree with the statement, "So what if we look on one perp as less than human -- after all a wild dog needs to be put down." When I feel outrage, I feel the same way. But the problem with this stance is that we humans are great generalists. We don't just look on one perp as less than human -- we generalize to looking down on "them" as less than human. We do it, and our enemy does it.

When "they" can look on "us" as less than human, it lets "them" commit atrocities with ease -- like dragging our soldiers' mutilated corpses through the streets. Unfortunately, the same applies to us as another group of flawed human beings fully capable of the same atrocious acts if the conditions are right for it. Look at what happened at the My Lai massacre in Vietnam if you don't believe me. That massacre was commited by good old American boys -- not monsters. I'm saying, "Let's not go there again ourselves." If we treat our enemies humanely, our allies trust us and our enemies have a damn hard time justifying their acts. If we don't, the reverse is true.

You say we don't go to war without cause, but we did. We went to war unprovoked in the belief that that Saddam Hussein was sitting on a stockpile of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. These allegations have proved to be based solely on false intelligence. Nearly the entire world warned us what would happen if we went into Iraq and they have been proven right -- the entire region of the world is more destabilized now due to our ill-conceived and ill-timed efforts and we are continuing to lose credibility in the eyes of the world -- that makes it a much more dangerous place for us. The question now is how do we fix it.

You say I've glossed over the fact that the military had already "taken care of it'" before we even knew of the prison abuse scandal. That is a lie and I resent it. As it hasn't even come up in our discussions before now, how could I possibly have glossed it over? What I've repeated here are the conditions that I and many others believe set the stage for such abuses, specifically, the administration's efforts to deny Geneva convention protection to the detainees in Guantanamo, the discussions and resulting belief that they could get around war crimes prosecution in regards to the treatment of those prisoners, the statement by Rumsfeld that we weren't getting intelligence fast enough from the prisoners in Iraq and the subsequent sending of CIA interrogators from Gitmo -- all these things (I've repeatedly repeated) contributed to an atmosphere in which some thought it was o.k. to torture prisoners.

Let me be clear -- I'm glad that the military took care of it because it lets me know that the general atmosphere of "anything goes" that was engendered by the administration isn't endemic in the military. But I'm also glad we were told about it because I'm convinced that open protest does more to prevent further abuses than secretly taking care of it can.

You've pointed out that the prisoners were "High Value Targets" and not innocents. I'm not sure why you think this is an important distinction. It doesn't counter the validity of what I've said about how we dehumanize others, or what the effects are when that happens.

I'm glad we agree that the Geneva convention rules protect our troops. However, your statement that sticking to it can hurt us if our enemy doesn't follow the rules is only true if our military is incredibly stupid -- which it is not. Our enemy can disobey the rules, kill us, and face war crimes prosecution later. Or he can follow the rules, kill us, and avoid war crimes prosecution. It is only those who feel above the law and justified in committing acts of atrocity who fail to see the advantage of following the rules of war. You've given the example of a mortar attack from a mosque. You clearly understand that such property is no longer protected when used that way, so I don't see the point of us throwing out the rules just because they do. We know the enemy is illegally using "protected" real estate, so we just don't blithely waltz by it -- but for god's sake, we don't attack hospitals, schools and mosques unprovoked just because they use them for cover!

Your position that "if one side refuses to follow the convention, the convention itself become null and void for BOTH parties" is completely unsupported. The world court certainly doesn't see it that way and neither do I.

I am also gratified that we agree on the importance of protecting our rights. I fail to see how those rights can keep me from protecting and defending myself, though. Our judicial system isn't perfect, and sometimes the bad guy does get away. But the purpose of the court system is to weed the innocent from the guilty. Sure, we could just "kill them all and let god sort them out," but would you want to live in a world like that? What if, some day a terrorist steals your identity and you get picked up by mistake, taken to a secret detention facility as a declared non-combatant, held indefinitely incommunicado and denied the right to appear in court to plead your innocence. It could happen to you today, my friend, under Homeland Security.

