War: why everyone wishes it would stop but no one can stop it.
Engineer
(This is a bit long, but the part at the end where the
author discusses war makes it worth reading)
By David Boaz
Government has an important role to play in a free society. It is
supposed to protect our rights, creating a society in which
people can live their lives and undertake projects reasonably
secure from the threat of murder, assault, theft, or foreign
invasion. By the standards of most governments in history, this
is an extremely modest role. That's what made the American
Revolution so revolutionary. The Declaration of Independence
proclaimed, To secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men. Not to make men moral. Not to boost economic growth.
Not to ensure everyone a decent standard of living. Just the
simple, revolutionary idea that government's role was limited to
securing our rights. But imagine how much better off we would all
be if our government did an adequate job at this simple, limited
task.
Unfortunately, most governments fail to live up to Thomas
Jefferson's vision in two ways. First, they don't do a good job
of swiftly and surely apprehending and punishing those who
violate our rights. Second, they seek to aggrandize themselves by
taking on more and more power, intruding themselves into more
aspects of our lives, demanding more of our money, and depriving
us of our liberty.
The most revolutionary aspect of the American Revolution was that
it sought to create from scratch a national government limited to
very little more than protecting individual rights. During the
Middle Ages, in England and other European countries, the idea of
limits on government had grown. Cities had written their own
constitutional charters, and representative assemblies had sought
to control kings through documents such as Magna Carta and the
Golden Bull of Hungary. Many of the American colonists -- and
some of their British supporters such as Edmund Burke -- saw the
Revolution as a reclaiming of their rights as Englishmen. But the
soaring words of the Declaration and the strict rules of the
Constitution went further than any previous effort in declaring
the natural rights of life, liberty, and property and delegating
to the new government only the powers necessary to protect those
rights.
We should distinguish at this point between government and state.
Those two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, especially in
American English, but they actually refer to two very important
but easily confused kinds of institutions. A government is the
consensual organization by which we adjudicate disputes, defend
our rights, and provide for certain common needs. A condominium
association, for example, has a government to adjudicate disputes
among owners, regulate the use of common areas, make the
residents secure from outside intruders, and provide for other
common needs. We can readily see why people seek to have a
government in this sense. In every case, the residents agree to
the terms of the government (its constitution or charter or
by-laws) and give their consent to be governed by it. A state, on
the other hand, is a coercive organization asserting or enjoying
a monopoly over the use of physical force in some geographic area
and exercising power over its subjects. The audacity and the
genius of the American Founders was to attempt to create a
government that would not be a state.
Historically, the real origins of the state lie in conquest and
economic exploitation. The sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed
out that there are two basic ways to acquire the means to satisfy
our human needs. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and
the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. He called work
and free exchange the economic means of acquiring wealth, and the
appropriation of the work of others the political means.
From this basic insight, Oppenheimer said, we can discern the
origins of the state. Banditry and robbery and fraud are the
usual ways in which people seek to forcibly appropriate what
others have produced. But how much more efficient it would be to
organize and regularize robbery! According to Oppenheimer, The
State is the organization of the political means. States arose
when one group conquered another and settled in to rule them.
Instead of looting the conquered group and moving on, the
conquerors settled down and switched from looting to taxing. This
regularization had some advantages for the conquered society,
which is one reason it endured: rather than planting crops or
building houses and then being subject to unpredictable looting
by marauders, the peaceful and productive people may prefer
simply to be forced to give up, say, 25 percent of their crop to
their rulers, secure in the knowledge that that will -- usually
-- be the full extent of the depredation and that they will be
protected from marauders.
This basic understanding of the distinction between society and
the state, between the people and the rulers, has deep roots in
Western civilization, going back to Samuel's warning to the
people of Israel that a king would take your sons, and your
daughters, and your fields and to the Christian concept that the
state is conceived in sin. The Levellers, the great fighters for
English liberty in the time of Charles I and Cromwell, understood
that the origins of the English state lay in the conquest of
England by the Normans, who imposed on free Englishmen a Norman
yoke. A century later, when Thomas Paine sought to undermine the
legitimacy of the British monarchy, he pointed out, A French
bastard, landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself
king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain
terms a very paltry rascally original.
In a 1925 essay, More of the Same, the journalist H. L. Mencken
agreed:
"The average man . . . sees clearly that government is
something lying outside him and outside the generality
of his fellow men -- that it is a separate,
independent, and hostile power, only partly under his
control, and capable of doing him great harm. . . .
[Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of
citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of
the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous
corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the
population for the benefit of its own members. . . .
When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is
deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when
the government is robbed, the worst that happens is
that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play
with than they had before."
The Democratic State
It is usually argued in the United States that all this may have
been true in ancient times, or even in the countries our
forefathers fled, but that in a democratic country we are the
government. The Founders themselves hoped that a democratic --
or, as they would have said, a republican -- form of government
would never violate people's rights or do anything against the
interests of the people. The unfortunate reality is that we can't
all be the government. Most of us are too busy working, producing
wealth, taking care of our families to watch what the rulers are
doing. What normal, productive person can read a single one of
the 1,000-page budget bills that Congress passes each year to
find out what's really in it? Not one American in a hundred knows
how much he really pays in taxes, given the many ways that
politicians hide the real costs.
Yes, we have the power every four years or so to turn the rascals
out and put in a new set of rascals. But many factors limit the
value of that power:
* There aren't many fundamentally different alternatives on
the ballot. Most choices are hardly worth getting excited
about.
* We have to choose a package deal. In the real world,
one candidate offers higher taxes, legalized abortion,
and getting out of the war in Vietnam; another promises
a balanced budget, school prayer, and escalation of
the war. What if you want a balanced budget and withdrawal
from Vietnam? In the marketplace, you get lots of choices;
politics forces you to choose among only a few.
* People employ what economists call rational ignorance.
That is, we all spend our time learning about things
we can actually do something about, not political issues
that we can't really affect. That's why more than half
of us can't name either of our U.S. senators. And why
most of us have no clue about how much of the federal
budget goes to Medicare, foreign aid, or any other program.
Even if a citizen studies the issues and decides to vote
accordingly, he has a one in a hundred million chance of
influencing the outcome of the presidential election,
after which, if his candidate is successful, he faces
a Congress with different ideas, and in any case, it
turns out the candidate was dissembling in the first
place. Instinctively realizing all this, most voters
don't spend much time studying public policy.
* Finally, as noted above, the candidates are likely
to be kidding themselves or the voters anyway. One
could argue that in every presidential election since
1968, the American people have tried to vote for
smaller government, but in that time the federal
budget has risen from $178 billion to $1.6 trillion.
George Bush made one promise that every voter noticed
in the 1992 campaign: Read my lips, no new taxes. Then
he raised them. If we are the government, why do we
get so many policies we don't want, from school busing
and the war in Vietnam to huge deficits, tax rates
higher than almost any American approves, and the
intervention in Bosnia?
No, even in a democracy there is a fundamental difference between
the rulers and the ruled. Mark Twain once said, It could probably
be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native
American criminal class except Congress. Of course, Congress is
no worse than its counterparts in other countries.
One of the most charming and honest descriptions of politics ever
penned came from a letter written by Lord Bolingbroke, an English
Tory leader in the eighteenth century.
I am afraid that we came to Court in the same dispositions as
all parties have done; that the principal spring of our actions
was to have the government of the state in our hands; that our
principal views were the conservation of this power, great
employments to ourselves, and great opportunities of rewarding
those who had helped to raise us and of hurting those who stood
in opposition to us.
Why Government Gets Too Big
Thomas Jefferson wrote, The natural progress of things is for
liberty to yield and government to gain ground. Two hundred years
later, James M. Buchanan won a Nobel Prize in economics for a
lifetime of scholarly research confirming Jefferson's insights.
Buchanan's theory, developed along with Gordon Tullock, is called
Public Choice. It's based on one fundamental point: Bureaucrats
and politicians are just as self-interested as the rest of us.
But lots of scholars did -- and do -- believe otherwise, and
that's why textbooks tell us that people in the private economy
are self-interested but the government acts in the public
interest. Notice the little sleight of hand in that last
sentence? I said people in the private economy, but then I said
government acts. Switching from the individual to the collective
confuses the issue. Because actually, the government doesn't act.
Some people in the government act. And why should the guy who
graduates from college and goes to work for Microsoft be
self-interested, while his roommate who goes to work for the
Department of Housing and Urban Development is suddenly inspired
by altruism and starts acting in the public interest?
As it turns out, making the simple economic assumption that
politicians and bureaucrats act just like everyone else, namely,
in their own interest, has enormous explanatory power. Far better
than the simplistic civics-book model that assumes public
officials act in the public interest, the Public Choice model
explains voting patterns, lobbying efforts, deficit spending,
corruption, the expansion of government, and the opposition of
lobbyists and members of Congress to term limits. In addition,
the Public Choice model explains why self-interested behavior has
positive effects in a competitive marketplace but does such harm
in the political process.
Of course politicians and bureaucrats act in their own interest.
One of the key concepts of Public Choice is concentrated benefits
and diffuse costs. That means that the benefits of any government
program are concentrated on a few people, while the costs are
diffused among many people. Take Archer Daniels Midland's ethanol
subsidy, for instance. If ADM makes $200 million a year from it,
it costs each American about a dollar. Did you know about it?
Probably not. Now that you do, are you going to write your
congressman and complain? Probably not. Are you going to fly to
Washington, take your senator out to dinner, give him a $1,000
contribution, and ask him not to vote for the ethanol subsidy? Of
course not. But you can bet that ADM chairman Dwayne Andreas is
doing all that and more. Think about it: How much would you spend
to get a $200 million subsidy from the federal government? About
$199 million if you had to, I'll bet. So who will members of
Congress listen to? The average Americans who don't know that
they're paying a dollar each for Dwayne Andreas's profits? Or
Andreas, who's making a list and checking it twice to see who's
voting for his subsidy?
If it were just ethanol, of course, it wouldn't matter very much.
But most federal programs work the same way. Take the farm
program. A few billion dollars for subsidized farmers, who make
up about 1 percent of the U.S. population; a few dollars a year
for each taxpayer. The farm program is even more tricky than
that. Many of its costs involve raising food prices, so consumers
are paying for it without realizing it.
Billions of dollars are spent every year in Washington to get a
piece of the trillion dollars of taxpayers' money that Congress
spends every year. Consider this ad from the Washington Post:
Infrastructure . . . is a new Washington buzzword for:
A. America's crumbling physical plant? $3 trillion is needed to
repair highways, bridges, sewers, etc.
B. Billions of federal reconstruction dollars? The 5\c per gallon
gasoline tax is only the beginning.
C. Your bible for infrastructure spending? where the money is
going and how to get your share? in a concise biweekly
newsletter?
ANSWER: All of the above. Subscribe today.
Countless such newsletters tell people what kind of money the
government is handing out and how to get their hands on it.
In 1987 an advertisement in the Durango, Colorado, Herald touting
the Animas-La Plata dam and irrigation project made explicit the
usual hidden calculations of those trying to get their hands on
federal dollars: Why we should support the Animas-La Plata
Project: Because someone else is paying the tab! We get the
water. We get the reservoir. They get the bill.
Economists call this process rent-seeking, or transfer-seeking.
It's another illustration of Oppenheimer's distinction between
the economic and the political means. Some individuals and
businesses produce wealth. They grow food or build things people
want to buy or perform useful services. Others find it easier to
go to Washington, a state capital, or a city hall and get a
subsidy, tariff, quota, or restriction on their competitors.
That's the political means to wealth, and, sadly, it's been
growing faster than the economic means.
Of course, in the modern world of trillion-dollar governments
handing out favors like Santa Claus, it becomes harder to
distinguish between the producers and the transfer-seekers, the
predators and the prey. The state tries to confuse us, like the
three-card monte dealer, by taking our money as quietly as
possible and then handing some of it back to us with great
ceremony. We all end up railing against taxes but then demanding
our Medicare, our subsidized mass transit, our farm programs, our
free national parks, and on and on and on. Frederic Bastiat
explained it in the nineteenth century: The State is that great
fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of
everyone else. In the aggregate, we all lose, but it's hard to
know who is a net loser and who is a net winner in the immediate
circumstance.
Thus, every group in society comes up with a way for the
government to help it or penalize its competitors: businesses
seek tariffs, unions call for minimum-wage laws (which make
high-priced skilled workers more economical than cheaper,
low-skilled workers), postal workers get Congress to outlaw
private competition, businesses seek subtle twists in regulations
that hurt their competitors more than themselves. And because the
benefits of every such rule are concentrated on a few people,
while the costs are spread out over many consumers or taxpayers,
the few profit at the expense of the many, and they reward the
politicians who made it happen.
Another reason that government grows too big is what Milton and
Rose Friedman have called the tyranny of the status quo. That is,
when a new government program is proposed, it's the subject of
heated debate. (At least if we're talking about big programs like
farm subsidies or Medicare. Plenty of smaller programs get
slipped into the budget with little or no debate, and some of
them get pretty big after a few years.) But once it has passed,
debate over the program virtually ceases. After that, Congress
just considers every year how much to increase its budget.
There's no longer any debate about whether the program should
exist. Reforms like zero-based budgeting and sunset laws are
supposed to counter this problem, but they haven't had much
effect. When the federal government moved to shut down the Civil
Aeronautics Board in 1979, they found that there were no
guidelines for terminating a government agency -- it just never
happens. Even President Clinton's own National Performance Review
-- the much-touted reinventing government project -- said, The
federal government seems unable to abandon the obsolete. It knows
how to add, but not to subtract. But you could search a Clinton
budget for a long time and not find a proposal to eliminate a
program.
One element of the tyranny of the status quo is what
Washingtonians call the iron triangle, which protects every
agency and program. The Iron Triangle consists of the
congressional committee or subcommittee that oversees the
program, the bureaucrats who administer it, and the special
interests that benefit from it. There's a revolving door between
these groups: a congressional staffer writes a regulation, then
she goes over to the executive branch to administer it, then she
moves to the private sector and makes big bucks lobbying her
former colleagues on behalf of the regulated interest group. Or a
corporate lobbyist makes contributions to members of Congress in
order to get a new regulatory agency created, after which he's
appointed to the board of the agency -- because who else
understands the problem so well?
If bureaucrats and politicians are self-interested, like the rest
of us, how will they act in government? Well, no doubt they will
sometimes seek to serve the public interest. Most people believe
in trying to do the right thing. But the incentives in government
are not good. To make more money in the private economy, you have
to offer people something they want. If you do, you'll attract
customers; if you don't, you may go out of business, or lose your
job, or lose your investment. That keeps businesses on their
toes, trying to find ways to better serve consumers. But
bureaucrats don't have customers. They don't make more money by
satisfying more consumers. Instead, they amass money and power by
enlarging their agencies. What do bureaucrats maximize?
Bureaucrats! Their incentive, then, is to find ways to hire more
people, expand their authority, and spend more taxpayers'
dollars. Discover a new problem that your agency could work on,
and Congress may give you another billion dollars, another
deputy, and another whole bureau under your control. Even if you
don't discover a new problem, just advertise that the problem you
were commissioned to handle is getting a lot worse, and you may
get more money and power. Solve a problem, on the other hand --
improve children's test scores or get all the welfare recipients
into jobs -- and Congress or your state legislature is likely to
decide you don't need more money. (It could even decide to shut
your agency down, though this is largely an idle threat.) What an
incentive system! How many problems are likely to get solved when
the system punishes problem solving?
The obvious answer would seem to be to change the incentive
system. But that's easier said than done. Government doesn't have
customers, who can use its products or try a competitor instead,
so it's difficult to decide when government is doing a good job.
If more people send letters every year, is the U.S. Postal
Service doing a good job of serving its customers' Not
necessarily, because its customers are captive. If they want to
mail a letter, they have to do it through the Postal Service
(unless they're willing to pay at least ten times as much money
for over-night service). As long as any institution gets its
money coercively, through legally required payments, it is
difficult if not impossible to measure its success at serving
customers. Meanwhile, special interests within the system --
politicians, administrators, unions -- fight over the spoils and
resist any attempts to measure their productivity or efficiency.
To see the self-interested nature of those in the state, just
look at any day's newspapers. Check out how much better the
federal employees' pension system is than Social Security. Look
at the $2 million pensions that will be collected by retiring
members of Congress. Note that when Congress and the president
temporarily shut down the federal government, they kept on
getting their paychecks while rank-and-file employees had to
wait.
Political scientist James L. Payne examined the record of 14
separate appropriations hearings, committee meetings where
members of Congress decide which programs to fund and by how
much. He found that a total of 1,060 witnesses testified, of
which 1,014 testified in favor of the proposed spending and only
7 against (the remainder were not clearly for or against). In
other words, in only half the hearings was there even one witness
against the program. Congressional staff members confirmed that
the same was true in each member's office: The ratio of people
coming in to ask the congressman to spend money versus those who
opposed any particular program was several thousand to one.
No matter how opposed to spending a new legislator may be, the
constant, day-in-and-day-out, year-in-and-year-out requests for
money have an effect. He would increasingly say, We've got to get
spending down, but this program is necessary. Studies indeed show
that the longer a person stays in Congress, the more spending he
votes for. That's why Payne called Washington a Culture of
Spending, in which it takes almost superhuman effort to remember
the general interest and vote against programs that will benefit
some particular person who visited your office or testified
before your committee.
About a century ago a group of brilliant Italian scholars set out
to study the nature of the state and its monetary affairs. One of
them, Amilcare Puviani, tried to answer this question: If a
government were trying to squeeze as much money as possible out
of its population, what would it do? He came up with eleven
strategies that such a government would employ. They're worth
examining:
1. The use of indirect rather than direct taxes, so that the tax
is hidden in the price of goods
2. Inflation, by which the state reduces the value of everyone
else's currency
3. Borrowing, so as to postpone the necessary taxation
4. Gift and luxury taxes, where the tax accompanies the receipt
or purchase of something special, lessening the annoyance of the
tax
5. Temporary taxes, which somehow never get repealed when the
emergency passes
6. Taxes that exploit social conflict, by placing higher taxes on
unpopular groups (such as the rich, or cigarette smokers, or
windfall profit makers)
7. The threat of social collapse or withholding monopoly
government services if taxes are reduced
8. Collection of the total tax burden in relatively small
increments (a sales tax, or income tax withholding) over time,
rather than in a yearly lump sum
9. Taxes whose exact incidence cannot be predicted in advance,
thus keeping the taxpayer unaware of just how much he is paying
10. Extraordinary budget complexity to hide the budget process
from public understanding
11. The use of generalized expenditure categories, such as
education or defense, to make it difficult for outsiders to
assess the individual components of the budget
Notice anything about this list? The United States government
uses every one of those strategies -- and so do most foreign
governments. That just might lead a cynical observer to conclude
that the government was actually trying to soak the taxpayers for
as much money as it could get, rather than, say, raising just
enough for its essential functions.
In all these ways, government's constant instinct is to grow, to
take on more tasks, to arrogate more power to itself, to extract
more money from the citizenry. Indeed, as Jefferson observed, The
natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government
to gain ground.
The State and War
The apotheosis of state power is war. In war the state's force is
not hidden or implicit; it is vividly on display. War creates a
hell on earth, a nightmare of destruction on an otherwise
unimaginable scale. No matter how much hatred people may
sometimes feel for other groups of people, it's difficult to
conceive why nations have chosen so often to go to war. The
calculation of the ruling class may be different from that of the
people, however. War often brings the state more power, by
drawing more people under its control. But war can enhance state
power even in the absence of conquest. (Losing a war, of course,
can topple a ruling class, so making war is a gamble, but the
payoff is good enough to attract gamblers.)
Classical liberals have long understood the connection between
war and state power. Thomas Paine wrote that an observer of the
British government would conclude that taxes were not raised to
carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes. That
is, the English and other European governments gave the
impression of quarreling in order to fleece their countries by
taxes. The early twentieth-century liberal Randolph Bourne wrote
simply, War is the health of the State -- the only way to create
a herd instinct in a free people and the best way to extend the
powers of government.
U.S. history provides ample evidence of that. The great leaps in
federal spending, taxation, and regulation have occurred during
wartime -- first, notably, the Civil War, then World War I and
World War II. War threatens the survival of the society, so even
naturally libertarian Americans are more willing to put up with
state demands at such a time -- and courts agree to sanction
unconstitutional extensions of federal power. Then, after the
emergency passes, the government neglects to give up the power it
has seized, the courts agree that a precedent has been set, and
the state settles comfortably into its new, larger domain. During
major American wars, the federal budget has gone up ten- or
twenty-fold, then fallen after the war, but never to as low a
level as it was before. Take World War I, for example: Federal
spending was $713 million in 1916 but rose to nearly $19 billion
in 1919. It never again fell below $2.9 billion.
It isn't just money, of course. Wartime has occasioned such
extensions of state power as conscription, the income tax, tax
withholding, wage and price controls, rent control, censorship,
crackdowns on dissent, and Prohibition, which really began with a
1917 statute. World War I was one of the great disasters of
history: In Europe it ended ninety-nine years of relative peace
and unprecedented economic progress and led to the rise of
Communism in Russia and Nazism in Germany and to the even greater
destruction of World War II. In the United States the
consequences were far less dramatic but still noteworthy; in two
short years President Woodrow Wilson and Congress created the
Council of National Defense, the United States Food
Administration, the United States Fuel Administration, the War
Industries Board, the Emergency Fleet Corporation, the United
States Grain Corporation, the United States Housing Corporation,
and the War Finance Corporation. Wilson also nationalized the
railroads. It was a dramatic leap toward the megastate we now
struggle under, and it could not have been done in the absence of
the war.
Statists have always been fascinated by war and its
possibilities, even if they sometimes shrink from the
implications. The rulers and the court intellectuals understand
that free people have their own concerns -- family and work and
recreation -- and it's not easy to get them enrolled voluntarily
in the rulers' crusades and schemes. Court intellectuals are
constantly calling for a national effort to undertake some task
or other, and most people blithely ignore them and go on about
the business of providing for their families and trying to build
a better mousetrap. But in time of war -- then you can organize
society and get everyone dancing to the same tune. As early as
1910, William James came up with the idea of The Moral Equivalent
of War, in an essay proposing that young Americans be conscripted
into an army enlisted against Nature that would cause them to get
the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into
society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas.
Collectivists don't like the killing involved in war, but they
love its domestic effects: centralization, the growth of
government power, and, not coincidentally, an enhanced role for
court intellectuals and planners with Ph.D.'s. The dangers of war
in the modern era have encouraged the state and its intellectual
allies to look for more trumped-up emergencies and moral
equivalents of war to rally the citizenry and persuade them to
give up more of their liberty and their property to the state's
plans. Thus we've had the War on Poverty, and the War on Drugs,
and more crises and national emergencies than a planner could
count on a super-computer. One advantage of these moral
equivalents of war is that real wars eventually end, while the
War on Poverty and the War on Drugs can go on for generations.
And thus does the alliance between the state and its compliant
intellectuals reach its zenith in war or its moral equivalent.
War, then, is Public Choice theory writ large: bad for the people
but good for the governing class. No wonder everyone wishes it
would stop but no one can stop it.
chris....@gmail.com
Engineer wrote:
> (This is a bit long, but the part at the end where the
> author discusses war makes it worth reading)
>
> By David Boaz
>
> Government has an important role to play in a free society. It is
> supposed to protect our rights, creating a society in which
> people can live their lives and undertake projects reasonably
> secure from the threat of murder, assault, theft, or foreign
> invasion.
(clip 5,700 words)
Yes, it is long, and probably an infringement of copyright.
Perhaps you could provide the link for the full article and quote
briefly a point or two you'd like to address?
Christine
Yowie
news:y86dncy2XpZ...@giganews.com...
>
>
>
> (This is a bit long, but the part at the end where the
> author discusses war makes it worth reading)
>
> By David Boaz
>
> Government has an important role to play in a free society. It is
> supposed to protect our rights, creating a society in which
> people can live their lives and undertake projects reasonably
> secure from the threat of murder, assault, theft, or foreign
> invasion. By the standards of most governments in history, this
> is an extremely modest role. That's what made the American
> Revolution so revolutionary. The Declaration of Independence
> proclaimed, To secure these rights, governments are instituted
> among men. Not to make men moral. Not to boost economic growth.
> Not to ensure everyone a decent standard of living. Just the
> simple, revolutionary idea that government's role was limited to
> securing our rights. But imagine how much better off we would all
> be if our government did an adequate job at this simple, limited
> task.
I stopped when it was implied that the tax we pay to states is the same as
paying money to a 'protection racket'. Whilst I can't speak for other
states, when I pay my taxes, I can see them going into schools, into
affordable housing, into infrastructure, into universal health care, going
into things that I want and need, into things I'm happy to pay for, into
things that I'm happy for the state to manage. I can't say that my state is
perfect, it isn't. The way it uses my taxes can be ineffecient. Some people
in governement are corrupt. Sometimes it gives a higher proportion of the
tax money to things than I would. But on the whole, I am happy to pay for
the things the state provides.
The article would only make sense to me if the government took money and
used it for its own enjoyment / edification rather than paying for things
people want. Since it doesn't, its whole premise is unsound. I didn't bother
reading the rest.
Yowie
Ian Davis
I think the article wrongly focused because I am not interested in the notion
that one shouldn't pay taxes and being forced to constitutes a basic
infringment of my rights (to me the Russian system which was that everyone
was in theory obliged to pay taxes, but in practice only those who wanted
to did isn't one I'd wish to see implemented here). I am much more interested
in the question of how taxes raised then get redistributed. I cannot
understand why somewhere like England which has higher taxes on things
like petrol/gasoline than Canada seemingly doesn't as a consequence have
higher revenues to invest back into the system -- Canada spends ~13% of
GDP on health care while Britain spends ~8%, etc. Why is it that everything
in England costs easily twice what it costs here.
A personal pet theory, is that a particular aspect of the capitalist system
actually works against the prosperity of nations. In London England, the
demand for housing exceeds the supply. As a consequence there is seemingly
no limit to how high house prices can eventually get. Each generation is
essentially bankrolled by the previous, and this means that there is always
some capital arising from sales that justify the every increasing inflation
in the housing market. If you look at this economically it is as if the
British have taken their considerable personal wealth and tied it all up
in a commodity that they as a nation owned to begin with. Worse than this
the high cost of real estate trickles down to high cost for any service that
uses as part of that service real estate. It is the harsh reality of being
morgaged to the hilt which places even the more affluent within London
society, at a huge disadvantage when compared to the same affluent person
living somewhere where house prices are cheaper. Somehow the very capitalist
model which says that the market will set a better price when left itself
than when managed, seems flawed in the above example. The market in the
above example is not making people better off collectively, but is the
monster in the room, making all worse off collectively. It is too late now,
but the English would have been far better off if the government had built
the same houses (they did build council houses in London) and made them
available at a fixed cost, with availability resolved when demand exceeded
supply by some sort of lottery system. The devil would of course be in the
details, but somehow a country tying up a substantial portion of its GDP
paying itself ever increasing sums of money for the same commodity, while
having those profitting from this arrangement going of to buy cheap villa's
in the south of France/Portugal etc. when they retire, doesn't seem to be
a wise use of a nations GDP.
Ian
Engineer
<annoyed>
(Context deleted to accomodate those who are unwilling to
follow instructions such as "look at the last few paragraphs."
I fully expect to now see criticisms based on the lack of
the contextual material I snipped out...)
<annoyed/>
The State and War
By David Boaz
Ian Davis
Engineer <inv...@example.com> wrote:
>
>
>
><annoyed>
>(Context deleted to accomodate those who are unwilling to
>follow instructions such as "look at the last few paragraphs."
>I fully expect to now see criticisms based on the lack of
>the contextual material I snipped out...)
><annoyed/>
>
To whom is this post replying too. My apologies if it was I who annoyed
you.
Over.. Ian
Yowie
news:e3smv9$con$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
It would be me... I didn't get through to the end of the original article
because my BS meter went into meltdown after the first few paragraphs, and
since it was such a long article, it didn't seem worthwhile working my way
through the BS to get to the good stuff, especially when the argumetn seemed
to be building on ap remise which sent my BS meter into meltdown.
Had Engineer originally posted the salient paragraphs the first time rather
than leaving the whole article intact, I probably would have read it the
first time, instead of now. The upshot of the article being the 2nd last
line: War is "bad for the people but good for the governing class". I don't
like that summary: it implies that the governing class is not made up of
people. It implies that the governing class is something other than 'us'.
Perhaps I missed the disctinction between the government - the elected
officials who we vote for - and the 'governing class' who may well be
different. But as far as I can see, i most democracies, the gverning class
is very much 'us', and therefore we ourselves as a group are responsible for
war otherwise war would have stopped after the first revolution.
Yowie
Ian Davis
Yowie <yowie9644....@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>Had Engineer originally posted the salient paragraphs the first time rather
>than leaving the whole article intact, I probably would have read it the
>first time, instead of now. The upshot of the article being the 2nd last
>line: War is "bad for the people but good for the governing class". I don't
>like that summary: it implies that the governing class is not made up of
>people. It implies that the governing class is something other than 'us'.
>Perhaps I missed the disctinction between the government - the elected
>officials who we vote for - and the 'governing class' who may well be
>different. But as far as I can see, i most democracies, the gverning class
>is very much 'us', and therefore we ourselves as a group are responsible for
>war otherwise war would have stopped after the first revolution.
>
There is I think a deep divide between those who see the "governing" class
as one and the same as the "governed" class and those who don't. In a
democracy the notion is that it is government for the people, by the people,
while this is not the case in either "republics" or in "monarchies". In
republics there is more a sense that the people are governed by a ruling or
authorative class, and in fact a distrust of democracy precisely because the
idea of the rabble governing itself is considered to be very poor form. I'm
not an authority but I have the impression that many of the US founding
fathers looked much more sympathetically on the notion of the US becoming
a "republic" than they did on it becoming a "democracy". The culture that
they spawned I think retained this fondness for the republican system
of goverment to a much greater extent than would be true of nations such
as Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand etc. It is almost as if in the US
your chances of "governing" are directly related to whether you belong or
do not belong to that subset of the aristocracy which spawns "governors".
Within a current context I see much of the American population as wanting
to distance themselves from the very notion that the governed and the
governing are one and the same. I see it as a Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde
thing.. the separation of roles and responsibilities allows the American
people to on the one hand reap the profit from any crime committed by the US
government (such as invading Iraq) which ends up being bank error in their
personal favour, while retaining the ability to hold the government responsible
(but not the nation as a whole) when things go wrong. It is very convenient
that US presidents get replaced every 8 years, because it permits the
population to firstly attribute the mistakes of a nation to the leadership
of one man, and secondly it permits them to routinely put bad prior
leadership behind them, and effectively make the claim that whatever
was done under that old leadership can be filled under "history" and
forgotten. Of course there are also those who are much clearer as to
crimes being crimes and wanting no part of them, not wanting to see
their tax dollars spent on these crimes, etc. who perhaps would
genuinely wish to see the US take different directions than it does,
but this group too perhaps even more so takes the stance "Not my
government", and I'm never to be associated in any way with its
actions.
At an emotive level I strongly disagree with this "not my government" thing.
Mind you I'd be perhaps much more sympathetic to it, if I'd lived a lifetime
under a political system which was anathema to me, which is perhaps the case
for some in the US. My sense is that as a Canadian its my government, and I
have a duty to take on the burden of accepting and acknowledging that fact,
the more so when I do not agree with government actions. In the war against
Serbia, I could have told the various Serbs I dialogued with that hey "the
Canadian Government bombing Belgrade" had nothing to do with me. I hadn't
said that they should, wasn't flying the planes, no one thought to consult
with me before the bombs were dropped, etc. What I actually said was that
while I was a voice as strongly opposed to that war as any, considering my
own leaders war criminals for having initiated it, it was my government, and
thus yes it was the Canadian people, and thus yes it was me personally that
was answerable for the actions of that government. I choose to assume guilt
for actions which many might argue I had no reason to be deemed guilty of
having committed, in preference to denying my own personal guilt for those
actions, in large part because my guilt better served the interests of those
whom my nation had harmed than my denial of that guilt. And it also to my
mind better served my own nation to be telling Serbs that at least some
Canadians were racked with guilt by what their nation was doing, than by
telling those same Serbs that if they had a problem with Canada, that was
their problem and not mine too.
What say you?
Ian
JEB
news:e402k6$ek8$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
> Of course
> there are also those who are much clearer as to crimes being crimes
> and wanting no part of them, not wanting to see their tax dollars
> spent on these crimes, etc. who perhaps would genuinely wish to see
> the US take different directions than it does, but this group too
> perhaps even more so takes the stance "Not my government", and I'm
> never to be associated in any way with its actions.
>
I think that's probably a misreading of how many Americans feel. I have no
difficulty at all separating what my government does and what I personally
endorse or do and thereby am accountable for. It seems quite simple and
honest to make this distinction.
Those who make the common destructive mistake of assuming that the
government and the populace are the same often have no qualms about waging
war on citizens because they are somehow guilty of "tolerating an evil
dictator." I've heard this very argument used to brush off any harm done to
the Iraqi people, given that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant.
I don't feel any collective guilt when my government acts contrary to my
wishes and my ability to influence it within the confines of a democratic
government.
In a democracy the governing are elected by the governed; thus the
governing are presumed to be under some periodic control of the governed.
They are not the same, never have been, and never will be. However, I agree
that the distinction is not one of class. It is one of function.
jeb
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote in
>news:e402k6$ek8$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>
>> Of course
>> there are also those who are much clearer as to crimes being crimes
>> and wanting no part of them, not wanting to see their tax dollars
>> spent on these crimes, etc. who perhaps would genuinely wish to see
>> the US take different directions than it does, but this group too
>> perhaps even more so takes the stance "Not my government", and I'm
>> never to be associated in any way with its actions.
>>
>
>I think that's probably a misreading of how many Americans feel. I have no
>difficulty at all separating what my government does and what I personally
>endorse or do and thereby am accountable for. It seems quite simple and
>honest to make this distinction.
The issue is who is answerable to who. Are the people answerable to the
government or is the government answerable to the people. In any system
that works there have to be checks and balances. Whether one says the
government is answerable to the people, or the courts, or to the army,
or to the king, there has to be some sort of relationship ideally where
each institution still get policed by some supervisory body.
This having no difficulty separating what a government does from what the
people collectively endorse, or themselves consider themselves accountable
for, gives government a blank cheque to similarly have no difficulty
separating what they do from what the people collectively endorse or
insist upon, while leaving them unaccountable for their actions. It is in
part the very notion that a population has no control over a monarch, that
gives monarchs the power to be monarchs. Magna Carter was not fundamentally
about giving peoples more human rights.. it was about asserting that the
power of monarchs was hence forth not to be absolute, and it was that
assertion itself which undercut the future power of King John. The assertion
that one is not accountable for something is on par with saying I abdicate my
right to assert that because I am ultimately to be deemed accountable, I have
some right to be master over that for which I am to be deemed accountable.
>
>Those who make the common destructive mistake of assuming that the
>government and the populace are the same often have no qualms about waging
>war on citizens because they are somehow guilty of "tolerating an evil
>dictator." I've heard this very argument used to brush off any harm done to
>the Iraqi people, given that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant.
Most certainly so.. But the argument that I for example consider them one and
the same is not correct. I would have had the Iraqi people overthrow their
own government if that was the wish of the Iraqi people, for I simply do not
believe that any government can survive the collective determination of a
population to be rid of it. There are ways in which the government and the
people may be considered one and the same, and there are ways that they may
not. I've always considered it grossly unfair to impose sanctions on the
Iraqi people, because one wanted to make the Iraqi government suffer.
For me it comes down to who is committing the crime and who is the
victim of it. When Germany started WWII Germany collectively made the
entire German nation a legitimate target for retaliation. Likewise when
the US invaded Iraq that act made the entire American nation a legitimate
target for retaliation. I don't think most in the US really grasp that the
US is at war (as is Canada in Afghanistan) and that being at war makes
targets of oneself. If the Iraqi's had the missiles, the planes or
the bombs they would have every right to be dropping them on American
cities.. that to my mind is the nature of the beast called war. And it
is because the nature of this beast is so monsterous that I feel strongly
that there is probably no crime greater on this planet than starting a
war of aggression. If people don't want bloody noses they shouldn't
start fights.
>
>I don't feel any collective guilt when my government acts contrary to my
>wishes and my ability to influence it within the confines of a democratic
>government.
>
My grey cells were formed in a world where the German people were to be
considered collectively guilty for the conduct of the German nation, just
as the British were to be considered collectively guilty for any action
that they committed which was equally monsterous. I think it right and
proper that soldiers should know that their conduct carries with it the
risk of shaming the nations under whom they serve. Collective guilt
is the wrong notion -- collective shame is perhaps a better one. I
think that Abu-Graib should rightfully collectively shame the American
people.. and leave them saying, better that had been done to us, than
that we'd done that to them. But the emotional weight of those thinking
this should if anything feel at least as heavy a burden as guilt because
that which doesn't hurt is not really felt.
>In a democracy the governing are elected by the governed; thus the
>governing are presumed to be under some periodic control of the governed.
>They are not the same, never have been, and never will be. However, I agree
>that the distinction is not one of class. It is one of function.
It is not whether the government is to be under periodic control of the
governed but whether governing are to be deemed accountable to the governed.
Is it right and proper that Canadian individuals can launch lawsuits against
the US president for aiding and abetting torture, as a consequence of the
US having signed international protocols aggreeing to outlaw torture.
If George Bush authorises a criminal act, such as illegal wiretapping
of US citizens, who is to say whether he has this right -- George Bush
or the people of the US. Who ultimately is going to slave to the other.
Ian.
JEB
>
> The issue is who is answerable to who. Are the people answerable to
> the government or is the government answerable to the people. In any
> system that works there have to be checks and balances. Whether one
> says the government is answerable to the people, or the courts, or to
> the army, or to the king, there has to be some sort of relationship
> ideally where each institution still get policed by some supervisory
> body.
Correct for any system that works. The real difficulty I have with some
of the American electorate is that they writhed in ethical anquish about
Clinton unzipping his pants, but now are so timid about calling people
to task for lying to start wars, trampling rights, ethical misconduct,
etc. This is troubling because it suggests radical dysfunction in a
large segment of those voting.
> This having no difficulty separating what a government does from what
> the people collectively endorse, or themselves consider themselves
> accountable for, gives government a blank cheque to similarly have no
> difficulty separating what they do from what the people collectively
> endorse or insist upon, while leaving them unaccountable for their
> actions.
Well, I've seen some that voted for Bush twice and then screeched about
what he did in between elections as if they had no part in it. I've
never really been able to understand that discontinuity in people's
rationality.
I gave the current administration no check at all, let alone a blank
one. So in my thinking any presumption of a valid check from me is just
another part of a fraud. (I know. I'm stretching this analogy a bit.)
> The assertion that one is not
> accountable for something is on par with saying I abdicate my right to
> assert that because I am ultimately to be deemed accountable, I have
> some right to be master over that for which I am to be deemed
> accountable.
I'm not sure I grasp what you are trying to say.
>>
>>Those who make the common destructive mistake of assuming that the
>>government and the populace are the same often have no qualms about
>>waging war on citizens because they are somehow guilty of "tolerating
>>an evil dictator." I've heard this very argument used to brush off any
>>harm done to the Iraqi people, given that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant.
>
> Most certainly so.. But the argument that I for example consider them
> one and the same is not correct.
I deliberately used the word "often" to indictate sometimes. It is a
slippery slope that most do not avoid sliding down. Some do.
> I would have had the Iraqi people
> overthrow their own government if that was the wish of the Iraqi
> people, for I simply do not believe that any government can survive
> the collective determination of a population to be rid of it.
I'm not sure this is really true. Your body's own immune system is one
example of a system that is sometimes willing to destroy itself
completely in order to "prevent" or destroy what it thinks is a threat.
I think many dictatorships of the past would have been willing to
sacrifice most, if not all, of the population to stay in power.
Collective action requires some ability to organize and develop an
effective effort. The means of preventing this are much greater today
than 100 years ago. Without means of organizing and coordinating
collective effort, the reality is that it will not occur until the
tyranny eventually weakens with rot. And that may take a long time.
> I don't think most in the US really grasp that
> the US is at war (as is Canada in Afghanistan) and that being at war
> makes targets of oneself. If the Iraqi's had the missiles, the planes
> or the bombs they would have every right to be dropping them on
> American cities.. that to my mind is the nature of the beast called
> war. And it is because the nature of this beast is so monsterous that
> I feel strongly that there is probably no crime greater on this planet
> than starting a war of aggression. If people don't want bloody noses
> they shouldn't start fights.
War warps truth more destructively than nearly anything else. There are
very few people with enough rational strength to resist the "us" good
vs. "evil" them mentality that swallows people's minds and ethics. Part
of an effective war machine is creating this blind spot. Military
indoctrination is often geared toward enhancing agression by means of
painting combatants in the stark black and white of St. George vs. the
dragons.
> It is not whether the government is to be under periodic control of
> the governed but whether governing are to be deemed accountable to the
> governed.
From a practical point of view, the deeming is of little importance
unless political figures KNOW there will be a consequence.
> If George Bush authorises a criminal act,
> such as illegal wiretapping of US citizens, who is to say whether he
> has this right -- George Bush or the people of the US. Who ultimately
> is going to slave to the other.
>
If we as Americans do not actually hold our leaders accountable, then
all the deeming in the world will only hurt by supporting a delusion
that we are in control.
jeb
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote in
>news:e409td$jgb$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>
>>
>> The issue is who is answerable to who. Are the people answerable to
>> the government or is the government answerable to the people. In any
>> system that works there have to be checks and balances. Whether one
>> says the government is answerable to the people, or the courts, or to
>> the army, or to the king, there has to be some sort of relationship
>> ideally where each institution still get policed by some supervisory
>> body.
>
>Correct for any system that works. The real difficulty I have with some
>of the American electorate is that they writhed in ethical anquish about
>Clinton unzipping his pants, but now are so timid about calling people
>to task for lying to start wars, trampling rights, ethical misconduct,
>etc. This is troubling because it suggests radical dysfunction in a
>large segment of those voting.
>
Well I was personally greatly affronted by Bill Clinton's conduct too. I'd
not have people forget that he also initiated a war of aggression against
a nation that was then at peace. But regarding Clinton's moral failing
that you speak of they outraged me, because I have a very clear understanding
that any form of sexual relationship between an employer and an employee
constitutes sexual abuse because it is founded on a relationship in which
consent is not really possible, due to the inherent inequalities between
the parties involved. This is why doctors can loose their licenses here
for engaging in any form of sexual relationship with a patient, and university
professors can rapidly find themselves ex-professors if they engage in sexual
relationships with students. I don't have problems with John Kennedy cheating
on his wife and having a relationship with Maryln Monroe (if indeed he did)
but I do have problems with an employer potentially placing themselves in
a conflict of interest (theirs versus the employees) with an employee. It
was the willingness to do this that offends me. A secondary thing that offended
me is that he brought disgrace upon his nation by his conduct, and left the
legacy that every future visitor to the White House will find that building
itself tarnished by its own history.
>
>> This having no difficulty separating what a government does from what
>> the people collectively endorse, or themselves consider themselves
>> accountable for, gives government a blank cheque to similarly have no
>> difficulty separating what they do from what the people collectively
>> endorse or insist upon, while leaving them unaccountable for their
>> actions.
>
>Well, I've seen some that voted for Bush twice and then screeched about
>what he did in between elections as if they had no part in it. I've
>never really been able to understand that discontinuity in people's
>rationality.
I have trouble understanding what the attraction is. I don't see George
as being charismatic, capable, convincing, nor having any of the sorts
of qualifications that would make me think him worth putting money on.
With a population ten times ours, I don't understand why the US seems to
have such difficulty getting good help. In fairness to Bill Clinton, while
I didn't like his morals one bit and was frankly at the time thinking
the US could hardly have elected worse in electing George Bush, at
least Bill Clinton was capable, convincing, and an effective leader
on the international scene. On at least the fiscal/managerial level
Bill Clinton's presidency was a success story, if one can call being
able to convince Britain, Canada, Spain, and even Turkey to bomb
Belgrade a success story. George Bush's tenure seems to me to have
been an unmitigated disaster, which in large part seems to be what one
might reasonably expect to get when one hires someone whose made something
of a name for themselves in the past by screwing up. Screwed up national
guard service, screwed up running oil companies, screwed up handling the
bottle, screwed up finding religion, screwed up attacking Iraq, etc.
