Quote:
Originally posted by shakran
I'm sure you will agree that people have less freedom than we did before 9/11.
Now, I'm not saying that's ALL bad - I think that we do have to take steps to protect ourselves from terrorism.
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anytime anyone anywhere LOSES any amount of freedom, IT IS ALL BAD. liberal or conservative, if you are reading the same declaration of independence i am, you cannot disagree with that.
it is too hard to win freedom. we paid for it in blood. we suffered for it in prisons. we can never, ever let any of it go. because the minute any pinhead gets the tiniest piece of power, the first thing they will do is try to take some of your freedom away -- that is how power is actually increased. it is through control.
you can't claim to give liberty while you are taking it away from someone else. everyone out there claiming to be super humanitarians for "liberating" iraq needs to reconcile themselves with this hypocracy. you can't have it both ways, the ideology is black and white. if you use it as your justification, you will not be able to stand up to the purity of the paradigm. the credit you give yourself for saving iraqis repression is cancelled out by the debit of trying to restrict choices of americans because they do not jive with the some abject concept of morality.
the threat of terrorism before 9/11 was the same as the threat of terrorism after 9/11 - that threat is a constant. it has always been there, and it will always be there. that is why it is an effective weapon: the attack itself is not the weapon, it is merely the device that delivers it. the fear of the threat is the actual intended effect. the difference now is that after 9/11, we acknowledge that threat instead of living in blissful denial. how we deal with that awakening is our great challenge... we can either rise above that challenge or sink to the lowest level to get around it. which way are we going now?
this is a very appropriate thread for this type of discussion. fear was the basis of control for the soviet empire, and it was the rationale for the insane defense spending that drove the cold war.
kicking ass won't make go away, no matter how many asses get kicked, you just can't kick them all.