You say that the risks are high and I see your point regarding danger assessment. We all agree that when the cost in lives goes up in relation to a potential threat, the risks of taking chances goes up too. But let's be very careful in how we determine what is a risk and what isn't, and how we deal with it. I'm not concerned with the Patriot Act and law-enforcements efforts to track down terrorists -- that's what they should be doing. But we don't need to gut our legal system to do it. Homeland Security is where the problem began with denying Habeas corpus to detainees -- and where the potential abuse stems from, not the Patriot Act. As I've said, all it would take is for you or me to be declared an enemy non-combatant (for whatever reason) and under the current system we would just disappear. There are NO checks on this to protect us from abuse.

(Having said that, I am happy to report that the Administration has finally realized their error in denying Geneva convention protection to detainees at Guantanamo before their cases have been reviewed in front of a tribunal. They have initiated such hearings even as we speak. They still may be held accountable for any acts of atrocity carried out against detainees that may have taken place prior to the Tribunal hearings, but at least they've come to heel in recognizing the validity of Article 5.)

You say that we can't know and shouldn't know what the President knows. I'm not advocating that law enforcement and military secrets should be revealed, man! I am advocating that we not blindly follow anyone just because it gives us comfort to know that someone is in charge. Even the wisest can make mistakes. But the difference between a wise man and a fool is that a wise man can admit his mistakes and correct them while a fool has great difficulty in doing so. Into which of these categories would you put our great leader? He certainly thought he new the truth about Iraq, didn't he. He sure didn't know the dictates of the Geneva convention very well.

In the same vein you've stated that disunity at home imperils our troops. I completely disagree. If you're driving a car off a cliff and I'm a passenger, sticking with your decision in order to preserve unity is suicide. In that situation I'm gonna yank on that wheel as hard as I can. Same applies to the conflict in Iraq, though the solution there isn't so simple. The only way I can see to salvage this situation in Iraq is to get our allies, including the Muslim nations, involved in a substantial way. We're gonna have a hard time doing that now, though, due to the stubbornness and hubris of our approach to date.

I won't deny that there are many people who would like to see the Iraqi conflict just go away. You and I both know, however, that we can't just pull the troops out now without destabilizing the region even more. But you've also stated that eroding support of the military action is the only way we can lose the war because we've got the most powerful military -- and that assessment is completely false. If the military does not have clear military objectives and a way to carry them out, it will lose no matter how powerful it is. Just look at what happened in Vietnam, where likewise we had the most powerful military, but failed to set clear military objectives that could be carried out. We're mired in Iraq at the moment and if we continue to lose the support of our allies, disrespect the people of Iraq that we're there to "liberate," and fail to set and carry out clear military objectives, we will lose the war, just like we did in Vietnam. Likewise, if we go after the "wrong" enemy (such as attacking Iraq instead of tracking down Bin Laden and al Quada), fail to admit our mistakes and make proper course corrections, we will lose the war here at home as well.

I made the statement "...a leader without the moral understanding of the consequences of his acts can take down hundreds of thousands, even of our own people, in the end if he has the support of the masses," and you've labeled this statement as hyperbole, but it is not. Hyperbole is an exaggeration used for effect. My statement is not exaggeration, but simple historical fact. Hitler and Pol Pot both had the support of the masses -- in fact they could not have done what they did without it. I have never said that GWB intends to set out on a crusade of genocide -- I have, however, implied that he has initiated a course of actions that could potentially lead to one regardless of his intent. I have referred to the same type of acts that were initiated by the Argentine government after WWII that lead mass killing of their own people. The Argentineans' intentions were self-protection, too, remember -- not genocide.

You've said that you're more concerned with protecting yourself from terrorist acts than you are concerned about their rights. This isn't an either-or situation. It isn't necessary to deny human rights to anyone for our protection. Protecting their rights protects all of our rights.

You've also stated that you're more concerned with results than with procedures. There is an old saw that goes, "The ends justify the means," but the truth is that the means become ends unto themselves. This is true no matter what the desired ends or the employed means. It's just the way the world twists. Let me give you an example of this close to home in the way that children learn.

Say my intention (desired result/ends) is that my son learn how to set the dinner table. I will use a procedure (means) that I believe will effectively achieve my goal -- I will tell my son that by setting the table, he is helping his mommy. Very soon, if I ask my son what he's doing when I see him set the table, he will say, "I'm helping mommy!" The means have become ends unto themselves for my son. Likewise, other tasks will soon fall into the category of "helping mommy." It's how we all learn and generalize our learning. The same process takes place no matter what the means or ends. If I threaten my son with a spanking in order to secure his compliance in setting the table, very soon he sees the act of setting the table as punishment in itself and will generalize this learning to include all such chores. This shouldn't be so difficult to understand and apply to the issues we've been discussing. The means employed are as important as the ends and the means chosen dictate the outcomes. We should be extremely careful in choosing our means.