>I gave the current administration no check at all, let alone a blank
>one. So in my thinking any presumption of a valid check from me is just
>another part of a fraud. (I know. I'm stretching this analogy a bit.)
Things perhaps look different from where one is standing.. I know I have a
lot more power to bitch to my government about what it does, than I do to
bitch to George Bush about what it is he is doing. You are at least a
Roman in 21st century Rome. You're not at risk of being shipped off to
Syria and being tortured for a year for committing the crime of being
in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is not very reassuring when
the people I perceive as being the ones with the power to object to
what their government is doing (ostensibly in their names) knowing that
they do object claim that that isn't actually in their mandate.
>
>
>> The assertion that one is not
>> accountable for something is on par with saying I abdicate my right to
>> assert that because I am ultimately to be deemed accountable, I have
>> some right to be master over that for which I am to be deemed
>> accountable.
>
>I'm not sure I grasp what you are trying to say.
>
The American people will collectively make their own destiny. If they
choose to assert that the government is answerable to the people they
will see a day come when the government is answerable to the people. If
they instead choose to say what the government does is not their problem,
they will have the government which believes ever more strongly that what
the government does is neither their problem nor their concern.
It's not going to ever be a perfect relationship, but the very expectation
in Britain that Tony Blair should be respecting the will of the people and
wasn't, and was acting in a profoundly undemocratic manner, hurt enough to
make his commitment to the war in Iraq at least harder for him to follow
through on (though he did) than it would have been if he had been an
absolute monarch who the people backed no matter what he did, because
that was what happened when monarchs made the executive decision to
initiate wars.
>>>
>>>Those who make the common destructive mistake of assuming that the
>>>government and the populace are the same often have no qualms about
>>>waging war on citizens because they are somehow guilty of "tolerating
>>>an evil dictator." I've heard this very argument used to brush off any
>>>harm done to the Iraqi people, given that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant.
>>
>> Most certainly so.. But the argument that I for example consider them
>> one and the same is not correct.
>
>I deliberately used the word "often" to indictate sometimes. It is a
>slippery slope that most do not avoid sliding down. Some do.
>
>> I would have had the Iraqi people
>> overthrow their own government if that was the wish of the Iraqi
>> people, for I simply do not believe that any government can survive
>> the collective determination of a population to be rid of it.
>
>I'm not sure this is really true. Your body's own immune system is one
>example of a system that is sometimes willing to destroy itself
>completely in order to "prevent" or destroy what it thinks is a threat.
>I think many dictatorships of the past would have been willing to
>sacrifice most, if not all, of the population to stay in power.
>
But the people permit this to be so, if such a leader does stay in power.
The Shah of Iran fits your model. The people of Iran fit mine. When the
immovable object meets the irresistible force, the immovable moves. But
getting a population solidly opposed to even the worlds worst leaders is
astonishingly hard. A full 31% of the US population still approve of
George Bush's performance. So it is hard to imagine less than 31% of
Iraqi's supporting Saddam Hussein's performance or whatever, and you
can easily rule with an iron fist with the support of 25% of the
population if they have the guns and the willingness to use them.
It becomes harder if you have the guns but only the support of 10%
of the population which is perhaps where the US finds itself today
in Iraq.
>Collective action requires some ability to organize and develop an
>effective effort. The means of preventing this are much greater today
>than 100 years ago. Without means of organizing and coordinating
>collective effort, the reality is that it will not occur until the
>tyranny eventually weakens with rot. And that may take a long time.
>
I think 70 years a very short time. Hardly worth even worrying about
in the over all scale of things.
>> I don't think most in the US really grasp that
>> the US is at war (as is Canada in Afghanistan) and that being at war
>> makes targets of oneself. If the Iraqi's had the missiles, the planes
>> or the bombs they would have every right to be dropping them on
>> American cities.. that to my mind is the nature of the beast called
>> war. And it is because the nature of this beast is so monsterous that
>> I feel strongly that there is probably no crime greater on this planet
>> than starting a war of aggression. If people don't want bloody noses
>> they shouldn't start fights.
>
>War warps truth more destructively than nearly anything else. There are
>very few people with enough rational strength to resist the "us" good
>vs. "evil" them mentality that swallows people's minds and ethics. Part
>of an effective war machine is creating this blind spot. Military
>indoctrination is often geared toward enhancing agression by means of
>painting combatants in the stark black and white of St. George vs. the
>dragons.
Yes this is true, but people permit themselves to be sold this bill of
goods. I don't understand this dance. I went through hell for opposing
the war against Serbia, and I don't quite see how it was that I came to
do so. Got lucky and simply wasn't enchanted along with the rest of the
population I guess at the time. But not being so enchanted, I looked
far more closely at the enchantment than most, and same for the first
time very clearly how pervasive the lies were. The hostages rounded
up and held in the sports stadium (with all the imagery of this actually
having happened in Beruit) -- it was a lie, and the media might later
have reported that it was a lie, but they didn't. The Serbs not allowing
people to cross into Albania and all the expressed suggestions that they
were instead being hurded into concentration camps -- but not one word
about how the Serbs had severed diplomatic relations with Albania because
Albania had handed Serb soldiers who had been captured in Albania over to
the Americans. The Serbs are murdering monsters and not one word about
how these same Serbs returned US soldiers to the US authorities despite
being at war, and despite having captured these soldiers on US territory.
The hundreds of thousands reportedly massacred during the war, but nothing
said about how after the war those sent to investigate the massacres could
find no evidence that there had even been massacres. Every day it was a
fresh lie, and every day it was I who was mad for thinking that all that
was said was not true.
Here is a gruesome example in the current conflict in Iraq which troubled me
when I encountered it. Its not for the squeamish. Try making sense of the
following recently published seemingly authoritive stories, when placed in the
context of the related historical image of the dead body discussed in those
stories:
Article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2168496,00.html
Article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2168496,00.html
Picture: http://www.alquds.co.uk/live/data/2006/02/02-24/s21.jpg
Source: http://truth-about-iraqis.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_truth-about-iraqis_archive.html
Perhaps the facts are as described and the picture tells the tale told. But
I have difficulty matching the story told to the picture known of.
>
>> It is not whether the government is to be under periodic control of
>> the governed but whether governing are to be deemed accountable to the
>> governed.
>
>From a practical point of view, the deeming is of little importance
>unless political figures KNOW there will be a consequence.
>
Chicken and egg.. there are consequences of deeming it so.
>> If George Bush authorises a criminal act,
>> such as illegal wiretapping of US citizens, who is to say whether he
>> has this right -- George Bush or the people of the US. Who ultimately
>> is going to slave to the other.
>>
>
>If we as Americans do not actually hold our leaders accountable, then
>all the deeming in the world will only hurt by supporting a delusion
>that we are in control.
>
I think it hurts less to feel that one aught to be in control and that
the leaders have betrayed that trust in not respecting that relationship
than to think that one cannot hold leadership accountable, and to
think otherwise is to do no more than support the delusion that one is
in control. I'd sooner believe myself a free man reduced to slavery,
than a slave longing for freedom. The England I grew up in was a very
defeatist nation -- people tended to put themselves and their nation down,
and to think that anyone in their right mind would be off to Canada in an
instance if they could. That verye thinking made England then the place
people imagined it to be. But if I had to put my money on which nation
would be more likely to hold its leadership accountable for grave
crimes and misdemeanors it would be a tough call. I suspect that
the British people would be more willing to hold the leadership
accountable, but that the US legal system might be more likely to
actually make them accountable. The mindsets are I think very
different between the two societies.
Ian
Bill Samuel
>a nation that was then at peace. But regarding Clinton's moral failing
>that you speak of they outraged me, because I have a very clear understanding
>that any form of sexual relationship between an employer and an employee
>constitutes sexual abuse because it is founded on a relationship in which
>consent is not really possible, due to the inherent inequalities between
>the parties involved. This is why doctors can loose their licenses here
That's generally good as a principle, but it really doesn't fit the
Clinton-Lewinsky relationship very well. She came into the White House
aiming to have sex with the President. This was her goal, well documented.
Clinton was a willing partner, but it was Lewinsky's conquest. Albeit it
wasn't a full conquest. Clinton refused to "have sex with that woman" - to
commit the act that would, in his mind, cross the line into adultery,
although Lewinsky wanted that very much. And of course she had fantasies
about it meaning more than it was reasonable to think it would.
It was smarmy, and not ethical. But nothing I have seen indicates Clinton
used his power to coerce her into sexual activity. It was more what
Kissinger said, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." Lewinsky wanted sex
with the powerful. She felt powerful because she had succeeded in getting
him into the relationship.
Of course, it was very sick, and it crashed down around her. And then
Clinton abandoned her, which is typical behavior. They both suffered
greatly for their weakness and sickness.
--
Bill Samuel, Silver Spring, MD, USA bill[at]friendsinchrist.net
http://home.comcast.net/~wsamuel/ http://www.quakerinfo.com/
Co-Coordinator, Friends in Christ, http://www.friendsinchrist.net/
"There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition."
Ian Davis
Bill Samuel <wsa...@comcast.net> wrote:
>In article <e40k02$p8c$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>,
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote:
>
>>a nation that was then at peace. But regarding Clinton's moral failing
>>that you speak of they outraged me, because I have a very clear understanding
>>that any form of sexual relationship between an employer and an employee
>>constitutes sexual abuse because it is founded on a relationship in which
>>consent is not really possible, due to the inherent inequalities between
>>the parties involved. This is why doctors can loose their licenses here
>
>That's generally good as a principle, but it really doesn't fit the
>Clinton-Lewinsky relationship very well. She came into the White House
>aiming to have sex with the President. This was her goal, well documented.
> Clinton was a willing partner, but it was Lewinsky's conquest. Albeit it
>wasn't a full conquest. Clinton refused to "have sex with that woman" - to
>commit the act that would, in his mind, cross the line into adultery,
>although Lewinsky wanted that very much. And of course she had fantasies
>about it meaning more than it was reasonable to think it would.
Doesn't matter. A patient's conduct in enticing a doctor would I suspect be
of no relevance in ruling that a doctor should loose their licence for sexual
misconduct. An employer who has a sexual relationship with an employee is
the one committing the offence no matter the provocation. Likewise an adult
having a sexual relationship with a child. If the defence of "the devil made
me do it" is to be considered a legitimate grounds for shifting who is at
fault for what or to what degree then you end up in precisely the murky
world where anything can be explained away as "there but for the grace of
God go you or I". Fundamentally I do not believe any bears responsibility
for their conduct but themselves. For me the slippery slope only exists
because people do not know how to say no. The knowing how to say no is
all about there never being a first time when one says yes..
>
>It was smarmy, and not ethical. But nothing I have seen indicates Clinton
>used his power to coerce her into sexual activity. It was more what
>Kissinger said, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." Lewinsky wanted sex
>with the powerful. She felt powerful because she had succeeded in getting
>him into the relationship.
But you are seeming to say here that the error was his; not hers to make.
How would the situation have been reversed if she had been president and he
the bell boy. If in either situation you'd label the same individual the
one responsible for having erred, I'd say that you held men and women to
different standards of conduct regarding the two genders.
The issue of using power goes to a very deep seated difference of philosophy
between our cultures that I came to grasp only gradually. In the US the
attitude tends to be that one has to actively do something in order to
be morally in the wrong.. so not using his power to coerce gets translated
into not having erred in having a relationship with an employee. Here in
Canada the presumptions are different. Regardless of what one does or does
not do, one is morally in the wrong if one permits there to be even a
potential conflict of interest. So whether Bill Clinton used his position
of president to in anyway overtly coerce is irrelevant.. His very position as
President of the USA meant that he could not but be in a coercive relationship
with someone working in the White House who he had the power to make, take,
break, and/or ruin. I don't like the US model here. I think it is open to
abuse by people who do take advantage of conflicts of interest to then claim
that they didn't with the responsibility being placed on society to actually
prove something which is hard to prove. I think it much easier to prove that
a conflict of interest existed and that one erred in not extracting oneself
from it. Far better to my mind to say people can't bet against themselves in
games they play in than to say people can, but they mustn't then throw the
game.
I also don't really buy into the idea it was poor naive Bill who was seduced
here. I don't judge another guilty till its proven in a court of law but
there had been various previous allegations that Bill Clinton had engaged
in earlier sexual inappropriate conduct with other employees, which leaves
open at least the suggestion that he was a long time serial abuser of women.
>
>Of course, it was very sick, and it crashed down around her. And then
>Clinton abandoned her, which is typical behavior. They both suffered
>greatly for their weakness and sickness.
>
Causes and consequences to me are separate issues. I'm not one to say
that bad enough consequences mean that one should in anyway modify ones
opinions about the rightness or wrongness of the cause. I'd not have
stopped thinking that the war in Iraq was illegal under international
law, if the US forces had come out of it smelling of roses. At worst
I would have conceeded that trying to convince people that waging wars
of aggression was both stupid and wrong would hence forth be a much
harder sell.
Ian
Yowie
This is probably cultural. I didn't care that Clinton was fooling arund with
Monica. I agree there *might* have been a power abuse, but then again, there
might not have been. Office romances (in or out of marraige) happen. As I
said at the time, Clinton isn't the first and won't be the last man to fool
around with a pretty young girl at the office, and the whole event seemed
totally disproportional to t e amount of media coverage and indeed outrage
that it generated, especially comared to the seriousness of other events
inthe world at the time. My only conclusion is that American people have a
huge cultural hang up about sex. Just like the 'outrage' of Janet jackson's
nipple. BFD (big .... deal) to the rest of us, who cares about a nipple or
some guy f*cking an intern, unless the individuals have set themselves up as
the paragons of sexual virtue, why the fuss? It snot like its going to cause
the death of thousands of innocent people, is it?
<snip>
> I have trouble understanding what the attraction is. I don't see George
> as being charismatic, capable, convincing, nor having any of the sorts
> of qualifications that would make me think him worth putting money on.
> With a population ten times ours, I don't understand why the US seems to
> have such difficulty getting good help. In fairness to Bill Clinton,
while
> I didn't like his morals one bit and was frankly at the time thinking
> the US could hardly have elected worse in electing George Bush, at
> least Bill Clinton was capable, convincing, and an effective leader
> on the international scene. On at least the fiscal/managerial level
> Bill Clinton's presidency was a success story, if one can call being
> able to convince Britain, Canada, Spain, and even Turkey to bomb
> Belgrade a success story. George Bush's tenure seems to me to have
> been an unmitigated disaster, which in large part seems to be what one
> might reasonably expect to get when one hires someone whose made something
> of a name for themselves in the past by screwing up. Screwed up national
> guard service, screwed up running oil companies, screwed up handling the
> bottle, screwed up finding religion, screwed up attacking Iraq, etc.
Certainly, Clinton was depicted as an articulate, intelligent, capable and
effecient leader on Australian media. George W. comes across as a moron.
Could be cultural, too, but thats how it seems.
> It's not going to ever be a perfect relationship, but the very expectation
> in Britain that Tony Blair should be respecting the will of the people and
> wasn't, and was acting in a profoundly undemocratic manner, hurt enough to
> make his commitment to the war in Iraq at least harder for him to follow
> through on (though he did) than it would have been if he had been an
> absolute monarch who the people backed no matter what he did, because
> that was what happened when monarchs made the executive decision to
> initiate wars.
At least Blair showed he was *listening* to the people...
<snip>
> I think it hurts less to feel that one aught to be in control and that
> the leaders have betrayed that trust in not respecting that relationship
> than to think that one cannot hold leadership accountable, and to
> think otherwise is to do no more than support the delusion that one is
> in control. I'd sooner believe myself a free man reduced to slavery,
> than a slave longing for freedom. The England I grew up in was a very
> defeatist nation -- people tended to put themselves and their nation down,
> and to think that anyone in their right mind would be off to Canada in an
> instance if they could. That verye thinking made England then the place
> people imagined it to be. But if I had to put my money on which nation
> would be more likely to hold its leadership accountable for grave
> crimes and misdemeanors it would be a tough call. I suspect that
> the British people would be more willing to hold the leadership
> accountable, but that the US legal system might be more likely to
> actually make them accountable. The mindsets are I think very
> different between the two societies.
I don't know about America, But commonwealth countries in general appear to
have a well established culture of satirising and criticising the government
of the time, regardless of which particular party is inthe leadership
position (and often have a good go at the opposition, too). I woudl suspect
that paying attention to what is being targetted to satirise is a *very*
good indicator of how the populace sees its government. In Australia, its
pretty much *mandatory*, culturally, to 'take the piss' out of any person in
a position of authority, it stops them taking themselves to seriously. And
just as importantly, a leader who can laugh at themselves will bemore
popular than one who can't, and one who can take the piss out of
*themselves* will gain far more loyalty and support than those who "have a
stick up their arse" (to use another colloquialism)
Yowie
Yowie
Ian Davis
Yowie <yowie9644....@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>This is probably cultural. I didn't care that Clinton was fooling arund with
>Monica. I agree there *might* have been a power abuse, but then again, there
>might not have been. Office romances (in or out of marraige) happen. As I
>said at the time, Clinton isn't the first and won't be the last man to fool
>around with a pretty young girl at the office, and the whole event seemed
>totally disproportional to t e amount of media coverage and indeed outrage
>that it generated, especially comared to the seriousness of other events
>inthe world at the time. My only conclusion is that American people have a
>huge cultural hang up about sex. Just like the 'outrage' of Janet jackson's
>nipple. BFD (big .... deal) to the rest of us, who cares about a nipple or
>some guy f*cking an intern, unless the individuals have set themselves up as
>the paragons of sexual virtue, why the fuss? Its not like its going to cause
>the death of thousands of innocent people, is it?
My objection is not to the sex. My objection is to abuse of power, be that
a passive or active abuse. I see sex between an employer and an employee as
abusive, period. If an employer wants to engage in a sexual relationship
with an employee the onus is on him/her to first distance themselves from the
employment relationship to ensure that the one does not wield power over the
other, before considering indulging in any other form of relationship. A
relationship where one party holds power over the other is not to my mind a
consentual relationship, and having actually seen one case where a newly hired
single mother lost her job after rejecting the advances of the man she then
reported to, because he subsequently announced that she failed her
probationary period, I have ever since known that grave injustices can occur
when one permits the notion of the mixing of business and pleasure. It is not
morality which is my hobby horse here.. My concern is entirely with the issue
of promoting and enforcing rules that serve the interests of justice for all.
It is unjust for an employer to think they can enjoy a relationship with an
employee even if they imagine this as being between equals when wearing
one hat, while simultaneously wielding significant power to do good or harm to
that employee who reports either directly or indirectly to them when wearing
the other.
Perhaps this is cultural; but I have this strange notion that we can all
across every culture on this planet find the compass that tells right from
wrong not by examining all the external trappings of our own personal
belief systems but instead by exploring the underlying issue of whether the
act helps or harms the future, and in doing so enriches or mars the past.
I think we collectively know that what helps is a very different beast from
that which harms.
>Certainly, Clinton was depicted as an articulate, intelligent, capable and
>effecient leader on Australian media. George W. comes across as a moron.
>Could be cultural, too, but thats how it seems.
>
Yes rather too often I think of George Bush as Zaphod Beeblebox.. I'm not
however sure if that means I've got him right or got him wrong. But that
only makes the connection in my mind stronger.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A607727
http://www.englisch.schule.de/wiesmoor/Zaphod.htm
http://www.media-file.net/hhgg/zaphod.mov
>> It's not going to ever be a perfect relationship, but the very expectation
>> in Britain that Tony Blair should be respecting the will of the people and
>> wasn't, and was acting in a profoundly undemocratic manner, hurt enough to
>> make his commitment to the war in Iraq at least harder for him to follow
>> through on (though he did) than it would have been if he had been an
>> absolute monarch who the people backed no matter what he did, because
>> that was what happened when monarchs made the executive decision to
>> initiate wars.
>
>At least Blair showed he was *listening* to the people...
>
Shout loud enough and it is hard for the person you are shouting at to
pretend they haven't heard you. Just the other day I shouted at an
automatic robotic telephone interface which had a pretty good grasp
of English (for a robot). Stuck in the endless hell of being unable
to give an an account number, and one being periodically demanded,
with small talk in between, it was a very pleasant suprise to discover
that the robot had been designed by an intelligent engineer, because
immediately upon raising my voice to maximum volume I got the response,
I don't seem to be able to help you -- let me hand you over to a human
operator. You have to give it to the robot for an imaginative response
here, even though the human operator was also totally unable to do anything
for me without the requisite account number. Do you think if I'd
tried the same raising voice trick twice the human operator might
have in turn handed me back to the robot.
Likewise in England.. indeed I had this strong sense when in Australia
that it was England, just moved half way round the world, blessed with
a climate that was worth waking up to, etc. It was a bit of a culture
shock that.. I'd always in my ignorance presumed that a big country
like Australia would be much the same as a big country like the US,
while it would be the smaller New Zealand which would be to Australia
what Canada is to the US. Politically I read Australia when there as
much closer to the same right wing political model as the US than Canada
but culturally it felt closer to England than Canada would I think were
you to come here. A lot of our English culture got traded in for the
more convenient culture that was right next door. I had also thought
that the deserts in Australia and the US would make them geographically
similar. But I now think that it is Australia and Canada that are
geographically very similarly. Both nations live almost exclusively
on that thin strip of land that forms the border.. ours with the US,
yours with the sea, and both nations have this massive land mass which
is just there and part of the defining psyche of the people, while being
not part of most peoples daily reality.
But neither you or I live in a nation where at rodeos one can be asked to
remove ones hat, and then watch as the entire audience holds hat over heart
while being invited to sing the greatest national anthem on earth. At that
invitation I was strongly tempted to break out with Canada's national
anthem, but soon realised that I might be on the receiving end of the
joke. Being fair here, perhaps the same sort of thing happens at Rodeo's
this side of the border in Alberta, but I wouldn't know, never having been
to the Calgary stampede. Media wise the US media gives the US administration
a much freer ride for the most part than one might reasonably expect were
that media to be reporting on our system here. What is largely missing I
think in the US system is the notion that far from being unpatriotic the
system only really works when one has both government and opposition.
The democrats and republicans by contrast seem to think that the only
way that either can get elected is by singing from the same hymn book.
Ian
Engineer
Ian Davis wrote:
>Within a current context I see much of the American population
>as wanting to distance themselves from the very notion that the
>governed and the governing are one and the same.
I would agree if we had a real choice, but in real life we have about
as much choice as to who governs us as Cuba does. Anyone who wishes
to run for office on a platform that calls for not starting wars or
in any other way limiting the ever-increasing size and power of
government is ruthlessly suppressed. They can only run if there is no
possibility of winning. Thus the governed and the governing are *not*
one and the same.
Engineer
JEB wrote:
>I have no difficulty at all separating what my government does and
>what I personally endorse or do and thereby am accountable for.
>It seems quite simple and honest to make this distinction.
>
>Those who make the common destructive mistake of assuming that the
>government and the populace are the same often have no qualms about waging
>war on citizens because they are somehow guilty of "tolerating an evil
>dictator." I've heard this very argument used to brush off any harm done to
>the Iraqi people, given that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant.
What would they have had an individual Iraqi do? Take up arms and
face certain death?
Timothy Travis
On 5/12/06 6:13 AM, in article EOSdneyEsJJ...@giganews.com,
"Engineer" <inv...@example.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Ian Davis wrote:
>
>> Within a current context I see much of the American population
>> as wanting to distance themselves from the very notion that the
>> governed and the governing are one and the same.
>
> I would agree if we had a real choice, but in real life we have about
> as much choice as to who governs us as Cuba does.
Americans have far more choice than Cubans do. Perhaps people who are not
part of the broad consensus (fringe people, like me) that has existed in
American politics over the last decade or so have no choice but that's not
the same as saying that Americans have no choice.
> Anyone who wishes
> to run for office on a platform that calls for not starting wars or
> in any other way limiting the ever-increasing size and power of
> government is ruthlessly suppressed.
To say that no one votes for them--or even that people in power have erected
barriers to their running for office--is not to say that they are ruthlessly
suppressed.
A limit on campaign contributions and spending would, of course, help to
level the playing field.
>They can only run if there is no
> possibility of winning.
there is no possibility of them winning because they do not reflect the
views of the electorate...
>Thus the governed and the governing are *not*
> one and the same.
Some of the attitudes of some of people governed are not the same as the
some of the attitudes of the some of the people who govern.
But the fact is that the governed are reflected by the government. To
paraphrase William Penn, a bad government cannot make good people bad, for
they will change it. A good government cannot make bad people good, for
they will change it.
And there will always be those on the fringes, like me, who will never see
the government conform to our policy wishes.
Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon
chris....@gmail.com
Ian Davis wrote:
> In article <4cij7bF...@individual.net>,
> Yowie <yowie9644....@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> >This is probably cultural. I didn't care that Clinton was fooling arund with
> >Monica. I agree there *might* have been a power abuse, but then again, there
> >might not have been. Office romances (in or out of marraige) happen. As I
> >said at the time, Clinton isn't the first and won't be the last man to fool
> >around with a pretty young girl at the office, and the whole event seemed
> >totally disproportional to t e amount of media coverage and indeed outrage
> >that it generated, especially comared to the seriousness of other events
> >inthe world at the time. My only conclusion is that American people have a
> >huge cultural hang up about sex. Just like the 'outrage' of Janet jackson's
> >nipple. BFD (big .... deal) to the rest of us, who cares about a nipple or
> >some guy f*cking an intern, unless the individuals have set themselves up as
> >the paragons of sexual virtue, why the fuss? Its not like its going to cause
> >the death of thousands of innocent people, is it?
I agree with you in part. But the partner who is more vulnerable still
tends to be the lower level employee, and that person still tends to be
a woman. And I'll hazard to say that for many women, sex IS a big deal,
both because of physical consequences and our usual preference for sex
as a component of relationship. It's true that the Clinton/Lewinski
violations of moral and ethical norms were far less important than
other things in the world. Still, this pattern of behavior has greater
consequences for women everywhere than it does for the men in power.
>
> My objection is not to the sex. My objection is to abuse of power, be that
> a passive or active abuse. I see sex between an employer and an employee as
> abusive, period. If an employer wants to engage in a sexual relationship
> with an employee the onus is on him/her to first distance themselves from the
> employment relationship to ensure that the one does not wield power over the
> other, before considering indulging in any other form of relationship. A
> relationship where one party holds power over the other is not to my mind a
> consentual relationship, and having actually seen one case where a newly hired
> single mother lost her job after rejecting the advances of the man she then
> reported to, because he subsequently announced that she failed her
> probationary period, I have ever since known that grave injustices can occur
> when one permits the notion of the mixing of business and pleasure. It is not
> morality which is my hobby horse here.. My concern is entirely with the issue
> of promoting and enforcing rules that serve the interests of justice for all.
> It is unjust for an employer to think they can enjoy a relationship with an
> employee even if they imagine this as being between equals when wearing
> one hat, while simultaneously wielding significant power to do good or harm to
> that employee who reports either directly or indirectly to them when wearing
> the other.
Concerning abuses of power, sex is a very small segment of the market,
and the workplace only one of many places it plays out. Gender
discrimination, for one, is bigger. But I suspect the biggest abuses
have to do with the daily betrayals and collusions that are considered
normal business practices.
Work place rules aren't based on justice for all. They are based on
creating a tolerable balance between exploitation and productivity.
Why we can't stop abuses and exploitation is the same as why we don't
stop war. We refuse to try. I think in part it's because we are
addicted to romance, control of others, and revenge--all of which
color our views of sex and war.
Christine
Ian Davis
Yes, there is certainly that too. To a greater extent than perhaps
would be generally accepted there seems to my mind a correlation
between the US political system and the type of one party state
that existed under communism. Indeed I've had russians express
bewilderment as to how while in Russia it was a given that the
government wasn't to be trusted, and that it wasn't good, and
that it wasn't even a very desirable form of government, and the
government spent all type of money on propaganda that no one
bought into, in the US the government largely managed to carry
the notion that it is to be trusted, it is good, and that it is
not only a desirable form of government but the best of all
governments, all without seemingly even having to pay for the
propaganda to achieve that effect.
Ian
Timothy Travis
On 5/12/06 11:28 AM, in article e42k3i$ubs$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca, "Ian
Davis" <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
Perhaps it is because most Americans believe that the government can, on
some level, be trusted, that it is good and that it is not only a desireable
form of government but the best of all possible. The propaganda that
convinced them of that might be the cradle to grave "imbedded" propaganda of
our culture but that could be coupled with a grain of truth.
That doesn't mean that these things are all true, but it would answer your
question.
The correlation in your mind between the American government and the one
party government of the Soviet Union is, to my mind, as limited in its
usefulness in understanding what is going on here as Engineer's saying that
our electoral system gives Americans as much choice about who governs as
Cuba's does. You both seem, to me, to have a chip on your shoulder and to
go far beyond reasonable in trashing the US. There are so many reasonable
things that could be said to trash the US that it doesn't seem, from my
point of view, necessary to resort to the hyperbole you both favor.
But, hey, it's just my opinion. You are both entitled to your opinions, of
course, and to post them. I am entitled to mine, however, and to tell you
that I disagree with you.
I'm not a big fan of American government--at least not in the absolute
sense--although I certainly would prefer its institutions to those of many
states (and absences of state) in other parts of the world.
Ian Davis
Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>The correlation in your mind between the American government and the one
>party government of the Soviet Union is, to my mind, as limited in its
>usefulness in understanding what is going on here as Engineer's saying that
>our electoral system gives Americans as much choice about who governs as
>Cuba's does. You both seem, to me, to have a chip on your shoulder and to
>go far beyond reasonable in trashing the US. There are so many reasonable
>things that could be said to trash the US that it doesn't seem, from my
>point of view, necessary to resort to the hyperbole you both favor.
>
I don't think I have a chip on my shoulder. My impressions of the US political
system have been forged by what Engineer has said about how the current
system as imposed by the Democrats and Republicans conspires to thwart any
possibly of there being the ability to build new political parties in the US,
in contrast to the ease with which this is possible in Canada, coupled with
Marshalls earlier descriptions of how when the Socialist Wobbly party of the
1930's started doing too well the Democrats and Republicans then similarly
too conspired to change the rules regarding eligibility to get elected the
better to ensure that the IWW never became a threat to their grasp on power.
If Engineer and Marshall's accounts of how the US political system works in
practice are misleading then it is not so much that I have a chip on my
shoulder as that I've been mislead by people whose opinion I respect.
If on the other hand, their accounts of how the US political establishment
conspires to ensure that the US remains a two party state is correct, I
think I might reasonably reply that far from it being I who has the chip
on my shoulder it might be you who are choosing to blinker yourself here.
Is the following account of the establishments repression of the IWW at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWW
http://www.answers.com/topic/industrial-workers-of-the-world
accurate. If so perhaps you might comment on precisely how the US suppression
of socialist parties differs substantially from the communist suppression of
non-socialist parties in Russia.
In similar vein you might comment on what I believe to be Engineers assertion
that if one wishes to seek to be elected as other than a Democrat or
Republican candidate one must jump through hoops in order to get on the
ballot, while those same rules are routinely waived for Democratic and
Republican candidates. Is the US political system as of today a level
playing field, or is it a stacked game?
Ian
Bill Samuel
>To a greater extent than perhaps
>would be generally accepted there seems to my mind a correlation
>between the US political system and the type of one party state
>that existed under communism
There's some truth to this. My pastor, who is English, was speaking last
week about not judging people, including "for voting Republican . . . or
Democrat" (he emphasized the Republican, I'm sure, knowing his audience was
mostly politically progressive) and then he mused that perhaps our problem
here was that we only have two parties. Well it definitely is part of the
problem. While technically there are other parties, the system is
carefully set up to be a two-party system. In most American elections (not
true in all state elections) one doesn't need a majority to get elected.
The result is that people fear voting for third party or independent
candidates because they fear that it will result in throwing the election
to the worse of the two major party candidates since even a 20% vote will
get one elected if it is a plurality.
As a result, our electoral choices tend not to be very meaningful.
Particularly with regard to war and peace. It looks more like we have a
War party, with two branches, then that we have two parties. Last year,
the military budget got a unanimous vote in the Senate and only a handful
of votes against in the House.
Bill Samuel
>Is the US political system as of today a level
>playing field, or is it a stacked game?
Heavily stacked. Part of this is in laws designed to overwhelmingly favor
parties that are historically strong, and part of it is the media. The
media anoint certain candidates as "serious" candidates and refuse to
provide meaningful coverage to other candidates. This is largely a
self-fulfilling prophecy as the other candidates generally don't have the
means to get their ideas across effectively in the face of a media
blackout. And even "good government" groups like the League of Women Voters
help stack it by usually refusing to allow anyone other than the media
anointed ones in their debates.
Timothy Travis
On 5/13/06 6:07 AM, in article sI-dnarL9ZP...@comcast.com, "Bill
Samuel" <wsa...@comcast.net> wrote:
> In article <e42k3i$ubs$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>,
> ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote:
>> To a greater extent than perhaps
>> would be generally accepted there seems to my mind a correlation
>> between the US political system and the type of one party state
>> that existed under communism
Some snipped
> As a result, our electoral choices tend not to be very meaningful.
> Particularly with regard to war and peace. It looks more like we have a
> War party, with two branches, then that we have two parties. Last year,
> the military budget got a unanimous vote in the Senate and only a handful
> of votes against in the House.
Isn't that because whether some of us like it or not there is a broad
political and cultural consensus in this country and both parties try to
live within it, contesting for votes only on a few issues about which the
culture is divided?
Political parties in this country are like car makers: some one tries to
start a new one they go no where but if there is an innovation of some kind
that appeals to people every car maker goes there, quickly.
The "consensus" in the Soviet Union was artificial and there was no
competitive innovation, as was demonstrated by the way it fractured when the
"unifying" force was removed. I think that if political policy maker in the
US died of bird flu tomorrow a government with pretty much the same
orientation would replace it.
Of course, I, like the founders, don't think political parties should be
recognized. I realize that people are going to come together and even
create group identities for themselves in politics, but I don't see any
reason for the government to recognize and use those names and I sure don't
see any reason why tax money should be used to support political primaries
or any other party building activities. (I'm not a registered member of any
political party--organized or not). (Registered non-partisan since the
early nineties.)
There's a quote on the Governor's Balcony at the Oregon State Capitol which,
paraphrased, says that the government reflects the soul of its people. If
they are greedy and full of strife then it will be oppressive and hard to
live with, if they be virtuous and moral it will be peaceful and beneficial.
Ian Davis
Bill Samuel <wsa...@comcast.net> wrote:
>In article <e43kh5$htu$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>,
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote:
>>Is the US political system as of today a level
>>playing field, or is it a stacked game?
>
>Heavily stacked. Part of this is in laws designed to overwhelmingly favor
>parties that are historically strong, and part of it is the media. The
>media anoint certain candidates as "serious" candidates and refuse to
>provide meaningful coverage to other candidates. This is largely a
>self-fulfilling prophecy as the other candidates generally don't have the
>means to get their ideas across effectively in the face of a media
>blackout. And even "good government" groups like the League of Women Voters
>help stack it by usually refusing to allow anyone other than the media
>anointed ones in their debates.
>
The media problem is also I suspect very similar here. But all the candidates
should be given equal time and opportunity to express their positions on the
issues. I can't see having a wider range of inputs worse than a narrow range.
For the system to discriminate between candidates is unjust. No matter what
party one is running for one has presumably paid the deposit, made the
serious commitment to run a campaign, and more so if one has little chance
of actually getting elected made a serious commitment for little return
on investment. Even if one is running as an independent one should be given
equal air time. It might horrify some in the US but I personally found it
quite refreshing to see in our last election, during our local candidates
debate, a candidate on the podium running for the maxist-leninist party,
suitably attired for the debate in the uniform of a communist.. (well he had
the communist beret on anyway).
[Picture here]
http://www.therecord.com/fed_election2006/fed_election2006_0601168507.html
http://www.mlpc.ca/Articles/JulianIchim.html
He garnered 114 votes.
http://www.ctv.ca/mini/election2006/preelections/riding35039.html
My vote went to "the only Liberal MP who voted against the government's
Anti-Terrorism Act in 2001. He maintains the Act curtails civil rights
without sufficient accountability, such as oversight by a parliamentary
committee."
Ian
Engineer
Timothy Travis wrote:
>
>Bill Samuel wrote:
>
>> As a result, our electoral choices tend not to be very meaningful.
>> Particularly with regard to war and peace. It looks more like
>> we have a War party, with two branches, then that we have two
>> parties. Last year, the military budget got a unanimous vote
>> in the Senate and only a handful of votes against in the House.
>
>Isn't that because whether some of us like it or not there is
>a broad political and cultural consensus in this country and
>both parties try to live within it, contesting for votes only
>on a few issues about which the culture is divided?
The above is incorrect. The lock-step that the dual-monopoly
parties engage in is demonstably *not* based on the will of the
people. In 1995 Gallup pollsters reported that 39 percent of
Americans said that "the federal government has become so large
and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and
freedoms of ordinary citizens." Pollsters couldn't believe it,
so they tried again, taking out the word "immediate." This time
52 percent of Americans agreed. And that's just the percentage
that thinks that ever-increasing government is an immediate
threat; far more think that the government is too big and too
powerful. Yet in election after election the candidates frm the
only parties that are allowed to win run on a platform of making
the federal government even larger and even more powerful.
Timothy Travis
On 5/13/06 8:21 AM, in article PfqdnS7oSaD...@giganews.com,
"Engineer" <inv...@example.com> wrote:
If this is truly accurate (or even if it was ten years ago--a citation to
the source would be helpful although not dispositive as to the accuracy of
the underlying claim) then it begs the question of why this "fact" is only
expressed to anonymous voices on the phone but not expressed in American
politics. The Constitution doesn't provide for government by polling any
more than it provides for candidates for president being designated winners
or losers by popular vote.
If there is a flaw in the Constitutional system what is the remedy? As is
well known, I believe that limits on campaign contributions (only human
beings, say, can make campaign contributions and each is limited to $100 per
candidate per election--this limit imposed upon the candidate him or
herself, as well) would go a long way toward leveling the playing fields.
I'm not a fan of spending limits or public funding of elections. Do you
believe that spending money is speech, Constitutionally speaking?
This *isn't* Cuba and it's not the Soviet Union. Oppression and repression
are not what is holding the American people back from adopting the
Libertarian or Green (or the Socialist Worker) platform. What happened to
violent labor unions (the Wobblies were not a political party) in the
twenties isn't happening to Greens or Libertarians in the United States and
more than Evangelical Christians are being persecuted, here. The fact is
that at the present time the solutions that minor political parties espouse
simply are not appealing the the American voter.
One might explain this by arguing that this is so because the American
people are not so smart as we give them credit for, that our mythology that
people are perfectly capable of running their own lives in this complicated
technological, ideological and cultural infrastructure is just wrong.
Evidence: look around. Evidence: drive to work in the morning.
People--who did not evolve in this milieu but now are forced to contend with
it--are totally overwhelmed and over powered and so fearful--thus they are
easy to manipulate and herd around. That makes far more sense to me than
that the vicious power of government violence has everyone too scared to
speak up.
When minor party concerns start to register on the voter's radar then the
major parties will absorb those issues and they will get worked out and
worked in to the broad political and cultural consensus that exists in
American politics today.
I am no fan of this consensus and I think it has us headed for disaster but
it is not helpful to make up all kinds of excuses for why most voters don't
share my vision. People who advocate for the market place of ideas should
face up to it when few are buying their ideas and, dealing with reality, try
to go from there to change that. The victim stance that it's all the fault
of something else ("government" or the "commies" or anyone else) and that
one has no power to change things may be comforting and gratifying but it's
the precursor to losing.
Everything wrong in this world is not the fault of government. Anyone who
repeats over and over and over that it is, as it is written, "not going to
make it with anyone, anyhow." So far the votes (and even the public opinion
polls guaging Libertarian strength) seem to indicate that what was written
is fairly accurate.
Ian Davis
Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>This *isn't* Cuba and it's not the Soviet Union. Oppression and repression
>are not what is holding the American people back from adopting the
>Libertarian or Green (or the Socialist Worker) platform. What happened to
>violent labor unions (the Wobblies were not a political party) in the
>twenties isn't happening to Greens or Libertarians in the United States and
>more than Evangelical Christians are being persecuted, here. The fact is
>that at the present time the solutions that minor political parties espouse
>simply are not appealing the the American voter.
I think it still happens to some extent. How otherwise does one explain
http://www.alternet.org/story/14563/
>Everything wrong in this world is not the fault of government. Anyone who
>repeats over and over and over that it is, as it is written, "not going to
>make it with anyone, anyhow." So far the votes (and even the public opinion
>polls guaging Libertarian strength) seem to indicate that what was written
>is fairly accurate.
>
Might not be the fault of the government while still being a fault of the
system.
Ian
Timothy Travis
On 5/13/06 10:38 AM, in article e455i2$aqp$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca, "Ian
Davis" <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> In article <C08B60FD.2C7B%qsp...@comcast.net>,
> Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> This *isn't* Cuba and it's not the Soviet Union. Oppression and repression
>> are not what is holding the American people back from adopting the
>> Libertarian or Green (or the Socialist Worker) platform. What happened to
>> violent labor unions (the Wobblies were not a political party) in the
>> twenties isn't happening to Greens or Libertarians in the United States and
>> more than Evangelical Christians are being persecuted, here. The fact is
>> that at the present time the solutions that minor political parties espouse
>> simply are not appealing the the American voter.
>
> I think it still happens to some extent. How otherwise does one explain
>
> http://www.alternet.org/story/14563/
Is it your view that this list of people who are not allowed to fly is a
tool for the ruthless oppression (to use Engineer's phrase) of minor
political parties that the Republicans and Democrats fear threaten their
strangle hold on electoral politics in the United States?
Timothy Travis
Bride City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon
-- "The phrase that appears more often than any other in the journal of
George Fox is "the power of the Lord (or God) is over all," and by this he
meant a sense of the personal presence of God as enabler on every occasion
and in every situation in life. It didn't occur to him or other Friends to
speculate about the nature and attributes of God. It was enough that God
was present with them."
Wilmer Cooper
A Living Faith
p. 267
Ian Davis
Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>On 5/13/06 10:38 AM, in article e455i2$aqp$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca, "Ian
>Davis" <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>> In article <C08B60FD.2C7B%qsp...@comcast.net>,
>> Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> This *isn't* Cuba and it's not the Soviet Union. Oppression and repression
>>> are not what is holding the American people back from adopting the
>>> Libertarian or Green (or the Socialist Worker) platform. What happened to
>>> violent labor unions (the Wobblies were not a political party) in the
>>> twenties isn't happening to Greens or Libertarians in the United States and
>>> more than Evangelical Christians are being persecuted, here. The fact is
>>> that at the present time the solutions that minor political parties espouse
>>> simply are not appealing the the American voter.
>>
>> I think it still happens to some extent. How otherwise does one explain
>>
>> http://www.alternet.org/story/14563/
>
>Is it your view that this list of people who are not allowed to fly is a
>tool for the ruthless oppression (to use Engineer's phrase) of minor
>political parties that the Republicans and Democrats fear threaten their
>strangle hold on electoral politics in the United States?
Well to the extent that the Green party doesn't represent a considerable
threat yet, I doubt that people who have vested interests in not seeing the
Green party replace either the democrats or the republicans feel the
need to ruthlessly oppress yet. So your question is somewhat off target.
I think the powers that be will be sufficiently ruthless to accomplish
ends, but not so ruthless as to needlessly appear ruthless.
I do believe that the targetting of green party members described in the
article was almost certainly politically motivated and vindictive. I find
your suggestion that the existing administration is other than ruthless,
decidedly strange given the willingness of that administration to be
ruthless, be it in terms of character asassination (swiftboating Kerry for
example), compromising national security (outing a covert CIA operative),
electoral fraud which has been widely documented, illegal use of phone
records, shipping Canadians off to Syria to endure a full year of torture,
or whatever.
Don't you think it pretty ruthless to invade Iraq. Isn't it pretty ruthless
to consider invading Iran, in the hope of that improving ones current 29%
approval rating.
Do you personally think that there is anything that George Bush would not
sanction if he thought there was profit to be made from sanctioning it.
If not, is not that a pretty good definition of "ruthless".
Ian
Yowie
news:-6KdnfAYNIdCRvjZ...@comcast.com...
