shakran

From the 50's until the cold war ended, we vehemently opposed communism. It eroded the freedoms of its people, and its government officials want nothing more than personal power, we said as Joe McCarthy ruined countless lives with trumped up communism charges in a bid for personal power.

We were angry that people living in communist-controlled countries such as Russia, China, and half of Vietnam found their freedoms diminishing. They weren't allowed the freedom of choice - they had to do what the leaders of their government told them. Personal liberties were cast aside in favor of the security of the state (the KGB could yank you off the street for breathing if they wanted, for example), and there were hundreds of laws banning practices that couldn't possibly do anyone any harm.

We hated that system of government, yet we have become it. The Department of Homeland Security can restrict your freedom to travel by putting you on a no-fly list for dubious reasons - for example, your credit rating can effect your ranking in the no-fly system.

We have a shadowy leader who rarely speaks to us, and when he does his messages are calculated to be unclear and imprecise so we don't really know what's going on. Shades of Lenin.

We have a government who continually rules by fear. "Let us take your freedoms away from you or the terrorists will come get us." To keep us in line, they cleverly invented a terrorist threat level, aka the National Mood Ring, which they artificially elevate whenever they feel the masses need a fresh hit of fear lest they begin to think the administration is doing wrong. Orwell was dead-on accurate in 1984. He just messed up the timing by a couple of decades.

And today President Bush, who secured his presidency with the help of judges who were loosely interpreting constitutional law with regard to elections, came out in full support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage - saying he's tired of judges loosely interpreting constitutional law when they allow gay marriages to proceed.

He has lied to us repeatedly. There are no WMD's. Sadaam did not send terrorists after us. The CIA did not make an intelligence gaffe with regard to WMD's. The job market has not improved over what it was when he seized power (the "fastest job growth rate in decades" is deliberately misleading. i.e. if we have 1000 jobs and add 10 jobs, we have a small growth rate. If we had 1000 jobs, then cut it to 10 jobs, and then add 10 jobs, it's a huge growth rate, but a net loss of 980 jobs. NOT an improvement).

He uses insinuation, vague half-truths, and flat out lies to justify his actions, which have not only brought us to the worst level of personal freedom in recent memory, but have also made the United States a pariah on the international relations scene.

In short, our government today is doing pretty much what communist dictatorships did during the cold war.

So why is it that we hated communism so much?

Check the mirror, United States. The enemy lies within.

Phaenx

Are you serious?

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Ustwo

Never again, and before someone tells me 'oh they weren't really communist' tell it to the mass graves, I'm not listening.

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mystmarimatt

Um...I can see how we might be living under a much more scrutinized, controlled environment. But that isn't Communism.

We've been leaning towards an even stronger capitalistic system in the last 3 years (Perhaps more than that, I'm just generalizing). What you're referring to has more to do with an Authoritarian government, not a Communist one. You're comparing Apples wih Oranges.

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matthew330

spoken like a man who has never been outside this country. I was in East Germany in 1984. There is no comparison, and i won't even bother trying to articulate just how bad it was.

Ustwo

But don't you understand they weren't REALLY communists!

Bah these people make me sick.

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RAGEAngel9

We(Americans) hate communism because of who used it as their flag.
Communism itself isn't a terrible idea/political structure. The problem is in the practical application of communism. Basically as long as humans are involved, communism will not work. There is no group(and you need a group,sine a single person cannot controll the world) that can be trusted to fairly and equally rule the world with little to no method of review. Democracy works(sort of) since if the current group in power screws up, we can kick them out and put in a new bunch until they screw up.

ARTelevision

The initial post in this thread consists of unbridled hyperbole, unreasonable comparison, and unjustified exaggeration. It is so close to being flame-bait that I think I'll leave it here as an ostentatious example of how to speak only to yourself and convince no one at all.

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Lebell

I completely concur.

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Bill O'Rights

So...tell us how you really feel, Art.

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ARTelevision

This Forum is notorious and avoided by many good members because there is a tendency to veer away from rational discourse. Perhaps this thread can be salvaged. It's up to you.

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Lebell

Are you taking odds, Art?

'Cause if you are, I'm in for $5 against salvage.

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Scipio

And after a 4 post moderated interlude...

We have a historical hatred of communism. It was a war both of cultures and of military posturing. We liked freedom, they didn't, we had religion, they made everyone take up atheism, etc.

Is the united states becoming a communist dictatorship? What you're describing is more of an oligarchy. Historically, even democracies have had ruling elites. The idea here is that they are constrained to some extent by laws, and that their membership is to some extent open. It might take more than a generation for someone to get there, but the possibility is open.