"Who's flying this damn thing?!? Oh, right -- that would be me."

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Saturday, July 10, 2004 2:07 PM

HKCAVALIER

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Oddly, I think my discussion problems with you and others (Jasonzz, Finn, Wulfhawk, Drakon) is that while you all think that you're realists, in fact you're idealists (in the philosophical sense). You use words like "life" "liberty", "freedom" and "capitalism" as if they pointed to some ideal thing that is only imperfectly reflected in the "real" world. In other words the definition becomes the thing, and the actuality isn't real. But definitions (except mathematical ones) always have fuzzy edges and gray areas. To point out what I mean, please try to define for me what you mean by "LIFE".

Thank you, SignyM. I tried to make a similar point earlier but I wasn't nearly as successful or as eloquent.

Drakon, rereading my previous post I will admit that in several instances I misunderstood you. I jumped to conclusions; saw what I thought was implied in your remarks and argued against that, which I think confused you. I'm sorry. It's not surprising to me, therefore, that you have misunderstood some of what I had to say as well.

Seriously, Drakon, for instance, I didn't mean to call anyone names with the term "extremist." I simply meant it literally. A total ban on abortion, across the board legalization of firearms, and a hard-line commitment to only lowering taxes, in my view, are definitively "extreme," as in "there ain't nothing beyond that." See what I mean? There's nothing more anti-abortion than a total ban. The most condemning thing I intended in using the word "extremist" for was to imply that the temporary political imbalance created by the neocons and their extreme views did not define reality. That reality was probably somewhere closer to the middle.

But getting back to your sense of "realism" and the subject of this thread. The most difficult aspect of your opinions for me to deal with is not that they are at variance with my own (though they surely are), but more importantly, that your basic assumptions about the reality of our situation, indeed assumptions about reality itself, are so at odds with mine that I wonder if meaningful discussion is even possible.

You talk a lot about being bombed or killed or our enemies taking over America. I think this is a real fear of yours. You're afraid of dying, and you're willing to put up with an awful lot of abridgements of your rights if it means that your life is spared. That's your profit and loss assessment.

I'd feel exactly the same if my life were as threatened as you feel yours is. But, I'm not afraid of dying. I feel no more or less afraid of dying since 9/11 than I did before. And I don't believe that America is in any real danger from terrorists. America will not be defeated this way. Yes, terrorist may strike at any time, but that has always been true and it cannot be stopped - where there's a will, there's a way. Thankfully, like serial murder and death cults, there are not a lot of people in the world who are really up for it.

In your reality, the "War on Terror" is necessary to safeguard your life and country. You seem to believe that there's a chance that a group of Islamic terrorist could somehow take over the United States. You imply that if we don't let Bush wage this war however he sees fit, they will conquer us.

For me, the attack on the WTC was a criminal act, not an act of war. There is no nation or dictator or ideology responsible for that crime. No attack on any nation or dictator or ideology will be effective against terrorism. The criminals are responsible for the crime. In my reality, the "War on Terror" is just rhetoric, not unlike the "War on Drugs." It's just talk.

You can't wage war on drugs because the drug culture is a spontaneous outgrowth of the larger culture. Get rid of one drug, another will appear. As long as there are people willing to do drugs, there will be people willing to profit from it.

Terrorism is similarly culturally based. Destroy Al Quaida and another torrorist organization will take its place. Terrorism is a spontaneous reaction to political hopelessness. As long as there are enemies who are unassailable through any other means, some few will resort to terrorism. Some wacko bombs an abortion clinic, it's not because he believed that abortion is murder, it's because the guy is a wacko! See what I mean?

I think the Bush forces and the anti-bush forces suffer from a similar rift in reality. Basic disagreements about what is real and what isn't real are being ignored. It's as if people are speaking different languages. I just gotta I pray that we all get through it okay. I'm sorry for being a brat earlier, Drakon, but it's been a bad couple of years, you know what I mean?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Sunday, July 11, 2004 4:19 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

HK Cavalier- Glad you liked the post. It's not "as if" we're speaking different languages- we ARE speaking different languages! Drakon's word usage implies some immutable pure concept with crystalline edges. I remember thinking exactly the same way, until someone challenged me to define "cup"... what IS the difference between cup, bowl, mug, and glass?