> In article <e43kh5$htu$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>,
> ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote:
>>Is the US political system as of today a level
>>playing field, or is it a stacked game?
>
> Heavily stacked. Part of this is in laws designed to overwhelmingly favor
> parties that are historically strong, and part of it is the media. The
> media anoint certain candidates as "serious" candidates and refuse to
> provide meaningful coverage to other candidates. This is largely a
> self-fulfilling prophecy as the other candidates generally don't have the
> means to get their ideas across effectively in the face of a media
> blackout. And even "good government" groups like the League of Women
> Voters
> help stack it by usually refusing to allow anyone other than the media
> anointed ones in their debates.
>
nobody - a poor working class nobody at that - start her own political party
and get enough groundswell that it got a few seats in parliament and in the
senate, and is now a legitimate enough minor party that the Big Two have to
pay attention to it. Tehre certainly was dirty politics involved - she was
sent to jail on a technicality regarding funding - but that only increased
the popularity of the party and her own fame. The individual has dropped out
of politics as such now (she is now a celebrity doing celebrity things (like
'Dancing with the Stars'), but the political party she founded is still
perfectly viable and still gets enough votes so that the two major parties
have to take into account the way that party's preferences will be
allocated.
To give her her dues, she also repaid all the money that she allegedly owed
when she was sent to jail out of her own pocket and lost her family home
because of it. She didn't ask the party to cough up the cash. I say
'allegedly' owed because I firmly believe that it was a genuine mistake on
her part because setting up a new political party doesn't exactly have a
"How to" guide book, and the problem was that she'd received funding from
the government (as all new political parties do) but she'd registered the
party under a name that didn't quite match the name she had got the original
500 signatures to found hte party under. She'd collected the signatures
under the name "One Nation" but the party ended up being formally registered
as "Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party" (or the reverse, can't remember).
Some enterprisign person who objected to her politics (and there were many)
found the obscure bt of legislation, and many of hte major players from both
of the 2 big parties funded an 'investigation'. The took her to court, and
by the letter of the law, she was guilty. She received 10 months jail time,
and then coldn't run for senate because she had a criminal record.
Thats when Australians knew that the Big Two were willing to play dirty, and
also knew hat, despite the problems Pauline Hanson faced, that it was indeed
possible for a 'nobody' to start a successful political party of their own.
As youcan tell, I have great admiratio fo the woman, even whilst I detest
the political views she holds.
Yowie
Timothy Travis
On 5/13/06 4:47 PM, in article e45r61$nkc$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca, "Ian
Davis" <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
You entire response is entirely off target.
> I find
> your suggestion that the existing administration is other than ruthless,
> decidedly strange
Never made such a suggestion. We were talking about how the major political
parties oppress the minor ones (see above snips).
>given the willingness of that administration to be
> ruthless, be it in terms of character asassination (swiftboating Kerry for
> example),
Nothing to do with the two major political parties ruthlessly oppressing
minor parties ...
>compromising national security (outing a covert CIA operative),
Nothing to do with the two major political parties ruthlessly oppressing
minor parties...
> electoral fraud which has been widely documented,
Nothing to do here with two major political parties ruthlessly oppressing
minor parties--here one oppressed the other...
>illegal use of phone
> records,
Nothing to do with the two major political parties ruthlessly oppressing
minor ones...
>shipping Canadians off to Syria to endure a full year of torture,
Nothing to do with the two major political parties ruthlessly oppressing
minor ones...
> or whatever.
Maybe something to do with the two major political parties ruthlessly
oppressing minor ones--cannot tell.
>
> Don't you think it pretty ruthless to invade Iraq. Isn't it pretty ruthless
> to consider invading Iran, in the hope of that improving ones current 29%
> approval rating.
Nothing to do with the two major political parties ruthlessly oppressing
minor ones...
>
> Do you personally think that there is anything that George Bush would not
> sanction if he thought there was profit to be made from sanctioning it.
> If not, is not that a pretty good definition of "ruthless".
Nothing to do with the two major political parties ruthlessly oppressing
minor ones...
We were talking about the major political parties being ruthless in their
oppression of minor political parties--none of this other stuff.
Ian Davis
Here there are two noteworthy stories. Back in the 1980's the conservatives
seeking enough support to get elected got into bed with the Quebec separatists.
When the separatists expectations were not meet Lucian Buchard who was then
a cabinet minister in the conservative government quit to found his own
party which he called the Bloc Quebequoir.. in the next election that
newly formed party became the official opposition, while the conservatives
who went into that next election with a majority government came out of it
with two seats. The party also established a provincial wing and that
party has dominated provincial politics in Quebec since.
The second is the formation of the "reform" party modelled to some extent
on the US reform party. It rapidly went from being a new party to being
the party which split the conservative vote, for several subsequent
elections. For the longest time the conservative party refused to join
the new upstart party, while the reform party refused to disband itself.
Ultimately the two parties seeing that splitting the vote wasn't exactly
smart did unite, when the leader of the conservative party elected on
a promise not to reunite then betrayed the one whose support he had
recieved in return for this public promise. Initially the new party
was to be called the "Canadian Reform Alliance Party", but very sadly
some bright spark realised that perhaps a party known as CRAP might
be a bummer, so the name got change. But essentially the old
conservative party around since the foundation of Canada gave up the
ghost to the new startup party.
Ian
Ian Davis
Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>We were talking about the major political parties being ruthless in their
>oppression of minor political parties--none of this other stuff.
>
You are free to insist that I don't generalise to ask whether you do or
do not consider the major political parties ruthless, but I am as free
to note that this is a issue you seem reluctant to address. If you
wanted to hear what I thought you've heard it. If however you merely
wanted to prove me wrong, and yourself right, which you leave me thinking
given the tone of your response above, I consider the error here entirely
yours.
Ian
Engineer
Timothy Travis wrote:
>If there is a flaw in the Constitutional system what is the remedy? As is
>well known, I believe that limits on campaign contributions (only human
>beings, say, can make campaign contributions and each is limited to $100 per
>candidate per election--this limit imposed upon the candidate him or
>herself, as well) would go a long way toward leveling the playing fields.
>I'm not a fan of spending limits or public funding of elections. Do you
>believe that spending money is speech, Constitutionally speaking?
Spending money to propagate speech is protected by the first
ammendment of the US Constitution. Limits on campaign contributions
are unconstitutional. The solution to the problem is to limit the
power of government. If they don't have anything to sell, restricions
on buyers will not be needed.
>Everything wrong in this world is not the fault of government. Anyone who
>repeats over and over and over that it is, as it is written, "not going to
>make it with anyone, anyhow."
In the interest of accuracy and the testimony of truth, please provide
a reference proving your assertion that someone claimed that everything
wrong in this world is the fault of government.
Engineer
Yowie wrote:
>Thankfully we here in Australia have, in recent hsitory, seen an absolute
>nobody - a poor working class nobody at that - start her own political party
>and get enough groundswell that it got a few seats in parliament and in the
>senate, and is now a legitimate enough minor party that the Big Two have to
>pay attention to it.
Just out of curiousity, do you folks have televised debates, and was
she barred from participating in them? Or from even sitting quitely
in the audience?
Engineer
Timothy Travis wrote:
>
>Ian Davis wrote:
>
>> I find your suggestion that the existing administration is other
>> than ruthless, decidedly strange
>
>Never made such a suggestion. We were talking about how the major
>political parties oppress the minor ones
You actually imagine the the Bush administration does not use its
power to helpthose parties that work 24/7 to increase his power
and suppress those that don't?
How do *you* explain the fact that all of those other democracies
have multiple parties with varied policies while the US has two
parties that are identical twins of each other?
Timothy Travis
On 5/13/06 6:52 PM, in article e462gq$rk9$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca, "Ian
Davis" <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
Of course you do, that way your objective--to show everyone how much smarter
and how much better you are at arguing than I am--is accomplished.
I am reluctant to get sucked into spending a lot of time and energy going
down every path you divert us on to as you are find yourself unable to
defend things that you say and so must change the subject.
You and Engineer started off about how minor political parties are
ruthlessly oppressed by the major political parties which feel threatened by
their existence and two e mails later you are making fun of me because,
according to you, I don't think the war in Iraq is ruthless.
If you want dialogue on a subject I'll be glad to provide it. But if you
just want to play games play with others, here, who are about the same
thing.
Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon
Timothy Travis
On 5/13/06 9:25 PM, in article 9KGdnRqSyr6...@giganews.com,
"Engineer" <inv...@example.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Timothy Travis wrote:
>>
>> Ian Davis wrote:
>>
>>> I find your suggestion that the existing administration is other
>>> than ruthless, decidedly strange
>>
>> Never made such a suggestion. We were talking about how the major
>> political parties oppress the minor ones
>
> You actually imagine the the Bush administration does not use its
> power to helpthose parties that work 24/7 to increase his power
> and suppress those that don't?
No, I don't. But that isn't the same as saying that the major political
parties conspire to ruthless oppress minor parties. They ruthlessly
conspire against one another. Greens and Libertarians are no threat to the
Democrats and Republicans because they do not espouse anything that those
who have bought into the American political consensus are interested in.
Remember, we were talking about how the major political parties oppress the
minor ones. You aren't talking about that, anymore.
>
> How do *you* explain the fact that all of those other democracies
> have multiple parties with varied policies while the US has two
> parties that are identical twins of each other?
I've done that in the last few e mails in this string--major parties in the
US co opt anything that minor parties come up with that has any traction
with voters. As many times as you ask this question, pretending that I have
not answered it, is the number of times I can, again, post the answer--an
answer that an analysis of Republican and Democratic Party platforms over
time proves. The New Deal was a cooptation of the left wing stuff that
people were going for in wholesale numbers during the Depression due to the
failure of the so called free market. It was that cooptation that killed
the socialist Left of the thirties, not any ruthless repression. All of the
major issues that challenged the major parties in the sixties are now part
of the mainstream American political consensus. It was Nixon's cooptation
of the anti draft sentiment that defused the Left of the sixties, not any
wholesale repression of anyone starting a new political party.
You and Ian keep throwing out tangential stuff but cannot come up with
examples of ruthless oppression of Greens and Libertarians or other minor
parties. You both keep drifting off of the subject and coming up with
examples of ruthlessness that have nothing to do with minor parties.
I jumped in when you both started comparing the US government to that in
Cuba and in the Soviet Union because they "ruthlessly oppressed" minority
parties. This is a ludicrous claim and your inability--either one of
you--to defend it with any thing other than diversion and distraction after
several posts just tells me it's time to disengage--there is nothing here to
learn.
Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon
Ian Davis
Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>On 5/13/06 6:52 PM, in article e462gq$rk9$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca, "Ian
>Davis" <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>> In article <C08BCB33.2C96%qsp...@comcast.net>,
>> Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> We were talking about the major political parties being ruthless in their
>>> oppression of minor political parties--none of this other stuff.
>>>
>>
>> You are free to insist that I don't generalise to ask whether you do or
>> do not consider the major political parties ruthless, but I am as free
>> to note that this is a issue you seem reluctant to address. If you
>> wanted to hear what I thought you've heard it. If however you merely
>> wanted to prove me wrong, and yourself right, which you leave me thinking
>> given the tone of your response above, I consider the error here entirely
>> yours.
>
>
>Of course you do, that way your objective--to show everyone how much smarter
>and how much better you are at arguing than I am--is accomplished.
>
That was not my objective. My objective was to answer the questions you
posed which I endevoured to do to the best of my ability. It was you who
then got shirty -- not I.
>I am reluctant to get sucked into spending a lot of time and energy going
>down every path you divert us on to as you are find yourself unable to
>defend things that you say and so must change the subject.
I'm not sure that I have to defend what I say when others here agree with
me. You are the one who seems to be out on a limb.
>You and Engineer started off about how minor political parties are
>ruthlessly oppressed by the major political parties which feel threatened by
>their existence and two e mails later you are making fun of me because,
>according to you, I don't think the war in Iraq is ruthless.
>
I did not.. I started out by saying that I saw a greater correlation between
the US two party state and the USSR one party state than many perhaps would
conceed. Then when you said that everything was hunky dory with the US
political system I pointed you at an article which suggested quite strongly
that people are still today the target of harassment in the US because of
their desire to see parties other than the republican/democratic ones become
better represented. The article troubles me.. I am suprised it seemingly
did not trouble you.
It is you who are putting all sorts of words in my mouth that I never
uttered and it is you right now who seems to me to be being more than a
little abnoxious. This as I said earlier is your error. I think you
make a mistake in thinking that either of us "winning" a debate on any
issue under the sun, is anywhere near as important to how our future
selves remember our past conduct. Appearing the smarter or the cleverer
is not something I have any strong desire to accomplish. I have no need
to convince people that I can think. But being today someone who I will
not be ashamed of tomorrow, still seems like a worthy goal.
You got off on the wrong foot in demanding that I said whether I agreed or
disagreed with Engineers position. You wanted to enlarge your argument
with Engineer by dragging me in as his second. I'm no bodies second but
my own.
I'm speaking plainly not to further annoy you but rather in the hope that
you might come to your senses.
>If you want dialogue on a subject I'll be glad to provide it. But if you
>just want to play games play with others, here, who are about the same
>thing.
>
Go back and read what I wrote, post by post. I don't think it is playing
games to raise the issue of whether US administrations are ruthless when
you object to the notion that they might do things precisely because they
are ruthless.
Ian.
Timothy Travis
On 5/13/06 10:19 PM, in article e46eko$2ji$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca, "Ian
Davis" <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> conceed. Then when you said that everything was hunky dory with the US...
You just make me up as you go along...
I'm done.
Yowie
news:9KGdnRuSyr4...@giganews.com...
We have televised debates, televised interviews etc etc etc... and she was
quite vocal. Embrassingly so. She was never banned from participating or
attending (although people don't tend to heckle as such things)
She's quit Politics now, probably for hte best all round. She didnt' play
politics very well, too up front and honest about everything, and didn't
know how to waffle on or carefully avoide answering questions. She was very
much a 'regualr person', just with a passion to change the wrongs she
erceive din her country.
Yowie
Engineer
Timothy Travis wrote:
>Remember, we were talking about [...] You aren't talking about
>that, anymore. [...] You and Ian keep throwing out tangential
>stuff
Different people see different aspects of any situation, and
have every right to explore those dfferent aspects in an online
conversation. As convenient as it might be to be able to dictate
what other people talk about, that power hs not been given to you,
and thus your choices are to either engage their interest by
writing interesting posts on the narrow range of subjects you
wish to discuss, follow the flow as the topic drifts, or withdraw.
>You and Ian keep throwing out tangential stuff but cannot come
>up with examples of ruthless oppression of Greens and Libertarians
>or other minor parties.
Asked and anwered. To recap:
Example #1: Not allowing third party candidates to participate in
the nationally televised presidential debates.
Example #2: Not allowing third party candidates to sit quitely in
the audience of the nationally televised presidential debates for
fear that the cameras will show their faces.
There are other examples. Read the back posts and you will find them.
You might also look at the following lawsuit:
http://www.realcampaignreform.org/cloud_dec.htm
>I jumped in when you both started comparing the US government to that in
>Cuba and in the Soviet Union because they "ruthlessly oppressed" minority
>parties. This is a ludicrous claim and your inability--either one of
>you--to defend it with any thing other than diversion and distraction after
>several posts just tells me it's time to disengage--there is nothing here to
>learn.
May I suggest that you apply the same standards to yourself?
When you made the following rather ludicrous claim:
"Everything wrong in this world is not the fault of government.
Anyone who repeats over and over and over that it is, as it
is written, 'not going to make it with anyone, anyhow.'"
...and I requested, in the interest of accuracy and the testimony
of truth, that you please provide a reference proving your assertion
that someone claimed that everything wrong in this world is the
fault of government, you showed an inability to defend it with
anything other than diversion and distraction.
Or is it only Ian who gets everything he said analysed, dissected,
and challanged?
>just tells me it's time to disengage
...
>I am reluctant to get sucked into spending a lot of time and
>energy going down every path you divert us on
...
>I'm done.
"In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade;
And he carries the reminders, of every glove that layed him down,
or cut him till he cried out, in his anger and his shame;
'I am leaving, I am leaving', But the fighter still remains..."
-"The Boxer", by Simon & Garfunkel
Yowie
Whoa there. Of the democracies I am familiar with, one of the major
complaints is that the two major parties have become so similar over the
last 10 - 20 years that there is not enough difference to make voting for
either meaningful.
Sure, we in Australia have minor parties. In order of power and influence,
they are The National Party (always forms a coalition with The Liberal Pary,
and therefore not really a third party in its own right), The Greens, The
Democrats (not even remotely related to the the American Democrats), One
Nation and Family First (a Christian party). There are also some
independants.
Due to the difference in election procedure between the lower house and the
senate, its rare for a minor party to get a seat in the lower house.
However, the Senate tends to get quite a few minor parties and independants,
and they tend to hold the balance of power. For a long while, the Democrats
(which were the biggest 'minor' party in the 80's ad early 90's) actually
ran on the ticket "Keeping the bastards honest".
The only major difference we have from the two-party biarchy in the USA is
that a vote fro a minor party in the House of Representatives (lower house)
isn't a totally wasted voe, as we have a preference system.
Yowie
SMcFarlane
"Yowie" <yowie9644....@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:4cij7bF...@individual.net...
>
> This is probably cultural. I didn't care that Clinton was fooling arund
> with
> Monica. I agree there *might* have been a power abuse, but then again,
> there
> might not have been. Office romances (in or out of marraige) happen. As I
> said at the time, Clinton isn't the first and won't be the last man to
> fool
> around with a pretty young girl at the office, and the whole event seemed
> totally disproportional to t e amount of media coverage and indeed outrage
> that it generated, especially comared to the seriousness of other events
> inthe world at the time. My only conclusion is that American people have a
> huge cultural hang up about sex. Just like the 'outrage' of Janet
> jackson's
> nipple. BFD (big .... deal) to the rest of us, who cares about a nipple or
> some guy f*cking an intern, unless the individuals have set themselves up
> as
> the paragons of sexual virtue, why the fuss? It snot like its going to
> cause
> the death of thousands of innocent people, is it?
It's very interesting to me that this still gets painted (in America and
apperantly abroud) as being about sex. Long debates about the Lewinsky
affair can and have gone on about it as if the matter at hand was whether
extramarital sex disqualifies someone from acting as President. It's
preposterous to suppose so, but equally preposterous to suggest that this
was ever the question. It is simply a work of cynical beauty that
politicos were able to frame the 'debate' around this non-issue, almost
completely deflecting from attention the real issues involved. That remains
true no matter how one ultimately resolves those issues personally. Hats
off to the politicos. In a way, it's always nice to admire the work of
those who are truly geniuses at what they do, even if it is a bit shady.
Admittedly, sexual mores were important for many Americans, but for a lot of
people who were offended by Clinton's behavior it had zilch to do with that.
It is not very likely that any American president would ever be impeached
for extramarital sex - or for that matter sex with White House staffers, as
sordid as that might become. It remains an open question to me whether
Clinton's behavior rose to the level of impeachment; it is beyond question
(to me) that his behavior was flawed to an extent that certainly raises a
legitimate question of his fitness to be the ultimate executor of American
law.
Why exactly do you think Clinton was impeached, and what precisely got the
ball rolling? I'll wager a guess that you can't correctly answer this
without first doing a bit of Google-research...
Scott
chris....@gmail.com
SMcFarlane wrote:
> Admittedly, sexual mores were important for many Americans, but for a lot of
> people who were offended by Clinton's behavior it had zilch to do with that.
> It is not very likely that any American president would ever be impeached
> for extramarital sex - or for that matter sex with White House staffers, as
> sordid as that might become. It remains an open question to me whether
> Clinton's behavior rose to the level of impeachment; it is beyond question
> (to me) that his behavior was flawed to an extent that certainly raises a
> legitimate question of his fitness to be the ultimate executor of American
> law.
>
> Why exactly do you think Clinton was impeached, and what precisely got the
> ball rolling? I'll wager a guess that you can't correctly answer this
> without first doing a bit of Google-research...
You mean the perjury thing or is this a trick question?
As a sex educator, I can tell you that while Clinton's definition of
intercourse differs from the scientific line, it's shared by many,
likely most, younger people in America. Inquisitors need to ask "have
you given or received oral, anal, or vaginal sex" if they want the
answer to that particular question.
However, if we expect impeccable honesty from presidents and other
elected officials, shouldn't we apply the standard even when they are
not under oath? What if we stopped sanctioning distortions that fall
within the law but clearly are intended to mislead?
Presidential candidates claim superiority of character. But most of us
apply different standards for different kinds of lies. I don't know if
betraying a spouse or an intern is worse than betraying the citizenry.
Both are common enough. However, my own continuum of badness suggests
that, as others have said, lying to justify a preemptive war seems
worse than lying to save your own face.
What is your standard for fitness? The courage to take responsibility
for one's failures as well as one's triumphs would be nice, but it
doesn't seem to be permitted outside of TV's version of the West Wing.
Christine
Ian Davis
<chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Presidential candidates claim superiority of character. But most of us
>apply different standards for different kinds of lies. I don't know if
>betraying a spouse or an intern is worse than betraying the citizenry.
>Both are common enough. However, my own continuum of badness suggests
>that, as others have said, lying to justify a preemptive war seems
>worse than lying to save your own face.
A lot of people are putting the emphasis on "lying" as being why it
was wrong to start a preemptive war. Personally I consider starting a
pre-emptive war a far greater crime than the lying in order to start
one. As long as the focus is on the lying I fear that people will
continue to operate under the presumption that if no lying is involved
then it is somehow ok to start a pre-emptive war.
We don't make the central crime when one rapes another the issue of whether
they lied or did not lie in order to do so. Why make it so when the crime
is one of having raped entire nations.
Ian
chris....@gmail.com
Ian Davis wrote:
> In article <1147701723.8...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >Presidential candidates claim superiority of character. But most of us
> >apply different standards for different kinds of lies. I don't know if
> >betraying a spouse or an intern is worse than betraying the citizenry.
> >Both are common enough. However, my own continuum of badness suggests
> >that, as others have said, lying to justify a preemptive war seems
> >worse than lying to save your own face.
>
> A lot of people are putting the emphasis on "lying" as being why it
> was wrong to start a preemptive war. Personally I consider starting a
> pre-emptive war a far greater crime than the lying in order to start
> one. As long as the focus is on the lying I fear that people will
> continue to operate under the presumption that if no lying is involved
> then it is somehow ok to start a pre-emptive war.
Actually, I was just addressing the issues in this sub-discussion,
which is exploring notions related to the role of cultural memes (sex
and character) in choosing leaders. Or something of the sort <g>.
I think your logic strains a little here to make a point. Lying is one
factor in waging preemptive war, especially in the use of propaganda to
build and sustain support.
And it's hard to imagine a way to eliminate lying.
As to starting preemptive wars when there is no lying, collusion, or
attempts to surpress information, well, it's pretty hard to imagine
that happening. Suppose the administration had said look, we need to
solidify our stake in the Middle East for economic reasons--especially
related to oil--and we want to protect Israel and stop Hussein in his
tracks and put in place another government that favors us more. It's
part of our plan to maintain world power through military force; we
can't figure out how to do it any other way.
It would make me feel better about the government because at least we'd
know what we are dealing with. But it would not make me support the
ideas as justifications for war.
That's not to say many people wouldn't cheer the approach on anyway. I
think they have a right to do that. But I don't think the majority
would.
> We don't make the central crime when one rapes another the issue of whether
> they lied or did not lie in order to do so. Why make it so when the crime
> is one of having raped entire nations.
The use of metaphor in this case makes it harder, not easier, to think
about the issues because we have to support or refute the idea of
whether rape is a valid descriptor and whether the two situations are
really comparable.
Even so, the central problem of rape isn't rape. It's believing that
our needs are more important than other people's needs and that we can
inflict harm on others to fulfill our desires.
Isn't that true of preemptive war as well? But in war, you need the
cooperation of many, and therein lies the role of manipulating
information.
Christine
Ian Davis
<chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Ian Davis wrote:
>> In article <1147701723.8...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
>> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >Presidential candidates claim superiority of character. But most of us
>> >apply different standards for different kinds of lies. I don't know if
>> >betraying a spouse or an intern is worse than betraying the citizenry.
>> >Both are common enough. However, my own continuum of badness suggests
>> >that, as others have said, lying to justify a preemptive war seems
>> >worse than lying to save your own face.
>>
>> A lot of people are putting the emphasis on "lying" as being why it
>> was wrong to start a preemptive war. Personally I consider starting a
>> pre-emptive war a far greater crime than the lying in order to start
>> one. As long as the focus is on the lying I fear that people will
>> continue to operate under the presumption that if no lying is involved
>> then it is somehow ok to start a pre-emptive war.
>
>Actually, I was just addressing the issues in this sub-discussion,
>which is exploring notions related to the role of cultural memes (sex
>and character) in choosing leaders. Or something of the sort <g>.
>
>I think your logic strains a little here to make a point. Lying is one
>factor in waging preemptive war, especially in the use of propaganda to
>build and sustain support.
There is no absolute requirement that one need lie in order to wage a
preemptive war. Consider the case where Iraq really had been armed with
nuclear weapons that it deliver to targets of its choosing. To my mind
that would no more have excused the starting of a pre-emptive war against
Iraq than it would have excused the US starting a pre-emptive against the
USSR during the height of the cold war.
There is a rather strange dynamic here. I think most people would have
considered it rather more insane to pre-emptively attack the USSR during
the height of the cold war, than it deemed it to be when done to Iraq.
Thus I rather suspect that at least at the subconscious level people
knew or at least believed/trusted that Iraq was not capable of retaliating
in a fashion similar to that which might have been expected had the US
invaded the USSR. Thus to some extent people knew before the war in
Iraq started that the WMD issue was being hyped, because had they not
they would have been far more concerned about starting that pre-emptive
war than they were at the time.
>
>And it's hard to imagine a way to eliminate lying.
>
Don't eliminate the lying -- eliminate nations starting pre-emtive wars
period -- doesn't matter the provocation.. doesn't matter the risk. It
is to my mind better to take the risk of the other side initiating the
war, regardless of the possible cost of allowing that to happen, than
to take the risk of starting a pre-emptive war that might never have
been a war in the first place if you hadn't started it.
Establishing the principle that no one may start a pre-emptive war makes
us all safer. Establishing the principle that any may, makes us all less
safe.
> As to starting preemptive wars when there is no lying, collusion, or
>attempts to surpress information, well, it's pretty hard to imagine
>that happening. Suppose the administration had said look, we need to
>solidify our stake in the Middle East for economic reasons--especially
>related to oil--and we want to protect Israel and stop Hussein in his
>tracks and put in place another government that favors us more. It's
>part of our plan to maintain world power through military force; we
>can't figure out how to do it any other way.
>
>It would make me feel better about the government because at least we'd
>know what we are dealing with. But it would not make me support the
>ideas as justifications for war.
Right, which is why I think the focus on the being "lied" into war, the
wrong focus. The focus should be on the being "lead" into war. Strangely
I rather think with hindsight that had the administration told the truth,
and had that truth as then told been supported by the US public, it would
not now be the administration which was to be held accountable for all that
followed. Lying is to my mind short term gain for long term pain.
>
>That's not to say many people wouldn't cheer the approach on anyway. I
>think they have a right to do that. But I don't think the majority
>would.
>
Hard to say.. I wonder what the Germans were told about Hitlers rational
for invading other countries. I have an impression that the German people
had a better up front grasp of why Germany went to war, than might be
the case v.v. Iraq. I have difficulty imagining that Hitler could sell
an invasion and occupation of France on the grounds that France posed
an ever present threat to Germany on the one hand, or that the French
people would welcome the German troops with kisses and flowers. I think
that Goebels would have been in awe of how effectively ridiculous propaganda
could be sold in the US. Mind you, he did say that the mechanism for
starting a war was to firstly name an imagined threat, and then to get people
to fear that threat.. which is what was actually done, and Goebel's claimed
that this always worked.
>> We don't make the central crime when one rapes another the issue of whether
>> they lied or did not lie in order to do so. Why make it so when the crime
>> is one of having raped entire nations.
>
>The use of metaphor in this case makes it harder, not easier, to think
>about the issues because we have to support or refute the idea of
>whether rape is a valid descriptor and whether the two situations are
>really comparable.
>
Perhaps but it is hard to come up with any analogy to convey the absolute
horror of what war does to entire populations, short of coming up with the
worst horror that can be done to an individual, make that a horror that is
done not once, but daily for years on end, and then compare and contrast
the resulting horror to the worst horror that one might imagine one human
being being capable of inflicting on another human being.
And then having done all that try calling the lesser crime a crime, and the
greater crime no crime.
Consider:
["PS: Intisar's brother was killed. She found his body in the hospital's fridge.
He was slaughtered. She said that she is leaving. Well, sorry to tell you
this, but you know how the situation is."
Intisar is the pharmacist who accompanied Zeina while shooting the film in
Qaiem.
I did not reply. I could not. Words, just like Iraqi young men, went missing.
Kidnapped, shot in the head, killed, slaughtered , tortured, drilled, bound
and gagged, bodies, disappeared ... Silence replaced emotions. Silence became
our way to mourn our dead: brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, husbands and
children; our unnamed, uncounted dead. Unless ...
Despite my silence, I received her second email this morning:
Thank you, Haifa, I am happy that you still have hope. The resistance, and
the spirit of resistance, will go on. History says so. But it tears my heart
every moment to see the wonderful Iraqi young men slaughtered like sheep -
even worse, like insects.
It tortures me, like all Iraqi mothers, to wait by seconds for my daughters
to come back home from college. Nightmares fill our nights. And what is there
on the horizon? Nothing. Just dark, bleak pictures of smaller, powerless,
backward entities controlled by you-know-who ... This is the future of Iraq
... Actually, there will be no more Iraq: they have to find another name.
I wish I could have more hope; at least to feel better than I do. But I read
almost all the Iraqi papers every day. I listen to people talk, and I watch.
It is difficult for me to find hope in what I see. As a woman, I can tell
you that we have no hope, no matter what.
Sorry again for this very down feeling. I wrote this reply yesterday very
late at night but decided not to send it. I thought that maybe I would feel
better in the morning and write in a better way. But it was not the night:
it was the reality, which is darker than Baghdad's night these days. Well,
I think you already know what I've just said. Best, Zeina.
]
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/haifa_zangana/2006/05/they_are_killing_iraqi_women.html
>Even so, the central problem of rape isn't rape. It's believing that
>our needs are more important than other people's needs and that we can
>inflict harm on others to fulfill our desires.
>
That is the left wing take. The right wing take is that the central problem
is that there will always be people who hold these beliefs, and that therefore
they need to be controlled, constrained, or denied the opportunity to rape.
I take more of the right wing position, since I don't hold to the communist
belief that the perfect society can create the perfect man. I don't want
to see the current US leadership replaced with people who put other peoples
interests before there own, though clearly that would be "nice". I want
to see that even bad leadership operates within systems that thwart their
natural desire to do harm. Ergo, I wish to see the US draft laws that veto
the rights of a commander in chief to ever initiate a pre-emptive war of
aggression against any other nation, period.
>Isn't that true of preemptive war as well? But in war, you need the
>cooperation of many, and therein lies the role of manipulating
>information.
>
Yes, but not all manipulation of information is bad. We can mold our behaviour
to rules that we make up as we go along. That is the history of the evolution
of civilisation. Create a strong enough conviction that the very notion of
starting a war of aggression puts one on par with Nazi Germany, and the
people are going to be far harder to lead to war.
Ian
JEB
news:e4a2vo$3g3$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>
> A lot of people are putting the emphasis on "lying" as being why it
> was wrong to start a preemptive war. Personally I consider starting a
> pre-emptive war a far greater crime than the lying in order to start
> one. As long as the focus is on the lying I fear that people will
> continue to operate under the presumption that if no lying is involved
> then it is somehow ok to start a pre-emptive war.
>
I think the lying was at least as bad as the actual deed. If someone
lied and convinced you that an attack on your wife and child was
imminent beyond all reaonable doubt, you would likely agree to much
different countermeasures than you would if you were not told and did
not believe such. I have serious doubt that Congress or the American
people would have supported any war, let alone a preemptive one, against
Iraq given an honest assessment of the real situation.
That does not exonerate Congress. They were in a position to demand good
information, and force forbearance. I'm persuaded many of them knew
better, but were very happy for "credible" evidence to provide them
cover. Very few were politically brave enough to publicly question the
action, because fears of many Americans were exaggerated to
irrationality by the deception.
In a matter where people are asked to die, to send others to die, or to
kill others, it seems little enough that they be given the opportunity
to make their judgments based on truth. This is not to say that this
happens often. Historically, war is often the bastard child of a lie.
Presume that people had been told the truth and gone to war anyhow. Then
the American people would share the blame of an accomplice rather than
the blame of negligence. In most courts that would make a difference.
What is more disgusting than the lie is that it still persists as truth
in the minds of many, and for many others does not rise to the level of
demanding accountability. My faith in the general robustness of the
American culture to support democracy in the long term has been lost.
But then the reality of living is that everything changes, decays and is
replaced by something new.
jeb
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote in
>news:e4a2vo$3g3$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>
>
>>
>> A lot of people are putting the emphasis on "lying" as being why it
>> was wrong to start a preemptive war. Personally I consider starting a
>> pre-emptive war a far greater crime than the lying in order to start
>> one. As long as the focus is on the lying I fear that people will
>> continue to operate under the presumption that if no lying is involved
>> then it is somehow ok to start a pre-emptive war.
>>
>
>I think the lying was at least as bad as the actual deed. If someone
>lied and convinced you that an attack on your wife and child was
>imminent beyond all reaonable doubt, you would likely agree to much
>different countermeasures than you would if you were not told and did
>not believe such. I have serious doubt that Congress or the American
>people would have supported any war, let alone a preemptive one, against
>Iraq given an honest assessment of the real situation.
>
Trying to put your analogy in a framework where I can relate to it, I
think of an individual I know who as a consequence of mental illness
does pose an ever present potential threat to both me and my family.
Posing a potential threat to someone is in my mind not a crime. Thus
I personally was comforted to read that at least one American agreed
with my position in writing:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0511-31.htm
and that another had the courage to vote against the execution of a man
guilty of no reported crime, which would have been a very black mark on
the US justice system.
One doesn't deal with potential threats by pre-emptive strikes against
such perceived threats. To say otherwise is to say anyone can blow
anyone else away because of they way they looked at them. If the
perceived threat becomes a proven risk, then the situation changes,
but proof requires exactly the thing that one lives in fear of first
happening.
Thus the very notion that a lie can alter subsequent behaviour here is
I think wrong. It can of course in practice, but I don't think it should
do so in theory.
>That does not exonerate Congress. They were in a position to demand good
>information, and force forbearance. I'm persuaded many of them knew
>better, but were very happy for "credible" evidence to provide them
>cover. Very few were politically brave enough to publicly question the
>action, because fears of many Americans were exaggerated to
>irrationality by the deception.
>
Yes, and strange as it might seem my perception was that it was the few
republicans with a spine who were the ones doing the questioning... Ron
Paul, Pat Buchanan, etc. but that impression may be a consequence of my
own biased choice of where I go for news.
>In a matter where people are asked to die, to send others to die, or to
>kill others, it seems little enough that they be given the opportunity
>to make their judgments based on truth. This is not to say that this
>happens often. Historically, war is often the bastard child of a lie.
>
Yes they say that truth is the first casualty of war. That is why I contend
that one cannot justify pre-emptive war on the grounds of what is sold as
truth. There has to be a "no means no -- period" when it comes to the
very notion of pre-emptive war being right.
>Presume that people had been told the truth and gone to war anyhow. Then
>the American people would share the blame of an accomplice rather than
>the blame of negligence. In most courts that would make a difference.
>
Most certainly so.. so as I say it was the US administration which burned
itself in not being up front as to its real motivation and rational for
acting as it did. The entire political climate is government by the
dicotomy between "need to know" and "need to believe" but I think that
honest leadership would in the long term better serve its own ends than
the neo-con approach which is to think that morality is doing what one
wants and calling that right.
>What is more disgusting than the lie is that it still persists as truth
>in the minds of many, and for many others does not rise to the level of
>demanding accountability. My faith in the general robustness of the
>American culture to support democracy in the long term has been lost.
Yes, I would second this, though it is not clear that ones faith would
be better placed in other cultures. It was at the time (as an outsider,
and I stress one sees truth more clearly from a distance because one is
less subject to being personally manipulated) very hard to accept that
the majority of the population in the US could be convinced that the 9/11
attack had been orchestrated by Iraq, given that as far as I know there
is not one shred of evidence to support that assertion. Personally I find
the hardest part of believing things profoundly which the majority think
nuts (such as that Milosevic was never either a Hitler or a Hussein) is
this the vast majority of those who think otherwise are more than happy to
think otherwise without ever examining the foudations on which their
convictions are predicated. Of course that would be just as painful if it
was I who believed the truth to be the one at odds with reality, which
is in large part the rational given for dismissing points of view that
do not align with the accepted one.
>But then the reality of living is that everything changes, decays and is
>replaced by something new.
>
In your universe (universe view) but not in mine. In mine the universe
is frozen in a permanance that is immutable and in which there is neither
any special time or any special place. Your universe decays to be
replaced by something new. Mine sprang into being fully formed, with
it being no more than our illusion that time exists within it. We would
see the universe very very differently if we could move backwards and
forwards through time in it. There would be this mess labelled Iraq 2003
which one could visit as many times as one wished, and could curse for
all that followed it. This Iraq 2003 would not then be a minor thing that
could be put behind one and forgetten a thousand years hence. It would be
a blemish, that along with other countless blemishes through history marred
the marvel of this creation called our universe.
Ian
JEB
news:oKT9g.2758$mU6.2028@trnddc07:
> Admittedly, sexual mores were important for many Americans, but for a
> lot of people who were offended by Clinton's behavior it had zilch to
> do with that. It is not very likely that any American president would
> ever be impeached for extramarital sex - or for that matter sex with
> White House staffers, as sordid as that might become. It remains an
> open question to me whether Clinton's behavior rose to the level of
> impeachment; it is beyond question (to me) that his behavior was
> flawed to an extent that certainly raises a legitimate question of his
> fitness to be the ultimate executor of American law.
>
> Why exactly do you think Clinton was impeached, and what precisely got
> the ball rolling? I'll wager a guess that you can't correctly answer
> this without first doing a bit of Google-research...
>
I haven't googled, but as I recall the issue was perjury as a result of
a deposition in a suit by Paula Jones.
I think many Americans were convinced that George Bush perjured himself
in testimony about Iran Contra,and that Reagan lied about it, whether or
not he perjured himself. Those were matters of international
significance and had signficant consequences.
The Clinton perjury, if it were proven not be a lawyerly parsing of
words, had no such effect, except for a continuing erosion of respect
for the office. The sexual aspect was spicy, and in my area of the
country all the moral outrage was focused on that. Any perjury was just
an excuse for getting even for the embarrassment about the matter. The
matter was not at all in my mind in the same league as Nixon where
crimes were deliberately committed, and justice actively obstructed with
continuing orchestrated perjuries by many.
I have no sympathy with the moral puritans in my area. They are
embarrassed and shamed about sex, but feel no embarrassment at all about
preemptive wars, killing civilians in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo,
rendering of prisoners, etc. Perhaps my distaste clouds my judgment on
the matter.
jeb
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>The Clinton perjury, if it were proven not be a lawyerly parsing of
>words, had no such effect, except for a continuing erosion of respect
>for the office. The sexual aspect was spicy, and in my area of the
>country all the moral outrage was focused on that. Any perjury was just
>an excuse for getting even for the embarrassment about the matter. The
>matter was not at all in my mind in the same league as Nixon where
>crimes were deliberately committed, and justice actively obstructed with
>continuing orchestrated perjuries by many.
>
What is really bizarre about the perjury issue is that if I remember
correctly Dick Cheney was only prepared to testify to certain committees
if his testimony was not given under oath. It seems to me a very
strange world where peoples testimony is taken at face value when the
one giving it explicitly refused to give that same testimony under oath,
the better to avoid any question of later having committed perjury.
Is the notion that members of the administration may refuse to testify
before congress except under the condition that their testimony not be
given in a context where false testimony can be deemed perjury a recently
introduced one?
Bill Clinton could have saved himself very big headaches by likewise
insisting that he would testify about his relationship with Monica
but only if that testimony was not given under oath. Of course
testimony before a grand jury is not the same as testifying to
congress.. seems one may lie to one but not the other.
Or am I missing all the important stuff here..
Ian
SMcFarlane
<chris....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1147701723.8...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> You mean the perjury thing or is this a trick question?
>
Exactly. Nothing tricky about it, but it seems to have been lost in the
media haze.
> As a sex educator, I can tell you that while Clinton's definition of
> intercourse differs from the scientific line, it's shared by many,
> likely most, younger people in America. Inquisitors need to ask "have
> you given or received oral, anal, or vaginal sex" if they want the
> answer to that particular question.
And for this reason, it remains questionable that perjury could have been
established in a criminal case involving Clinton. I'm not up on the details
of his deposition or the law surrounding perjury well enough to say with any
certainty.
>
> However, if we expect impeccable honesty from presidents and other
> elected officials, shouldn't we apply the standard even when they are
> not under oath? What if we stopped sanctioning distortions that fall
> within the law but clearly are intended to mislead?
I don't think it's reasonable to expect impeccable honesty from anyone,
least of all politicians. But I do think a legitimate expectation is that
the President act lawfully. It would seem to undermine the position of
President more than most political offices were he to do otherwise.
Incidently, it is one thing to expect lapses in honesty from mere humans and
be willing to let it go when appropriate; it's another thing to sanction
those lapses (intentional misleading - a.k.a. distortion - is simple
dishonesty, IMO). I think very few people really sanction that sort of
thing. A great many are willing to tolerate it in a politician with whom
they disagree. Maybe worse, many are willing to deny it is even going on to
the point of silliness if the political affliations are right. That seems
to be a disease that affects both sides of the aisle more or less equally,
so far as I can tell.
> Presidential candidates claim superiority of character. But most of us
> apply different standards for different kinds of lies. I don't know if
> betraying a spouse or an intern is worse than betraying the citizenry.
> Both are common enough. However, my own continuum of badness suggests
> that, as others have said, lying to justify a preemptive war seems
> worse than lying to save your own face.
I would certainly agree with this. However, I would also like to point out
that for many the problem with Clinton was not even that he lied, but rather
the context in which he was alleged to have done so (i.e. under deposition).
There is also a technical issue differentiating the two situations. Lying
to justify a preemptive war is an excellent reason to not vote for a
President. But no matter how dispicable it may be, it would be stretching
things to the breaking point to suggest it would be grounds for impeachment.
I suppose the law around impeachment is not really well defined. Possibly
Timothy could chime in here. Perhaps a reasonable arguement could be made
that perjury does not constitute grounds for impeachment; however, it's
clearly in the ballpark.
>
> What is your standard for fitness? The courage to take responsibility
> for one's failures as well as one's triumphs would be nice, but it
> doesn't seem to be permitted outside of TV's version of the West Wing.
>
I think your criterion is a good one for measuring a President, but not so
much his fitness. Fitness implies 'those simple bear necessities'. You can
be a fit President, but a really lousy one all the same. J. Carter comes to
mind. He was clearly a fit President, but in many ways he was a terribly
ineffective one also (though he is, IMO much more importantly, a great man).
Richard Nixon was probably a very effective President, despite being way
unfit.
Scott
SMcFarlane
"JEB" <en...@erewhon.com> wrote in message
news:Xns97C4A868...@216.196.97.136...
> I haven't googled, but as I recall the issue was perjury as a result of
> a deposition in a suit by Paula Jones.
That's pretty much it.
>
> I think many Americans were convinced that George Bush perjured himself
> in testimony about Iran Contra,and that Reagan lied about it, whether or
> not he perjured himself. Those were matters of international
> significance and had signficant consequences.
>
> The Clinton perjury, if it were proven not be a lawyerly parsing of
> words, had no such effect, except for a continuing erosion of respect
> for the office. The sexual aspect was spicy, and in my area of the
> country all the moral outrage was focused on that. Any perjury was just
> an excuse for getting even for the embarrassment about the matter. The
> matter was not at all in my mind in the same league as Nixon where
> crimes were deliberately committed, and justice actively obstructed with
> continuing orchestrated perjuries by many.