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Strange Famous

There has never been an existing socialist or communist state. If people will not understand that, or just chose, like Humpty Dumpty, to say "the word means what I want it to", then there really is no possibility to have a rational debate. Modern America is certainly not comparable to Hitlerist Germany or Franco's Spain or Pinnochet's Chile, or any of the other brutal regimes mentioned (its funny how people only mention the mass graves in those countries where it fits their theories)... America is not free, is not a democracy, the American people - as all other people in this world currently are - are enslaved by a contradictory, exploitative, and damaging mode of production and system of society. Capitalism will not last... if history can teach nothing, it must teach that no empire and no system of government is immortal... the revolution will happen, withing the next 100 years certainly - and those who hate communism now may be fortunate to know that what they hated - Pol Pot, Stalinism, Mao - is not the same as a collective and co-operative form of society, based on the common good rather than competing private interest (regulated more or less by the state)

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Ustwo

I know the feeling, and I find myself getting frusterated at times to the point of giving up myself. I've taken to ignoring whole threads I know nothing good can come of because if I don't read it, I won't post on it.

I should have done the same with this one. Some ideas are so out touch with reality its best to back away slowly while smilling, making no eye contact and saying nothing.

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Strange Famous

In fairness Ustwo, telling people who have a different point of view to you "bah, you make me sick" is not really that constructive. If you don't feel it is worthy of debate whether communist dictatorships have or have not existed, or whether Stalinist Russia can properly be called communist - well thats your opinion, and perhaps as you ay it is best to stay out of these debates - because some people obviously do have opinions that differ from yours which they are willing to support with arguments rather than simply re-asserting a single statement over and over again.

It is simply a matter of definition. Communism is not Russia. And if you must have it that communism IS Russia, then what we believe in is not communism, but Marxism, or socialism - or another name - because the ideals that I and millions of other people who call themselves communists are simply not compatible with the ideals of twentieth century states which called themselves communists.

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"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

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shakran

Now that the thread is opened again, I feel that perhaps some clarification is in order.

I certainly do not accuse the United States of being involved in the mass-extermination of its citizens that some of the countries mentioned by Ustwo are guilty of. What I accuse the United States of is in going down the road toward greater and greater restriction of liberty, which would land us in a similar situation to the "communists." (By the way, yes I know that communism is an economic, not a governmental, system, but in today's vernacular communism is synonymous with an authoritarian government in which liberty is repressed. To avoid having to go into a long discourse on comparitive governments, I simply used the common term.)

What concerns me greatly is that we are losing our freedoms at a steady rate, yet few people are doing anything about it, or even talking about it. Let's look at some facts here:

In 1974 the story broke that half a million 10,000 United States citizens, including Martain Luther King, had been spied on by the FBI and CIA. As a result, a system of checks and balances was put into place, which would strengthen the requirement for search warrants/wiretapping warrants/etc before the government spies on its own citizens. In short, it went to enhance our right to personal privacy. The Patriot Act killed all that - Under the Patriot Act, the government can spy on anyone it wants with no oversight. This sets a dangerous precedent.

Anything we do online can be monitored. Our emails can be monitored. What you look at here can be monitored, and this can all be monitored without the government having to have any justification for this monitoring. Again, this sets a dangerous precedent. At what point do we decide that our personal privacy has been eroded enough, and demand that it stop?


Many people are unaware (I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating) that your credit rating can stop you from flying. Low credit? You might just be placed on the government's "no fly" list. You can be placed on it without warning, with no explanation. The government does not have to and in most cases will not tell you why you are on that list, or what, if anything, you can do to get off of it again.

Vague terrorist threats. Anyone wonder why the terrorist threat level keeps going to orange, and then nothing happens? We don't even hear about any arrests of potential terrorists during these elevated warning periods. And remember, the intelligence agencies that are releasing the data that causes the administration to elevate the terrorist threat level are the same intelligence agencies that Bush & Co. are currently blaming for the WMD fiasco in Iraq.

And speaking of WMD's, where in hell are they? We were told by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and others, that Iraq had them, that they would use them against us, and if we didn't attack we were all gonna be in a world of hurt soon. All this despite the fact that nearly every other country on the planet told us that there was no reason to suspect Sadaam had them, that we were jumping the gun, and that the attack was unwarranted.

Of course, those countries that did tell us that, and who chose not to involve themselves in an immoral act of war perpetrated by the United States, were promptly ridiculed by America. France comes to mind here. Freedom toast, Freedom fries, etc, were all asinine and childish ways of trying to get back at France for standing up for what it believed in. Even the president, the most powerful man in the world, and the public face of our country, engaged in this juvenile behavior when he allowed freedom toast to be served on Air Force One. French's Mustard had to release a statement swearing the company is not based in France, and the company still saw a reduction in sales during the France-bashing. Did the American people rally against this kindergarten display? Heck no, they participated in it. The mob mentality took over and we forgot that America stands for freedom of expression. Despite that lofty principal, we bashed France for months for expressing itself.

Now that we're in Iraq, and we've seen WMD's are not there, we also begin to see that the United States has no exit strategy. Why? Because Bush wanted to beat up Sadaam, and he didn't want to plan any further.

We have a president who not only avoids informing himself of world events, but who brags about it! The man came straight out and said he does not read the newspapers or listen to the news, preferring instead for his close advisors to inform him of what's happening. A president who does not keep himself informed is a president who is at best easily manipulated and is so badly misinformed that he cannot possibly make good decisions even if he wants to.