Drakon-

I'm not being a nitpicker when I ask for your definitions of "life", "people", and "freedom". Here is a real-life example: "People in my country don't do laundry."

So when you say "people are free" - HOWEVER you define freedom- I don't think you mean everyone. Saddam is in jail, as are many others. Are they people? What you mean is that SOME people are free. Or maybe you mean that detainees aren't people? I don't know- you tell me.

And then there is that word "freedom". Do you mean "without constraint"? Constrained by what? The law? Fear? Poverty? Gravity?

So you see, unless you explain to me what you mean when you say "people", "life", "free", I really DON'T know what you mean!

Drakon, Soupcatcher- I think the question is not whether the ends justify the means, it's whether the ends justify ANY AND ALL means. Drakon's ends- freedom, security, liberty, whatever- are still undefined. Until I know what the ends are, I won't know whether the means are justified, or even likely to be effective.

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Sunday, July 11, 2004 7:25 AM

To SignyM:

I think you are right in your assessment. Polarization involves splitting issues into black vs. white (as defined both by extremes and ideals). I prefer more concrete facts, myself, rather than rhetoric.

Wash: "Oh my God! Who's flying this thing!?! Oh, right -- that would be me..."

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Sunday, July 11, 2004 7:30 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
SignyM,

Your insight is brilliant. I'm still considering that nobody (Drakon et al) is so consistently evasive unless it is purposeful. But maybe you are right and the more charitable, and meaningful, explanation is there is such a pervasive blind-spot in their thinking they CAN'T get the obvious. Even when it's put plain in front of them ...

In any case, while a 'same to you !' reply to this post wouldn't surprise me, I don't think you will get any reply to yours. Which is too bad, b/c as little as I fathom your interest in dissecting issues with them, you seem like an honest person who sincerely means the invitation.
Aside from that, I think you posed a basic and important question.

Aren't you being just a litte uncharitable here? Or are you just all paranoid and crotchety from space dementia?

Wash: 'Oh my God! Who's flying this thing?!? Oh, right -- that would be me..."

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Sunday, July 11, 2004 7:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Terrorism is similarly culturally based. Destroy Al Quaida and another torrorist organization will take its place. Terrorism is a spontaneous reaction to political hopelessness. As long as there are enemies who are unassailable through any other means, some few will resort to terrorism.

Wow! A voice of reason in a political arena -- I am impressed, gratified and heartened.

"Oh, my God! Who's flying this thing?!? Oh, right -- that would be me..."

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Monday, July 12, 2004 10:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by WickD:
Michael Moore (a demonizer himself) is currently getting demonized. Richard Clarke was demonized when his book was published. John Edwards was being demonized by the Bush campaign within hours of his selection being announced. Demonization of the Clintons has been a going on for more than a decade.

I see a big difference in substance between these examples and what the left is doing to the President. Do you call any negative comment demonization? I don't.

We can go back to the classic Bush=Hitler comment propogated by some on the left, over the objections of some here, who see it (rightly) as a minority view that reflects badly on the left as a whole. Besides being a self refuting comment, it is a rather vague attempt at saying that Bush is evil, without identifying exactly what evil is, or providing any evidence to support the declaration.

What is being said about Moore is that he is factually inaccurate, sloppy, and internally contradicting himself with his various claims. It has been said he hates America, and from many of his public comments, I can see how many folks would see those statements by him as implying a hatred of this country. You don't call people you love stupid and ignorant. Even if you are sure they won't hear it.

The problem as I see it is there IS no debate. The left is even inconsistent with itself, and this is something that is the most infuriating to me. I keep reading their stuff about how they are for the liberation of the little guy. Yet they would appear to keep Saddam in power, or see Iraq decend into civil war, rather than have that country and its people liberated, and set up a functioning democracy.

[That is the way it looks. I know some will be offended by that comment but look guys, I am just telling you what I see here. Follow your own 'arguments' out. If it was wrong to go into Iraq and remove Saddam in power, that is functionally saying the same thing that Saddam should still be ruling and terrorizing Iraq.]