>
> I have no sympathy with the moral puritans in my area. They are
> embarrassed and shamed about sex, but feel no embarrassment at all about
> preemptive wars, killing civilians in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo,
> rendering of prisoners, etc. Perhaps my distaste clouds my judgment on
> the matter.
I completely agree with you. There is beyond question a 'hierarchy of sin',
and Clinton's was really petty in comparision to the issues you mention.
Petty in all senses of the word. To me the whole affair was very
disappointing, because whether one disagreed with Clinton or not, he was
clearly a great leader and IMO one of the better post-WII Presidents. His
perjury, presuming he did perjure himself, really soured the whole thing.
All the more so considering how little was at stake...
Scott
SMcFarlane
"Ian Davis" <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
news:e4aqdl$jj6$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
>
> Bill Clinton could have saved himself very big headaches by likewise
> insisting that he would testify about his relationship with Monica
> but only if that testimony was not given under oath. Of course
> testimony before a grand jury is not the same as testifying to
> congress.. seems one may lie to one but not the other.
>
> Or am I missing all the important stuff here..
Possibly. I don't think Bill Clinton had any real choice but to testify
under oath. To refuse to do so would have created bigger problems for him
in the end. Contempt of court charges would be problematic in applying to a
sitting President, but theoretically I think it could happen. Simply the
spectacle of trying to claim executive immunity from the charge would have
been the more serious political nightmare for him.
Scott
Ian Davis
SMcFarlane <nos...@nothanks.com> wrote:
>
>Incidently, it is one thing to expect lapses in honesty from mere humans and
>be willing to let it go when appropriate; it's another thing to sanction
>those lapses (intentional misleading - a.k.a. distortion - is simple
>dishonesty, IMO). I think very few people really sanction that sort of
>thing.
So does the following article suggest a lapse in honesty or intentional
misleading - a.k.a. distortion.
-- You have a team of experts examine what are claimed to be mobile biological
labs, they report back unequivacally that they are not, the report is marked
secret, and two days later the president publically announces "we've found
the WMD".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101888_pf.html
Makes me think of the line -- "Who are you going to trust: me or the evidence
of your own eyes".
Ian.
SMcFarlane
>>Incidently, it is one thing to expect lapses in honesty from mere humans
>>and
>>be willing to let it go when appropriate; it's another thing to sanction
>>those lapses (intentional misleading - a.k.a. distortion - is simple
>>dishonesty, IMO). I think very few people really sanction that sort of
>>thing.
>
> So does the following article suggest a lapse in honesty or intentional
> misleading - a.k.a. distortion.
>
I think it more than suggests it. Of course, what really makes the Admin
look bad is the suggestion of pre-war manipulation. I have formed my
opinions as to whether that happened or not, but I don't know that the
evidence is strong enough to make strong statements. The difficulty is
absolutely ruling out self-deception on the part of Admin officials (that
is, they made themselves believe, as opposed to purposely attempting to make
us believe what they knew to be untrue).
Scott
chris....@gmail.com
Ian Davis wrote:
> In article <1147705702.7...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Even so, the central problem of rape isn't rape. It's believing that
> >our needs are more important than other people's needs and that we can
> >inflict harm on others to fulfill our desires.
> >
>
> That is the left wing take. The right wing take is that the central problem
> is that there will always be people who hold these beliefs, and that therefore
> they need to be controlled, constrained, or denied the opportunity to rape.
> I take more of the right wing position, since I don't hold to the communist
> belief that the perfect society can create the perfect man. I don't want
> to see the current US leadership replaced with people who put other peoples
> interests before there own, though clearly that would be "nice". I want
> to see that even bad leadership operates within systems that thwart their
> natural desire to do harm. Ergo, I wish to see the US draft laws that veto
> the rights of a commander in chief to ever initiate a pre-emptive war of
> aggression against any other nation, period.
It makes me uneasy that you conflate the "left wing take" with
Communism. That's an argumentative ploy to polarize people at extremes
and create an emotional response that may distract from finding some
sort of common ground.
You seem to place a lot of faith in restrictive rules, whether they be
related to war or individual human behaviors. To "control, constrain,
or deny the opportunity to rape" would require severe constraints on
the ability of women to move freely in society, a freedom many men take
for granted. It would put women under the protection of the state, a
protection enforced largely by men and not much different from
depending on male relatives for protection. It would harm the potential
victims more than the potential perpetrators. And it would enhance the
notion that men are beasts, unable to contol their impulses.
In effect, you ARE believing in a more perfect society created through
controls, restrictions, punishments.
Systems are creations of people. How well they work depends on those
who operate within them. And being clever animals, we are most
industrious when trying to get around something.
I don't believe in a perfect society or perfect people. But I do know
that if people are fed, educated, have work that allows them to raise
their families; if they have beauty and kindness in their lives and
some control over their own destinies, they are less likely to behave
"badly." Though I suppose if you keep them stunted by overwork and
undernutrition you could make them too weak to act badly very often. .
.
This doesn't explain why the privileged and powerful disturbingly
often seem eager to send other people's children to war. Your
suggestion of controlling THEM seems like a good one to me, though I'm
cynical that our congress--another set of privileged leaders--can be
expected to behave better than the president.
>
> >Isn't that true of preemptive war as well? But in war, you need the
> >cooperation of many, and therein lies the role of manipulating
> >information.
> >
>
> Yes, but not all manipulation of information is bad. We can mold our behaviour
> to rules that we make up as we go along. That is the history of the evolution
> of civilisation. Create a strong enough conviction that the very notion of
> starting a war of aggression puts one on par with Nazi Germany, and the
> people are going to be far harder to lead to war.
We make it ALL up as we go along. We could decide to act on something
besides precedent, but to do that would require a leap beyond the
confines of law making and law makers. The nature of the law is to
protect the status quo, not change it.
Your contention that propaganda be used to create revulsion and
justification connected with our feelings about Nazism is not so
different from Nazi uses of propaganda to create revulsion and
justification for a war against non-Aryans. In either case it involves
a group of protected people deciding what is right for others and
believing their superior understanding and position justifies the use
of any means to attain that end
Your argument supports the notion that people must be manipulated by
their leaders, and are not capable of doing "the right thing" on the
basis of knowledge, love, and justice. I don't buy that. Your faith in
better leaders, restrained by better laws, seems as naive to me as my
belief in people who don't have the deck stacked against them showing
leaders the way to go must seem to you.
Christine
Ian Davis
<chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>Ian Davis wrote:
>> In article <1147705702.7...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
>> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> >Even so, the central problem of rape isn't rape. It's believing that
>> >our needs are more important than other people's needs and that we can
>> >inflict harm on others to fulfill our desires.
>> >
>>
>> That is the left wing take. The right wing take is that the central problem
>> is that there will always be people who hold these beliefs, and that therefore
>> they need to be controlled, constrained, or denied the opportunity to rape.
>> I take more of the right wing position, since I don't hold to the communist
>> belief that the perfect society can create the perfect man. I don't want
>> to see the current US leadership replaced with people who put other peoples
>> interests before there own, though clearly that would be "nice". I want
>> to see that even bad leadership operates within systems that thwart their
>> natural desire to do harm. Ergo, I wish to see the US draft laws that veto
>> the rights of a commander in chief to ever initiate a pre-emptive war of
>> aggression against any other nation, period.
>
>It makes me uneasy that you conflate the "left wing take" with
>Communism. That's an argumentative ploy to polarize people at extremes
>and create an emotional response that may distract from finding some
>sort of common ground.
>
That was my error. I wasn't attempting to make "left wing" and communism
seem one and the same. I was trying to say that the notion that the
problem is that people are selfish, can be addressed either by saying
that they shouldn't be, should be taught not to be or whatever, or that
the systems people operate within should be designed to minimise the
consequences of the problem.
>You seem to place a lot of faith in restrictive rules, whether they be
>related to war or individual human behaviors. To "control, constrain,
>or deny the opportunity to rape" would require severe constraints on
>the ability of women to move freely in society, a freedom many men take
>for granted. It would put women under the protection of the state, a
>protection enforced largely by men and not much different from
>depending on male relatives for protection. It would harm the potential
>victims more than the potential perpetrators. And it would enhance the
>notion that men are beasts, unable to contol their impulses.
>
My personality is one which tends to be ruled based. I try not to break
rules, am not comfortable with others breaking rules, and am the antithesis
therefore of the "political activist". I think that the rules should be
ones imposed on those who would otherwise violate the rules, not on those
who respect them. So unless it was women going around raping men, I don't
think my desire to see the rule that "thou shalt not rape" enforced as
strongly as possible would in any way reduce a womans ability to move
freely within society. I would actually question whether it is I or
women themselves who limit their own freedom to move freely, because
they themselves are afraid of the consequences of doing so. As a young
adult male my risk of getting raped was less than that of a womans risk,
but my risk of getting physically assaulted was perhaps much higher. In
one such assault I lost a tooth; in another I was burned with cigarettes.
In yet another I was surrounded by thugs with knives. Call me a slow
learner but I have never translated those actual experiences into society
imposing any restriction on my freedom to move freely within society.
Fundamentally I think it would be a mistake to do so.
>In effect, you ARE believing in a more perfect society created through
>controls, restrictions, punishments.
>
Yes, and that might seem a bad thing. But I think most people if they
thought about it would say that it was in the interest of society that
controls be placed on peoples right to harm other people, restrictions
be placed on who may harm who, and that punishment are just about the
only means of deterring those who felt that neither the controls nor the
restrictions were applicable to them whenever they wished to harm others.
Actually I believe in something just a little more subtle. I believe that
people can be molded by the attitudes that they absorb as their own. I
don't think controls, restrictions and punishments work half as well as
evolving society towards being one that views certain actions as wrong
period. Joe public might think they think starting a war of aggression
wrong period, because this piece of paper or that says its wrong. I see
things the other way round. I think pieces of paper say things are wrong
as a consequence of there being widespread pior agreement that the thing
controlled, restricted, or subject to punishment, was something that
needed to be controlled, restricted or subject to punishment.
>Systems are creations of people. How well they work depends on those
>who operate within them. And being clever animals, we are most
>industrious when trying to get around something.
Such systems do two things. For sure they create an environment where
some try to get round the system. But they also create an environment
where others are able to say that that is wrong. Right now we have an
environment where US presidents have it within their perceived rights,
the right to initiate wars of aggression. It is the US people who
permit the concept to stand.
>
>I don't believe in a perfect society or perfect people. But I do know
>that if people are fed, educated, have work that allows them to raise
>their families; if they have beauty and kindness in their lives and
>some control over their own destinies, they are less likely to behave
>"badly." Though I suppose if you keep them stunted by overwork and
>undernutrition you could make them too weak to act badly very often. .
>.
Here I am in full agreement. I think Canada the better for not having
the same extremes of inequality that one can find in the US. We don't
have the same ability to pile wealth on wealth, with politicians giving
the tax savings to the richest, but neither (I suspect) do we have quite
the same problem with homelessness, crime, violence etc. which it is
inequality that feeds.
But was George Bush not fed, not educated, denied work which would allowed
him to raise a family; was there not beauty and kindness in his life. Did
he never feel in control over his destiny. I don't think your rational
can be applied to those who initiate wars of aggression.. my rational
which says they initiate wars of aggression, both because they can,
and because they perceive such action as being profitable to them,
seems the saner one for explaining their motives. And so my arguement
that one counters "the can" by legislation that says they can not, and
counter "its profitable" by its a crime and you'll make no profit out
of committing this crime, the better way of deterring war mongers from
starting wars, that the nation as a whole then pays for.
>
>This doesn't explain why the privileged and powerful disturbingly
>often seem eager to send other people's children to war. Your
>suggestion of controlling THEM seems like a good one to me, though I'm
>cynical that our congress--another set of privileged leaders--can be
>expected to behave better than the president.
>
I'm cynical too. Therefore I think the best strategy is to play to the
"Now look what a fine mess you've got me into", and play to the notion
that this American lunacy of starting wars they then can't finish, be
treated as the lunacy it is. I'd sell vetoing wars of aggression as
not the right thing to do but the sensible thing to do. And this is
something that I think is possible to sell, more so now that the memory
of "what a fine mess you've got me into" is still fresh in everyones
mind. The German people have come to understand that their willingness
to start wars of aggression was wrong.. why not the American people.
I recommend Russ Feingold's May 8th speech. It was for me like a breath
of fresh air.
http://www.feingold.senate.gov/
>> >Isn't that true of preemptive war as well? But in war, you need the
>> >cooperation of many, and therein lies the role of manipulating
>> >information.
>> >
>>
>> Yes, but not all manipulation of information is bad. We can mold our
>behaviour
>> to rules that we make up as we go along. That is the history of the evolution
>> of civilisation. Create a strong enough conviction that the very notion of
>> starting a war of aggression puts one on par with Nazi Germany, and the
>> people are going to be far harder to lead to war.
>
>We make it ALL up as we go along. We could decide to act on something
>besides precedent, but to do that would require a leap beyond the
>confines of law making and law makers. The nature of the law is to
>protect the status quo, not change it.
>
>Your contention that propaganda be used to create revulsion and
>justification connected with our feelings about Nazism is not so
>different from Nazi uses of propaganda to create revulsion and
>justification for a war against non-Aryans. In either case it involves
>a group of protected people deciding what is right for others and
>believing their superior understanding and position justifies the use
>of any means to attain that end
>
Within my frame of reference it is different because I believe that all are
capable of agreeing at least broadly on what helps and what harms. I don't
have a problem with propaganda that helps.. Do you have a problem with the
"No means no campaign". And if you do is it not really the case that your
concern is not really with the propaganda but with the consequences of that
propaganda.. Are you not implicitly deciding on the merits of a given
propaganda campaign on the basis that it will either do good or harm.
>Your argument supports the notion that people must be manipulated by
>their leaders, and are not capable of doing "the right thing" on the
>basis of knowledge, love, and justice. I don't buy that. Your faith in
>better leaders, restrained by better laws, seems as naive to me as my
>belief in people who don't have the deck stacked against them showing
>leaders the way to go must seem to you.
>
You are turning everything I've said 180o and then giving it back to me as
if it were something I'd said.
I think that people should place constraints on their leaders, not vica
versa as you imply. As Feingold said he's not exactly sure what George Bush
thought he was swearing an oath about in agreeing to defend and uphold the US
constitution, given that he's subsequently done the exact opposite. I don't
have faith that you'll get better leaders.. if one examines history I'd say
a nation was extraordinarily lucky if it got good leadership one time in
10. It is not leaders I think people should support and trust in but the
systems that this leadership operates within. You are not to my mind
supporting the US constitution, when you fail to insist that the US
constitution be respected, honoured, and enforced. There is a big difference
between saying its my government whether or not I agree with it, and saying
that Stephen Harper (our current PM) is my man, and I must support him
regardless of my own conviction about the rightness of his positions.
I didn't say that I ever thought the people not capable of doing the
right thing; indeed I'd hardly be trying to educate that starting an
illegal war of aggression is just plain wrong, if I thought the readership
here incapable of grasping that truth first hand. And regarding my faith
in better leaders constrained by better laws, it might be seen as naive and
as wishful thinking, but for my part I see those who are unprepared to
even consider the need to have better laws and better enforcement of laws
to stop US presidents from doing stupid things that destroy the US in ways
that Al-Quaeda could only dream of doing, the ones who in aiding the status
quo are the enemies of whatever good future it is I might wish on America.
When you permit George Bush to be above the law, you do more than merely
permit George Bush to be above the law. You set the precident that all
future presidents may also declare themselves equally not bound by US law,
to also use their signing authority to declare that they are to be held to
no US law, etc. etc.
There is a fire blazing in the forest, and if it is impractical to suggest
that any might be somehow able to get water to the fire, it is to my mind
negligent almost beyond belief to not even be trying to work out how to get
water to the fire, instead arguing that the fire just has to be allowed to
burn and as a consequence do whatever harm it does. By the time the fire
reaches into the very heart and soul of America, it will be way too late
to do anything to control it. Indeed it already to me feels way too late.
Ian.
chris....@gmail.com
Ian Davis wrote:
> In article <1147971035.3...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com>,
> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Systems are creations of people. How well they work depends on those
> >who operate within them. And being clever animals, we are most
> >industrious when trying to get around something.
>
> Such systems do two things. For sure they create an environment where
> some try to get round the system. But they also create an environment
> where others are able to say that that is wrong. Right now we have an
> environment where US presidents have it within their perceived rights,
> the right to initiate wars of aggression. It is the US people who
> permit the concept to stand.
Perhaps--but other nations, and especially Great Britain, appear quite
happy to benefit from this bizarre American notion that we should be
the police force and moral arbiter for the world.
>> I'm cynical too. Therefore I think the best strategy is to play to the
> "Now look what a fine mess you've got me into", and play to the notion
> that this American lunacy of starting wars they then can't finish, be
> treated as the lunacy it is. I'd sell vetoing wars of aggression as
> not the right thing to do but the sensible thing to do. And this is
> something that I think is possible to sell, more so now that the memory
> of "what a fine mess you've got me into" is still fresh in everyones
> mind. The German people have come to understand that their willingness
> to start wars of aggression was wrong.. why not the American people.
Because we've not lost (or waged) a war on our own ground, perhaps.
Would it be better if we could finish the wars? Would it be acceptable
to start them then?
> I recommend Russ Feingold's May 8th speech. It was for me like a breath
> of fresh air.
>
> http://www.feingold.senate.gov/
I'm proud to say that Feingold is my senator.
> Within my frame of reference it is different because I believe that all are
> capable of agreeing at least broadly on what helps and what harms. I don't
> have a problem with propaganda that helps.. Do you have a problem with the
> "No means no campaign". And if you do is it not really the case that your
> concern is not really with the propaganda but with the consequences of that
> propaganda.. Are you not implicitly deciding on the merits of a given
> propaganda campaign on the basis that it will either do good or harm.
The problem with the "no means no" campaign is the same as the problem
with the "just say no" campaign. It's overly simplistic and to be
effective must be one prong of a multi-prong approach.
For example, it's important for people to understand and accept that no
means no, at whatever point the "no" is stated. But women must take
some responsibility for behaving foolishly (going to frat parties with
strangers and accepting open drinks) and sending mixed messages.
If you suggest to a young woman who's dressed like a prostitute that
she's giving a message of availabilty, she'll tell you indignantly
that she's just being fashionable. She may or may not be aware of how
people are "reading" her. And she can't know anything about young men
if she thinks she needs to go to extremes to arouse one!
Young women also have to believe that it's not only okay to say no,
it's desirable in many situations--I'm not sure how many understand and
believe that, so pervasive is casual sexual behavior in many places. On
the other hand, they need to know when to say "yes" as well.
Meanwhile, men need to take responsibility for their own behaviors and
not assume that only women can set limits. To do that, they need to
think of women as more than containers for the thing contained.
The bottom line of these approaches is that alone, they just don't
accomplish their desired end.
> >Your argument supports the notion that people must be manipulated by
> >their leaders, and are not capable of doing "the right thing" on the
> >basis of knowledge, love, and justice. I don't buy that. Your faith in
> >better leaders, restrained by better laws, seems as naive to me as my
> >belief in people who don't have the deck stacked against them showing
> >leaders the way to go must seem to you.
> >
>
> You are turning everything I've said 180o and then giving it back to me as
> if it were something I'd said.
Then I apologize. I intended only to interpret what you'd said from
where I sit.
>
> It is not leaders I think people should support and trust in but the
> systems that this leadership operates within. You are not to my mind
> supporting the US constitution, when you fail to insist that the US
> constitution be respected, honoured, and enforced. There is a big difference
> between saying its my government whether or not I agree with it, and saying
> that Stephen Harper (our current PM) is my man, and I must support him
> regardless of my own conviction about the rightness of his positions.
But the system depends on leaders, and apparently allows leaders to
disable or restrict checks and balances at will.
I don't think I said a thing about the Constitution. My argument comes
from a sense of human decency and obligation to justice and kindness.
The Constitution only deals with one of those attributes, I think. You
are arguing from a basis of law, not me. Aren't Friends obligated to
listen to even deeper authority?
My president said that the Constitution is just a piece of paper. I
respect it more than that, but I cannot respect the motivations behind
all the self-interested interpretations of the document.
Ultimately, it's a human document and must be improved upon -- and will
be altered, for better or worse -- from time to time.
> I didn't say that I ever thought the people not capable of doing the
> right thing; indeed I'd hardly be trying to educate that starting an
> illegal war of aggression is just plain wrong, if I thought the readership
> here incapable of grasping that truth first hand. And regarding my faith
> in better leaders constrained by better laws, it might be seen as naive and
> as wishful thinking, but for my part I see those who are unprepared to
> even consider the need to have better laws and better enforcement of laws
> to stop US presidents from doing stupid things that destroy the US in ways
> that Al-Quaeda could only dream of doing, the ones who in aiding the status
> quo are the enemies of whatever good future it is I might wish on America.
It's a bit of a distance between thinking that law alone is not enough
to "aiding the status quo;" from loyal (enough) citizen wanting change
to enemy of the people. I do think I'm in the first of each pair.
> When you permit George Bush to be above the law, you do more than merely
> permit George Bush to be above the law. You set the precident that all
> future presidents may also declare themselves equally not bound by US law,
> to also use their signing authority to declare that they are to be held to
> no US law, etc. etc.
I do not permit George Bush to be above the law. I did not vote for him
and I actively work -- a little, anyway -- to get him out of office or
under the rule of law. Even Republicans are working on that. But most
of us try to work within the system, even though it seems clear that
it's not working fast enough.
> There is a fire blazing in the forest, and if it is impractical to suggest
> that any might be somehow able to get water to the fire, it is to my mind
> negligent almost beyond belief to not even be trying to work out how to get
> water to the fire, instead arguing that the fire just has to be allowed to
> burn and as a consequence do whatever harm it does. By the time the fire
> reaches into the very heart and soul of America, it will be way too late
> to do anything to control it. Indeed it already to me feels way too late.
It seems a little. . . arrogant to suggest that no one is trying to
work out how to get water to the fire. Whatever gave you that
impression?
Or are you suggesting something more radical? I find myself afraud ti
even write the phrase beginning with the word "overthrow," which will
wake up some computer out there and cause it to sniff around me.
Christine
Ian Davis
<chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Ian Davis wrote:
>> In article <1147971035.3...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com>,
>> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> >Systems are creations of people. How well they work depends on those
>> >who operate within them. And being clever animals, we are most
>> >industrious when trying to get around something.
>>
>> Such systems do two things. For sure they create an environment where
>> some try to get round the system. But they also create an environment
>> where others are able to say that that is wrong. Right now we have an
>> environment where US presidents have it within their perceived rights,
>> the right to initiate wars of aggression. It is the US people who
>> permit the concept to stand.
>
>Perhaps--but other nations, and especially Great Britain, appear quite
>happy to benefit from this bizarre American notion that we should be
>the police force and moral arbiter for the world.
>
Well I don't know anyone in England who would agree with you. I don't know
anyone in England who thinks that invading Iraq was other than a war crime
comparable with Germany's invasion of France. I must move in the wrong
circles. My sister, my niece, et. al. were there in that million strong
who appeared on front pages of most papers back before the war began voicing
their vocal opposition to it. And I've not meet anyone who thinks the term
"poodle" applied to Blair any improvement on the image of bulldog applied to
Churchill.
Are you sure that this notion that the rest of the world wants you to be
moral arbiter of the world is not a made in America concept designed
specifically to justify why you think it your calling to be the moral
arbiter of the world. I really don't think that the US is in a very
strong position to claim that it even understands the meaning of the
word "moral" or the word "arbitrate". Doesn't arbiter suggest that some
arbitration is involved. Wouldn't "moral dictator" be a more fitting
description of precisely how the US seeks to impose its moral values on
the rest of the world. I don't remember any nation actually going out and
asking for the US to be moral arbiter over them or anyone else. Perhaps
at some point Israel and the Palestinians did ask for such help. But I
don't see how one can claim to be moral arbiter of the world in invading
Iraq.
>
>>> I'm cynical too. Therefore I think the best strategy is to play to the
>> "Now look what a fine mess you've got me into", and play to the notion
>> that this American lunacy of starting wars they then can't finish, be
>> treated as the lunacy it is. I'd sell vetoing wars of aggression as
>> not the right thing to do but the sensible thing to do. And this is
>> something that I think is possible to sell, more so now that the memory
>> of "what a fine mess you've got me into" is still fresh in everyones
>> mind. The German people have come to understand that their willingness
>> to start wars of aggression was wrong.. why not the American people.
>
>Because we've not lost (or waged) a war on our own ground, perhaps.
>
Start enough wars and you will both wage and loose wars on your own soil.
It is said that experience is a dear teacher but fools learn from no other.
There is no immutable law which says that America may go to the war, but
the war may never come to America. But the US does have the advantage that
most of the nations that might constitute a serious threat to the US --
Russia, China, North Korea, Iran etc. know war well enough to want to avoid
it if at all possible. For they have as you note waged wars on their own
ground.
>Would it be better if we could finish the wars? Would it be acceptable
>to start them then?
No, but you will never finish them. Gamblers don't stop when they are
winning. The US never had any greater hope of conquering all of the
middle east than Germany did of conquering all of Europe. For sure the
US can invade, oppress and declare itself the victor, but as long as
the US remained the oppressor it would be opposed. How long would it take
the Russians to finish a war involving the occupation of the US, or
the US to finish a war involving the occupation of Canada. How are
you going to define "finishing" the war in Iraq. Is it over when the
population of 25 million has been slaughtered. Is it over when the
US declares mission accomplished.. or is the only way to finish the
war in Iraq to pull out and hope that the other side then thinks that
as good a time to also call it quits. My wife did better than most
when challenged to name a war that the occupier/oppressor won, when
she responded China's invasion and occupation of Tibet. Do you think
even that war finished yet. If so who won -- or did all in reality
still loose. How exactly has occupying Tibet helped China, more than
not occupying Tibet would have. How has occupying Iraq helped the
US?
>
>> I recommend Russ Feingold's May 8th speech. It was for me like a breath
>> of fresh air.
>>
>> http://www.feingold.senate.gov/
>
>I'm proud to say that Feingold is my senator.
>
Lucky you.
The democratic party makes me think of Sodam and Gomorrah. That city is the
one who I think it was declared would be spared if three good men could be
found anywhere within it. With the democratic party one can count on one
hand the number of people who have had the courage to public speak out and
say the Iraq war is wrong.. Feingold, Gore, Howard Dean, and Murtha. If I've
done a disservice to others that also opposed the war, whom I've failed to
mention please educate me as to their names. And even among the greats
within that party named above, they have hardly been courageous. Feingold
after all never got beyond calling for a motion of censure for actions by a
sitting president that were clearly unlawful, and that was promptly defeated
by his own party. Only tonight I was reading that the smell of fear is the
smell of political failure, and those who fear will as a consequence fail.
"Eau de Don't Let Me Screw Up and Flush My Chances down the Toilette".
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0518-31.htm
So few voices crying in such a large wilderness. But I guess like Rumsfelt
says, you don't go to war with the army you might want -- you go to war with
the army you have, and I am on the side of all regardless of their party
affiliation who hold that starting wars of aggression is wrong.
Feingold's speech was a breath of fresh air in large part because it seemed
that here was a man both amply able to say what he genuinely thought, and to
say it without apparent fear or hesitation. I wish his career well.
>> Within my frame of reference it is different because I believe that all are
>> capable of agreeing at least broadly on what helps and what harms. I don't
>> have a problem with propaganda that helps.. Do you have a problem with the
>> "No means no campaign". And if you do is it not really the case that your
>> concern is not really with the propaganda but with the consequences of that
>> propaganda.. Are you not implicitly deciding on the merits of a given
>> propaganda campaign on the basis that it will either do good or harm.
>
>The problem with the "no means no" campaign is the same as the problem
>with the "just say no" campaign. It's overly simplistic and to be
>effective must be one prong of a multi-prong approach.
>
What were the other prongs?
>For example, it's important for people to understand and accept that no
>means no, at whatever point the "no" is stated. But women must take
>some responsibility for behaving foolishly (going to frat parties with
>strangers and accepting open drinks) and sending mixed messages.
>
That is not my interpretation of "no means no". I'm an absolutist. I
don't see shades of grey. One either acts correctly or one does not.
How the other party behaves has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness
of anyones subsequent conduct but their own.
>If you suggest to a young woman who's dressed like a prostitute that
>she's giving a message of availabilty, she'll tell you indignantly
>that she's just being fashionable. She may or may not be aware of how
>people are "reading" her. And she can't know anything about young men
>if she thinks she needs to go to extremes to arouse one!
>
This was a discussion which caused people to draw battle lines way back when
I was a youth a college. On the one side there was the argument that women
should dress modestly because men had problems with their sexuality. I
contend that if men have the problems then the solution should be doing
things to cure that problem in men; not doing things to hide that problem
from men. And coming back to what I've said before we as a species have
a built in ability (unless we are mentally impaired) to know right from
wrong. That is a concept that is foundational to the very notion of
justice having any real meaning. The thing that should be the brake on
people erring is their consciences -- not layers of black wrapped round
any women they might be tempted to take, or any object they might be
tempted to steal, or whatever. My sense is that those who contend they
cannot help themselves are lying to both themselves and to others. The
very contention becomes part of the excuse for why they behave wrongly.
They could have helped themselves if behaving rightly was their primary
consideration, but they choose to behave wrongly because it was not. That
was their error in my frame of reference. I don't buy the argument that
"the devil made me do it".
>Young women also have to believe that it's not only okay to say no,
>it's desirable in many situations--I'm not sure how many understand and
>believe that, so pervasive is casual sexual behavior in many places. On
>the other hand, they need to know when to say "yes" as well.
I can't speak for women never (to the best of my knowledge) having been one.
>Meanwhile, men need to take responsibility for their own behaviors and
>not assume that only women can set limits. To do that, they need to
>think of women as more than containers for the thing contained.
We are slightly schitzophrenic on this point. It is not an either or
proposition.. I think we see women as multi facetted, one facet of which
is that they are containers for the thing contained. Probably in like
fashion women see men as multi facetted creatures, one facet of which is
their ability to give women children.
>
>The bottom line of these approaches is that alone, they just don't
>accomplish their desired end.
>
I don't know what will deter US presidents from starting illegal wars of
aggression if the system they operate within permits them to do so. You
might say the people, but I've seen how easily the people can be led to
support wars of aggression. Do you perhaps imagine that Iraq was the
last time that political leaders will lie the better to get the people
to support an illegal war of aggression. Or that it will be the last time
that such lies will achieve their objective. Why the apparent opposition to
making the initiation of a war of aggression an automatically impeachable
offence. Is some part of your background conscienceness holding on to the
notion that their might be cases where starting a war was sound, sensible, or
merely necessary. Take that case, stack it up against the human cost of
waging WWI and WWII and I think you will find that even that worse case
scenario becomes no case for starting a war of aggression.
>
>> >Your argument supports the notion that people must be manipulated by
>> >their leaders, and are not capable of doing "the right thing" on the
>> >basis of knowledge, love, and justice. I don't buy that. Your faith in
>> >better leaders, restrained by better laws, seems as naive to me as my
>> >belief in people who don't have the deck stacked against them showing
>> >leaders the way to go must seem to you.
>> >
>>
>> You are turning everything I've said 180o and then giving it back to me as
>> if it were something I'd said.
>
>Then I apologize. I intended only to interpret what you'd said from
>where I sit.
>>
>> It is not leaders I think people should support and trust in but the
>> systems that this leadership operates within. You are not to my mind
>> supporting the US constitution, when you fail to insist that the US
>> constitution be respected, honoured, and enforced. There is a big difference
>> between saying its my government whether or not I agree with it, and saying
>> that Stephen Harper (our current PM) is my man, and I must support him
>> regardless of my own conviction about the rightness of his positions.
>
>But the system depends on leaders, and apparently allows leaders to
>disable or restrict checks and balances at will.
That is not the system. Being able to disable or restrict checks and balances
at will is not part and parcel of any system I can imagine except perhaps the
system called anarchy, which is by definition that which arises from the
absence of respect for existing systems. US presidents are not permitted
under the US system of government to do many of the things that George Bush
has sometimes proudly, sometimes sheepishly fessed up to routinely doing.
If the system does nothing to oppose abuses of government, it is not serving
its own best interest. It is not being the very thing it was designed and
built to be. I don't think you can label such a travesty of the system "the
system" without muddying the boundaries between whatt the system is and what
it is not.
>
>I don't think I said a thing about the Constitution. My argument comes
>from a sense of human decency and obligation to justice and kindness.
>The Constitution only deals with one of those attributes, I think. You
>are arguing from a basis of law, not me. Aren't Friends obligated to
>listen to even deeper authority?
You and I would say it different ways and arrive at the things said by
different means but I am not sure that we'd really be saying two different
things. I argue from a basis of law, because I see law as our collective
effort over centuries to codify this internal voice we hear which tells us
that this is right, and that wrong. Most certainly on occasions the law
can be an ass.. but that said, listening to law is listening to an the
very expression of our own inner humanity, and this is quite deep enough
an authority to have and to hold my respect and regard. Listening to law
is listening to what we as a species have come to understand and to codify
regarding the very nature of what constitutes right and what wrong. Support
a war of aggression and you are effectively saying that those who at Nuremburg
declared that wars of aggression constituted the supreme war crime were wrong.
On what basis can any of us do that, when they having lived through five years
of war, and found war to be hell, knew the nature of war so much better than
you or I.
>
>My president said that the Constitution is just a piece of paper. I
>respect it more than that, but I cannot respect the motivations behind
>all the self-interested interpretations of the document.
>
Well I personally respect the constitution in the same way that I respect
the bible. I think it all to the good if it improves those who read it and
have respect and regard for it. I don't actually personally understand quite
why it turns some people on to the extent that it does, but I do see it as
being something which at least has the potential to be a weapon defending
people from fascism, and to that extent am all in favour of it, and want
to see the weapon kept as sharp as possible.
>Ultimately, it's a human document and must be improved upon -- and will
>be altered, for better or worse -- from time to time.
>
I think the overall trend if for the codification of right and wrong to
be more towards the right than towards the wrong over time. Thus I do
not see the better being cancelled out by the worse, which you seem to
implicitly suggest above.
>> I didn't say that I ever thought the people not capable of doing the
>> right thing; indeed I'd hardly be trying to educate that starting an
>> illegal war of aggression is just plain wrong, if I thought the readership
>> here incapable of grasping that truth first hand. And regarding my faith
>> in better leaders constrained by better laws, it might be seen as naive and
>> as wishful thinking, but for my part I see those who are unprepared to
>> even consider the need to have better laws and better enforcement of laws
>> to stop US presidents from doing stupid things that destroy the US in ways
>> that Al-Quaeda could only dream of doing, the ones who in aiding the status
>> quo are the enemies of whatever good future it is I might wish on America.
>
>It's a bit of a distance between thinking that law alone is not enough
>to "aiding the status quo;" from loyal (enough) citizen wanting change
>to enemy of the people. I do think I'm in the first of each pair.
If I wanted to see a certain policy implemented (for example that the US not
initiate wars of aggression) I would trust the US to implement that policy
far more if US legislation said that them was the rules, than if the US
legislation did not say that them were the rules, regardless of the merit
the US people saw in supporting such a policy. Putting things in the
rules permits some objection to be voiced when the rules are broken.
Having a belief that the US would not be the first to use nuclear weapons
seems to me a very poor cousin to the US declaring that it would not be
the first to use nuclear weapons, and making such first use unlawful.
Why should one trust another, when they are not prepared to put their
money where their mouth is.
>
>> When you permit George Bush to be above the law, you do more than merely
>> permit George Bush to be above the law. You set the precident that all
>> future presidents may also declare themselves equally not bound by US law,
>> to also use their signing authority to declare that they are to be held to
>> no US law, etc. etc.
>
>I do not permit George Bush to be above the law. I did not vote for him
>and I actively work -- a little, anyway -- to get him out of office or
>under the rule of law. Even Republicans are working on that. But most
>of us try to work within the system, even though it seems clear that
>it's not working fast enough.
>
Sorry, my use of "you" was at the socialogical level thinking about the
collective nation -- not intended to be read as "singular/specific".
>> There is a fire blazing in the forest, and if it is impractical to suggest
>> that any might be somehow able to get water to the fire, it is to my mind
>> negligent almost beyond belief to not even be trying to work out how to get
>> water to the fire, instead arguing that the fire just has to be allowed to
>> burn and as a consequence do whatever harm it does. By the time the fire
>> reaches into the very heart and soul of America, it will be way too late
>> to do anything to control it. Indeed it already to me feels way too late.
>
>It seems a little. . . arrogant to suggest that no one is trying to
>work out how to get water to the fire. Whatever gave you that
>impression?
Well the suggestion that I was being naive in wanting to see legislation
that restricted the power of presidents to commit the greatest crime on
earth, among other things. I don't understand the seemingly wide spread
opposition among Quakers for both accepting that starting wars of
aggression is criminal, and for insisting that those who start such
wars be treated by the societies they exist within as the criminals they
are.
>
>Or are you suggesting something more radical? I find myself afraud ti
>even write the phrase beginning with the word "overthrow," which will
>wake up some computer out there and cause it to sniff around me.
>
I am no radical, unless we live in a time when the notion that presidents
should be under the law rather than like the monarchs of old answerable to
no law, is to itself be deemed a radical notion. We must be even closer
to the fascist state I fear and have since an early age been pledged to
oppose, if the positions I hold are now to be labelled radical ones.
Don't worry too much about using wrong words. In the current political
climate I am sure that every word written here gets read by someone
somewhere the better to stay one jump ahead of "evil" Quakers. My
concern is not that I use the wrong words, but that I am gravely
misunderstood. As I've said before my only hope is that those
that police this news group better see who I am and who I am not
than most who contribute to this forum have.
http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=9002
Ian
JEB
> That was my error. I wasn't attempting to make "left wing" and
> communism seem one and the same. I was trying to say that the notion
> that the problem is that people are selfish, can be addressed either
> by saying that they shouldn't be, should be taught not to be or
> whatever, or that the systems people operate within should be designed
> to minimise the consequences of the problem.
I'm not sure your epithet of "left wing" means anything, and therefore,
other than a jab at something you don't like, doesn't communicate much. Nor
is Republican or Democrat a useful way of communicating very much.
If it's absolutists vs. relativists - well, I can understand that, and I
pretty much know what side of that fence I'm on. There are a few absolutes,
and every thing else is pretty much relative to those.
> My personality is one which tends to be ruled based. I try not to
> break rules, am not comfortable with others breaking rules, and am the
> antithesis therefore of the "political activist". I think that the
> rules should be ones imposed on those who would otherwise violate the
> rules, not on those who respect them.
You might make a good hall monitor ferreting out peccadilloes and crimes
with equal vigor. I would not. Rules are a necessary evil to smooth out
interactions among people, and stabilize what would otherwise be a chaotic
society and civilization. They are due general respect because of that
important function they serve. But they have no virtue in themselves, and
mostly do not rise to the level of morality at all. Rules may restrain the
savage, but they can never make men good or great. It takes a spark of
divinity (whatever you wish to label it) for civilization to move forward.
Your paint by numbers approach to art will often get you a facsimilie of
Lassie, but never art. And if you relish and enforce the reliability of
your "Lassies," you will choke the freedom to be original and different
that makes men great.
In reality, I believe even you recognize that balance between freedom and
ultimate "order" are needed.
>
> Actually I believe in something just a little more subtle. I believe
> that people can be molded by the attitudes that they absorb as their
> own. I don't think controls, restrictions and punishments work half as
> well as evolving society towards being one that views certain actions
> as wrong period.
This is true, and something that I think many people miss. Inherent in a
culture is transmission of values that greatly exceed the ability of laws
to inculcate. We have 50 legislatures and a federal government busy passing
more laws, defining even more "crimes," as if this will change people's
values. Look at the size of the U.S. prison population, the frequency of
murder, even infant mortality among civilized countries and its clear that
the approach doesn't work. While organized religion could help here, it is
fully occupied with much more important things like foisting the junk
science of Intelligent Design on the public.
Changing the culture is the key. And there are ways to do this, but it will
likely be a slow process.
> I don't have a problem with propaganda that helps..
Do you really believe this? Maybe you're using a much different definition
of propaganda than comes to mind. Propaganda is a means of distorting
reality - always for some alleged "good" purpose. You think distortion of
reality for your idea of "good" is a sound principle? Maybe we don't mean
the same thing by propaganda.
jeb
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote in
>news:e4icr3$3f4$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>
>
>> That was my error. I wasn't attempting to make "left wing" and
>> communism seem one and the same. I was trying to say that the notion
>> that the problem is that people are selfish, can be addressed either
>> by saying that they shouldn't be, should be taught not to be or
>> whatever, or that the systems people operate within should be designed
>> to minimise the consequences of the problem.
>
>I'm not sure your epithet of "left wing" means anything, and therefore,
>other than a jab at something you don't like, doesn't communicate much. Nor
>is Republican or Democrat a useful way of communicating very much.
>If it's absolutists vs. relativists - well, I can understand that, and I
>pretty much know what side of that fence I'm on. There are a few absolutes,
>and every thing else is pretty much relative to those.
I think you are mistaken in thinking I don't like "left wing". If you were
to explore my politics I think you would find them far more left than right.
Our current right wing party in power is not my party of choice. I would
have been quite happy to see the right wing here split the vote with the
right wing here endlessly. But I don't predicate my philosophy on my politics.
I instead predicate my philosophy on my internal compass, and measure all
positions against that. On some things I think the left wing is wrong. The
ease with which they will commit any crime provided only that that crime is
wrapped in the guise of being "humanitarian intervention" troubles me. Bush
invading Iraq in order to save its people, spread freedom, or whatever is
something I view as left wing, regardless of Bush's actual beliefs. I
see left wing as thinking in terms of people, while the right wing tends
more to think in terms of systems. The left wing tends to make its concern
interfering in the rest of the world, while the right tends to be more
isolationist. You'll perhaps say that the neocons put a lie to that notion,
but I don't see the neocons as promoting classic right wing positions and
attitudes. I see their stated policies as being hard left wing policies.
Overthrowing other political systems the better to impose your own political
system on the universe was what the communists aspired to achieve. It may
be that they are right wing wolves wearing left wing clothing the better
to get the gullible left wing on side, but the right wing approach would be
to defend why one did things in terms of why they were good for the self --
not why they were going to lead to good things happening for others. The
Nazi's who by comparison were right wing did not invade France in order
to help France.. the German population were I am sure told that the invasion
of France was done to help Germany. And even the Nazi's conceeded that they
were socialists -- just nationalistic ones.
I know that people bridle the minute I seem to declare myself opposed
to left wing concepts and actions, but I think the error theirs. They've
chosen which side to support, and they predicate how they parse what others
say on the basis of what they say about the sides they are on, and not what
they say about the substantive issues at hand. This is viewing things
subjectively, rather than objectively, and means that they are filtering out
the real message even before it reaches its intended destination. Perhaps
the fault is mine in making it so easy for people to do this. But how else
am I to explain what I see as left wing and what as right, except by saying
"that is left wing" and "that is right". That simply isn't the dividing
line for me.. what is the dividing line for me is what is right and what
is wrong. And that dividing line doesn't divide the parties one from the
other but divides the people within the parties one from the other.
>
>> My personality is one which tends to be ruled based. I try not to
>> break rules, am not comfortable with others breaking rules, and am the
>> antithesis therefore of the "political activist". I think that the
>> rules should be ones imposed on those who would otherwise violate the
>> rules, not on those who respect them.
>
>You might make a good hall monitor ferreting out peccadilloes and crimes
>with equal vigor. I would not. Rules are a necessary evil to smooth out
>interactions among people, and stabilize what would otherwise be a chaotic
>society and civilization. They are due general respect because of that
>important function they serve. But they have no virtue in themselves, and
>mostly do not rise to the level of morality at all. Rules may restrain the
>savage, but they can never make men good or great. It takes a spark of
>divinity (whatever you wish to label it) for civilization to move forward.
>Your paint by numbers approach to art will often get you a facsimilie of
>Lassie, but never art. And if you relish and enforce the reliability of
>your "Lassies," you will choke the freedom to be original and different
>that makes men great.
>
I don't think the world can afford the freedom to allow some men to be great
if it gives other the license to be Hitlers. The good one man can accomplish
can't compare to the harm one man can cause. I take your vision of the
universe you see me as desiring by choking the freedom of people to be
individual and different; hold it up against the absolute horror of what men
enjoying that freedom to be original and different have made of Iraq, and
don't see this freedom you talk of as freedom at all. I see it as monsterous
tyranny. You can show me the vision I am wishing to choke and it would be
something in your head. I can show you the pictures of why this bastard child
should never have been permitted to be born, and that will be blood running
in gutters. My vision of what this universe is makes me think your visions
of what constitute good or bad ideas about what it should be or where it
should go, are so far removed from the hard reality of what this universe
is as to be near worthless in understanding this universe.
It is perhaps inevitable that there will be few Americans who can relate to
this notion of mine that initiating a war of aggression constitutes a supreme
crime, and those who do so should go down in history as the architects of all
the evil that springs from this crime, but the fact that few Americans agree
with me is not something that really troubles me. The Iraqi's know that I
am right, and I will always choose to side with the victim, given the choice
between siding with the victim and siding with the aggressor. You see I
believe in what to me is the Quaker concept of being ever mindful of that
internal compass of ours.
>In reality, I believe even you recognize that balance between freedom and
>ultimate "order" are needed.
>
I am a liberal. That means that were it possible to be so I'd be more
libertarian than libertarians on social issues. But I'm a Canadian which
means I'm more tolerant of there being some restrictions on peoples
freedoms than perhaps libertarians would accept right and proper. If
someone wanted to smoke in my presence I'd say fine -- go right ahead..
but if the government legislated that one not be allowed to smoke in
any public building, I'd say that was fine too.. workers in those buildings
should have the freedom to not have to endure second hand smoke that could
later kill them. Should women have the right to walk down streets topless
here -- absolutely. Should they be required to -- absolutely not.
But on the subject of war I am unequivocal. Starting a war is wrong because
war is inherently wrong, and can only harm. I'll not do anything to aid those
who start such wars. If I can impose restrictions on peoples ability to
start wars that is fine with me, because those restrictions are entirely
on the side of increasing peoples freedom while also decreasing entrophy
(lack of order) in this universe. It is a constant source of amazement
to me that Quakers seem so wishy washy in their own positions regarding
where they stand in relationship to war, given their strong opposition
at least on paper to war. To my mind it seems bizarre that these notions
of mine should be ones that here seem to flow very much against the general
current of opinion. But that would not convince me I was wrong -- it would
only convince me that for Quakers rivers run up hill.
>>
>> Actually I believe in something just a little more subtle. I believe
>> that people can be molded by the attitudes that they absorb as their
>> own. I don't think controls, restrictions and punishments work half as
>> well as evolving society towards being one that views certain actions
>> as wrong period.
>
>This is true, and something that I think many people miss. Inherent in a
>culture is transmission of values that greatly exceed the ability of laws
>to inculcate. We have 50 legislatures and a federal government busy passing
>more laws, defining even more "crimes," as if this will change people's
>values. Look at the size of the U.S. prison population, the frequency of
>murder, even infant mortality among civilized countries and its clear that
>the approach doesn't work. While organized religion could help here, it is
>fully occupied with much more important things like foisting the junk
>science of Intelligent Design on the public.
Culture intrigues me. I don't understand why things work and how they work.
I will always go back to seeing Trudeau forge a new Canada out of an old
by almost overnight changing all of the old paradyms and replacing them
by new quite alien ones, and then telling the people that the new paradyms
were the ones that Canadians had always held, and that this made us as
Canadians something special. How do you put French on all the packaging
and make of that action a virtue when the population as a whole never
wanted the French on the packaging to begin with. How do you take a
population more English than the English, and probably more French than
the French and tell them that theirs is rightfully a multicultural society
which the English and French not be permitted to emigrate to, but instead
permitting anyone from anywhere else in the world to emigrate to. How
did the US turn its notion about the rightness of their being racial
inequality between blacks and whites around. The answer to all these
questions seems to be that it can be done if only a single generation
can grow up in the shadow of such revolutionary ideas, but how is the tree
that casts this shadow to be nurtured that long.
>
>Changing the culture is the key. And there are ways to do this, but it will
>likely be a slow process.
>
>
>> I don't have a problem with propaganda that helps..
>
>Do you really believe this? Maybe you're using a much different definition
>of propaganda than comes to mind. Propaganda is a means of distorting
>reality - always for some alleged "good" purpose. You think distortion of
>reality for your idea of "good" is a sound principle? Maybe we don't mean
>the same thing by propaganda.
I saw the propaganda used to convince Canadians that theirs was a multicultural
society. That propaganda did distort reality. Canada prior to that propaganda
was a more racist nation than the US. Blacks need not apply to emigrate here..
the rational when rejecting such applications was "Not suitable to the culture-
Not suitable to the climate". We turned away ship loads of German Jews seeking
refuge here, because we "distrusted" jews at least as much as the US. I bought
into the propaganda -- I agreed with those nice pictures of all nations on
earth with the slogan below "Strength through diversity". The propaganda
made of me something I would otherwise not have been, and more than that it
made me proud to have become that thing I would never have become had I not
been exposed to it. I was proud to have my children be educated jointly in
English and French. I don't know of anyone in England who would think the
notion of English children being educated in French a good one. I'm not
outside the Canadian propaganda machine, but within it, and its up to you to
say whether I'm the better for having bought into it, believing that the
directions Canada has taken are the right ones to take. But I will tell you
this, and tell you this strongly: Propaganda works, and therefore let us all
hope that propaganda is used as a force for good, rather than as a force for
evil.
Ian
chris....@gmail.com
an Davis wrote:
> In article <1148012204....@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
(snipped up with the intention of condensing, not subverting)
> Are you sure that this notion that the rest of the world wants you to be
> moral arbiter of the world is not a made in America concept designed
> specifically to justify why you think it your calling to be the moral
> arbiter of the world. I really don't think that the US is in a very
> strong position to claim that it even understands the meaning of the
> word "moral" or the word "arbitrate". Doesn't arbiter suggest that some
> arbitration is involved. Wouldn't "moral dictator" be a more fitting
> description of precisely how the US seeks to impose its moral values on
> the rest of the world. I don't remember any nation actually going out and
> asking for the US to be moral arbiter over them or anyone else. Perhaps
> at some point Israel and the Palestinians did ask for such help. But I
> don't see how one can claim to be moral arbiter of the world in invading
> Iraq.
What I refer to is not any rightness in or explicit support for this
role. However, it's arguable that European countries refuse to take a
strong policing role and still accept the "benefit" to them of having
the US strongman around--using more of their own money on
infrastructure and social programs than on military expenditures.
On some level, reliance on the American "police force" makes lifestyle
and economic improvements possible for those who don't need to fill
that role. So to stop the US imperialism, others will have to step up
to the plate, along with internal pressure.
> >Would it be better if we could finish the wars? Would it be acceptable
> >to start them then?
>
> No, but you will never finish them. Gamblers don't stop when they are
> winning. The US never had any greater hope of conquering all of the
> middle east than Germany did of conquering all of Europe. For sure the
> US can invade, oppress and declare itself the victor, but as long as
> the US remained the oppressor it would be opposed.
Yes, certainly. This is a lesson we should have learned from the
British as well as the Germans.
> How exactly has occupying Tibet helped China, more than
> not occupying Tibet would have. How has occupying Iraq helped the
> US?
It's as obvious to me as to you that there is more harm than benefit.
But I am in the minority here, and our system of government is winner
take all--it isn't as fluid as a parliamentary one is.
> The democratic party makes me think of Sodam and Gomorrah. That city is the
> one who I think it was declared would be spared if three good men could be
> found anywhere within it. With the democratic party one can count on one
> hand the number of people who have had the courage to public speak out and
> say the Iraq war is wrong.. Feingold, Gore, Howard Dean, and Murtha. If I've
> done a disservice to others that also opposed the war, whom I've failed to
> mention please educate me as to their names. And even among the greats
> within that party named above, they have hardly been courageous. Feingold
> after all never got beyond calling for a motion of censure for actions by a
> sitting president that were clearly unlawful, and that was promptly defeated
> by his own party. Only tonight I was reading that the smell of fear is the
> smell of political failure, and those who fear will as a consequence fail.
> "Eau de Don't Let Me Screw Up and Flush My Chances down the Toilette".
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0518-31.htm
I have no quarrel. The Democratic National Committee has not taken a
courageous path on anything. Its attempts to portray itself as having
concordant values with the religious right will be its downfall.
> So few voices crying in such a large wilderness. But I guess like Rumsfelt
> says, you don't go to war with the army you might want -- you go to war with
> the army you have, and I am on the side of all regardless of their party
> affiliation who hold that starting wars of aggression is wrong.
Here you are entirely wrong. Many voices are crying in the wilderness.
They just aren't getting any conventional media coverage.
> Feingold's speech was a breath of fresh air in large part because it seemed
> that here was a man both amply able to say what he genuinely thought, and to
> say it without apparent fear or hesitation. I wish his career well.
Unfortunately, he's short, Jewish, and divorced, all of which condemn
him more than his rather ordinary liberal stands that now look radical.
> >> Within my frame of reference it is different because I believe that all are
> >> capable of agreeing at least broadly on what helps and what harms. I don't
> >> have a problem with propaganda that helps.. Do you have a problem with the
> >> "No means no campaign". And if you do is it not really the case that your
> >> concern is not really with the propaganda but with the consequences of that
> >> propaganda.. Are you not implicitly deciding on the merits of a given
> >> propaganda campaign on the basis that it will either do good or harm.
> >
> >The problem with the "no means no" campaign is the same as the problem
> >with the "just say no" campaign. It's overly simplistic and to be
> >effective must be one prong of a multi-prong approach.
> >
>
> What were the other prongs?
That's the problem. There weren't any. We don't sustain and develop
programs over time, we just shoot up a rocket here and then one there.
> >For example, it's important for people to understand and accept that no
> >means no, at whatever point the "no" is stated. But women must take
> >some responsibility for behaving foolishly (going to frat parties with
> >strangers and accepting open drinks) and sending mixed messages.
> >
>
> That is not my interpretation of "no means no". I'm an absolutist. I
> don't see shades of grey. One either acts correctly or one does not.
> How the other party behaves has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness
> of anyones subsequent conduct but their own.
Then I will hope you are an engineer and not a teacher <g>.
>
> >If you suggest to a young woman who's dressed like a prostitute that
> >she's giving a message of availabilty, she'll tell you indignantly
> >that she's just being fashionable. She may or may not be aware of how
> >people are "reading" her. And she can't know anything about young men
> >if she thinks she needs to go to extremes to arouse one!
> >
>
> This was a discussion which caused people to draw battle lines way back when
> I was a youth a college. On the one side there was the argument that women
> should dress modestly because men had problems with their sexuality. I
> contend that if men have the problems then the solution should be doing
> things to cure that problem in men; not doing things to hide that problem
> from men. . . I don't buy the argument that
> "the devil made me do it".
Again, the battle doesn't lie at the black and white edges, it lies in
complicated grey human interactions.
Certainly men who consider or do rape should be "cured." But how will
you do this? Develop saliva tests and chemical castration or aversion
therapy with electric shock? To shape ideas through cultural pressure
and education is the way, as you've said. But it's a long and iterative
process that has to come from more than one source.
I don't want women to wrap themselves in black and hide. But I do
think it's disrespectful to deliberately flaunt our sexuality in a way
that makes most other people uncomfortable--unless our goal is to find
a sex partner fast.
When I was in college in Madison, a girl was raped in the hallway at
school. The judge chastized her for being provocative. She was wearing,
as was the style at the time, blue jeans and an enormous plaid flannel
men's shirt over a loose t-shirt. So provocative is in the eye of the
beholder, and this judge appeared to believe that women are provocative
by virtue of being women--not as uncommon an idea as we'd like to
think.
So this is an area for greys--what we call moderation, probably. I
happen to think most people are happy to live there, wearing neither
burkas nor lingiere in public.
>
> >Young women also have to believe that it's not only okay to say no,
> >it's desirable in many situations--I'm not sure how many understand and
> >believe that, so pervasive is casual sexual behavior in many places. On
> >the other hand, they need to know when to say "yes" as well.
>
> I can't speak for women never (to the best of my knowledge) having been one.
>
> >Meanwhile, men need to take responsibility for their own behaviors and
> >not assume that only women can set limits. To do that, they need to
> >think of women as more than containers for the thing contained.
>
> We are slightly schitzophrenic on this point. It is not an either or
> proposition.. I think we see women as multi facetted, one facet of which
> is that they are containers for the thing contained. Probably in like
> fashion women see men as multi facetted creatures, one facet of which is
> their ability to give women children.
<g> Not schizophrenic: complex--or grey.
> I don't know what will deter US presidents from starting illegal wars of
> aggression if the system they operate within permits them to do so. You
> might say the people, but I've seen how easily the people can be led to
> support wars of aggression.
Do you think the US is unique in this?
> Why the apparent opposition to
> making the initiation of a war of aggression an automatically impeachable
> offence. Is some part of your background conscienceness holding on to the
> notion that their might be cases where starting a war was sound, sensible, or
> merely necessary. Take that case, stack it up against the human cost of
> waging WWI and WWII and I think you will find that even that worse case
> scenario becomes no case for starting a war of aggression.
First, I think it's an error to paint with such a broad brush. There is
no national consensus supporting the war in Iraq. The background and
beliefs of Americans are incredibly diverse. Our elected officials
don't represent us at all well.
I agree that there's no place for wars of aggression. In fact, I see
all wars as wars of aggression.
Still, the argument for imminent danger has some feet. It's apparent
that there was not the threat we feared in this situation, that the
sense of imminent danger for the US has usually, if not always, been
exaggerated. But I think if we'd gotten wind of Japanese plans for
Pearl Harbor, we would be faced with choosing to be the aggressor or
the victim. I'd have chosen to interfere with their act of aggression
by one of my own, philosophic consistence bowing to survival instinct.
> >> It is not leaders I think people should support and trust in but the
> >> systems that this leadership operates within. You are not to my mind
> >> supporting the US constitution, when you fail to insist that the US
> >> constitution be respected, honoured, and enforced. There is a big difference
> >> between saying its my government whether or not I agree with it, and saying
> >> that Stephen Harper (our current PM) is my man, and I must support him
> >> regardless of my own conviction about the rightness of his positions.
> US presidents are not permitted
> under the US system of government to do many of the things that George Bush
> has sometimes proudly, sometimes sheepishly fessed up to routinely doing.
> If the system does nothing to oppose abuses of government, it is not serving
> its own best interest. It is not being the very thing it was designed and
> built to be. I don't think you can label such a travesty of the system "the
> system" without muddying the boundaries between whatt the system is and what
> it is not.
Well, I'd agree. But the administration's interpretations and arguments
seem to be acceptable to a diminishing but still large group of
citizens and a fairly consistent majority of elected officials.
> You and I would say it different ways and arrive at the things said by
> different means but I am not sure that we'd really be saying two different
> things. I argue from a basis of law, because I see law as our collective
> effort over centuries to codify this internal voice we hear which tells us
> that this is right, and that wrong. Most certainly on occasions the law
> can be an ass.. but that said, listening to law is listening to an the
> very expression of our own inner humanity, and this is quite deep enough
> an authority to have and to hold my respect and regard. Listening to law
> is listening to what we as a species have come to understand and to codify
> regarding the very nature of what constitutes right and what wrong. Support
> a war of aggression and you are effectively saying that those who at Nuremburg
> declared that wars of aggression constituted the supreme war crime were wrong.
> On what basis can any of us do that, when they having lived through five years
> of war, and found war to be hell, knew the nature of war so much better than
> you or I.
My own encounters with the law do not incline me to see it as an
expression of our humanity but rather as a system of limiting the
ability of one party to harm another.
The determinent of rightness isn't always justice, it's adhering to
precedent. And the ability to legally oppose personal "harm" is related
to the ability to pay for time and knowledge of rules and loopholes.
It's not always the party we would see as injured that has those
resources.
I have profound respect for the judgments at Nuremburg. I don't see us
as being especially good at generalizing other experiences (or even our
own past experiences) to our own immediate ones, no matter how parallel
they may be, however.
> I think the overall trend if for the codification of right and wrong to
> be more towards the right than towards the wrong over time. Thus I do
> not see the better being cancelled out by the worse, which you seem to
> implicitly suggest above.
That wasn't my intent. I think changes made to the Constitution can
either improve it or degrade it. I haven't the knowledge or experience
to hazard a guess as to the overall trend. What I do see is some pretty
silly amendments being proposed now, especially language to define
marriage and restrict civil union as contracts between a man and a
woman only.
> If I wanted to see a certain policy implemented (for example that the US not
> initiate wars of aggression) I would trust the US to implement that policy
> far more if US legislation said that them was the rules, than if the US
> legislation did not say that them were the rules, regardless of the merit
> the US people saw in supporting such a policy. Putting things in the
> rules permits some objection to be voiced when the rules are broken.
> Having a belief that the US would not be the first to use nuclear weapons
> seems to me a very poor cousin to the US declaring that it would not be
> the first to use nuclear weapons, and making such first use unlawful.
> Why should one trust another, when they are not prepared to put their
> money where their mouth is.
Yes.
> >> There is a fire blazing in the forest, and if it is impractical to suggest
> >> that any might be somehow able to get water to the fire, it is to my mind
> >> negligent almost beyond belief to not even be trying to work out how to get
> >> water to the fire, instead arguing that the fire just has to be allowed to
> >> burn and as a consequence do whatever harm it does. By the time the fire
> >> reaches into the very heart and soul of America, it will be way too late
> >> to do anything to control it. Indeed it already to me feels way too late.
> >
> >It seems a little. . . arrogant to suggest that no one is trying to
> >work out how to get water to the fire. Whatever gave you that
> >impression?
>
> Well the suggestion that I was being naive in wanting to see legislation
> that restricted the power of presidents to commit the greatest crime on
> earth, among other things. I don't understand the seemingly wide spread
> opposition among Quakers for both accepting that starting wars of
> aggression is criminal, and for insisting that those who start such
> wars be treated by the societies they exist within as the criminals they
> are.
I was suggesting that you were naive in assuming that people weren't
trying to "fix" this, not in wanting better legislation.
Please tell me more about this wide-spread Quaker opposition. I haven't
seen it here in Wisconsin--quite the opposite.
> Don't worry too much about using wrong words. In the current political
> climate I am sure that every word written here gets read by someone
> somewhere the better to stay one jump ahead of "evil" Quakers. My
> concern is not that I use the wrong words, but that I am gravely
> misunderstood. As I've said before my only hope is that those
> that police this news group better see who I am and who I am not
> than most who contribute to this forum have.
Oh, yikes! If people who have been listening, speaking with you, and
holding you in the light misunderstand you, why would you expect
someone expressly looking for threats to do otherwise during a swat
perusal?
Personally, I think "they" must fall asleep all the time, and with good
reason.
Christine
Ian Davis
Ian Davis <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>I can show you the pictures of why this bastard child should never have been
>permitted to be born, and that will be blood running in gutters.
This is life in Iraq today for those who otherwise would rather not know.
"http://baghdadtreasure.blogspot.com/2006/05/who-else-wants-to-die-in-iraq.html"
If you want to understand where I am coming from all that is needful is to
understand what I read, and have read every day for the last three years.
I'm rather trapped. I can't turn my back on so much suffering.. but neither
is it easily to daily absorb the knowledge of each new horror and each new
outrage against our collective humanity without being driven mad by that
very knowledge. Iraq has become a greater horror than anything ever dreamed
up by the script writers of Dr Who, and what has been done there can never now
be undone. And still daily that horror gets more unimaginably horrendous. Where
is it all going to end. I'm left thinking "stop the planet - I want to get
off".
Why is it insane to want a world in which what I read happening every day
never happened. Why is insane to say that this beast called pre-emptive
war needs a cage big enough and strong enough that it never again be permitted
to be loosed upon the world. That is what they said at the end of WWII and
it was they who had it right. Do we really need yet more wars on the scale
of WWI and WWII or worse in order to once again reinforce this notion that
war is evil.
Those who thought it was worth any price to stop Iraq from launching a nuclear
attack on Los Angeles three years ago, should be learning of the price paid to
stop Iraq doing something they never had the capability to do in the first
place, and should now be saying that they erred in thinking the most important
place in the world to protect was the places where they lived, and not the
places where others lived.
Ian
JEB
>>
>>I'm not sure your epithet of "left wing" means anything, and
>>therefore, other than a jab at something you don't like, doesn't
>>communicate much. Nor is Republican or Democrat a useful way of
>>communicating very much. If it's absolutists vs. relativists - well, I
>>can understand that, and I pretty much know what side of that fence
>>I'm on. There are a few absolutes, and every thing else is pretty much
>>relative to those.
(snipped for brevity)
>
> You'll perhaps say that the
> neocons put a lie to that notion, but I don't see the neocons as
> promoting classic right wing positions and attitudes. I see their
> stated policies as being hard left wing policies. Overthrowing other
> political systems the better to impose your own political system on
> the universe was what the communists aspired to achieve.
In your statement lies the crux of mine. Labels don't communicate anything
worthwhile here. Presuming the same things were being done as are currently
being done in the U.S. with the Republicans, conservatives, whatever, out
of power, we would hear endless bellowing from them about federalization of
states rights, the totalatarian evil of the surveillance of American
citizens, the insidious provisions of the Patriot act, the totally
irresponsible spending without being willing to pay for it, the horrible
travesty of corruption -- endless bleating by the same sheep at currently
at the controls. The labels do not communicate; that's the point I was
trying to make. Communistic states were viewed as the terrible left. Facist
states were the terrible right. I want nothing to do with either.
>
> I know that people bridle the minute I seem to declare myself opposed
> to left wing concepts and actions, but I think the error theirs.
> They've chosen which side to support, and they predicate how they
> parse what others say on the basis of what they say about the sides
> they are on, and not what they say about the substantive issues at
> hand. This is viewing things subjectively, rather than objectively,
> and means that they are filtering out the real message even before it
> reaches its intended destination.
Again, the labels don't communicate anything except perhaps to trigger an
emotional response by people who are not well equipped to think. Your
ability to think is much better than that.
> That simply isn't the dividing line for
> me.. what is the dividing line for me is what is right and what is
> wrong. And that dividing line doesn't divide the parties one from the
> other but divides the people within the parties one from the other.
Quite agree.
>
>>
>>> My personality is one which tends to be ruled based. I try not to
>>> break rules, am not comfortable with others breaking rules, and am
>>> the antithesis therefore of the "political activist". I think that
>>> the rules should be ones imposed on those who would otherwise
>>> violate the rules, not on those who respect them.
>>
>>You might make a good hall monitor ferreting out peccadilloes and
>>crimes with equal vigor. I would not. Rules are a necessary evil to
>>smooth out interactions among people, and stabilize what would
>>otherwise be a chaotic society and civilization. They are due general
>>respect because of that important function they serve. But they have
>>no virtue in themselves, and mostly do not rise to the level of
>>morality at all. Rules may restrain the savage, but they can never
>>make men good or great. It takes a spark of divinity (whatever you
>>wish to label it) for civilization to move forward. Your paint by
>>numbers approach to art will often get you a facsimilie of Lassie, but
>>never art. And if you relish and enforce the reliability of your
>>"Lassies," you will choke the freedom to be original and different
>>that makes men great.
>>
>
> I don't think the world can afford the freedom to allow some men to be
> great if it gives other the license to be Hitlers.
I wouldn't phrase it that way, but I would fundamentally agree that I would
not endorse the philosophical premise that justifies the excesses of a
Nietzschean superman at the expense of everyone else.
But if the price of freedom and its ability to advance civilization to the
point of survival is the risk of a despot, then I think the potential
greatly exceeds the risk. This is particularly true since I believe that
mankind does not have either the wisdom or temperament to do anything less
than evil in the long term when he is ceded long term power, and therefore
should never be given the controlling power he always craves -- always in
the name of some "good."
Hitler is a lesson in people's willingness to assent to great evil in the
pursuit of some personal good. Germany reveals the great flaw in believing
any system - even a democratic one, or one based on great knowledge, will
shield people from the weakness of their own humanity.
Without people's gullibility, their desire to believe, there hope for a
better future, Hitler would probably be a mostly unknown name today.
> The good one man
> can accomplish can't compare to the harm one man can cause.
I see no real basis for that statement, other than a rhetorical one.
> I take
> your vision of the universe you see me as desiring by choking the
> freedom of people to be individual and different; hold it up against
> the absolute horror of what men enjoying that freedom to be original
> and different have made of Iraq, and don't see this freedom you talk
> of as freedom at all.
Freedom is freedom. If one is constrained to do someone elses good, then
freedom fails. I would rather determine my own good with all of its
precariousness than to suffer the security of someone elses good. No. I
would not give up my free will so that the U.S. could not choose to go to
war against Iraq. Sorry.
> I see it as monsterous tyranny. You can show
> me the vision I am wishing to choke and it would be something in your
> head. I can show you the pictures of why this bastard child should
> never have been permitted to be born, and that will be blood running
> in gutters. My vision of what this universe is makes me think your
> visions of what constitute good or bad ideas about what it should be
> or where it should go, are so far removed from the hard reality of
> what this universe is as to be near worthless in understanding this
> universe.
Our views of life are quite different. You rant about the suffering in
Iraq, but a sense of history shows your view to be extremely limited about
the journey of mankind through history and even today. I would be more
impressed if your vision encompassed Africa and what has happened and
continues to happen there. If it ecompassed what happened in China, the
U.S.S.R., South American, etc. then I would see your compassion extending
toward something important rather than the political misbehavior of the
U.S. at the moment. Looking a few hundred to a few thousands of years ago,
the U.S./Iraq event doesn't even register on the scale of evil and
suffering mankind has both inflicted and endured.
In the grand scheme of things, mankind is advancing slowly. Whether the
advancement will be fast enough to prevent his extinction is another
matter. For philosophical reasons, even that eventual demise doesn't keep
me awake at night.
Much of the good in life comes from the ability to be free. In my opinion
much of the value of religion lies in its potential to free men from the
normal habits and selfish perspective that usually dominate their lives.
> You see I believe in
> what to me is the Quaker concept of being ever mindful of that
> internal compass of ours.
Sure. Agreement is not what moral action is about.
> But on the subject of war I am unequivocal. Starting a war is wrong
> because war is inherently wrong, and can only harm. I'll not do
> anything to aid those who start such wars. If I can impose
> restrictions on peoples ability to start wars that is fine with me,
> because those restrictions are entirely on the side of increasing
> peoples freedom while also decreasing entrophy (lack of order) in this
> universe. It is a constant source of amazement to me that Quakers
> seem so wishy washy in their own positions regarding where they stand
> in relationship to war, given their strong opposition at least on
> paper to war. To my mind it seems bizarre that these notions of mine
> should be ones that here seem to flow very much against the general
> current of opinion. But that would not convince me I was wrong -- it
> would only convince me that for Quakers rivers run up hill.
Quakers are human beings struggling with the same stuff that non-Quakers
do. There is nothing about any particular path that ensures those following
it won't err. Spirituality is an individual journey, not some sure-fire
mechanized means of moral attainment.
I might fault Quakerism for the inconsistency of some of its adherents. If
I do, then I must also classify all instituions as failures, none
infallibly preclude faulty adherents. In Christianity, there is the concept
of mercy. In Buddhism it's compassion. In both there is recognition that
even among human beings that try, limitations and sometimes failure are
just part of being the intelligent meat we are. The ability to love people,
mankind, etc. while not ignoring those failures, is the beginning of a
journey beyond cynicism.
>
>>>
>>> Actually I believe in something just a little more subtle. I
>>> believe that people can be molded by the attitudes that they absorb
>>> as their own. I don't think controls, restrictions and punishments
>>> work half as well as evolving society towards being one that views
>>> certain actions as wrong period.
>>
>>This is true, and something that I think many people miss. Inherent in
>>a culture is transmission of values that greatly exceed the ability of
>>laws to inculcate. We have 50 legislatures and a federal government
>>busy passing more laws, defining even more "crimes," as if this will
>>change people's values. Look at the size of the U.S. prison
>>population, the frequency of murder, even infant mortality among
>>civilized countries and its clear that the approach doesn't work.
>>While organized religion could help here, it is fully occupied with
>>much more important things like foisting the junk science of
>>Intelligent Design on the public.
>
The answer to all these questions
> seems to be that it can be done if only a single generation can grow
> up in the shadow of such revolutionary ideas, but how is the tree that
> casts this shadow to be nurtured that long.
Therein lies some hope. Things do not ever have to be as they have been.
>>> I don't have a problem with propaganda that helps..
>>
>>Do you really believe this? Maybe you're using a much different
>>definition of propaganda than comes to mind. Propaganda is a means of
>>distorting reality - always for some alleged "good" purpose. You think
>>distortion of reality for your idea of "good" is a sound principle?
>>Maybe we don't mean the same thing by propaganda.
>
(snipped for brevity)
> Propaganda works, and
> therefore let us all hope that propaganda is used as a force for good,
> rather than as a force for evil.
>
I don't see Canada's effort to incorporate diversity into its culture as
necessarily a distortion of reality. In many ways, racism, the myths that
surround it, and the perpetration of those myths are big distortions of
reality that benefit from correction. It is one thing to use corrective
lenses to aid impaired vision. It is quite another to provide/sell faulty
lens that cause a person to see things incorrectly, but in some socially or
politically preferable way.
jeb
Ian Davis
<chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>an Davis wrote:
>> In article <1148012204....@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
>> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>(snipped up with the intention of condensing, not subverting)
>
>> Are you sure that this notion that the rest of the world wants you to be
>> moral arbiter of the world is not a made in America concept designed
>> specifically to justify why you think it your calling to be the moral
>> arbiter of the world. I really don't think that the US is in a very
>> strong position to claim that it even understands the meaning of the
>> word "moral" or the word "arbitrate". Doesn't arbiter suggest that some
>> arbitration is involved. Wouldn't "moral dictator" be a more fitting
>> description of precisely how the US seeks to impose its moral values on
>> the rest of the world. I don't remember any nation actually going out and
>> asking for the US to be moral arbiter over them or anyone else. Perhaps
>> at some point Israel and the Palestinians did ask for such help. But I
>> don't see how one can claim to be moral arbiter of the world in invading
>> Iraq.
>
>What I refer to is not any rightness in or explicit support for this
>role. However, it's arguable that European countries refuse to take a
>strong policing role and still accept the "benefit" to them of having
>the US strongman around--using more of their own money on
>infrastructure and social programs than on military expenditures.
>
I think it stretching things to suggest that Europe saw benefits to themselves
in the US invading Iraq. I'm not even sure that Tony Blair saw things
in that context. As I understood it he went along with the US desire to
invade Iraq not because he saw the action as a good idea, but that he
saw benefit to be had by remaining a US ally. I can't believe that Mussaraf
saw benefit in NATO invading Afghanistan. Again the choice was between
being "with us or against us". I don't think there is a member of
parliament anywhere in Europe who would have thought it a good idea to
invade Iraq if the US had been opposed to that same notion.
>On some level, reliance on the American "police force" makes lifestyle
>and economic improvements possible for those who don't need to fill
>that role. So to stop the US imperialism, others will have to step up
>to the plate, along with internal pressure.
Imagining a world where none stepped up to that plate doesn't leave me
thinking "Oh dear - Canada will have to step up to that plate then".
Instead it leaves me thinking "Good -- worlds finally come to its
senses". Why exactly should any be interfering in the internal affairs
of other nations. I grew up in a world which viewed such interference
as just plain wrong.
>
>> >Would it be better if we could finish the wars? Would it be acceptable
>> >to start them then?
>>
>> No, but you will never finish them. Gamblers don't stop when they are
>> winning. The US never had any greater hope of conquering all of the
>> middle east than Germany did of conquering all of Europe. For sure the
>> US can invade, oppress and declare itself the victor, but as long as
>> the US remained the oppressor it would be opposed.
>
>Yes, certainly. This is a lesson we should have learned from the
>British as well as the Germans.
>
Well in fairness here, the British were very negligent in not telling George
Bush exactly how badly their earlier adventures in attempting to occupy Iraq
had gone. It is not like this is the first time the British have tried to
"civilise" Iraq.
"CAPTION: THE [BRITISH] FOREIGN OFFICE 1958.
MANDARIN 1: (Answering the phone) There's been a popular revolution.
MANDARIN 2; Popular with whom? Not with me certainly.
MANDARIN 1: They've murdered the King, the Crown Prince, the Prime Minster,
the Deputy Prime Minister, the Defence Minister, and they've
burnt down the British Embassy.
MANDARIN 2: You see Tristram it's always the same. We give them a Royal
Family, we send their Kings to Harrow, we build them hospitals,
schools, and roads.
MANDARIN 1: We bomb them and gas them.
MANDARIN 2: Nothing's too much trouble, and this is the thanks we get.
MANDARIN 1: And I suppose we'll just have to bomb them again.
MANDARIN 2: Well that would be lovely Tristram but unfortunately we closed
the RAF base two years ago.
MANDARIN 1: Oh well, that means another invasion then. We are getting quite
good at that.
MANDARIN 2: If we know one thing at the Foreign Office, Tristram, it is how
to draw lessons from history, and you can take it from me, that
whatever else happens we are not going to set foot in that ghastly
country again.
http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/special_reports/iraq_hard_place.html
>> How exactly has occupying Tibet helped China, more than
>> not occupying Tibet would have. How has occupying Iraq helped the
>> US?
>
>It's as obvious to me as to you that there is more harm than benefit.
>But I am in the minority here, and our system of government is winner
>take all--it isn't as fluid as a parliamentary one is.
How is it that you and I in a minority here, when the logic is so glaringly
obvious. There are days when I don't understand humanity at all. Why
do they have to catch all the fish in the sea in order to discover that doing
so was a mistake. Why does it take three years to know what I knew with what
felt like certainty back on day one.
>
>> The democratic party makes me think of Sodam and Gomorrah. That city is the
>> one who I think it was declared would be spared if three good men could be
>> found anywhere within it. With the democratic party one can count on one
>> hand the number of people who have had the courage to public speak out and
>> say the Iraq war is wrong.. Feingold, Gore, Howard Dean, and Murtha. If I've
>> done a disservice to others that also opposed the war, whom I've failed to
>> mention please educate me as to their names. And even among the greats
>> within that party named above, they have hardly been courageous. Feingold
>> after all never got beyond calling for a motion of censure for actions by a
>> sitting president that were clearly unlawful, and that was promptly defeated
>> by his own party. Only tonight I was reading that the smell of fear is the
>> smell of political failure, and those who fear will as a consequence fail.
>> "Eau de Don't Let Me Screw Up and Flush My Chances down the Toilette".
>>
>> http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0518-31.htm
>
>I have no quarrel. The Democratic National Committee has not taken a
>courageous path on anything. Its attempts to portray itself as having
>concordant values with the religious right will be its downfall.
>
>> So few voices crying in such a large wilderness. But I guess like Rumsfelt
>> says, you don't go to war with the army you might want -- you go to war with
>> the army you have, and I am on the side of all regardless of their party
>> affiliation who hold that starting wars of aggression is wrong.
>
>Here you are entirely wrong. Many voices are crying in the wilderness.
>They just aren't getting any conventional media coverage.
Yes I am wrong.. I should have qualified my remarks by saying so few voices
within the elected representatives and congressmen within both the democratic
and republican party. That was the context in which I was writing. I know
that there huge numbers of Americans who are as opposed to war as I. But it
is hard to give them my attention because it is your elected representatives
and congressmen whose vote is the one that tends to count. I periodically send
out the reminder that there are more Americans who think like liberal Canadians
such as myself than there are Canadians. It is just from my perspective a tad
unfortunate that they live in a society where roughly speaking they make up
only a quarter of that society.
>
>> Feingold's speech was a breath of fresh air in large part because it seemed
>> that here was a man both amply able to say what he genuinely thought, and to
>> say it without apparent fear or hesitation. I wish his career well.
>
>Unfortunately, he's short, Jewish, and divorced, all of which condemn
>him more than his rather ordinary liberal stands that now look radical.
>
Wouldn't know he was short, listening to him on what was a voice only medium.
Being Jewish is what he makes of it. Where I wonder do his loyalties lie..
with God, with the State of Israel, with his own conscience, or with the
nation he is a citizen of. That he is divorced would be I think irrelevant
here. Don't tell me he's left handed too :-)
>> That is not my interpretation of "no means no". I'm an absolutist. I
>> don't see shades of grey. One either acts correctly or one does not.
>> How the other party behaves has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness
>> of anyones subsequent conduct but their own.
>
>Then I will hope you are an engineer and not a teacher <g>.
I'm a programmer. Do no worse than mispell a word and the program will fail.
One of the probes sent to Mars failed to arrive because the line in the code
for i=1,10
had the comma replaced by a period. Engineers have it easy compared to us
programmers. Generally speaking they have to be wrong about the overall
behaviour of the system in order for it to fail. We fail if we mistakingly
press one key, and not the key right next to it.
<<snip>>
>> We are slightly schitzophrenic on this point. It is not an either or
>> proposition.. I think we see women as multi facetted, one facet of which
>> is that they are containers for the thing contained. Probably in like
>> fashion women see men as multi facetted creatures, one facet of which is
>> their ability to give women children.
>
><g> Not schizophrenic: complex--or grey.
>
I think schizophrenic because I don't think we see the complex greyness that
you allude to. Show me a pornographic image and I don't see in the image
a multi facetted human being -- I see what I've heard called eye candy.
Show me a picture of my wife on holiday, and I see a very different
image. The schizophrenia is in being unable to put the parts together
and in doing so see actual reality. The schizophrenia is in living in
very disjoint realities simultaneously and being able to see each in turn
as the present reality even while knowing particularly in the case of
pornography that there ain't anything in the picture that is genuine
except the parts.
>> I don't know what will deter US presidents from starting illegal wars of
>> aggression if the system they operate within permits them to do so. You
>> might say the people, but I've seen how easily the people can be led to
>> support wars of aggression.
>
>Do you think the US is unique in this?
>
No.. I want to see all nations evolve a recognition that there is never ever
justification for starting a war of aggression. I think the people of the
US more likely to be leaders in exporting this concept, than followers in
implementing it. What is really annoying is that the whole world did buy
into the concept that starting wars of aggression was both illegal and
wrong and 50 years on it is the US which is trying to do the Animal Farm
trick of rewriting the recognised truths, as the antithesis of what till
now they have been. It was the US which established this very notion of
the waging of wars of aggression as constituting the supreme war crime.
I'm not the one who has shifted in saying pre-emptive war wrong period.
It is the US which has shifted and shifted radically by buying into the
notion that there may be times when pre-emptive war is the right thing to do.
>> Why the apparent opposition to
>> making the initiation of a war of aggression an automatically impeachable
>> offence. Is some part of your background conscienceness holding on to the
>> notion that their might be cases where starting a war was sound, sensible, or
>> merely necessary. Take that case, stack it up against the human cost of
>> waging WWI and WWII and I think you will find that even that worse case
>> scenario becomes no case for starting a war of aggression.
>
>First, I think it's an error to paint with such a broad brush. There is
>no national consensus supporting the war in Iraq. The background and
>beliefs of Americans are incredibly diverse. Our elected officials
>don't represent us at all well.
>
>I agree that there's no place for wars of aggression. In fact, I see
>all wars as wars of aggression.
>
>Still, the argument for imminent danger has some feet. It's apparent
>that there was not the threat we feared in this situation, that the
>sense of imminent danger for the US has usually, if not always, been
>exaggerated. But I think if we'd gotten wind of Japanese plans for
>Pearl Harbor, we would be faced with choosing to be the aggressor or
>the victim. I'd have chosen to interfere with their act of aggression
>by one of my own, philosophic consistence bowing to survival instinct.
>
The US did get wind of Japanese plans for Pearl Harbor. They watched it
unfold and occur and did what they could to keep those on the receiving
end in the dark precisely because it was of the utmost importance that
it be seen as Japan attacking the US pre-emptively and not vica versa.
The US had cracked the Japanese codes, and knew both what they were
saying and where they were heading.
The next time the argument of imminent danger rears its head how are you
going to better determine the merit of that claimed danger. Are the US
people to endlessly support wars of aggression because they can endlessly
be frightened into doing so. The American people have been fooled once..
twice if one counts Vietnam. What are they going to do to ensure that you
are never ever again fooled into unnecessary wars.
Why should I not think that you are a nation like children warned not to swim
who take your swimming trunks along just in case you are tempted, when you
refuse to consider as an alternative locking those same swimming trunks
away, the better to protect oneself from the future temptation of putting
them on.
>
>> >> It is not leaders I think people should support and trust in but the
>> >> systems that this leadership operates within. You are not to my mind
>> >> supporting the US constitution, when you fail to insist that the US
>> >> constitution be respected, honoured, and enforced. There is a big
>difference
>> >> between saying its my government whether or not I agree with it, and saying
>> >> that Stephen Harper (our current PM) is my man, and I must support him
>> >> regardless of my own conviction about the rightness of his positions.
>
>> US presidents are not permitted
>> under the US system of government to do many of the things that George Bush
>> has sometimes proudly, sometimes sheepishly fessed up to routinely doing.
>> If the system does nothing to oppose abuses of government, it is not serving
>> its own best interest. It is not being the very thing it was designed and
>> built to be. I don't think you can label such a travesty of the system "the
>> system" without muddying the boundaries between whatt the system is and what
>> it is not.
>
>Well, I'd agree. But the administration's interpretations and arguments
>seem to be acceptable to a diminishing but still large group of
>citizens and a fairly consistent majority of elected officials.
>
Paradoxically this is why I prefer our system where it lies with the power
of the Queen to declare the actions of the government warrant its dismissal.
Having people whose political future is vested in not rocking the boat police
the system they are part of seems a poor substitute for having an authority
with power over the legislature which is not allowed to be political, may
never express personal political preferences, and may never vote, and whose
only role is to keep government honest.
>
>> You and I would say it different ways and arrive at the things said by
>> different means but I am not sure that we'd really be saying two different
>> things. I argue from a basis of law, because I see law as our collective
>> effort over centuries to codify this internal voice we hear which tells us
>> that this is right, and that wrong. Most certainly on occasions the law
>> can be an ass.. but that said, listening to law is listening to an the
>> very expression of our own inner humanity, and this is quite deep enough
>> an authority to have and to hold my respect and regard. Listening to law
>> is listening to what we as a species have come to understand and to codify
>> regarding the very nature of what constitutes right and what wrong. Support
>> a war of aggression and you are effectively saying that those who at Nuremburg
>> declared that wars of aggression constituted the supreme war crime were wrong.
>> On what basis can any of us do that, when they having lived through five years
>> of war, and found war to be hell, knew the nature of war so much better than
>> you or I.
>
>My own encounters with the law do not incline me to see it as an
>expression of our humanity but rather as a system of limiting the
>ability of one party to harm another.
>
Is not our desire not to harm others what distinguishes us from those
who have no qualms about causing harm to others.
>The determinent of rightness isn't always justice, it's adhering to
>precedent. And the ability to legally oppose personal "harm" is related
>to the ability to pay for time and knowledge of rules and loopholes.
>It's not always the party we would see as injured that has those
>resources.
>
>I have profound respect for the judgments at Nuremburg. I don't see us
>as being especially good at generalizing other experiences (or even our
>own past experiences) to our own immediate ones, no matter how parallel
>they may be, however.
>
>
>> I think the overall trend if for the codification of right and wrong to
>> be more towards the right than towards the wrong over time. Thus I do
>> not see the better being cancelled out by the worse, which you seem to
>> implicitly suggest above.
>
>That wasn't my intent. I think changes made to the Constitution can
>either improve it or degrade it. I haven't the knowledge or experience
>to hazard a guess as to the overall trend. What I do see is some pretty
>silly amendments being proposed now, especially language to define
>marriage and restrict civil union as contracts between a man and a
>woman only.
>
The ones who own the words decide what use may be made of them. Words
are very powerful. A society which greets each other with Shalom or
Salam (Peace) is going to be perhaps periodically reminded that words
are not just words but stand for something. You say hallo to me and
I'll know that you are saying Hallaluja. Say Good Bye and I'll know
that your actually saying "God be with you".
I don't have a problem with treating two people who wish to live together
as spouses irrespective of their gender. I see the treating them as such
no more than acknowledging the relationship they enjoy one with the other.