What we get from the left are charges, claims, but nothing in the way of evidence or even the attempt at proof. They do not argue well, or really much at all. Politically, this is pretty damaging for them.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

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Monday, July 12, 2004 11:42 PM

Oops. I let things get sort of back-logged. This is going to be scattered and dis-jointed.

Quote:
Originally posted by Signym
Soupcatcher, I'm glad you liked my post. But, soemwhere along the line I falied to make the leap that went from "idealism" to "ends versus means".

I have a couple of thoughts, neither may be reflecting the connection that you made. This first is

a) The "ends" are definitional absolutes (like "freedom") that are unaffected by, and justify, any "means".

Yeah. The connection isn’t as solid to me now, in retrospect. But your first thought is basically where I was going by jumping to the ends versus means. You have phrased it nicely by calling the ends definitional absolutes to an idealist. I almost equate an idealist with a zealot in that they both refuse to acknowledge context and process and are all about the product. I am probably attaching a negative value to the term idealist that isn’t included in the strict definition.

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon
Funny, I don't think Washington, or Jefferson would have agreed with you. This nation was founded in revolution, and I don't think you can call that democratic. There was a lot of support for the British at the time, but their opinions were overridden. Whether that was by a majority, or simply an elect few, that is more an issue for historians. The fact remains we did not vote the British out, we kicked them out, by force.

You raise a good point that the founding of our country was achieved through means that would be illegal under our laws today. But, I don’t buy that what is happening in Iraq is similar at all to our Revolution. A revolution is different from a liberation (or invasion, depending on your point of view). In the Iraq case, we were an outside agent coming in to the country to remove the government and aid in the creation of a new one. So one of the assumptions is that our system works, and works so well that we want them to use it, and we feel that their country would be better off if they switched to our system of government. But it’s a poor sales job to go about changing over their country to be more like ours by putting their people through things that would be illegal back here.

Basically, where I’m going with this is that I don’t believe the original purpose in invading Iraq was to establish democracy (the current claim of the administration). I do believe that our goal was to remove Hussein from power. And that’s it. There was no thought beyond that. And it doesn’t have anything to do with 9/11. And all I’m trying to show is that if we were really serious about establishing democracy in Iraq we should probably be going about things a bit differently.

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon
If freedom means the freedom to get blowed up, well, I'll pass.
…
But if the choice is getting through the airport line slower, or getting blowed up, well I have to go for the former over the latter.

You are very good at picking examples. If all that was happening was longer lines at the airport, of course I wouldn’t be objecting. Flying is a choice and by choosing to fly I also accept whatever hoops I have to jump through. If I don’t want to jump through the hoops, I should just drive or take the train. But what has happened in this country since 9/11 is that now law enforcement agencies can enter your home while you are at work and search and they never have to notify you (they still need a search warrant, but the magic words “enemy combatant” are a blank check), your library records can be pulled and they never have to notify you, you can be held without counsel, you can be held without being charged. That’s a bit different to me than longer lines at the airport. Patriot Act II, which has not been passed yet and hopefully never will, will allow the removal of citizenship.

I was going to write why I disagree with you on the nature of the threat from terrorist attacks, but HKCavalier did a great job, so I’ll just include the quote.

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier
I'd feel exactly the same if my life were as threatened as you feel yours is. But, I'm not afraid of dying. I feel no more or less afraid of dying since 9/11 than I did before. And I don't believe that America is in any real danger from terrorists. America will not be defeated this way. Yes, terrorist may strike at any time, but that has always been true and it cannot be stopped - where there's a will, there's a way. Thankfully, like serial murder and death cults, there are not a lot of people in the world who are really up for it.

In your reality, the "War on Terror" is necessary to safeguard your life and country. You seem to believe that there's a chance that a group of Islamic terrorist could somehow take over the United States. You imply that if we don't let Bush wage this war however he sees fit, they will conquer us.

For me, the attack on the WTC was a criminal act, not an act of war. There is no nation or dictator or ideology responsible for that crime. No attack on any nation or dictator or ideology will be effective against terrorism. The criminals are responsible for the crime. In my reality, the "War on Terror" is just rhetoric, not unlike the "War on Drugs." It's just talk.

Amen. This is pretty much the way I feel about the “War on Terror”. We, as a country, will do more damage to ourselves through making fundamental changes than any terrorist could ever do through attacks.

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

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Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:35 AM