But I'm not burdened with this issue of "What God wants". Either he
doesn't have much control over my internal compass which makes him
irrelevant, or he agrees with it which makes my lack of belief in
him irrelevant. I wouldn't want to be making "God" the arbitrator
of what I perceived to be right and wrong. For me that would be
more like trying to navigate by sign posts as an alternative to comparing
ones own direction to that of the position of the sun. I trust the
position of the sun more than I trust sign posts that any can change
or put up to mislead.
>> If I wanted to see a certain policy implemented (for example that the US not
>> initiate wars of aggression) I would trust the US to implement that policy
>> far more if US legislation said that them was the rules, than if the US
>> legislation did not say that them were the rules, regardless of the merit
>> the US people saw in supporting such a policy. Putting things in the
>> rules permits some objection to be voiced when the rules are broken.
>> Having a belief that the US would not be the first to use nuclear weapons
>> seems to me a very poor cousin to the US declaring that it would not be
>> the first to use nuclear weapons, and making such first use unlawful.
>> Why should one trust another, when they are not prepared to put their
>> money where their mouth is.
>
>Yes.
>
>> >> There is a fire blazing in the forest, and if it is impractical to suggest
>> >> that any might be somehow able to get water to the fire, it is to my mind
>> >> negligent almost beyond belief to not even be trying to work out how to get
>> >> water to the fire, instead arguing that the fire just has to be allowed to
>> >> burn and as a consequence do whatever harm it does. By the time the fire
>> >> reaches into the very heart and soul of America, it will be way too late
>> >> to do anything to control it. Indeed it already to me feels way too late.
>> >
>> >It seems a little. . . arrogant to suggest that no one is trying to
>> >work out how to get water to the fire. Whatever gave you that
>> >impression?
>>
I have a sense quite probably misplaced that for everyone I know both here and
elsewhere my concerns are not theirs, my fears are not theirs, and my solutions
are not theirs. I feel awkward about so often making Iraq the central thrust
of all I say here, because while it is very much front and center for me night
and day, I don't believe that this is so for most others here. It may be that
I am surrounded by people who care just as much as I, but who are simply not
able to make the same impression on me that my own thoughts naturally do. Or
it may be that three years hence they just wish I'd shut up about Iraq, about
war, about it being wrong, and move on. I really don't know which is the truth
here.
>> Well the suggestion that I was being naive in wanting to see legislation
>> that restricted the power of presidents to commit the greatest crime on
>> earth, among other things. I don't understand the seemingly wide spread
>> opposition among Quakers for both accepting that starting wars of
>> aggression is criminal, and for insisting that those who start such
>> wars be treated by the societies they exist within as the criminals they
>> are.
>
>I was suggesting that you were naive in assuming that people weren't
>trying to "fix" this, not in wanting better legislation.
I didn't know that any were trying to "fix" this. Can you point me at what
it is they are actually doing. I know what I have been trying to do here
the last six years, but am given the little any other has said here about
what others are trying to do I am operating in a near complete vacuum.
As a Quaker forum this one seems to me remarkably remiss in rarely if
ever saying anything about what is actually going on in the alternative
Quaker universe out there.
>
>Please tell me more about this wide-spread Quaker opposition. I haven't
>seen it here in Wisconsin--quite the opposite.
>
I haven't seen anything but opposition to what I say on this forum. There
is not one I respect here who hasn't told me in no uncertain terms that I
am wrong. I'm the one Engineer labelled the USA basher.. I'm the one that
Timothy recently said must have a chip on my shoulder.. I'm the one whose
Timothy earlier asked "surely you can't be on their side". I'm also the one
who earlier was told by my wife that if I couldn't support Canada when Canada
was at war then perhaps I should go back to England. I'm the one who has been
compared to David Duke, and called the Fascist despite my strong opposition to
fascism. I'm the who is told privately "And it doesn't matter anyway who wins
because all USAmerican politicians are evil crooks, unlike our ever virtuous
neighbors to the north." I don't have the thick skin that perhaps others
perceive me as having. The last six years have been rough ones.
>> Don't worry too much about using wrong words. In the current political
>> climate I am sure that every word written here gets read by someone
>> somewhere the better to stay one jump ahead of "evil" Quakers. My
>> concern is not that I use the wrong words, but that I am gravely
>> misunderstood. As I've said before my only hope is that those
>> that police this news group better see who I am and who I am not
>> than most who contribute to this forum have.
>
>Oh, yikes! If people who have been listening, speaking with you, and
>holding you in the light misunderstand you, why would you expect
>someone expressly looking for threats to do otherwise during a swat
>perusal?
Yes well it is rather a forlorn hope. But I am not the one making up
the choices here. How does one reconcile childhood resolve to ever
oppose fascism, with plans to visit the Grand Canyon with my wife,
when the doing one might interfere horribly with the other. How at a
deep emotional level does one resolve the desire to protect that which
one loves and as our national anthem says "stand on guard for thee" when
the very ones I seeks to guard label me the enemy. America is as much
my home as Canada. You can't be Canadian and not know that. But I
am horribly disenfranchised because its not permitted for me to be the
one who cares about America. On 9/11 I cared deeply enough to spend the
day trying to work out how to give blood.. I cared deeply enough to
donate to American Friends knowing that I'd just waived the ability to
make my donation tax deductable. I cared enough to phone up Toronto
Airport and say that I'd take any American who found themselves stranded,
and then rush round trying to get the house in ship shape order for them.
And it hurts like hell even three years later to know that I cannot know
your pain and must eternally be seen as the outsider. I was in Logan Airport
a mere week before that 9/11 attack. I could as easily have been on those
planes as you or any other. As I say it is a forlorn hope. But that
does remain my hope. That those charged with the responsibility for
distinguishing friend from foe do a better job of doing so than those
here have to my mind historically done.
>Personally, I think "they" must fall asleep all the time, and with good
>reason.
If you think monitoring SRQ is bad pity the ones monitoring the other
newsgroups. Those are very much more boring but arguably far more
important.
Ian
1st Century Apostolic Traditionalist
> In article <e4kmgu$35c$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>,
> Ian Davis <ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>>I can show you the pictures of why this bastard child should never have
>>been
>>permitted to be born, and that will be blood running in gutters.
>
> This is life in Iraq today for those who otherwise would rather not know.
>
> "http://baghdadtreasure.blogspot.com/2006/05/who-else-wants-to-die-in-iraq.html"
>
> If you want to understand where I am coming from all that is needful is to
> understand what I read, and have read every day for the last three years.
> I'm rather trapped. I can't turn my back on so much suffering.. but
> neither
> is it easily to daily absorb the knowledge of each new horror and each new
> outrage against our collective humanity without being driven mad by that
> very knowledge.
Sit back....relax Ian.....you cannot do anything about it, for such a
condition was prophesied by Christ and the Apostles that this would be the
state of the world prior to Christ's Return.
> Iraq has become a greater horror than anything ever dreamed
> up by the script writers of Dr Who, and what has been done there can never
> now
> be undone. And still daily that horror gets more unimaginably horrendous.
> Where
> is it all going to end. I'm left thinking "stop the planet - I want to
> get
> off".
It will end in God's good time, He is in overall control so stop witling,
you cannot change anything as God has foreordained this scenario, indeed it
will slowly become worse and worse .....until...."Men's hearts shall be
failing them for fear of the things that they see coming on the
earth".........."Unless the days are shortened ALL FLESH would perish, but
for the Elects sake the days will be cut short"
> Why is it insane to want a world in which what I read happening every day
> never happened. Why is insane to say that this beast called pre-emptive
> war needs a cage big enough and strong enough that it never again be
> permitted
> to be loosed upon the world.
It will be so when Christ Returns and takes control of the nations.
Micah 4:3 "And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations
afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears
into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war any more.
4 But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and
none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken
it."
Jeff...
Acts 2:41 "Then they that gladly received his word were *baptized: and the
same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. 42 And
they continued *stedfastly in the *apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in
breaking of bread, and in prayers."
Ian Davis
1st Century Apostolic Traditionalist <nospa...@add.com> wrote:
>
>Sit back....relax Ian.....you cannot do anything about it, for such a
>condition was prophesied by Christ and the Apostles that this would be the
>state of the world prior to Christ's Return.
When it comes to the time of the accounting as to how you have spent your
talents, what will you say to the one who made it very clear that one was
not merely supposed to bury them in the ground, and then later return those
same talents without interest as you seek to do above.
"Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee
that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering
where thou hast not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent
in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord answered and said
unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where
I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: Thou oughtest therefore
to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have
received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give
it unto him which hath ten talents.
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but
from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast
ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth. When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the
holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And
before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from
another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set
the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me
drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was
sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the
righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?
or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee
in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and
came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done
it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an
hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick,
and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him,
saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or
naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he
answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one
of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into
everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. "
Ian
JEB
Let me pose a couple of hypothetical questions here.
Presume that the same pictures were a result of Iran invading Iraq after
Iraq had lobbed a bomb at it? Assume the same history of violence
unfolded. Would you feel gripped by the same horror?
Presume that the 9/11 attack had been perpetrated by some cell quartered
in Iraq. The same pictures. The same history. Would you feel gripped by
the same horror?
Is it really the horror of what's happening? If so, then war, whether
internal, or between external combatants is seen for the unruly offense
against mankind it usually is, regardless of the justification or lack
thereof.
If everything's different, then I would think your distress is more
about the U.S. premise for promulgating the war, than the actual horror
of what you see.
For me the logical premise is that horror and suffering are just horror
and suffering without mitigation of some "just" or "unjust" initiating
premise.
There's no zinger here, nor ANY belittling of what you see or feel. To
me it's just that the picture is much bigger than whether the U.S. had
adequate "reason" to start this.
jeb
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>Let me pose a couple of hypothetical questions here.
>
>Presume that the same pictures were a result of Iran invading Iraq after
>Iraq had lobbed a bomb at it? Assume the same history of violence
>unfolded. Would you feel gripped by the same horror?
>
What is the point of your hypothetical. Are you trying to suggest that
the US invade Iraq after Iraq had lobbed a bomb at it. There has never
been anyone who has presented any evidence whatsoever that Iraq was in
anyway involved in 9/11. Why your chosen story line?
Why not stick to the facts. Iraq invaded Iran in what was then called
operation whirlwind. Back then I held that as the victim the world
should have sided with Iran against Iraq. I've said that many times
since, and I firmly believe that had the world opposes Saddams first
war of aggression, their would never have been his second.
But regarding the final question asked above. No I wouldn't feel quite
the same horror. Some part of the horror of what is being done in
Iraq is that it is that the doing is being done by Americans. If that
is part of the thing that horrifies me but does not horrify you, then I find
you strangely unconcerned about the good name of your own people. There
is a horror in discovering that the US is willing to practice torture,
willing to destroy cities such as Falluja in order to save them, willing
to do to Iraqi's what Saddam Hussein earlier did to Iraqi's in the very
same prison and to know as I write that Murtha is accusing US marines of the
recent massacre of Iraqi women and children in cold blood. If I had told you
that the US would be doing such things six years hence back in 2000 when I
first came here there would be none who would have believed my claims
credible. Yet now six years later there is none who seems even able to
remember a time when they might themselves then have been horrified at what
the US has become in the eyes of the rest of the world today. How in just six
years could all that has transpired take on such normality that it not even a
subject in need of any airing, concern or apparent alarm by most in the US?
I know where my various horrors can be found, but I really don't see where
yours can. You tell me you'd not give up your freedom to do it all again,
even knowing what the doing it all again would mean. What is the point of
arguing that what has been done is wrong with one who would do it all again
tomorrow.
>Presume that the 9/11 attack had been perpetrated by some cell quartered
>in Iraq. The same pictures. The same history. Would you feel gripped by
>the same horror?
>
Again why the need for hypotheticals. It may not be the case but it is
easier to imagine that the 9/11 attack was perpetrated with some support
from the then government of Afghanistan. I have said that there is some
legitimacy for the position that nation states have a responsibility to
protect other nation states from the threat of attack from within their
borders, and that their right to be exempt from attack is predicated on the
presumption that they will honour the international notion of not allowing
attacks to take place on or through their soil. Doing otherwise itself
constitutes an act of war. I do not think that the US/NATO invasion and
occupation of Afghanistan falls under the same category of "illegal war
of aggression" that the Iraq war does. You didn't have France, Germany,
Russia and China and Canada and the secretary General of the UN saying that
the war in Afghanistan was wrong. But you didn't have any of these nations
or the UN saying that the war in Iraq was right. Why play the game of asking
me to believe what isn't while trying to displace the topic of conversation
from that which blatantly is.
>Is it really the horror of what's happening? If so, then war, whether
>internal, or between external combatants is seen for the unruly offense
>against mankind it usually is, regardless of the justification or lack
>thereof.
No my horror is at starting an illegal war of aggression. It is this act
which precipitates war, and thus as the precursor to war, the one to be
directly to be held as responsible for producing war. This is for me
the difference between seeing that which might be deemed lawful and seeing
that which is clearly by just about any standard not lawful. Start an
illegal war of aggression and anything that results is entirely to be blamed
on the one who starts it. I will not treat victim and aggressor equally
and I will not deny the victim the right to use the methods of the aggressor
in attempting to thwart or deter such aggression. You want to say that all
wars are equally wrong and that there is no greater wrong in starting them
than in waging a war started by another. That may be a position Quakers hold
to, but it is not one which I find convincing. I hold to the position that
Britain was right to oppose Nazi Germany, that Britain was right to oppose
the attempt by Argentina to occupy the Falklands, that George Bush senior
was right to not tolerate the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, and that George
Bush junior was wrong to to that very thing that Hitler did, that those
Argentinian generals did, that Saddam Hussein did, and that the Israeli's
did in invading and occupying Lebanon. I am the one who is being consistent
here. It is you who are being inconsistent in thinking it ok for America
to start pre-emptive wars but presumably not ok for North Korea or Iran to
do likewise.
>
>If everything's different, then I would think your distress is more
>about the U.S. premise for promulgating the war, than the actual horror
>of what you see.
>
Everything is not different. The dead people are still dead. All the horrors
are still real. Why would you try to say otherwise. This is not some radio
show that you can switch channels on when you find your self disturbed by its
content.
>For me the logical premise is that horror and suffering are just horror
>and suffering without mitigation of some "just" or "unjust" initiating
>premise.
>
For me the logical premise is that horror and suffering are a consequence
of a universe gone horrible astray, and I'll mourn that fact, even if you
will not. There was a moment in time where futures hang in the balance
and we betrayed whatever good futures exists in our then universe by using
our power of choice to choose that which was wrong instead of that which
was right. It is the story of the garden of Eden all over again, just set
in a 21st century context. It is even set in that very same mythical
location where Eden is supposed to have existed. You can call it time and
chance if you wish. I call it a blight on all future history.
>There's no zinger here, nor ANY belittling of what you see or feel. To
>me it's just that the picture is much bigger than whether the U.S. had
>adequate "reason" to start this.
>
Yes the picture is much bigger, and it begs a very big question. Is this
going to be the last time the US and the US people are going to think that
their right to start war trumps the right of other people not to have wars
of aggression imposed on them. Is what we are currently going through some
sort of huge aberation, later to be blamed on one man, or is it the case
that with the US what one now sees is what one is in future going to get
more of. Is this a ship on the beach from which anything will be learned
or just one more shipwreck courtesy of the American people in what is to
be an endless production line that produces as its finished product new
shipwrecks. Is 2006 to be labelled the beginning of the end, or the
end of the beginning.
Ian.
Bill Samuel
>
>No, I don't. But that isn't the same as saying that the major political
>parties conspire to ruthless oppress minor parties. They ruthlessly
>conspire against one another. Greens and Libertarians are no threat to the
>Democrats and Republicans because they do not espouse anything that those
>who have bought into the American political consensus are interested in.
But the truth is that the two major parties have conspired together to make
it extremely difficult for other parties or independents to get a foothold.
Whether particular third parties would have become major players were the
rules not stacked against them is not relevant to that fact.
--
Bill Samuel, Silver Spring, MD, USA bill[at]friendsinchrist.net
http://home.comcast.net/~wsamuel/ http://www.quakerinfo.com/
Co-Coordinator, Friends in Christ, http://www.friendsinchrist.net/
"There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition."
JEB
> In article <Xns97C8B252...@216.196.97.136>,
> JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>
>>Let me pose a couple of hypothetical questions here.
>>
>>Presume that the same pictures were a result of Iran invading Iraq
>>after Iraq had lobbed a bomb at it? Assume the same history of
>>violence unfolded. Would you feel gripped by the same horror?
>>
>
> What is the point of your hypothetical. Are you trying to suggest
> that the US invade Iraq after Iraq had lobbed a bomb at it. There has
> never been anyone who has presented any evidence whatsoever that Iraq
> was in anyway involved in 9/11. Why your chosen story line?
The hypothetical had nothing to do with any facts about 9/11 or Iran.
I was trying to frame the situation in a different context. I was
interested whether or not that change of context changed your reaction to
what you saw. It did for you. For me it did not change it that much. Your
emotion seem mostly driven by whether or not it was done by the U.S. or
done in some justified manner. Mine is simpler. It is primarily a feeling
of human sympathy for civilans that suffer the harshness of war that has
little to do with those issues. Thus I feel much the same about what I read
and see in Africa, where the U.S. is not involved, whereas you probably do
not.
>
> Why not stick to the facts. Iraq invaded Iran in what was then called
> operation whirlwind. Back then I held that as the victim the world
> should have sided with Iran against Iraq. I've said that many times
> since, and I firmly believe that had the world opposes Saddams first
> war of aggression, their would never have been his second.
You may have been prescient about Iran. My hypothetical had nothing to do
with that. To me, the suffering in Iraq is not at all about who's doing it.
The maimed children suffer the same whether or not some someone met a test
of justification about promulgating the war. I believe many who are
screaming about the U.S. would shrug off the suffering if Iran were causing
it. The burns, the wounds, the grief are indifferent to all of those
notions.
> How in just six
> years could all that has transpired take on such normality that it not
> even a subject in need of any airing, concern or apparent alarm by
> most in the US?
One dynamic has changed whether you acknowledge it or not. Most of the
mayhem in Iraq today is NOT at the hands of the U.S. and would not stop if
the U.S. left tomorrow. I think that's true, whether or not it suits
someone's ideas about the U.S. presence.
>
> I know where my various horrors can be found, but I really don't see
> where yours can. You tell me you'd not give up your freedom to do it
> all again, even knowing what the doing it all again would mean. What
> is the point of arguing that what has been done is wrong with one who
> would do it all again tomorrow.
You really missed my point. I simply refused to surrender my free for a
tyranny of control that you believed could prevent such a war. And I still
feel the same. One because I have no faith in the bargain, And two I
believe freedom and its associated creativity have a better chance of
shaping a postive future for mankind than heavy-handed control that has
been the hallmark of historical governance.
>
>>Presume that the 9/11 attack had been perpetrated by some cell
>>quartered in Iraq. The same pictures. The same history. Would you feel
>>gripped by the same horror?
>>
>
> Again why the need for hypotheticals. It may not be the case but it
> is easier to imagine that the 9/11 attack was perpetrated with some
> support from the then government of Afghanistan.
Same point as above. Given different reasons for the war, the pictures for
you would apparently not be as horrible. If the outcome is the same, my
point is that except, for intellectual anquish and inner moral angst, the
outcome is the same. That fact makes me very reluctant to jump on the
bandwagon of suffering, no matter what I feel about the justification for
retaliation or even defense. It is that basic reluctance to go to war
because one is deeply aware of the evil it spawns and the suffering it
causes that provides an antidote or at least forbearance for either
intellectually justified wars or cowbow forades.
>
>>Is it really the horror of what's happening? If so, then war, whether
>>internal, or between external combatants is seen for the unruly
>>offense against mankind it usually is, regardless of the justification
>>or lack thereof.
>
> No my horror is at starting an illegal war of aggression.
We differ quite a bit about what horrifies us. That's not to dimiss
consideration of any legality or illegality. A "legal" war can be just as
devastating as an illegal one, and I am not immediately mollified by the
fact that it is "justfied." Wars are always "justified" in someone's mind.
I'm looking at something beyond the "right" to start a war.
>
>>
>>If everything's different, then I would think your distress is more
>>about the U.S. premise for promulgating the war, than the actual
>>horror of what you see.
>>
>
> Everything is not different. The dead people are still dead. All the
> horrors are still real. Why would you try to say otherwise.
I wholeheartedly agree. And that is the key point. It makes not one iota of
difference to the dead and wounded in my hypotheticals about who did what
or whether or not they met someone's test of justification. I start from
that point of compassion, and work back to what must be done, rather than
starting from some theoretical ground of whether or not it fits someone's
idea of a just war.
> This is
> not some radio show that you can switch channels on when you find your
> self disturbed by its content.
Actually many people do this. They do not even bother to look or turn on
your radio. This willingness to ignore is a significant part of the
problem, because people don't really understand the suffering involved. I
believe they would react differently if they did. My contention is that
looking at Iraq because the U.S. is there is equally selective when there
is ample cause to look elsewhere too. I think this is a difference between
us. You look at Iraq because you think the U.S. involvement there flawed.
My contention is that it deserves to be looked at independent of U.S.
involvement, and certainly independent of whether the war was "justified"
or not.
>
>>For me the logical premise is that horror and suffering are just
>>horror and suffering without mitigation of some "just" or "unjust"
>>initiating premise.
>>
>
> For me the logical premise is that horror and suffering are a
> consequence of a universe gone horrible astray, and I'll mourn that
> fact, even if you will not. There was a moment in time where futures
> hang in the balance and we betrayed whatever good futures exists in
> our then universe by using our power of choice to choose that which
> was wrong instead of that which was right. It is the story of the
> garden of Eden all over again, just set in a 21st century context. It
> is even set in that very same mythical location where Eden is supposed
> to have existed. You can call it time and chance if you wish. I call
> it a blight on all future history.
We see things quite differently. I doubt we'll ever agree on this. I'm
little concerned about war theoretically marring someone's ideal pristine
world.I'm much more concerned about what is actually going on.
>
>>There's no zinger here, nor ANY belittling of what you see or feel. To
>>me it's just that the picture is much bigger than whether the U.S. had
>>adequate "reason" to start this.
>>
>
> Yes the picture is much bigger, and it begs a very big question. Is
> this going to be the last time the US and the US people are going to
> think that their right to start war trumps the right of other people
> not to have wars of aggression imposed on them.
That is a significant question. And to me an equally important question is
whether or not we'll come to our senses and realize the suffering that war
engenders whether or not we want to feel pleased about our justification
for initiating them - and whether or not we caused them.
> or is it the case that with the US what one now
> sees is what one is in future going to get more of. Is this a ship on
> the beach from which anything will be learned or just one more
> shipwreck courtesy of the American people in what is to be an endless
> production line that produces as its finished product new shipwrecks.
> Is 2006 to be labelled the beginning of the end, or the end of the
> beginning.
>
Don't know. That troubles me too. I hope it's an aberration and that we've
not lowered our threshold for the indefinite future.
jeb
Ian Davis
>You may have been prescient about Iran. My hypothetical had nothing to do
>with that. To me, the suffering in Iraq is not at all about who's doing it.
>The maimed children suffer the same whether or not some someone met a test
>of justification about promulgating the war. I believe many who are
>screaming about the U.S. would shrug off the suffering if Iran were causing
>it. The burns, the wounds, the grief are indifferent to all of those
>notions.
>
I wouldn't be shrugging it off. I spent last Christmas reading the Great
War for Civilization by Robert Fisk, which coverered in some detail the
eight year war between Iran and Iraq which killed millions. I read that
story and was just as angry that Iraq should have started such a pointless
war with Iran as I was with the US for starting a pointless war against
Iraq. That eight year war was like a replay of WW1. It is central to
any understanding of the bad blood which exists between Iran and Iraq to
this day. You seem to be trying to rationalise that my screaming is
related to my not liking the fact that the US is at war. This doesn't
explain the facts half as well as to rationalise that I do not like war,
and wish to see the conditions that cause it outlawed. What difference
if war be in 1812, 1914, 1939, 1999, or 2003.
>> How in just six
>> years could all that has transpired take on such normality that it not
>> even a subject in need of any airing, concern or apparent alarm by
>> most in the US?
>
>One dynamic has changed whether you acknowledge it or not. Most of the
>mayhem in Iraq today is NOT at the hands of the U.S. and would not stop if
>the U.S. left tomorrow. I think that's true, whether or not it suits
>someone's ideas about the U.S. presence.
I have said that I hold to the Neuremburg principle that:
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international
crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war
crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
I believe that the crime of initiating a war of aggression contains within
itself the crime of being the cause of all the evil that result from that
war.
I also question this notion that most of the mayhem in Iraq today is NOT at
the hands of the U.S. I saw with horror the US float the idea of using the
El-Salvador option in Iraq, in the US media. Later I saw the development of
death squads in Iraq precisely according to the El-Salvador model. If the US
had been staunchly opposed to such death squads they would not have been
speculating on they themselves creating and controlling them. Ergo, I am
no where near as certain as you that the US is not behind at least much of
the continuing mayhem in Iraq. One of the main reasons I want to see the US
out of Iraq is because it would at least help shield the US from the
accusation that it is behind the continuing crimes in Iraq if it is not.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/011105.html
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=FUL20051110&articleId=1230
And much more recently:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12885.htm
>
>>
>> I know where my various horrors can be found, but I really don't see
>> where yours can. You tell me you'd not give up your freedom to do it
>> all again, even knowing what the doing it all again would mean. What
>> is the point of arguing that what has been done is wrong with one who
>> would do it all again tomorrow.
>
>You really missed my point. I simply refused to surrender my free for a
>tyranny of control that you believed could prevent such a war. And I still
>feel the same. One because I have no faith in the bargain, And two I
>believe freedom and its associated creativity have a better chance of
>shaping a postive future for mankind than heavy-handed control that has
>been the hallmark of historical governance.
Those are high flying words but when the US does what it did to Iraq to
some other country, I'll remember them as the words that permitted the
US to do so. I'll remember them as the words which said that my
freedom trump all other peoples freedom, which is as been observed here
is close to the rational behind the rational for war. I'll hack at the
rational for war, I'll hack at the rational that is the rational for war,
and so on backwards, because I'll never sanction the initiation of a war
of aggression, nor any vehicle that you can construct that might permit
it.
>
>>
>>>Presume that the 9/11 attack had been perpetrated by some cell
>>>quartered in Iraq. The same pictures. The same history. Would you feel
>>>gripped by the same horror?
>>>
>>
>> Again why the need for hypotheticals. It may not be the case but it
>> is easier to imagine that the 9/11 attack was perpetrated with some
>> support from the then government of Afghanistan.
>
>Same point as above. Given different reasons for the war, the pictures for
>you would apparently not be as horrible. If the outcome is the same, my
>point is that except, for intellectual anquish and inner moral angst, the
>outcome is the same. That fact makes me very reluctant to jump on the
>bandwagon of suffering, no matter what I feel about the justification for
>retaliation or even defense. It is that basic reluctance to go to war
>because one is deeply aware of the evil it spawns and the suffering it
>causes that provides an antidote or at least forbearance for either
>intellectually justified wars or cowbow forades.
>
You are talkng about a universe where we had no choice in which our actions
might be viewed as much an act of nature as a tsunami, and of neither more or
less consequence than a tsunami. For me the deaths of people at the hands of
a tidal wave is easier to accept than the death of people at the hands of
other people. There is something infinitely more ugly about a man with a
drill in one hand and a human head in the other, than any wall of water.
Tidal waves cannot be stopped; and so must be endured, but I'd have us do
even with tidal waves what we can to mitigate the harm they cause: wars in my
opinion can be stopped through never being started if we ever decide to get
serious about vetoing the starting of them. I have difficulty conceiving that
any might really grasp the scale of the horror that is war and then not want
to get serious about stopping them before they start.
>>
>>>Is it really the horror of what's happening? If so, then war, whether
>>>internal, or between external combatants is seen for the unruly
>>>offense against mankind it usually is, regardless of the justification
>>>or lack thereof.
>>
>> No my horror is at starting an illegal war of aggression.
>
>We differ quite a bit about what horrifies us. That's not to dimiss
>consideration of any legality or illegality. A "legal" war can be just as
>devastating as an illegal one, and I am not immediately mollified by the
>fact that it is "justfied." Wars are always "justified" in someone's mind.
>
Every international war begins as an illegal war of aggression. My opposition
is to the starting of wars. Thus my opposition is to illegally initiating a
war of aggression. That is what started the Iran/Iraq war, the Kuwait war,
the Iraq war, the Falklands war... on and on. The starting of a war is
never justified. Perhaps if all 5 permanent members of the UN were to
collectively declare that a situation was so eggregious as to warrant war
that would convince me otherwise, but I have never seen Russia, China, the
US Britain and France all agree on the necessity for war. If they did I would
be inclined to think that they were at least not collectively lying to me
about the gravity of the situation they collectively faced. But I fully
expect that to remain a hypothetical in my lifetime.
>I'm looking at something beyond the "right" to start a war.
>
>>
>>>
>>>If everything's different, then I would think your distress is more
>>>about the U.S. premise for promulgating the war, than the actual
>>>horror of what you see.
>>>
>>
>> Everything is not different. The dead people are still dead. All the
>> horrors are still real. Why would you try to say otherwise.
>
>I wholeheartedly agree. And that is the key point. It makes not one iota of
>difference to the dead and wounded in my hypotheticals about who did what
>or whether or not they met someone's test of justification. I start from
>that point of compassion, and work back to what must be done, rather than
>starting from some theoretical ground of whether or not it fits someone's
>idea of a just war.
>
It makes a huge difference to the dead and wounded that they are dead and
wounded, and would not have been if some damned fool hadn't thought starting
a war a good idea. I think it makes a huge difference to soldiers to know
that they are putting their lives on a line for a worthy cause, and not
for a mistake. As Kerry once said -- who wants to be the last man to die
for a mistake. I don't think one can remove the context of why people
are putting their lives on the line, and claim that the context is of
no relevance to the nature of the war they are fighting. I don't think
one can understand war by first simplifying it so as to remove all the
context about who is the aggressor and who the victim.
>> This is
>> not some radio show that you can switch channels on when you find your
>> self disturbed by its content.
>
>Actually many people do this. They do not even bother to look or turn on
>your radio. This willingness to ignore is a significant part of the
>problem, because people don't really understand the suffering involved. I
>believe they would react differently if they did. My contention is that
>looking at Iraq because the U.S. is there is equally selective when there
>is ample cause to look elsewhere too. I think this is a difference between
>us. You look at Iraq because you think the U.S. involvement there flawed.
>My contention is that it deserves to be looked at independent of U.S.
>involvement, and certainly independent of whether the war was "justified"
>or not.
No I look at Iraq because I want to end war, and think that Iraq is among
the better candidates to convince the American people that they too want
to end war. I want to end war before war ends us. I think we are no
more than mere years away from arriving back at the point were were at 100
years ago, and I don't want a future universe where once again there are
ten women for every man. This has less to do with America than you imagine.
America is not the centre of my universe that it is perhaps to you. WWI and
WWII are closer to the centre of my universe. In the 1930's knowing what I
know today, I would have been just as desperately trying to persuade the
Germans to renounce their own love of war, and for just the same reasons. I
would have been saying think not what war can do for you -- think instead on
what war will do to you. It levelled Germany. The world today can deliver
the destructive force of four years of war in a day if it wished to. If your
concern is weapons of mass destruction I think you'd be well advised to make
avoiding needless war your cause.
>
>>
>>>For me the logical premise is that horror and suffering are just
>>>horror and suffering without mitigation of some "just" or "unjust"
>>>initiating premise.
>>>
>>
>> For me the logical premise is that horror and suffering are a
>> consequence of a universe gone horrible astray, and I'll mourn that
>> fact, even if you will not. There was a moment in time where futures
>> hang in the balance and we betrayed whatever good futures exists in
>> our then universe by using our power of choice to choose that which
>> was wrong instead of that which was right. It is the story of the
>> garden of Eden all over again, just set in a 21st century context. It
>> is even set in that very same mythical location where Eden is supposed
>> to have existed. You can call it time and chance if you wish. I call
>> it a blight on all future history.
>
>We see things quite differently. I doubt we'll ever agree on this. I'm
>little concerned about war theoretically marring someone's ideal pristine
>world.I'm much more concerned about what is actually going on.
>
We see things differently because you think the past a fleeting moment in
time, while I think of it as an eternal moment in time. For you perhaps
this notion of the past still being real is as existential an issue as
whether a tree falls if no one hears it do so. For me it is as concrete
an issue as whether trees stand in forests period if no one sees them do
so. Everything comes back for me to the nature of the universe I live
within, and perhaps while there can be no more certainty about the nature
of the universe than the nature of God, there is at least a lot more
hard evidence in place to hint at the true nature of this universe.
>>
>>>There's no zinger here, nor ANY belittling of what you see or feel. To
>>>me it's just that the picture is much bigger than whether the U.S. had
>>>adequate "reason" to start this.
>>>
>>
>> Yes the picture is much bigger, and it begs a very big question. Is
>> this going to be the last time the US and the US people are going to
>> think that their right to start war trumps the right of other people
>> not to have wars of aggression imposed on them.
>
>That is a significant question. And to me an equally important question is
>whether or not we'll come to our senses and realize the suffering that war
>engenders whether or not we want to feel pleased about our justification
>for initiating them - and whether or not we caused them.
>
>
>
>> or is it the case that with the US what one now
>> sees is what one is in future going to get more of. Is this a ship on
>> the beach from which anything will be learned or just one more
>> shipwreck courtesy of the American people in what is to be an endless
>> production line that produces as its finished product new shipwrecks.
>> Is 2006 to be labelled the beginning of the end, or the end of the
>> beginning.
>>
>
>Don't know. That troubles me too. I hope it's an aberration and that we've
>not lowered our threshold for the indefinite future.
>
I don't know either. But I do know that lower the threshold on the legitimacy
of waging war far enough and futures will cease to be indefinite ones. I do
know that the legitimising of pre-emptive wars of aggression has taken us
from the world as it existed post WWII, back to the world as it existed
immediately prior to WWI. We may now be living on borrowed time, and simply
not yet know it.
Ian
chris....@gmail.com
Ian Davis wrote:
> In article <1148055924.6...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Feingold's speech was a breath of fresh air in large part because it seemed
> >> that here was a man both amply able to say what he genuinely thought, and to
> >> say it without apparent fear or hesitation. I wish his career well.
> >
> >Unfortunately, he's short, Jewish, and divorced, all of which condemn
> >him more than his rather ordinary liberal stands that now look radical.
> >
>
> Wouldn't know he was short, listening to him on what was a voice only medium.
> Being Jewish is what he makes of it. Where I wonder do his loyalties lie..
> with God, with the State of Israel, with his own conscience, or with the
> nation he is a citizen of. That he is divorced would be I think irrelevant
> here. Don't tell me he's left handed too :-)
While I was being flippant, I'm quite serious about what images are
important to the electorate. His religion is not only what he makes of
it: it's what others make of it, too. And people are stepping all over
each other in politics to declare themselves true Christians. As to the
divorce thing, it would be so cool if his sister, a rabbi, acted as
first lady.
> had the comma replaced by a period. Engineers have it easy compared to us
> programmers. Generally speaking they have to be wrong about the overall
> behaviour of the system in order for it to fail. We fail if we mistakingly
> press one key, and not the key right next to it.
Your fondness for rules and binary view of the universe now make sense
<g>.
My mother believes in rules and I . . . don't. It took me a long time
to understand that because she was an orphan and had no one to show her
the rules, she had to figure them out for herself, and they make her
feel safe and protected. I, having a safe and loving home, had the
luxury of finding the rules restrictive.
> <<snip>>
>
> >> We are slightly schitzophrenic on this point. It is not an either or
> >> proposition.. I think we see women as multi facetted, one facet of which
> >> is that they are containers for the thing contained. Probably in like
> >> fashion women see men as multi facetted creatures, one facet of which is
> >> their ability to give women children.
> >
> ><g> Not schizophrenic: complex--or grey.
> >
>
> I think schizophrenic because I don't think we see the complex greyness that
> you allude to. Show me a pornographic image and I don't see in the image
> a multi facetted human being -- I see what I've heard called eye candy.
> Show me a picture of my wife on holiday, and I see a very different
> image. The schizophrenia is in being unable to put the parts together
> and in doing so see actual reality. The schizophrenia is in living in
> very disjoint realities simultaneously and being able to see each in turn
> as the present reality even while knowing particularly in the case of
> pornography that there ain't anything in the picture that is genuine
> except the parts.
I wouldn't bank on the parts being genuine.
>> >I agree that there's no place for wars of aggression. In fact, I see
> >all wars as wars of aggression.
> >
> >Still, the argument for imminent danger has some feet. It's apparent
> >that there was not the threat we feared in this situation, that the
> >sense of imminent danger for the US has usually, if not always, been
> >exaggerated. But I think if we'd gotten wind of Japanese plans for
> >Pearl Harbor, we would be faced with choosing to be the aggressor or
> >the victim. I'd have chosen to interfere with their act of aggression
> >by one of my own, philosophic consistence bowing to survival instinct.
> >
>
> The US did get wind of Japanese plans for Pearl Harbor. They watched it
> unfold and occur and did what they could to keep those on the receiving
> end in the dark precisely because it was of the utmost importance that
> it be seen as Japan attacking the US pre-emptively and not vica versa.
> The US had cracked the Japanese codes, and knew both what they were
> saying and where they were heading.
Ah. This gives some credibility to the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, eh?
> Why should I not think that you are a nation like children warned not to swim
> who take your swimming trunks along just in case you are tempted, when you
> refuse to consider as an alternative locking those same swimming trunks
> away, the better to protect oneself from the future temptation of putting
> them on.
You have forgotten about us Americans: the lack of trunks doesn't phase
us a bit. We swim in the nude when we are being naughty.
> >> You and I would say it different ways and arrive at the things said by
> >> different means but I am not sure that we'd really be saying two different
> >> things. I argue from a basis of law, because I see law as our collective
> >> effort over centuries to codify this internal voice we hear which tells us
> >> that this is right, and that wrong. Most certainly on occasions the law
> >> can be an ass.. but that said, listening to law is listening to an the
> >> very expression of our own inner humanity, and this is quite deep enough
> >> an authority to have and to hold my respect and regard. Listening to law
> >> is listening to what we as a species have come to understand and to codify
> >> regarding the very nature of what constitutes right and what wrong. Support
> >> a war of aggression and you are effectively saying that those who at Nuremburg
> >> declared that wars of aggression constituted the supreme war crime were wrong.
> >> On what basis can any of us do that, when they having lived through five years
> >> of war, and found war to be hell, knew the nature of war so much better than
> >> you or I.
> >
> >My own encounters with the law do not incline me to see it as an
> >expression of our humanity but rather as a system of limiting the
> >ability of one party to harm another.
> >
>
> Is not our desire not to harm others what distinguishes us from those
> who have no qualms about causing harm to others.
That seems like an easy yes. However, the older I grow the less
confident I am of being smarter or more morally/ethically "evolved"
than others.
> >. . . I think changes made to the Constitution can
> >either improve it or degrade it. I haven't the knowledge or experience
> >to hazard a guess as to the overall trend. What I do see is some pretty
> >silly amendments being proposed now, especially language to define
> >marriage and restrict civil union as contracts between a man and a
> >woman only.
> >
>
> The ones who own the words decide what use may be made of them. Words
> are very powerful. A society which greets each other with Shalom or
> Salam (Peace) is going to be perhaps periodically reminded that words
> are not just words but stand for something.
Well, let us pray that happens soon because they are looking like the
calico cat and the gingham dog right about now. . .
You say hallo to me and
> I'll know that you are saying Hallaluja. Say Good Bye and I'll know
> that your actually saying "God be with you".
But I may not have the same understanding you do. We are living in a
Humpty Dumpty world in which words mean what we say they mean,
regardless of history and dictionaries. "Clean air" means "pollute
away," in one piece of legislation.
> >> Well the suggestion that I was being naive in wanting to see legislation
> >> that restricted the power of presidents to commit the greatest crime on
> >> earth, among other things. I don't understand the seemingly wide spread
> >> opposition among Quakers for both accepting that starting wars of
> >> aggression is criminal, and for insisting that those who start such
> >> wars be treated by the societies they exist within as the criminals they
> >> are.
> >
> >I was suggesting that you were naive in assuming that people weren't
> >trying to "fix" this, not in wanting better legislation.
>
> I didn't know that any were trying to "fix" this. Can you point me at what
> it is they are actually doing. I know what I have been trying to do here
> the last six years, but am given the little any other has said here about
> what others are trying to do I am operating in a near complete vacuum.
> As a Quaker forum this one seems to me remarkably remiss in rarely if
> ever saying anything about what is actually going on in the alternative
> Quaker universe out there.
Hundreds of thousands of people are participating in Move On's
petitions, drives, other actions--there's a new one every day. People
have beefed up efforts to replace incumbant senators and congressmen
everywhere. Every week people in my community continue public
demonstrations against the war that have been going on as long as the
troops have been in Iraq. High school students set up non-recruitment
booths across from military recruitment booths at their high schools
here. Friends are involved in all those activities, often in leadership
roles. Some have asked others to serve on area draft boards so that in
the event of reinstatement, which some of us fear, there will be people
who will strive not to place the burden equitably and not mainly on the
less privileged.
> >
> >Please tell me more about this wide-spread Quaker opposition. I haven't
> >seen it here in Wisconsin--quite the opposite.
> >
>
> I haven't seen anything but opposition to what I say on this forum. There
> is not one I respect here who hasn't told me in no uncertain terms that I
> am wrong.
Ah. I thought you meant opposition to efforts to stop this and other
wars. You are talking about people opposing you or your ideas or your
ways of presenting them.
> I'm the one whose
> Timothy earlier asked "surely you can't be on their side". I'm also the one
> who earlier was told by my wife that if I couldn't support Canada when Canada
> was at war then perhaps I should go back to England. I'm the one who has been
> compared to David Duke, and called the Fascist despite my strong opposition to
> fascism. I'm the who is told privately "And it doesn't matter anyway who wins
> because all USAmerican politicians are evil crooks, unlike our ever virtuous
> neighbors to the north." I don't have the thick skin that perhaps others
> perceive me as having. The last six years have been rough ones.
So you feel embattled yourself, like you are fighting a war single
handedly?
You remind me of my father. He was a man of strong intelligence and
conviction, with a utopian view of the world. He knew how things should
be, how they could be, and it drove him mad that others couldn't see
it. For years he was bitter, and he and I could barely speak to each
other because I was just like him, only with an opposing viewpoint.
I don't know exactly when he changed but at some point he lay down his
weapons. He couldn't defend the truth and one right way alone any
longer. You know, they say a pessimist has a more accurate view of the
world but an optimist is happier. I'm glad that my dad spent his last
two decades being happy instead of right.
Now I, his opinionated daughter, am working in the same direction.
I don't have any answers for you. Some of us are led to be outsiders,
others are born there. I've made my career around my outsiderness;
sometimes that works, others not. You don't sound like any kind of
enemy to me. However, none of us likes to be scolded and told that our
ways are terribly wrong, all of them, and we must repent and swear off
alcohol and vow to remain virgins and work tirelessly for all good
causes and on and on and on.
It's all too overwhelming for me. I believe that every important reform
comes from the bottom up, not the top down, so I concentrate more on my
own sphere of influence.
I try to be kind (not an easy task for me) and sometimes I try to see
things as others see them. I feed my children good food and innoculate
them with liberal-humanist-Quakerish notions. I go to meeting and I
listen with my heart when I'm able. I write checks, small ones I'm
afraid, for a few worthy causes. I try to find better ways to speak
truth to power, ways that can be considered. I write letters to
congressmen and stand in the dark with others holding a candle against
the dark of this war. I talk and laugh and cry and drink dark beer with
a couple good friends, walk my dog, and call my mother more often.
As Garrison Keillor says, every day is a new day. You take some small
steps and this gives you courage.
It's almost enough, for me at least.
> >Personally, I think "they" must fall asleep all the time, and with good
> >reason.
>
> If you think monitoring SRQ is bad pity the ones monitoring the other
> newsgroups. Those are very much more boring but arguably far more
> important.
I think "they" don't need to worry too much about those of us who spend
too much time keyboarding away in the land of Usenet <g>.
But then, I don't think they need to worry about Quakers. Go figure.
Christine
1st Century Apostolic Traditionalist
> In article <NEpbg.1376$bY4....@newsfe5-gui.ntli.net>,
> 1st Century Apostolic Traditionalist <nospa...@add.com> wrote:
>>
>>Sit back....relax Ian.....you cannot do anything about it, for such a
>>condition was prophesied by Christ and the Apostles that this would be the
>>state of the world prior to Christ's Return.
>
> When it comes to the time of the accounting as to how you have spent your
> talents, what will you say to the one who made it very clear that one was
> not merely supposed to bury them in the ground,
My life as a 'baptised believer' is being recorded on a daily basis and
written in "The books" which will be opened on judgment day. So one tries to
fill the day with some "good works" which please God and help your
neighbours.
>and then later return those
> same talents without interest as you seek to do above.
You do not what goes on in my life.
You are not aware (till now) of the 90 homes and the 100+ elderly folks
which I warden and try to help out in their daily lives.
So Ian instead of worrying unnecessarily about things which are destined to
happen anyway, lets fill our lives in the masters service and use our
'talents' by helping those who are living around us, by preaching the TRUTH
without compromise, both in our daily lives and on the internet, by
correcting the faithless and wilfully disobedient, and rebuking the heretics
which abound throughout Usenet.
You will find also if you did your daily Bible Readings which allows you to
read the Bible completely ever year, you would see the reasons and
explanations for the terrible things which are 'driving you to madness' and
have a much more calmer and contented outlook, and be patiently (but still
working hard) waiting for the salvation of the Lord.
Regards Jeff...
William Ehrich
> No, I don't. But that isn't the same as saying that the major political
> parties conspire to ruthless oppress minor parties. They ruthlessly
> conspire against one another. Greens and Libertarians are no threat to the
> Democrats and Republicans because they do not espouse anything that those
> who have bought into the American political consensus are interested in.
Greens are a threat to the Democrats because they take votes from them. That
is why the Republican party has sometimes actively supported the Greens. This
wouldn't work in a parliamentary democracy but it can be very effective in
our winner-take-all system.
-- Bill Ehrich
JEB
> I wouldn't be shrugging it off. I spent last Christmas reading the
> Great War for Civilization by Robert Fisk, which coverered in some
> detail the eight year war between Iran and Iraq which killed millions.
> I read that story and was just as angry that Iraq should have started
> such a pointless war with Iran as I was with the US for starting a
> pointless war against Iraq. That eight year war was like a replay of
> WW1. It is central to any understanding of the bad blood which exists
> between Iran and Iraq to this day. You seem to be trying to
> rationalise that my screaming is related to my not liking the fact
> that the US is at war. This doesn't explain the facts half as well as
> to rationalise that I do not like war, and wish to see the conditions
> that cause it outlawed. What difference if war be in 1812, 1914, 1939,
> 1999, or 2003.
I'm glad your view is much broader than the the U.S. participation or
non-participation. On this we fully agree. What I've seen from some is
just the inverse of "only American troops count." The inverse notion is
that "the suffering in Iraq only counts because the U.S. is doing it
with some suspect justification." Both miss most of the signficance of
what war does and the the suffering it inflicts. While I may seem
pessimistic in some ways, I believe the modern era with its
communications may help people see what they did not have to see
previously, and thus make it less likely for war and large scale
genocide to be tolerated anywhere in the world.
>
> Later I saw
> the development of death squads in Iraq precisely according to the
> El-Salvador model. If the US had been staunchly opposed to such death
> squads they would not have been speculating on they themselves
> creating and controlling them. Ergo, I am no where near as certain as
> you that the US is not behind at least much of the continuing mayhem
> in Iraq. One of the main reasons I want to see the US out of Iraq is
> because it would at least help shield the US from the accusation that
> it is behind the continuing crimes in Iraq if it is not.
>
Here is where I think international involvement, even at the extent it
happens today, is important. It brings some degree of transparency that
makes some sorts of mischief less likely. It's one reason, I think U.N.
involvement, with all the baggage it brings, would have been and still
would be useful.
I think the U.S. does not see itself benefiting from continuing
instability in Iraq, and wishes the matter behind it. I don't see at all
the same dynamics as El Salvador.
>>You really missed my point. I simply refused to surrender my free for
>>a tyranny of control that you believed could prevent such a war. And I
>>still feel the same. One because I have no faith in the bargain, And
>>two I believe freedom and its associated creativity have a better
>>chance of shaping a postive future for mankind than heavy-handed
>>control that has been the hallmark of historical governance.
>
> Those are high flying words but when the US does what it did to Iraq
> to some other country, I'll remember them as the words that permitted
> the US to do so.
I just believe more deeply in the general positive value of freedom and
its associated creativity than you do. In the days following 9/11, I'll
swear there were people who wanted to be locked securely in jail with
its attendant police protection than face the uncertainty of being free
on the streets. I will generally take the risk the risk of freedom even
while realizing it increases the potential that others may take
advantage of it to do some evil. In general I believe it to be a good
bet.
I'm sure one thing that colors my thinking is the relative social order
and stability I've grown up with where I don't have to face daily
gunfire on the streets, the chaos of death squads, etc. Hobbes was right
at some basic level. Any sort of social order is probably more
beneficial than chronic chaotic violence.
> I'll remember them as the words which said that my
> freedom trump all other peoples freedom, which is as been observed
> here is close to the rational behind the rational for war.
That's not what I said, but I doubt I can clarify it more, or state it
in some way that will help you see what I mean.
> I'll hack
> at the rational for war, I'll hack at the rational that is the
> rational for war, and so on backwards, because I'll never sanction the
> initiation of a war of aggression, nor any vehicle that you can
> construct that might permit it.
Hack away. Please. Anything effort to deter future wars is welcome,
whether or not I am in total agreement with the underlying premises. So,
I hope your influence can in some way help.
>
> You are talkng about a universe where we had no choice in which our
> actions might be viewed as much an act of nature as a tsunami, and of
> neither more or less consequence than a tsunami.
I'm really not sure how you got to this conclusion. I don't see the
logical connection between what I thought I wrote and this.
For me the deaths of
> people at the hands of a tidal wave is easier to accept than the death
> of people at the hands of other people. There is something infinitely
> more ugly about a man with a drill in one hand and a human head in the
> other, than any wall of water. Tidal waves cannot be stopped; and so
> must be endured, but I'd have us do even with tidal waves what we can
> to mitigate the harm they cause: wars in my opinion can be stopped
> through never being started if we ever decide to get serious about
> vetoing the starting of them. I have difficulty conceiving that any
> might really grasp the scale of the horror that is war and then not
> want to get serious about stopping them before they start.
We agree on this. Since I've not argued differently, I'm not sure why
you make this point.
>
> Every international war begins as an illegal war of aggression. My
> opposition is to the starting of wars. Thus my opposition is to
> illegally initiating a war of aggression. That is what started the
> Iran/Iraq war, the Kuwait war, the Iraq war, the Falklands war... on
> and on. The starting of a war is never justified. Perhaps if all 5
> permanent members of the UN were to collectively declare that a
> situation was so eggregious as to warrant war that would convince me
> otherwise, but I have never seen Russia, China, the US Britain and
> France all agree on the necessity for war. If they did I would be
> inclined to think that they were at least not collectively lying to me
> about the gravity of the situation they collectively faced. But I
> fully expect that to remain a hypothetical in my lifetime.
>
As we've discussed many times before, your view narrowly excludes the
reality of internal wars and genocide whose carnage greatly exceeds that
of your official international wars. 30 million dead in Camboida are not
less tragic or unimportant because they were not U.S./European and did
not involve wars of agression between parties officially identified as
countries in the original U.N. charter.
I think your view has to be narrow to be intellectually satisfying. Mine
does not.
> It makes a huge difference to the dead and wounded that they are dead
> and wounded, and would not have been if some damned fool hadn't
> thought starting a war a good idea.
Actually we agree on this. Where we differ is that you exonerate the
carnage if it meets your test of legal justified retaliation, and think
it totally tragic if it does not. My point is that the dead do not care
about those distinctions.
> I think it makes a huge difference
> to soldiers to know that they are putting their lives on a line for a
> worthy cause, and not for a mistake. As Kerry once said -- who wants
> to be the last man to die for a mistake. I don't think one can remove
> the context of why people are putting their lives on the line, and
> claim that the context is of no relevance to the nature of the war
> they are fighting. I don't think one can understand war by first
> simplifying it so as to remove all the context about who is the
> aggressor and who the victim.
As I stated in a recent previous posting, I think people asked to die,
to send people to die, or to kill on behalf of the state are entitled to
truth which includes a careful honest weighing of information and facts.
Even with that mistakes will be made. But I don't think we even made an
honest mistake. I'm not sure that honest mistakes would be relevant at
all. Good sound bite from Kerry, but I don't see much there to think
about.
> No I look at Iraq because I want to end war, and think that Iraq is
> among the better candidates to convince the American people that they
> too want to end war.
I hope we come out of this with a deep reluctance to support any more
cowboy shoot-em-up excursions of any kind.
> If your concern is weapons of mass destruction I
> think you'd be well advised to make avoiding needless war your cause.
And I'm equally concerned about proliferation, about the mindset that
views nuclear weapons as viable tactical threats, etc. These don't have
much to do with needless war, though I endorse your premise that those
should be avoided.
>
> We see things differently because you think the past a fleeting moment
> in time, while I think of it as an eternal moment in time. For you
> perhaps this notion of the past still being real is as existential an
> issue as whether a tree falls if no one hears it do so. For me it is
> as concrete an issue as whether trees stand in forests period if no
> one sees them do so. Everything comes back for me to the nature of
> the universe I live within, and perhaps while there can be no more
> certainty about the nature of the universe than the nature of God,
> there is at least a lot more hard evidence in place to hint at the
> true nature of this universe.
>
Your universe is static with people traveling in time to look at it -
except - and I don't know how you make this happen - what people do can
still somehow mar its original pristine beauty. If it's static, then
it's either already marred or not, and choices would seem to have little
to do with it. I really can't follow this logic at all. Perhaps I
misunderstand.
jeb
Engineer
Ian Davis wrote:
>
> chris....@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>Perhaps--but other nations, and especially Great Britain, appear quite
>>happy to benefit from this bizarre American notion that we should be
>>the police force and moral arbiter for the world.
>
>Well I don't know anyone in England who would agree with you.
"To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy.
Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war,
up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!
Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for
the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."
-Winston Churchil
>I really don't think that the US is in a very strong position to
>claim that it even understands the meaning of the word "moral" or
>the word "arbitrate". Doesn't arbiter suggest that some arbitration
>is involved. Wouldn't "moral dictator" be a more fitting description
>of precisely how the US seeks to impose its moral values on the rest
>of the world. I don't remember any nation actually going out and
>asking for the US to be moral arbiter over them or anyone else.
>Perhaps at some point Israel and the Palestinians did ask for such
>help. But I don't see how one can claim to be moral arbiter of the
>world in invading Iraq.
"The US" and "the current government of the US" are not the same
thing. The US saved Great Britain from near-certain destruction
in WWII. The US will one day throw off the chains that those in
the current government of the US have imposed on it. Sic semper
tyrannus -- so always to tyrants.
"The Americans will always do the right thing... After they've
exhausted all the alternatives."
-Winston Churchill
>Being able to disable or restrict checks and balances at will is not
>part and parcel of any system I can imagine except perhaps the system
>called anarchy
The above is a better description of tyranny than it is of anarchy.
Ian Davis
<chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>While I was being flippant, I'm quite serious about what images are
>important to the electorate. His religion is not only what he makes of
>it: it's what others make of it, too. And people are stepping all over
>each other in politics to declare themselves true Christians. As to the
>divorce thing, it would be so cool if his sister, a rabbi, acted as
>first lady.
Yes I understood how important an issue image is. I came close to
responding flippantly that if his height was a problem perhaps he
could turn it around by never getting out of a wheel chair and
becoming a 21st century Rosevelt. But I was concerned that people
would see such a comment as laughing at the handicapped, rather
than laughing at a system where short men might be deemed more
handicapped than people in wheelchairs.
>
>> had the comma replaced by a period. Engineers have it easy compared to us
>> programmers. Generally speaking they have to be wrong about the overall
>> behaviour of the system in order for it to fail. We fail if we mistakingly
>> press one key, and not the key right next to it.
>
>Your fondness for rules and binary view of the universe now make sense
><g>.
>
>My mother believes in rules and I . . . don't. It took me a long time
>to understand that because she was an orphan and had no one to show her
>the rules, she had to figure them out for herself, and they make her
>feel safe and protected. I, having a safe and loving home, had the
>luxury of finding the rules restrictive.
>
The rules do protect. The first time the devil made me do it and after
that I did it without his prompting, is why one should seek to avoid
the first time one breaks rules. They are important also because if
you don't repeat the rules you'll not remember them when you need them
both.. the Silver Chair by C.S.Lewis is all about the importance of
repeating the rules constantly and not expecting them to appear in
the guise one imagines them to wear. Rules serve one other subtle
purpose.. they can prevent panic. Not knowing what to do causes
panic.. knowing what to do keeps panic at bay. Clearly posted
exit signs are rules designed to prevent panic and chaos, as much
as they are ways out of buildings. I read of a study that suggested
that those best equipped to cope with exiting burning planes are
those few who have planned their exits, before they are need of
them. It is the lack of rules that cause people to freeze up in
a crisis. Rules are the programs we instill in our selves. They
are also important because they give us our identities. I've read
that dogs respond to commands because they come to see themselves
as the dog who does this when that happens.
>> <<snip>>
>> The US did get wind of Japanese plans for Pearl Harbor. They watched it
>> unfold and occur and did what they could to keep those on the receiving
>> end in the dark precisely because it was of the utmost importance that
>> it be seen as Japan attacking the US pre-emptively and not vica versa.
>> The US had cracked the Japanese codes, and knew both what they were
>> saying and where they were heading.
>
>Ah. This gives some credibility to the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, eh?
>
Some but not much. No amount of credibility will move history an inch.
The US also considered shooting down a US plane and blaming the attack
on the Cubans. George Bush explored the idea of persuading the Iraqi's
to shoot down a US jet in Iraqi airspace which it would then be claimed
was a UN plane carrying UN colors.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wrhmt/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=Northwood
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wrhmt/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=Pearl+Harbor
>> Why should I not think that you are a nation like children warned not to swim
>> who take your swimming trunks along just in case you are tempted, when you
>> refuse to consider as an alternative locking those same swimming trunks
>> away, the better to protect oneself from the future temptation of putting
>> them on.
>
>You have forgotten about us Americans: the lack of trunks doesn't phase
>us a bit. We swim in the nude when we are being naughty.
>
I haven't forgotten. The woman swimming nude in the hotel pool (Embassy
Suites) in Pheonix Arizona, was my first introduction to this facet of life
in the big city. Later in New Mexico I've bathed in clothing optional pools,
without clothes. When in New Mexico do what the New Mexicans do was my motto.
I must be reading the wrong things about MoveOn because what I read has
little good to say about MoveOn. What say you?
http://www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=8366
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0310-35.htm
>People
>have beefed up efforts to replace incumbant senators and congressmen
>everywhere. Every week people in my community continue public
>demonstrations against the war that have been going on as long as the
>troops have been in Iraq. High school students set up non-recruitment
>booths across from military recruitment booths at their high schools
>here. Friends are involved in all those activities, often in leadership
>roles. Some have asked others to serve on area draft boards so that in
>the event of reinstatement, which some of us fear, there will be people
>who will strive not to place the burden equitably and not mainly on the
>less privileged.
This sort of stuff doesn't get widely reported. Is this type of news
blacklisted by the media, or is it the case that all of these activities
tend to occur in their own little vacuums, never as a consequence reaching
critical mass or critical notice.
>> >
>> >Please tell me more about this wide-spread Quaker opposition. I haven't
>> >seen it here in Wisconsin--quite the opposite.
>> >
>>
>> I haven't seen anything but opposition to what I say on this forum. There
>> is not one I respect here who hasn't told me in no uncertain terms that I
>> am wrong.
>
>Ah. I thought you meant opposition to efforts to stop this and other
>wars. You are talking about people opposing you or your ideas or your
>ways of presenting them.
>
>> I'm the one whose
>> Timothy earlier asked "surely you can't be on their side". I'm also the one
>> who earlier was told by my wife that if I couldn't support Canada when Canada
>> was at war then perhaps I should go back to England. I'm the one who has been
>> compared to David Duke, and called the Fascist despite my strong opposition to
>> fascism. I'm the who is told privately "And it doesn't matter anyway who wins
>> because all USAmerican politicians are evil crooks, unlike our ever virtuous
>> neighbors to the north." I don't have the thick skin that perhaps others
>> perceive me as having. The last six years have been rough ones.
>
>So you feel embattled yourself, like you are fighting a war single
>handedly?
>
Very much so. It would be really nice to think I was on side, and certainly
when I first came to this forum I thought I'd be surrounded by those who like
myself waged war on war. I am a little trapped. I can't walk away from what
I believe to the very depths of the core of my being without ceasing to be
who I am, and neither can I declare victory won and move onto other things.
It is a little scary how much a point of view can impact on ones very sanity.
Emotionally somewhat desperate to not once again find myself off side as I
did in the war against the Serbs, I rather gave the US a pass on Afghanistan.
I resolved to say not one word of critisism about American conduct of that
war, nor one word of critisism of your leadership for engaging in that war.
It is very very much easier to sleep at night when one is on side instead
of off side. As an aside, personally I have always thought that a vicious
covert undercover campaign against the Al-Queada leadership and organisation
while officially remaining at peace with the world, was a much better
political strategy for gathering information and surgically opposing
terrorism than an open and above radar war with the Taliban that might
accomplish very little in countering the real threat posed by Al-Quaeda.
Not very Quakerly I'll admit, but somehow I don't see Al-Quaeda as likely
to be won over by Quaker cooking.
And then having given America the one pass they up the anti by invading
and occupying Iraq. I might even have given the US a pass on that to. Long
forgotten now but I might have been convinced that that invasion was not
the starting of a new war but the ending of an old one. I imagined that if
they could change the leadership, eliminate the sanctions, put Iraq back
to where it had been before Kuwait, and do all this very fast, and then
get out, that perhaps the exercise would be for the better of the Iraqi
people. But you and I both know the actual history.
Shock and awe, disproportionate use of force, the airborne turning their
weapons on peaceful protesters in Falluja, lack of restraint,
no military discipline, brutalisation of prisoners, drowning of kids in
rivers, destruction of cities, and a population of near 350,000,000 who
couldn't count beyond one when counting anything but American dead. Add
to all of that the promises that the occupation was strictly a temporary
thing while building four permanent massive bases in Iraq, and the largest
US embassy in the world, and I just can't bullshit myself perhaps as well
as the average american can. I'm a very black and white person. When I
decide where I stand on an issue there is no doubt. And on Iraq America
is completely and utterly in the wrong. America on this one doesn't give
me any choice on where I stand. How do I reconcile the notion that all
nations should oppose nations that start wars of aggression, with the
clear fact of the matter which is that the US started a classic war of
aggression, except by doing what I believe all nations should do, and
stand in opposition to the US on this one. My sense is that far from
it being me who wants to be the "USA basher", its I who have been very
much backed into the corner here. Am I in this corner all alone or
are there others out there backed into the same corner for precisely
the same reasons?
>You remind me of my father. He was a man of strong intelligence and
>conviction, with a utopian view of the world. He knew how things should
>be, how they could be, and it drove him mad that others couldn't see
>it. For years he was bitter, and he and I could barely speak to each
>other because I was just like him, only with an opposing viewpoint.
>
My father died when I was 21. We rarely had a kind word to say to each other
those first 21 years. There was no point of intersection. A mans man off to
sea at 14 serving for many many years on the lower deck of the navy, and I
the kid incapable of being much else but a kid and a rather weedy one at that.
He'd want me to help rip the guts out of cars.. I never saw getting covered in
oil as a wow this is neat experience. I think sons need fathers who are proud
of them. My father despised me for all that I wasn't and I reciprocated by
despising him for all that he was. I'd have had him live long enough to take
me aside and tell me he was proud of me. Lots of reasons why he might be now.
We don't realise it as children, but those years are formative years, and we
never ever quite put them entirely behind us.
>I don't know exactly when he changed but at some point he lay down his
>weapons. He couldn't defend the truth and one right way alone any
>longer. You know, they say a pessimist has a more accurate view of the
>world but an optimist is happier. I'm glad that my dad spent his last
>two decades being happy instead of right.
>
That is probably about the life span I have left to go. How does one put
right aside, the better to live the happy lie. And would I really want to.
I have I think we would both conceed little hope of altering futures.
But who I am, what I do, and what I say makes past reality. If I
can't save futures then I'll at least create a past that will have
scrawled in graffiti IJD was here, rather than the silent accusation,
yes he was here, but he was afraid to leave behind any evidence of what
he thought or why his existance mattered even to him.
>Now I, his opinionated daughter, am working in the same direction.
>
Here I is a poem I carefully copied by hand when I was myself but a teen.
Perhaps you will find in it, what I once found in it and never after lost
sight of. Is this a poem about futures or about pasts. Edwin Brock
died if I remember correctly one month shy of his 70th birthday.
"Paternal Instruction -- Edwin Brock"
Children, I am training you now,
to carry out the only favour I
will ever ask you. Children
I am working for the day when
all the slaps and shouts are
cancelled out. Children obey me.
I do not know for sure when
I will expect you to carry out
this service. Lets say I live
for three score years and ten
and am exactly half way there.
So this is in fact a semi-anniversary:
the point at which your lesson
should begin. Andrea, say after me:
In my teenage years I hated him
but later I saw a core of good intent
At all events I remember him:
His name was Edwin and he lived.
Nicholas say: "He was never
a perfect father: too authoritarian,
liable to shout loudly and retire
to a quiet corner with a book.
I remember the look of him.
His name was Edwin and he lived.
I am trusting you to repeat these
things daily for the remainder
of your lives. And later, too
teach your baby sister
something similar to say.
I do not expect my discipline
to extend to the training of
your children. When you die
I will accept the end: will
open my mouth and let the crawling
kingdom enter, and give my face
leave to crumble from my head".
But I think I am misread. I think everything I say is read through the
filter of this is a Canadian saying stuff about us Americans. I really
do not believe if I said what I said but as an American with my "you"
replaced universally by "we" that I'd be seen in the same light. I
think it is national profiling that is the crux of the problem here.
For myself I think I might reasonably argue that I am more American
than the average American. I watched the presidential debate in totality
not once but many times. I probably have a better grasp of who is who
in US politics than the average American. I've been to every state in
the union with the exception of Oregon and North Dakota. Ok so I don't
like a lot of what America does, and I question the merit of its current
political system. But there are an awful lot of americans who wouldn't
disagree with me on either of those two points.
>It's all too overwhelming for me. I believe that every important reform
>comes from the bottom up, not the top down, so I concentrate more on my
>own sphere of influence.
>
>I try to be kind (not an easy task for me) and sometimes I try to see
>things as others see them. I feed my children good food and innoculate
>them with liberal-humanist-Quakerish notions. I go to meeting and I
>listen with my heart when I'm able. I write checks, small ones I'm
>afraid, for a few worthy causes. I try to find better ways to speak
>truth to power, ways that can be considered. I write letters to
>congressmen and stand in the dark with others holding a candle against
>the dark of this war. I talk and laugh and cry and drink dark beer with
>a couple good friends, walk my dog, and call my mother more often.
>
>As Garrison Keillor says, every day is a new day. You take some small
>steps and this gives you courage.
>
Oh and I've been known to play Garrison Keillor tapes in the car.
Ian
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>>>You really missed my point. I simply refused to surrender my free for
>>>a tyranny of control that you believed could prevent such a war. And I
>>>still feel the same. One because I have no faith in the bargain, And
>>>two I believe freedom and its associated creativity have a better
>>>chance of shaping a postive future for mankind than heavy-handed
>>>control that has been the hallmark of historical governance.
>>
>> Those are high flying words but when the US does what it did to Iraq
>> to some other country, I'll remember them as the words that permitted
>> the US to do so.
>
>I just believe more deeply in the general positive value of freedom and
>its associated creativity than you do. In the days following 9/11, I'll
>swear there were people who wanted to be locked securely in jail with
>its attendant police protection than face the uncertainty of being free
>on the streets. I will generally take the risk the risk of freedom even
>while realizing it increases the potential that others may take
>advantage of it to do some evil. In general I believe it to be a good
>bet.
>
But you see I start from the premise that waging a war of aggression is a
crime. Your refusal to relinquish the freedom to permit future generations
of Americans or other nations to start wars of aggression, seems to me a
refusal to take the crime seriously. Would you also argue that one should
not establish laws that outlawed rape on the grounds that doing so might
compromise peoples freedom.
>I'm sure one thing that colors my thinking is the relative social order
>and stability I've grown up with where I don't have to face daily
>gunfire on the streets, the chaos of death squads, etc. Hobbes was right
>at some basic level. Any sort of social order is probably more
>beneficial than chronic chaotic violence.
>
I grew up in the shadow of WWII. My childhood was about tales of the blitz,
the rationing-- later my adolesence was lived in the shadow of the ever
present threat of IRA bombs. I've crossed the border into Northern Ireland
during the troubles. I was in Israel just after the 1973 war there. While
US forces were going to Iraq, I was going to Morocco, the better to
be able to identify first hand with the type of people on the receiving
end of the shock and awe campaign. I've seen a fair amount of this
planet. My world includes Iraq, and my notion of humanity includes
Iraqi's.
>> I'll remember them as the words which said that my
>> freedom trump all other peoples freedom, which is as been observed
>> here is close to the rational behind the rational for war.
>
>That's not what I said, but I doubt I can clarify it more, or state it
>in some way that will help you see what I mean.
>
Perhaps, perhaps not. You'd have to start by convincing me that wars of
aggression were not a crime, but rather an option. Look at the totality
of what you have to do. You have to convince me that following WWII the
then leaders were wrong to said the way to stop future wars was to outlaw wars
of aggression and to have the UN security council use force if necessary
to do so. You have to convince me that waging a war against fascism
in part because initiating wars of aggression was wrong, was itself a
pretty pointless exercise, wars of aggression not being wrong. You'd have
to convince me that Hitler had every right to pre-emptively attack other
nations. And you'd have to convince me that we are better off living in
a world where any may attack any than where none may attack any. You'd
also have to conceed that North Korea has every right to pre-emptively
attack the US, as does Iran, because if your freedom to sanction pre-emptive
attacks is to be respected then so logically should theirs.
>> I'll hack
>> at the rational for war, I'll hack at the rational that is the
>> rational for war, and so on backwards, because I'll never sanction the
>> initiation of a war of aggression, nor any vehicle that you can
>> construct that might permit it.
>
>Hack away. Please. Anything effort to deter future wars is welcome,
>whether or not I am in total agreement with the underlying premises. So,
>I hope your influence can in some way help.
>
Well it will do one of two things. Either it will influence the way people
think or it will be the way they will wish they had thought later. It really
is their call.
<<snip>>
>As we've discussed many times before, your view narrowly excludes the
>reality of internal wars and genocide whose carnage greatly exceeds that
>of your official international wars. 30 million dead in Camboida are not
>less tragic or unimportant because they were not U.S./European and did
>not involve wars of agression between parties officially identified as
>countries in the original U.N. charter.
>
It excludes internal civil wars not because I want to see civil wars flurish
but because I am forced to conceed that it is next to impossible to untangle
who is the aggressor and who the victim in a civil war, so the simple maxim
that none be permitted to start a war of aggression, with heavy penalties
for violating that principle won't do much to stop internal civil wars. I
don't have a good handle on how one stops civil wars, beyond observing that
many of them are the direct consequence of external influences which might
better hold back than take sides. Bosnia, Vietnam, Iraq, and perhaps even
Israel are all civil wars largely fuelled by external participants. Perhaps
the solution to civil wars is to starve them instead of feeding them.
>I think your view has to be narrow to be intellectually satisfying. Mine
>does not.
>
Yours does not what. I'm still trying to work out what your view does, if
one discounts nothing beyond giving you some freedom you value as being
something.
>
>> It makes a huge difference to the dead and wounded that they are dead
>> and wounded, and would not have been if some damned fool hadn't
>> thought starting a war a good idea.
>
>Actually we agree on this. Where we differ is that you exonerate the
>carnage if it meets your test of legal justified retaliation, and think
>it totally tragic if it does not. My point is that the dead do not care
>about those distinctions.
>
I'm not focused on the dead. I'm focused on stopping the pivotal events
happening that lead to people dying in their thousands if not in their
millions. My test of legally justified retaliation is all about adding
an extra layer to all the other layers which might discourage those who
would otherwise start wars of aggression. I want the US to be discouraged
from starting wars of aggression. The Iraqi resistance may not be able
to help the Iraqi's much, but if it persuades the US that enlarging the
war to include an invasion of Iran would be a very bad idea, I say it had
done some good for all sides. The French resistance could do little to help
the French. But it could do a lot to thwart the future plans of the
aggressor. I don't think one turns the other cheek when confronted with
fascism. I think one fights back, because this is the only logical way to
make aggressors regret their actions. Caving into aggression only encourages
more aggression.
>> I think it makes a huge difference
>> to soldiers to know that they are putting their lives on a line for a
>> worthy cause, and not for a mistake. As Kerry once said -- who wants
>> to be the last man to die for a mistake. I don't think one can remove
>> the context of why people are putting their lives on the line, and
>> claim that the context is of no relevance to the nature of the war
>> they are fighting. I don't think one can understand war by first
>> simplifying it so as to remove all the context about who is the
>> aggressor and who the victim.
>
>As I stated in a recent previous posting, I think people asked to die,
>to send people to die, or to kill on behalf of the state are entitled to
>truth which includes a careful honest weighing of information and facts.
>Even with that mistakes will be made. But I don't think we even made an
>honest mistake. I'm not sure that honest mistakes would be relevant at
>all. Good sound bite from Kerry, but I don't see much there to think
>about.
>
>
>> No I look at Iraq because I want to end war, and think that Iraq is
>> among the better candidates to convince the American people that they
>> too want to end war.
>
>I hope we come out of this with a deep reluctance to support any more
>cowboy shoot-em-up excursions of any kind.
>
I am reading that the US liked the first war so much that they are well into
the preparations for starting a war on the eastern front -- namely Iran.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=9011
Do that and I think the US will loose and loose badly. I don't think the
world will stand for it, any more than the world stood for Germany launching
invasion on country after country. There are limits to what the US can
achieve militarily and those limits are being challenged even in Iraq.
A very powerful Iraq thought its forces could sweep into Iran and the war
there would be over in a week. That is why it was called operation wirlwind.
The reality was that all of Iraqs then high tech army and weaponry barely was
able to even make it across the Iranian border and was rapidly driven back.
Iran responded by waging a war as brutal and as bloody as WWI for twice the
length of WW1 when attacked by Iraq. Iraq ended up suing for peace a few
years into that war and the Iranians said no. It took the combined efforts of
both Russia and the US to stop Iran overrunning Iraq. Where is the combined
effort going to come from when it is the US's turn to cry uncle.
>
>> If your concern is weapons of mass destruction I
>> think you'd be well advised to make avoiding needless war your cause.
>
>And I'm equally concerned about proliferation, about the mindset that
>views nuclear weapons as viable tactical threats, etc. These don't have
>much to do with needless war, though I endorse your premise that those
>should be avoided.
>
It is the very threat of the US launching pre-emptive wars which is the
central justification for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
>
>>
>> We see things differently because you think the past a fleeting moment
>> in time, while I think of it as an eternal moment in time. For you
>> perhaps this notion of the past still being real is as existential an
>> issue as whether a tree falls if no one hears it do so. For me it is
>> as concrete an issue as whether trees stand in forests period if no
>> one sees them do so. Everything comes back for me to the nature of
>> the universe I live within, and perhaps while there can be no more
>> certainty about the nature of the universe than the nature of God,
>> there is at least a lot more hard evidence in place to hint at the
>> true nature of this universe.
>>
>
>Your universe is static with people traveling in time to look at it -
>except - and I don't know how you make this happen - what people do can
>still somehow mar its original pristine beauty. If it's static, then
>it's either already marred or not, and choices would seem to have little
>to do with it. I really can't follow this logic at all. Perhaps I
>misunderstand.
Choice means that we are the artists.. as well as the paint.
Ian.
Ian Davis
Engineer <inv...@example.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>Ian Davis wrote:
>>
>> chris....@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>>Perhaps--but other nations, and especially Great Britain, appear quite
>>>happy to benefit from this bizarre American notion that we should be
>>>the police force and moral arbiter for the world.
>>
>>Well I don't know anyone in England who would agree with you.
>
> "To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy.
> Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war,
> up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!
> Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for
> the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."
> -Winston Churchil
>
Same man who said that if Hitler was to invade Hell, he would make a
favourable reference to the Devil. :-)
>"The US" and "the current government of the US" are not the same
>thing. The US saved Great Britain from near-certain destruction
>in WWII. The US will one day throw off the chains that those in
>the current government of the US have imposed on it. Sic semper
>tyrannus -- so always to tyrants.
>
Wasn't the whole rational for invading Iraq that it was near impossible
to get rid of tyrants, except by waging total war against them. As an
american professor was saying in an interview I watched, it is a lot
easier to loose rights than to reclaim them.
> "The Americans will always do the right thing... After they've
> exhausted all the alternatives."
> -Winston Churchill
>
Is there any intrinsic reason why America is not at risk of taking
the path in the 21st century that Nazi Germany did in the 20th. Is
there something in the DNA of all American's which can reassure me
that they are programmed to respect other peoples. I see little
to suggest that. I'd be very much happier if I wasn't getting this
sub message all the time that Hadji's really didn't count, and it
doesn't matter how many of them died, provided only that the real
human beings came home safe and sound. I'm still struggling with
what to me is the astonishing fact that in Vietnam 55,000 Americans
died while between 2 and 5 million Vietnamese did. Is it not amazing
that numbers in the order of millions might never ever be spoken
of unless one went digging.
>>Being able to disable or restrict checks and balances at will is not
>>part and parcel of any system I can imagine except perhaps the system
>>called anarchy
>
>The above is a better description of tyranny than it is of anarchy.
>
Fair enough.
Ian.
chris....@gmail.com
Ian Davis wrote:
> In article <1148105569.6...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> <chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
> The rules do protect. The first time the devil made me do it and after
> that I did it without his prompting, is why one should seek to avoid
> the first time one breaks rules. They are important also because if
> you don't repeat the rules you'll not remember them when you need them
> both.. the Silver Chair by C.S.Lewis is all about the importance of
> repeating the rules constantly and not expecting them to appear in
> the guise one imagines them to wear. Rules serve one other subtle
> purpose.. they can prevent panic. Not knowing what to do causes
> panic.. knowing what to do keeps panic at bay. Clearly posted
> exit signs are rules designed to prevent panic and chaos, as much
> as they are ways out of buildings. I read of a study that suggested
> that those best equipped to cope with exiting burning planes are
> those few who have planned their exits, before they are need of
> them. It is the lack of rules that cause people to freeze up in
> a crisis. Rules are the programs we instill in our selves. They
> are also important because they give us our identities. I've read
> that dogs respond to commands because they come to see themselves
> as the dog who does this when that happens.
At some point, people need to stand up for ideals that go beyond the
existing rules. If you are entirely rule-bound, I can't imagine how
you'd form the intention to do this, never mind doing it.
> >> I didn't know that any were trying to "fix" this. Can you point me at what
> >> it is they are actually doing. I know what I have been trying to do here
> >> the last six years, but am given the little any other has said here about
> >> what others are trying to do I am operating in a near complete vacuum.
> >> As a Quaker forum this one seems to me remarkably remiss in rarely if
> >> ever saying anything about what is actually going on in the alternative
> >> Quaker universe out there.
> >
> >Hundreds of thousands of people are participating in Move On's
> >petitions, drives, other actions--there's a new one every day.
>
> I must be reading the wrong things about MoveOn because what I read has
> little good to say about MoveOn. What say you?
>
> http://www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=8366
> http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0310-35.htm
I'm a little confused as the CommonDreams link, posted recently,
appears to have been written last year. In any event, MoveOn has two
anti-war related platforms, one on censoring the president and one on
planning to pull out troops this year.
I'd agree that it's just a shill for the Democratic Party and a
fundraising tool that circumvents laws regulating party-sponsored
advertising. It's unfocused and claims populism while giving no
decision-making power to the people.
I can't tell whether it's successful in building unity or not. But
whether I like it or not, it is change-oriented.
>
> >People
> >have beefed up efforts to replace incumbant senators and congressmen
> >everywhere. Every week people in my community continue public
> >demonstrations against the war that have been going on as long as the
> >troops have been in Iraq. High school students set up non-recruitment
> >booths across from military recruitment booths at their high schools
> >here. Friends are involved in all those activities, often in leadership
> >roles. Some have asked others to serve on area draft boards so that in
> >the event of reinstatement, which some of us fear, there will be people
> >who will strive not to place the burden equitably and not mainly on the
> >less privileged.
>
> This sort of stuff doesn't get widely reported. Is this type of news
> blacklisted by the media, or is it the case that all of these activities
> tend to occur in their own little vacuums, never as a consequence reaching
> critical mass or critical notice.
Blacklisted? I think they fly under the radar. That, and they don't fit
in with the current formats favoring sensationalism and celebrity. The
non-recruitment booths have been covered in the local media, as have
some of the peace demonstrations. Certainly, the work to wrest control
of the House from the Republicans has been well-covered.
> >> I'm the one whose
> >> Timothy earlier asked "surely you can't be on their side". I'm also the one
> >> who earlier was told by my wife that if I couldn't support Canada when Canada
> >> was at war then perhaps I should go back to England. I'm the one who has been
> >> compared to David Duke, and called the Fascist despite my strong opposition to
> >> fascism. I'm the who is told privately "And it doesn't matter anyway who wins
> >> because all USAmerican politicians are evil crooks, unlike our ever virtuous
> >> neighbors to the north." I don't have the thick skin that perhaps others
> >> perceive me as having. The last six years have been rough ones.
> >
> >So you feel embattled yourself, like you are fighting a war single
> >handedly?
> >
>
> Very much so. It would be really nice to think I was on side, and certainly
> when I first came to this forum I thought I'd be surrounded by those who like
> myself waged war on war. I am a little trapped. I can't walk away from what
> I believe to the very depths of the core of my being without ceasing to be
> who I am, and neither can I declare victory won and move onto other things.
I don't know about you, but I've had little experience in my life
ANYWHERE, much less in Usenet, rallying support for my personal views.
I think that what success this medium has is owing to giving everyone
an opportunity to speak his onions. And you are heard. Perhaps that's
all you can expect, to be heard.
I do not mean this harshly but know it will feel harsh, so I'm asking
you to consider that I say it from concern for you and not from
cussedness or desire to turn you around. But I wonder what your waging
war on war with discourse has accomplished--what ANYONE'S has
accomplished.
For one thing, you are doing battle with those who are closer to, not
further, from your viewpoints, striving for a kind of purity, it seems,
that is known only to you. But to accomplish social change we need to
form alliances with others to develop necessary mass of influence,
people whose views are close enough to our own. We can't restrict
ourselves to those who recite from the same catechism. This doesn't
mean a weakening, it means an expansion that can be strengtheining.
Your core beliefs you can hold--if you have truly examined them in the
context of others' beliefs and viewpoints, facts that support AND
refute them --if you have tested them under different conditions. To do
that you have to be able to hold for awhile the notion that other ideas
have weight and value, too.
What would happen if you stopped fighting this war that is giving you
pain, causing tension with nearly everyone you know? Will the notion
that preemptive war is bad disappear from human consciousness? Will
whatever strides that have been made be lost? Will our descent into
fascism or hell or government by Bible terrorists and CEOs be hastened?
I don't think so. You can put it down for awhile and see what happens
to you and your relationships with others. Then you can pick it up
again, or not.
I'd like to ask you a couple questions. Why do you think it's your
duty, your calling, to be the conscience of America, and why would
others find you to be an authority or prophet? How do you differ from
other people who care about the world around them? Why do you think
continuing this approach will get results?
>
> My father died when I was 21. We rarely had a kind word to say to each other
> those first 21 years. There was no point of intersection. A mans man off to
> sea at 14 serving for many many years on the lower deck of the navy, and I
> the kid incapable of being much else but a kid and a rather weedy one at that.
> He'd want me to help rip the guts out of cars.. I never saw getting covered in
> oil as a wow this is neat experience. I think sons need fathers who are proud
> of them. My father despised me for all that I wasn't and I reciprocated by
> despising him for all that he was. I'd have had him live long enough to take
> me aside and tell me he was proud of me. Lots of reasons why he might be now.
> We don't realise it as children, but those years are formative years, and we
> never ever quite put them entirely behind us.
I'm not a psychologist but I do live by metaphor. So I'll simply
observe that you have become a warrior, maybe not the kind your father
would recognize, but a warrior nevertheless. As a woman, the warrior
archetype doesn't speak to me, and I have seen much tragedy--including
wars--come from our fascination with it.
> >I don't know exactly when he changed but at some point he lay down his
> >weapons. He couldn't defend the truth and one right way alone any
> >longer. You know, they say a pessimist has a more accurate view of the
> >world but an optimist is happier. I'm glad that my dad spent his last
> >two decades being happy instead of right.
> >
>
> That is probably about the life span I have left to go. How does one put
> right aside, the better to live the happy lie.
You have set up a judgment-based statement that can't be answered
unless one buys your premises that a) you have full posession of "the
right," and b) stopping crying into the night means living a lie.
I don't.
You don't put aside the right: you look around you and see how your
beliefs are affecting your relationships with other people. What you
are doing, does it make your life better? Your wife's? Your
community's? A woman in Iraq's? Your anguish appears to be largely in
the service of abstraction. What does it create?
> I have I think we would both conceed little hope of altering futures.
> But who I am, what I do, and what I say makes past reality. If I
> can't save futures then I'll at least create a past that will have
> scrawled in graffiti IJD was here, rather than the silent accusation,
> yes he was here, but he was afraid to leave behind any evidence of what
> he thought or why his existance mattered even to him.
Ah. Marking your territory, your existence. That makes the replies of
others irrelevant, but sounding boards for your voice. Well, there's
that. . .
Thank you for your kind thoughts in sharing this poem that is important
to you.
> But I think I am misread. I think everything I say is read through the
> filter of this is a Canadian saying stuff about us Americans. I really
> do not believe if I said what I said but as an American with my "you"
> replaced universally by "we" that I'd be seen in the same light.
I don't see it that way. If you said the same words as an American, you
would receive the same response because it is the words, the ideas, and
the way you present them that people react to.
> Oh and I've been known to play Garrison Keillor tapes in the car.
He's an excellent person to study to learn to speak strongly about
political things in ways that create empathy and motivate people to
strive for better ways.
Chris
Ian Davis
<chris....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I'd like to ask you a couple questions. Why do you think it's your
>duty, your calling, to be the conscience of America, and why would
>others find you to be an authority or prophet? How do you differ from
>other people who care about the world around them? Why do you think
>continuing this approach will get results?
>
It is my duty to defend the world that those who lived through WWII wanted
to create. I am not trying to create some brave new visionary world. I'm
trying desperately to remind people of a world until which recently they
too were pledged to defend. A world where never again would people die in
their hundreds of thousands as had happened in both WW1 and WWII. It is
called remembrance day, but for me I've a duty to remember the sacrifice
of those who fell every day -- not just once a year. It is called growing up
in a world where there was not a person I might meet who would not think the
Germans wicked beyond measure for making the fighting of WWII necessary.
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mccrae.html
Who do you think this foe John McCrae was talking of -- the Bosh in the
opposing trenches, or the system that permitted the perpetuation of war.
Nations now commit this same wickedness, and then ask why I think it
my duty to be their conscience. You have it backwards. I don't have
to be their conscience. Those who died in WWII opposing fascism, know
at least as well as I why fascism must be opposed. Why do you break
faith with the past by doing the very think your own ancestors fought
against and died the better to protect you from.
You ask why.. because as a child I swore an oath to myself that if I ever
lived under fascism, I'd not be one of the silent ones who scrapped the
ash of my clothes, but never breathed a whisper about where the ash came
from. I read the diary of Anne Frank as a child.. would you be one of
those who said no room in this inn, or would you be one of those who
felt obliged to do what you could in defence of the victims. This for
me is testing time, fourty years later or more. Am I going to side with
the victims, or am I going to pretend there are not any. I can't say
well not today, but perhaps tomorrow. The first time you break the
rules is the moment when you cease to be able to know that you have
always kept the faith.
You think I want to be your conscience. This has a lot more to do with
my own.
>>
>> My father died when I was 21. We rarely had a kind word to say to each other
>> those first 21 years. There was no point of intersection. A mans man off to
>> sea at 14 serving for many many years on the lower deck of the navy, and I
>> the kid incapable of being much else but a kid and a rather weedy one at that.
>> He'd want me to help rip the guts out of cars.. I never saw getting covered in
>> oil as a wow this is neat experience. I think sons need fathers who are proud
>> of them. My father despised me for all that I wasn't and I reciprocated by
>> despising him for all that he was. I'd have had him live long enough to take
>> me aside and tell me he was proud of me. Lots of reasons why he might be now.
>> We don't realise it as children, but those years are formative years, and we
>> never ever quite put them entirely behind us.
>
>I'm not a psychologist but I do live by metaphor. So I'll simply
>observe that you have become a warrior, maybe not the kind your father
>would recognize, but a warrior nevertheless. As a woman, the warrior
>archetype doesn't speak to me, and I have seen much tragedy--including
>wars--come from our fascination with it.
>
Perhaps so, but my psychological profile is that of Guardian and Protector.
I can't just change who I am and instead project the profile of a master
mind, a field marshall, a champion, a healer or whatever. It is my job
to bark when danger is near, and that is what I try to do.
>> >I don't know exactly when he changed but at some point he lay down his
>> >weapons. He couldn't defend the truth and one right way alone any
>> >longer. You know, they say a pessimist has a more accurate view of the
>> >world but an optimist is happier. I'm glad that my dad spent his last
>> >two decades being happy instead of right.
>> >
>>
>> That is probably about the life span I have left to go. How does one put
>> right aside, the better to live the happy lie.
>
>You have set up a judgment-based statement that can't be answered
>unless one buys your premises that a) you have full posession of "the
>right," and b) stopping crying into the night means living a lie.
>
>I don't.
>
>You don't put aside the right: you look around you and see how your
>beliefs are affecting your relationships with other people. What you
>are doing, does it make your life better? Your wife's? Your
>community's? A woman in Iraq's? Your anguish appears to be largely in
>the service of abstraction. What does it create?
>
They say that burdens shared are burdens halved.
>> I have I think we would both conceed little hope of altering futures.
>> But who I am, what I do, and what I say makes past reality. If I
>> can't save futures then I'll at least create a past that will have
>> scrawled in graffiti IJD was here, rather than the silent accusation,
>> yes he was here, but he was afraid to leave behind any evidence of what
>> he thought or why his existance mattered even to him.
>
>Ah. Marking your territory, your existence. That makes the replies of
>others irrelevant, but sounding boards for your voice. Well, there's
>that. . .
>
No not irrelevant. The replies of others tell me how I have altered the
past if at all, and the replies of others have the power to do likewise.
I am something of an introverted extravert. Very much wrapped up in myself
perhaps, but very much dependent not on how I see myself but on how others
see me. I don't have that useful ability to lift myself by the power of
my self esteem. Absent outside support, I have little ability to prop
myself up. So again I say not irrelevant. Your being gentle with me,
has been reciprocated by being the more open and more candid with
you. I think perhaps you have the wrong illusion above. I do not want
to be a sounding board for a voice like someone in speakers corner
standing on a soap box. I want to be the person I was supposed to be
back when I was being it. And my moral compass tells me that person
was supposed to oppose wars of aggression.
Ian.
JEB
> In article <Xns97C95862...@216.196.97.136>,
> JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>
> But you see I start from the premise that waging a war of aggression
> is a crime. Your refusal to relinquish the freedom to permit future
> generations of Americans or other nations to start wars of aggression,
> seems to me a refusal to take the crime seriously. Would you also
> argue that one should not establish laws that outlawed rape on the
> grounds that doing so might compromise peoples freedom.
No, of course not. And I think laws against wars would be fine things too.
And I don't have problems with sanctions for breaking those laws. But I
wouldn't agree to be castrated in some social engineering program to
preclude rape. Nor would I turn over U.S. defense forces to the command of
the United Nations so that they could never be used in a manner that didn't
violate its "laws." That's my point of freedom. Don't put people in
shackles first to prevent some possibility of theft on their part, even
though not doing so means that some will eventually steal.
I'm resisting a general mentality that always seems to propose drastic
restrictions of the behavior of everyone to preclude the possibility that
some will inevitably go astray without them. Free speech is a good example.
Don't condemn or preclude someone from criticizing a war because it's
unpatriotic, might give the enemy comfort, might demoralize the troops,
might ..... I'll take the risk associated with free speech, even
recognizing that a demagogue might use to start a war sometime. And I won't
voluntarily give it up to procure some good, because once it's given up, it
will never be given back voluntarily, and it won't prevent the ills it was
given up for.
As an aside, I read in the local paper the other day where several people
were pardoned posthumously because they had expressed very mild
reservations about WWI and were sent to jail because of it (I think the
state was Montana.). One comment quoted was simply normal bar banter that
no one would take seriously today, but the guy was sentenced to several
months of jail time for undermining the war effort.
I get really skeptical when people starting talking about the need to give
up freedom for some "good cause" of the moment. It's a bit different with
nations, but the principle is similar. This will probably never be a
problem with countries, because most are nationalistic to the core, and
will never voluntarily do this.
Democracy is a risk. Hitler was elected. Fine. If democracy means that
there's a risk that a Hitler might again be elected, I'll take that risk
rather than rely on the alternative of someone else's "benevolent"
dictatorship. If the risk of democracy is that sometimes countries will
misbehave or start an illegal pre-emptive war, I'll take that risk, because
I still think the risk is small compared to benefit that freedom and its
associated creativity can bring.
After all this discussion, we might have actually agreed all along?
>
> Perhaps, perhaps not. You'd have to start by convincing me that wars
> of aggression were not a crime, but rather an option. Look at the
> totality of what you have to do. You have to convince me that
> following WWII the then leaders were wrong to said the way to stop
> future wars was to outlaw wars of aggression and to have the UN
> security council use force if necessary to do so. You have to
> convince me that waging a war against fascism in part because
> initiating wars of aggression was wrong, was itself a pretty pointless
> exercise, wars of aggression not being wrong. You'd have to convince
> me that Hitler had every right to pre-emptively attack other nations.
> And you'd have to convince me that we are better off living in a world
> where any may attack any than where none may attack any. You'd also
> have to conceed that North Korea has every right to pre-emptively
> attack the US, as does Iran, because if your freedom to sanction
> pre-emptive attacks is to be respected then so logically should
> theirs.
I don't remember saying anything about pre-emptive wars. In a way, what I
was saying is that you should not take pre-emptive action to eliminate the
possibility of a pre-emptive war.
I can imagine a few circumstances where the danger was clear and the attack
imminent in which a pre-emptive strike might be warranted - legal or not.
The threshold for that, though, is very high. In the case of the U.S. and
Iraq, the fig leaf was a U.N. resolution of some sort. It's not clear to me
that the administration ever really claimed it met the threshold for a pre-
emptive strike. It is clear at least to me that any claimed meeting of this
threshold would have to have been a fanciful combination of distorted
intelligence, a vivid imagination, and a willingly gullible Congress.
Where was the U.N.? Where was the rest of the world? Mostly busy joining
the U.S. or ingratiating themselves for the promise of money - not much of
any threat of sanction or even embarrassment there.
>>
>
> It excludes internal civil wars not because I want to see civil wars
> flurish but because I am forced to conceed that it is next to
> impossible to untangle who is the aggressor and who the victim in a
> civil war, so the simple maxim that none be permitted to start a war
> of aggression, with heavy penalties for violating that principle won't
> do much to stop internal civil wars. I don't have a good handle on
> how one stops civil wars, beyond observing that many of them are the
> direct consequence of external influences which might better hold back
> than take sides. Bosnia, Vietnam, Iraq, and perhaps even Israel are
> all civil wars largely fuelled by external participants. Perhaps the
> solution to civil wars is to starve them instead of feeding them.
OK. I see. Your stance is based on pragmatism rather than philosophy. It's
a philosophical exclusion that I'd have difficulty with vs. just a
pragmatic one.
There seems to be evidence that democracies (in fact -not fiction) are
kinder toward their own than non-democracies. They don't seem to prevent
civil wars. And many are not robust enough to last long enough in fact to
bring about change.
>
>>I think your view has to be narrow to be intellectually satisfying.
>>Mine does not.
>>
> Yours does not what. I'm still trying to work out what your view
> does, if one discounts nothing beyond giving you some freedom you
> value as being something.
>
Your solution depends on determining an aggressor reliably.To reach that
conclusion, one has to make many assumptions about sovereignty that can be
reliably decided based on somewhat arbitrary map of countries included in
the U.N. charter, though those are in great dispute, and are totally out of
date. Within that context everything gets sorted out into a category of
just and unjust wars. And then of course, there's some impartial
international enforcement agency with capability of imposing its will on
the current world superpowers, and those to come.
Assuming all the above could be done justly and reliably, your solution is
tidy, and maybe even works. It is satisfying because everything is pretty
much spelled out and clear.
My view is simply that war is an utterly messy evil that like small pox has
to be contained and eliminated. To extend the analogy, rather than
spending great resources to decide who was the carrier, you'd expend energy
and resources to prevent its spread, rescue people from its ravages, and
inoculate as many people as you can as fast as you can. As with a disease,
you publicize the outbreak, its reach, the spreading vector, and you
isolate and contain it as quickly as you can -even if its only temporary.
There is not friendly smallpox and unfriendly smallpox. You don't look the
other way when a friend has it and is spreading the disease.
There's nothing tidy about my view. And my view, unlike yours, does not
believe the problem to be fixable - at least in any short term. When I look
at the pictures from Iraq, I refuse to rationalize about whether the maimed
are the result of some terrorist, a Sunni, a Shiite, a justified or
unjustified war, or even one of the U.S. coalition. My stomach doesn't turn
less when I see the facial holes in a African child whose nose has been
hacked off with a machete because he wouldn't join the guerrillas when I
know the official government to be corrupt and negligent.
The causes of war are deeply embedded in mankind and will not be readily
fixed. And they have little to do with all the legalities surrounding the
U.N. Or even who is the most culpable. And I have no illusions that this
will change in my lifetime.
I want people to see the enormity of the problem as the sloppy horrible
mess it is, believing that if people see it that way, the inherent good in
many will work to find some way to alleviate the problem. I don't want
Americans slumbering easy at night because their war is justified, as the
consequences of war unfold into the human suffering it always does,
regardless of its "merit." I want Americans to see. I want the world to
see. The least the U.N. could do is make sure that the world actually has
to see what's going on.
Thus I tend to resist tidy solutions that seem to have the premise, "If we
just do this, then things will be fixed." I understand your pragmatism, and
am not disinterested in anything that helps. But just getting the smallpox
out of Bexar county isn't even close to being a solution. And I think it's
important that people recognize that.
My view doesn't need much tidiness at all. The viewpoint is just one of
compassion, and that doesn't require or demand the narrowness of
intellectual rigor that reliable determinations of just vs. unjust demand.
Please understand two things. 1) While I'm not sold on your solution, I am
glad you are willing to make the effort to advocate it. Most people are
pretty much disinterested in doing much about war in general. 2) I
understand your attempt to be pragmatic, and believe that your view of the
effects of war are not limited to your pragmatism.
>. I want
> the US to be discouraged from starting wars of aggression.
That statement is probably the best means of clarifying a difference
between us. I want the U.S. to discouraged from starting wars. I want them
to be very reluctant, unless there is clear and imminent danger. I want
that reluctance to make people think about the effects of what they'll do
rather than play mental games as to whether or not this is a war of
aggression. I want them to visualize bloody children in their mind as they
make their decision. I want them if they decide to war, to do everything
reasonably within their power to mitigate the tragedies that will
inevitably follow.
I don't want them riding excitedly with the posse to round up the "bad
guys" because the U.N. has said they aren't the aggressor.
> The Iraqi
> resistance may not be able to help the Iraqi's much, but if it
> persuades the US that enlarging the war to include an invasion of Iran
> would be a very bad idea,
I'm not at all sold on the idea of the Iraqi resistance as being the
ongoing cause of violence in Iraq. There are many groups that want the
Iraqi government to fail miserably, and for the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis
to disintegrate into a hellacious civil war to create opportunity for their
own agenda. Based on what I've read, most Iraqis want peace, order, running
water, electricity, and a means of living, and are not at all interested in
ongoing violence except to hope and pray it ceases. I want that peace for
them too, even if it means that the U.S. stays there a while longer.
Many Kurds, Sunni, and Shiites actually think of themselves as Iraqis - not
the packages we keep sorting them into.
>
> I am reading that the US liked the first war so much that they are
> well into the preparations for starting a war on the eastern front --
> namely Iran.
>
> http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=9011
I don't think even Bush wants another war these days.
>
> Choice means that we are the artists.. as well as the paint.
Nice phrasing.
jeb
Engineer
Ian Davis wrote:
>easier to loose rights than to reclaim them.
You may wish to look up "loose" and "lose" in the dictionary...
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote in
>news:e4o320$9nd$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>
>> In article <Xns97C95862...@216.196.97.136>,
>> JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>>
>
>> But you see I start from the premise that waging a war of aggression
>> is a crime. Your refusal to relinquish the freedom to permit future
>> generations of Americans or other nations to start wars of aggression,
>> seems to me a refusal to take the crime seriously. Would you also
>> argue that one should not establish laws that outlawed rape on the
>> grounds that doing so might compromise peoples freedom.
>
>No, of course not. And I think laws against wars would be fine things too.
>And I don't have problems with sanctions for breaking those laws. But I
>wouldn't agree to be castrated in some social engineering program to
>preclude rape. Nor would I turn over U.S. defense forces to the command of
>the United Nations so that they could never be used in a manner that didn't
>violate its "laws." That's my point of freedom. Don't put people in
>shackles first to prevent some possibility of theft on their part, even
>though not doing so means that some will eventually steal.
>
I have no desire to see U.S. defense forces turned over to anyone. It is
said that strong fences make for good neighbours. I am not advocating
that the US be disarmed. I am advocating that the US recognise that
stochastically its wars of aggression have proven to be a liability it
simply can't afford to make, and that therefore it should renounce the
made in the US idea that pre-emptive wars are the way to go. They are
not. I don't see how saying that pre-emptive wars of aggression is
wrong in any way puts you in shackles unless you are in the group which
wishes to reserve the right to initiate pre-emptive wars. Your
president shackled you to a war you then couldn't win. At very worst
the question is not whether you are to be placed in shackles but which
shackles are the heavier to wear.
>I'm resisting a general mentality that always seems to propose drastic
>restrictions of the behavior of everyone to preclude the possibility that
>some will inevitably go astray without them. Free speech is a good example.
>Don't condemn or preclude someone from criticizing a war because it's
>unpatriotic, might give the enemy comfort, might demoralize the troops,
>might ..... I'll take the risk associated with free speech, even
>recognizing that a demagogue might use to start a war sometime. And I won't
>voluntarily give it up to procure some good, because once it's given up, it
>will never be given back voluntarily, and it won't prevent the ills it was
>given up for.
Last time I checked the president of the US wasn't everyone. He was one
man. Now is it a good idea or a bad idea to place limits on what a monarch
may do. It is not your own freedom to do wrong which you are defending here;
it is the freedom of your president to do wrong, and to be obeyed when he
does wrong which is the issue here. And even if you hold that the rights
of presidents should not be constrained, I think you would conceed that
someone aught to say something to stop a president from ordering a nuclear
strike on an American city. So the issue is not whether there are to be
limits imposed on presidents but what are the sensible limits to impose on
Presidents, the better to protect the society the president is president
of.
>
>As an aside, I read in the local paper the other day where several people
>were pardoned posthumously because they had expressed very mild
>reservations about WWI and were sent to jail because of it (I think the
>state was Montana.). One comment quoted was simply normal bar banter that
>no one would take seriously today, but the guy was sentenced to several
>months of jail time for undermining the war effort.
>
The father of an elderly friend of the family fell asleep while guarding
prisoners during WWI. Luckily the one discovering him asleep decided to
ignore the offence rather than report it. At the time the sentence for
falling asleep while guarding prisoners was execution by firing squad.
They were very unforgiving times back then, and getting off with a
jail sentence probably meant that one had been lucky to survive at
all.
>I get really skeptical when people starting talking about the need to give
>up freedom for some "good cause" of the moment. It's a bit different with
>nations, but the principle is similar. This will probably never be a
>problem with countries, because most are nationalistic to the core, and
>will never voluntarily do this.
>
This is not about giving up some freedom you once had. The USA is a
signatory to the UN charter and is pledged not to initiate a war of
aggression without first obtaining the consent of the UN security
council. This is about George Bush ignoring his own responsibilities
as a permanent sitting member of the UN security council to not commit
the supreme international crime.
>Democracy is a risk. Hitler was elected. Fine. If democracy means that
>there's a risk that a Hitler might again be elected, I'll take that risk
>rather than rely on the alternative of someone else's "benevolent"
>dictatorship. If the risk of democracy is that sometimes countries will
>misbehave or start an illegal pre-emptive war, I'll take that risk, because
>I still think the risk is small compared to benefit that freedom and its
>associated creativity can bring.
>
Well it is nice to see that you'll take that risk with other peoples lives.
You sound a bit like Madalaine Albright when asked about the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children that resulted from the sanctions
imposed on Iraq. "We think the price is worth it" she replied. Nice that
-- they were not her children were they. And the people who are to be the
ones to pay the price for your being willing to take the risk of US presidents
starting future pre-emptive wars, are I presume not imagined to be family
members, friends or associates. Why accept constraints on starting
pre-emptive wars, when all your pre-emptive wars are free. The trouble is
they are not free. The day will come when the debt collector wants paying
for all those past mistakes that you thought could be freely made. Where do
you get off thinking that war is something that you can indulge in at your
whim, if it seems like a good idea at the time when
"planning and waging aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War
is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the
belligerent States alone, but affect the whole world."
Would you also think that you had the inherent right to go round starting
fires with a box of matches, and that if any said you didn't that would
limiting the inherent creativity associated with owning a box of matches.
>After all this discussion, we might have actually agreed all along?
>
No way -- not if I'm reading what you are saying correctly.
>>
>
>> Perhaps, perhaps not. You'd have to start by convincing me that wars
>> of aggression were not a crime, but rather an option. Look at the
>> totality of what you have to do. You have to convince me that
>> following WWII the then leaders were wrong to said the way to stop
>> future wars was to outlaw wars of aggression and to have the UN
>> security council use force if necessary to do so. You have to
>> convince me that waging a war against fascism in part because
>> initiating wars of aggression was wrong, was itself a pretty pointless
>> exercise, wars of aggression not being wrong. You'd have to convince
>> me that Hitler had every right to pre-emptively attack other nations.
>> And you'd have to convince me that we are better off living in a world
>> where any may attack any than where none may attack any. You'd also
>> have to conceed that North Korea has every right to pre-emptively
>> attack the US, as does Iran, because if your freedom to sanction
>> pre-emptive attacks is to be respected then so logically should
>> theirs.
>I don't remember saying anything about pre-emptive wars. In a way, what I
>was saying is that you should not take pre-emptive action to eliminate the
>possibility of a pre-emptive war.
So you think it better that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and then be driven
out than that the US when asked about whether they thought such a conflict
acceptable took any pre-emptive action to stop such a conflict from occurring.
They were in your mind quite right in behaving as described below:
"As the world watched the military build up at the Kuwaiti border, Saddam
called a meeting with then US ambassador April Gillespie, who told Saddam:
"We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement
with Kuwait." She went on to say: "James Baker has directed our official
spokesmen to emphasize this instruction." (San Francisco Examiner, 11/18/02)"
http://www.bnfp.org/neighborhood/jmoore.htm
>
>I can imagine a few circumstances where the danger was clear and the attack
>imminent in which a pre-emptive strike might be warranted - legal or not.
>The threshold for that, though, is very high. In the case of the U.S. and
>Iraq, the fig leaf was a U.N. resolution of some sort. It's not clear to me
>that the administration ever really claimed it met the threshold for a pre-
>emptive strike. It is clear at least to me that any claimed meeting of this
>threshold would have to have been a fanciful combination of distorted
>intelligence, a vivid imagination, and a willingly gullible Congress.
>
Why would they have to meet some threshold. You are not going to sanction
them (as far as I can see) in any way for having launched an illegal war
of aggression that failed to live up to these thresholds that you speak
of. Indeed you acknowledge that they did not. What does it mean to
break all the rules, if that is to be no different from having no rules.
>Where was the U.N.? Where was the rest of the world? Mostly busy joining
>the U.S. or ingratiating themselves for the promise of money - not much of
>any threat of sanction or even embarrassment there.
The UN was profoundly embarrassed. Personally I'd have terminated the US
membership in the UN on the grounds that having blatantly violated the
UN charter they could no longer be considered members in good standing.
But given that they didn't why not? Perhaps because they were diplomats
and thought discretion the better part of valour.. or perhaps because they
remembered the old schoolboy joke about what you called a 500lb gorilla
with a machine gun, to which the answer is "Sir". I was in New York the
day that George Bush gave his own speech to the UN, and watched it live.
My take was that some members of the audience were openly laughing at
his performance, while others were clearly uncomfortable with the tone
of all he said.
>
>>>
>>
>> It excludes internal civil wars not because I want to see civil wars
>> flurish but because I am forced to conceed that it is next to
>> impossible to untangle who is the aggressor and who the victim in a
>> civil war, so the simple maxim that none be permitted to start a war
>> of aggression, with heavy penalties for violating that principle won't
>> do much to stop internal civil wars. I don't have a good handle on
>> how one stops civil wars, beyond observing that many of them are the
>> direct consequence of external influences which might better hold back
>> than take sides. Bosnia, Vietnam, Iraq, and perhaps even Israel are
>> all civil wars largely fuelled by external participants. Perhaps the
>> solution to civil wars is to starve them instead of feeding them.
>
>OK. I see. Your stance is based on pragmatism rather than philosophy. It's
>a philosophical exclusion that I'd have difficulty with vs. just a
>pragmatic one.
>
I am being very pragmatic. I say if you want to stop wars, make the price
of starting them unacceptably high. Makes me think of the stand up comic
in bowling for columbine whose solution to gun crime was to make the bullets
cost $15,000 each. I've been here on a Quaker forum six years, and I've
yet to see anyone make a better suggestion. Indeed I am hard pressed to
think of an occasion when any here has made a suggestion period about how
one might do away with the need for war. Quakers might readily accept:
"All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly
deny; with all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons,
for any end, or under an pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the
whole world."
but they don't seem to want to go the next step, even to the extent of backing
the existing provisions in place that already outlaw wars of aggression, and
which declare that those who initiate wars of aggression are to be considered
to have committed the supreme war crime.
>There seems to be evidence that democracies (in fact -not fiction) are
>kinder toward their own than non-democracies. They don't seem to prevent
>civil wars. And many are not robust enough to last long enough in fact to
>bring about change.
>
>>
>>>I think your view has to be narrow to be intellectually satisfying.
>>>Mine does not.
>>>
>
>> Yours does not what. I'm still trying to work out what your view
>> does, if one discounts nothing beyond giving you some freedom you
>> value as being something.
>>
>
>Your solution depends on determining an aggressor reliably.To reach that
>conclusion, one has to make many assumptions about sovereignty that can be
>reliably decided based on somewhat arbitrary map of countries included in
>the U.N. charter, though those are in great dispute, and are totally out of
>date. Within that context everything gets sorted out into a category of
>just and unjust wars. And then of course, there's some impartial
>international enforcement agency with capability of imposing its will on
>the current world superpowers, and those to come.
>
There will always be the need to make some judgement when crimes are committed.
Are you going to say that none should be tried for rape, because sometimes it
is difficult to determine if a rape has occurred.
When George Bush faces the ICJ for eggregious breaches of the peace are you
as his lawyer going to feel particularly comfortable arguing that his guilt
is in doubt because he might not have known where US sovereignty ended and
Iraqi sovereignty began, or that the maps he was using provided by the UN
showing where America ended and Iraq began might possible be out of date.
Don't you get any sense that such a defence would be no more than grasping
at straws given the indubitable nature of the crime committed and the
indubitable identity of the one having committed it. Why are you so
desperate to see justice in this case denied.
>Assuming all the above could be done justly and reliably, your solution is
>tidy, and maybe even works. It is satisfying because everything is pretty
>much spelled out and clear.
>
It has worked, with few exceptions for 60 years. Your solution which is
to permit all nations to initiate pre-emptive wars of aggression is only
in the early stages of testing, and the experiment has for me none of the
same hope that it will be either tidy, or will work. Your solution also
spells things out pretty clearly. The last to get nuclear weapons and
use them looses.
>My view is simply that war is an utterly messy evil that like small pox has
>to be contained and eliminated. To extend the analogy, rather than
>spending great resources to decide who was the carrier, you'd expend energy
>and resources to prevent its spread, rescue people from its ravages, and
>inoculate as many people as you can as fast as you can. As with a disease,
>you publicize the outbreak, its reach, the spreading vector, and you
>isolate and contain it as quickly as you can -even if its only temporary.
>There is not friendly smallpox and unfriendly smallpox. You don't look the
>other way when a friend has it and is spreading the disease.
>
But friend George Bush has it and you are looking the other way. You
wouldn't be looking the other way if it was Kim II Sung that had it. To my
mind you want one rule for Americans and another for the rest of the
world. That concept might go down swimmingly in the USA, but surely
it should be obvious that it is hardly likely to receive similar
applause in the rest of the world.
>There's nothing tidy about my view. And my view, unlike yours, does not
>believe the problem to be fixable - at least in any short term. When I look
>at the pictures from Iraq, I refuse to rationalize about whether the maimed
>are the result of some terrorist, a Sunni, a Shiite, a justified or
>unjustified war, or even one of the U.S. coalition. My stomach doesn't turn
>less when I see the facial holes in a African child whose nose has been
>hacked off with a machete because he wouldn't join the guerrillas when I
>know the official government to be corrupt and negligent.
>
>The causes of war are deeply embedded in mankind and will not be readily
>fixed. And they have little to do with all the legalities surrounding the
>U.N. Or even who is the most culpable. And I have no illusions that this
>will change in my lifetime.
>
Neither do I if the Quaker solution to war is to be to say "Stuff happens".
<<snip>>
>>. I want the US to be discouraged from starting wars of aggression.
>
>That statement is probably the best means of clarifying a difference
>between us. I want the U.S. to discouraged from starting wars. I want them
>to be very reluctant, unless there is clear and imminent danger. I want
>that reluctance to make people think about the effects of what they'll do
>rather than play mental games as to whether or not this is a war of
>aggression. I want them to visualize bloody children in their mind as they
>make their decision. I want them if they decide to war, to do everything
>reasonably within their power to mitigate the tragedies that will
>inevitably follow.
>
You don't get the reality which is that the US administration can conjure
up what will appear to be a clear and imminent danger whenever that is the
thing needed to start a war. You don't grasp that you were lied into war,
even while the rest of the world knew it to be a lie. Our own then prime
minister publically said that Canada was refusing to back the US in this war
because Canada did not support the notion of using force to achieve regime
change. Not force to stop the threat of WMD but force to achieve regime
change. If you want the right to launch pre-emptive wars whenever there
is a clear and imminent danger, you are (a) going to need administrations
who can distinguish between clear and imminent danger, and vague threats
that have more of gravy about them than the grave and (b) you are going
to need a population who would be just a tad skeptical if told that the
Easter Bunny was a threat. I wouldn't feel comfortable with putting the
responsibility for running a nuclear reactor in the hands of either your
administration, or of the general public. Why do you think I'd trust
either with the power to start pre-emptive wars.
>I don't want them riding excitedly with the posse to round up the "bad
>guys" because the U.N. has said they aren't the aggressor.
>
>> The Iraqi
>> resistance may not be able to help the Iraqi's much, but if it
>> persuades the US that enlarging the war to include an invasion of Iran
>> would be a very bad idea,
>
>I'm not at all sold on the idea of the Iraqi resistance as being the
>ongoing cause of violence in Iraq. There are many groups that want the
>Iraqi government to fail miserably, and for the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis
>to disintegrate into a hellacious civil war to create opportunity for their
>own agenda. Based on what I've read, most Iraqis want peace, order, running
>water, electricity, and a means of living, and are not at all interested in
>ongoing violence except to hope and pray it ceases. I want that peace for
>them too, even if it means that the U.S. stays there a while longer.
Don't you really think it should be the Iraqi people who decide what they
want or do not want rather than you. Support for the US occupation of Iraq
was last time I checked running 9-1 against. If 9 out of every 10 Americans
wanted the Russians to leave, would you thank Russians who thought that those
same Russians should stay.
>
>Many Kurds, Sunni, and Shiites actually think of themselves as Iraqis - not
>the packages we keep sorting them into.
>
Most certainly historically so. But not from my reading any more. The
country is disintegrating and already is looking like Lebanon as the
various ethnic communities flee places where they are in the minority
for places where they are in the majority. And yes you are also right -
we do keep sorting them into separate packages, which is what has
driven them to accept that no longer can they be Iraqi first and X
second. Don't you think we might be doing a better job if we were
not there, screwing everything up so badly. Since you suggest US forces
should stay there longer you haven't yet reached my conclusion which
is that there has never been a point in this war when in hindsight
US forces should not have got out sooner, and ergo there is probably
now never going to be a point when this trite observation ceases to
hold.
>>
>> I am reading that the US liked the first war so much that they are
>> well into the preparations for starting a war on the eastern front --
>> namely Iran.
>>
>> http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=9011
>
>I don't think even Bush wants another war these days.
>
I don't think the American people want another war these days, but I'm
not familiar enough with George Bush's profit/lose ledger to know whether
he does. My suspicion is that he'd very much like a new war to distract
the American people from the old one, but is not quite certain how he is
going to sell it, given the US population no longer trusts his not to
sell them down the river. I have this nagging feeling that where there
is a will a way will be found, and I hope this is mere pessimism on my
part.
>>
>> Choice means that we are the artists.. as well as the paint.
>
>Nice phrasing.
>
Thanks..
Ian
Ian Davis
Yes.. thanks.. I was presuming that if in England one went to a "loo"
that when one lost something that would be the verb to "loo-se". I'd
read "lose" as "loss" phonetically which makes it even harder. Loose
I'd presume from the phonetics to have a hard final 's' in it. It
would have been so much simpler if things were written the way they
sounded, as I am told is the case with spanish.
Ian
Ian Johnston
Traditionalist" <nospa...@add.com> wrote:
: My life as a 'baptised believer' is being recorded on a daily basis and
: written in "The books" which will be opened on judgment day. So one tries to
: fill the day with some "good works" which please God and help your
: neighbours....
: So ... instead of worrying unnecessarily about things which are destined to
: happen anyway, lets fill our lives in the masters service...
If things are going to happen anyway, why "try" to do anything?
Have you read the "Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner", by James Hogg, yet?
Ian
Engineer
Ian Davis wrote:
>
>Engineer wrote:
>>
>>Ian Davis wrote:
>>
>>>easier to loose rights than to reclaim them.
>>
>>You may wish to look up "loose" and "lose" in the dictionary...
>
>Yes.. thanks.. I was presuming that if in England one went to a "loo"
>that when one lost something that would be the verb to "loo-se". I'd
>read "lose" as "loss" phonetically which makes it even harder. Loose
>I'd presume from the phonetics to have a hard final 's' in it. It
>would have been so much simpler if things were written the way they
>sounded, as I am told is the case with spanish.
The spell-checker song:
I have a spelling checker.
It came with my pea sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot see.
Eye ran this poem threw it.
Your sure lee glad two no.
It is core wrecked in every weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a bless sing.
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right stiles ewe can reed,
And aides me when aye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Is trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore a veiling checkers
Hour spelling mite decline,
If wee R lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid two wine.
Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
There are know faults with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.
Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With words sew fare too hear.
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.
Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
With righting sure two please.
:)
JEB
We've probably reached an impasse in this conversation.
You insist that I believe in pre-emptive wars without sanction, though I've
not stated that. And you jump to a conclusion that I believe the Iraq war
justified as a pre-emptive war. And then you jump to Iraq and all of its
problems. And you restate this repeatedly, as if doing so somehow makes it
my view. Having created your target, you pounce on it as if it were real.
You demand that the support of your view either be absolute, or it is
entirely dismissed. And you are surprised that you find yourself absolutely
by yourself. In my effort to change things, I accept all sort of impure
help to meet some goal that seems worth pursuing.
I may decide to violate a speed limit to rush someone to the hospital, and
I may get a ticket as a result. And I would pay the ticket if I could not
persuade an officer or judge of the merit of my judgment. The importance of
saving life outweighs that risk and potential sanction, and I would not be
deterred by an absolutist view that speed limits are never to be disobeyed.
Normal sane human beings make those sorts of relative choices all the time.
I don't agree with George Bush at all, but I accept the risk of a democracy
that sometimes produces a George Bush, and that may not always work. You
can't seem to accept that point. In a democracy I will not always control
the outcome of what's decided. That is a risk worth taking. I don't have to
agree with all the outcomes of democracy to favor it. Some of that is just
humility in realizing I may not always be right. More often, it's an
acceptance of that as a better system than the alternative, even if it is
flawed with potential risk. My world does not have to be absolutely perfect
to be accepted.
You would have the U.N. start another war of sanction each time some member
fell outside its "laws" about wars. In any practical sense, this would be
required for your approach. You'd have Russia, China, and France presumably
wage war on the U.S., Britain, and other coalition members to bring them to
justice. This has no merit at all.
I think your solution is an illusion. It is another pipe dream about the
causes and fixes of war. While I doubt its overall merit, I am still very
glad you take the time to care about it and propose it.I'm not suggesting
giving up. I think you add something to the debate, and your solution might
even help in some specific cases. But there's no point in pretending this
idea is "the fix." It at best might cure a few patients when war and
genocide are more like a long term epidemic that has periodically ravaged
mankind since recorded history. Smallpox was eradicated. Maybe eventually
war can be controlled also.
The U.N. has failed more than it has succeeded. Many argue persuasively
that it was MAD that has kept the world from tipping into global war. Their
intellectual argument is stronger than your conjecture that the U.N. has
been the savior of mankind. I think both conclusions are wrong, and both
have played a role.
You believe human nature, wars, etc. will be fixed by systems. I think
human society is much more complex than that, and may never be fixable in
the way that engineers (social or otherwise) would like.
I believe that helping people see clearly has much greater curative
potential than the next legal perfection of trying to define who is
entitled to justly start a war. Even if people decide to go to war, I want
them to do so with cognizance of the suffering they will cause. And when
they see war happening, they will come to better decisions about helping if
they understand the suffering behind it. One picture of a child running
with her back aflame with napalm probably had more to do with people's
understanding of the suffering in Viet Nam than all the intellectual
arguments about whether or not the U.S. was justified in being there.
Favorable kill ratios didn't make that picture go away. When people
actually see, many are much better than their heads let them believe.
Peace - in the truest sense.
jeb
Bill Samuel
>>
>
>It is my duty to defend the world that those who lived through WWII wanted
>to create.
Why?
Timothy Travis
On 5/21/06 5:10 AM, in article Xns97CA531A...@216.196.97.136, "JEB"
<en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
> ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote in
> news:e4otra$lkd$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>
> We've probably reached an impasse in this conversation.
>
> You insist that I believe in pre-emptive wars without sanction, though I've
> not stated that. And you jump to a conclusion that I believe the Iraq war
> justified as a pre-emptive war. And then you jump to Iraq and all of its
> problems. And you restate this repeatedly, as if doing so somehow makes it
> my view. Having created your target, you pounce on it as if it were real.
Welcome to SRQ!!! (Or, perhaps, farewell to SRQ)
This is a "place" where we all redefine one another into the enemies we want
to defeat, addressing not that of God in one another but, rather, through
manifesting the Adversary in ourselves conjuring the Adversary in one
another. All of us feel as though we are treated like foils because all of
us are treated like foils.
We all have our opinions here transmuted (and transmute one another's
opinions) into things that no one would endorse and then we believe that we
have to invest great amounts of time in trying to make what we said clear.
But our interlocutors/we are too busy riffing on their/our own personal
demons, now identified with us/them, for the umpteenth time, to even care
what we/they really meant.
This playing out of wills to power, of course, is an illustration of why war
doesn't stop. And it illustrates that we have the power to stop it because
its source is in our behavior--in the behavior of all of us.
"And me I sit so patiently,
Waiting to find out what price,
You have to pay to get out of,
Going through all these things twice,
Oh, Momma, can this really be the end,
To be stuck in side of Mobile
With the Memphis Blues, again."
Bob Dylan
Is this the last lesson I was sent here to learn about myself and about my
monkey nature? Is the transformation from this my ticket out of here?
"But whatever the intention may be, the results of action undertaken by even
the most brilliant cleverness, when it is unenlightened by the divine Nature
of Things, unsubordinated to the Spirit, are generally evil...what a man's
mind conceives most clearly is the supreme value of his own ego."
Aldous Huxley
The Perennial Philosophy
p. 144
"You fear the sword, and the sword is what I will bring against you,
declares the Sovereign LORD."
Ezekial 11:8
"Be still and (you will) know that I *am* God."
Psalm 46:10
Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon
onequakertake.blogspot.com
"Such as men themselves are, such will God, Himself, seem to them to be."
attributed to John Smith, the Platonist
Ian Davis
JEB <en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote in
>news:e4otra$lkd$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>
>We've probably reached an impasse in this conversation.
>
I think the reason we have reached the impasse is because we are talking
past each other. You keep bringing up the UN as if I am advocating that
the US be policed by the UN. I am not!
Serbia has as Article 51 of its constitution:
Article 51
The defense of the Republic of Serbia is the right and a duty of every
citizen. No one has the right to acknowledge or sign an act of capitulation,
or accept or recognize the occupation of the Republic of Serbia, or any part
thereof. Treason against the Republic of Serbia is a crime against the people
and shall be punished as a serious criminal offence.
http://www.serbia-info.com/facts/constitution_2.html
This is presumably in the Serbian constitution because the Serbs decided
that they didn't like being occupied, and having been occupied were going
to make it illegal for a Serbian president under any condition whatsoever
to accept or recognize such an occupation.
I don't think you would say that the Serbs have no right to put this clause
in their constitution, and I think that you would say that this being in
their constitution Milosevic had no option but to say NO when NATO insisted
on an occupation of all of Serbia.
I am advocating that the US people similarly decide that they do not like
being lied into wars of aggression which costs the US billions, which
destroys its credibility in the rest of the world, and which kills
hundreds of thousands some small number of those American.
Is there any logical reason why the US legislator should not like the Serbs
pass laws that constrain the power of Presidents to do things that the
nation has as a whole has decided are extremely harmful to the state.
I read you as saying and I am not reading you at all clearly here and/or am
reading what you say with disbelief that you are promoting one or a more
of (1) it is a good idea for presidents to be able to launch pre-emptive
wars (2) we should take our chances that they won't but if they do that
is consequence of the fact that we live in a democracy (3) placing
constraints on a president limit freedom and limiting freedom constitutes
a threat to everyones freedom (4) we shouldn't be saying a-priori that it
is a bad idea for presidents to start pre-emptive wars.. instead we should
be deciding the merits of pre-emptive war, after presidents have decided
to start them (by which time it is going to be too late to stop them).
If I am anywhere close to reading back your positions to you, as you hold
them to be, then they are positions alien to me. Each of them seems close
to being a non-sequitur. I can't correlate in (1) "good" with "pre-emptive
war". I can't correlate in (2) "democracy" with "absolute monarchs". I
can't correlate "limitations on monarchs" equating to reduced "freedoms"
for the people. I can't correlate (4) deciding on the merits of pre-emptive
war, after it is too late to stop them.
The only thread running through these various facets of your argument that
binds them together is that at the end of it all it is important to not put
roadblocks in the way of permitting US presidents to start wars of aggression.
It is hard to see how you don't want wars of aggression to occur, when you
seem to be arguing that the most desirable world is one where a presidents
ability (be that a US president, an Iranian president, a North Korean one
or whatever) to initiate wars of aggression is maximal rather than minimal.
I can't explain this notion and where it leads to, except by percieving you
as someone who wants all nations to be able to start pre-emptive wars of
aggression, which I can't separate from welcoming war, and wanting leadership
that has within its power the power to commit the supreme crime. And thus
this makes my understanding of you also a non-sequitur because I read clearly
enough your claim that you don't.
I've left the UN out of my reply.. I've left Iraq out of my reply. I've
tried to keep it simple and focused on the point, the better that you can
see what the view looks like from here. Perhaps as I say I'm looking past
you, but if so I simply cannot see what it is I've missed.
Ian
Ian Davis
Bill Samuel <wsa...@comcast.net> wrote:
>In article <e4oe79$end$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca>,
>ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote:
>>>
>>
>>It is my duty to defend the world that those who lived through WWII wanted
>>to create.
>
>Why?
>
(1) Those who forget the past are destined to repeat it.
(2) I don't want to see the past repeated.
(3) Because those who like me didn't want to see the past repeated came up
with what are perhaps the only sensible rules for avoiding future war.
(a) No initiation of wars of aggression.
(b) No right to change international boundaries unilaterally.
(c) No interference in the internal affairs of other nations.
(4) Because these rules are both sensible ones and in the context of avoiding
future war wise ones, departing from them make future wars more likely,
not less likely.
To me my answer is no more than common sense. Why would you have me turn
my back on common sense? At what point in the evolutionary life cycle of
war are the American people going to say "we should have known better",
and should not have become the warmongers that we became.
Ian
Engineer
(I reset the subject line. A subject line should reflect the
subject, not be another place to make one's talking points.)
Timothy Travis wrote:
>Welcome to SRQ!!! (Or, perhaps, farewell to SRQ)
>
>This is a "place" where we all redefine one another into the enemies we want
>to defeat, addressing not that of God in one another but, rather, through
>manifesting the Adversary in ourselves conjuring the Adversary in one
>another. All of us feel as though we are treated like foils because all of
>us are treated like foils.
>
>We all have our opinions here transmuted (and transmute one another's
>opinions) into things that no one would endorse and then we believe that we
>have to invest great amounts of time in trying to make what we said clear.
>But our interlocutors/we are too busy riffing on their/our own personal
>demons, now identified with us/them, for the umpteenth time, to even care
>what we/they really meant.
>
>This playing out of wills to power, of course, is an illustration of why war
>doesn't stop. And it illustrates that we have the power to stop it because
>its source is in our behavior--in the behavior of all of us.
It should be noted that the above is one person's opinion, and one
that in my opinion is driven by a desire to continue engaging in
personal attacks without taking responsibility for them. Timothy
accuses fellow Christians of following the adversary, worshiping
other gods, and claims that those who hold certain rather mainstream
opinions cannot help but lead end up in places like the Buchenwald
Nazi concentration camp, and when the predictable response comes,
claims that his opinions were transmuted, he was redefined, that the
clearly worded insult was not what he really meant, etc. I suggest
that anyone reading the above attack on the culture of soc.religion.
quaker to consider the history of the one doing the attacking.
Ian Davis
Timothy Travis <qsp...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>On 5/21/06 5:10 AM, in article Xns97CA531A...@216.196.97.136, "JEB"
><en...@erewhon.com> wrote:
>
>> ijd...@softbase.math.uwaterloo.ca (Ian Davis) wrote in
>> news:e4otra$lkd$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca:
>>
>> We've probably reached an impasse in this conversation.
>>
>> You insist that I believe in pre-emptive wars without sanction, though I've
>> not stated that. And you jump to a conclusion that I believe the Iraq war
>> justified as a pre-emptive war. And then you jump to Iraq and all of its
>> problems. And you restate this repeatedly, as if doing so somehow makes it
>> my view. Having created your target, you pounce on it as if it were real.
>
>Welcome to SRQ!!! (Or, perhaps, farewell to SRQ)
>
>This is a "place" where we all redefine one another into the enemies we want
>to defeat, addressing not that of God in one another but, rather, through
>manifesting the Adversary in ourselves conjuring the Adversary in one
>another. All of us feel as though we are treated like foils because all of
>us are treated like foils.
>
It is also the place where people falsely attribute words to me that others
have written. Please have a care in how you quote prior posts Timothy. It
really confuses already confused issues further when you do this sort of
thing.
Your post makes me think you've gone out and got yourself a higher soap box,
the better that the rest of us can be taught some humility from you.
Ian