On to today's issue, the constitution is meant to define liberties, not restrict freedom. George Bush is supporting an amendment that would not only restrict freedom, but in fact would be at its core no different than the segregation of black people was. It is a discriminatory amendment that targets gays for the express purpose of restricting their freedom. It's another case of "if you don't hold the same beliefs as your government, your freedom gets taken away from you."

This legislation goes against the fundamental principals of our country. All people are created equal. Equal protection under the law. This amendment would protect marriage only for heterosexual people - that's not equal protection.

During the cold war we were told that Communist Russia was the evil empire because its government denied basic liberties to its citizens. Our government has started on the path to denying those same liberties, which forced me to wonder why we consider communism so dangerous when we ourselves are staring the same type of danger in the face and are doing basically nothing about it.

Hope that clears some stuff up.

archer2371

Strange Famous, I understand what you're saying, took me awhile, but I got it. What you are saying is that Russia, China, Vietnam, etc. were merely dictatorships that rallied themselves under the banner of communism and the rise of the proletariat. Indeed, I think that that is the reason why the Western Democracies hated communism so, because they saw that if it were misconstrued and brought under one person, then it could be a dangerous tool of a lunatic. I understand where you are coming from, I wish in my heart of hearts that communism would work, that we could all share and be happy in perfect harmony. Yet, there is one flaw in the communist thinking, it does not account for the fact that human beings aren't perfect and cannot exist in a perfect world. The very nature of humans is to have possessions, and the theory that they would have to give up their earnings and throw it into a pot to evenly distribute it, scares a lot of people. It scares me, because I would like to keep what I make (for the most part anyways, I don't mind the taxes, I'm represented at least). Capitalism isn't slavery. It used to be, because heads of corporations used to follow no moral laws whatsoever when dealing with employees. I think that has changed a lot, sure you get crooks, but again, humans aren't perfect. Laws have improved the conditions of workers and have made sure that those that take an unfair advantage in the system are punished.
I mean, I understand that you're all gung ho for communism, it's just that when you get a "revolution" like that all it takes is for one opportunistic bastard to ensnare all of the minds that have followed it and pervert the ideals that were originally put forth. All it takes is just one person. That's it. In a democracy such as the ones in the West, it is much more difficult for one person to take complete control, either the demagogue like politician is seen for what he/she is and isn't voted in/back in to his position, or he/she is legally removed from his/her seat.
As far as the removal of civil liberties go, I think that if the people find that their liberties are taken away, then it will be voiced and the PATRIOT Act won't be renewed. I'm still very iffy on the PATRIOT Act, there are points that bother me, but there are other points that I feel ensure our safety. I don't know, I shall have to think on it some more.

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tecoyah

Post topic: Why do we hate communism, so much?

"We" don't.

It is likely, in my opinion, that whatever society exists in 500 or so years will bear an uncanny resemblence to "true" communism.
This would seem the likely evolution of any large group of thinking creatures, as it creates the most benefit, at the least cost to society. I would hope for a natural progression from capitalism, to socialism, to communism over many decades.
It is extremely unlikely that we are capable of creating a functional communist society at this point in our evolution, as cooperation seems to be in short supply, and understanding more rare than honest politics.

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tecoyah

OMG.....I just re-read that, I am now very much afraid of the bush administration. I kid you not.

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archer2371

How so?

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Mojo_PeiPei

1)Its tough to gauge threats from Terrorists. If a flood of conversing between terrorists cells takes place the US takes every and all threats seriously. Thats a strategy employed by the terrorists. If they get us to chase a ghost and do something else they succeed(sp), if we elevate our levels and further hurt our economy they succeed even if they don't act. So what are you suggesting we just let them talk and not act on threats and intelligence?

2) WMD's weren't found. But go figure the WMD's that we knew Saddam had such as 26000 liters of anthrax, are still not declared and found. Iraq did have on going WMD programs, they weren't allowed to, they had precusors for WMD's, they weren't allowed to have those, they supported terrorism, and they had various illegal munitions in their possession that were sold to them by the French and Russians.

And then you talk about other countries not getting on board with us as if they were taking the high road and being moral. Countries like France, Russia, and Germany were only protecting their interests, their illegal bids on oil contracts, their illegal weapons for oil deals, and their lucrative military contracts. Plus they got to try and check American power, which France has been trying to do time and time again. And for the record, going into the war just about every country had intelligence saying the samething as us, that Saddam had weapons, even the French and UN people. They just had no fucking stones, all they wanted to do was slap him on the wrist and push some more bullshit resolutions for him to willingly and knowingly disobey.

Not to mention, we've been in Iraq for not even a year and your bitching about not having an exit strategy. That's rich. You know you can't build up an Arab nation that hasn't ever known democracy and expect them to be self sufficent in less then a year of being liberated. It makes it even mroe complicated that you have 3 ethnic factions, several religious factions, and foreign infultrators in the mix trying to stir things up.

3) Why should Bush have to listen to what the media says? Frankly I'm glad Bush isn't a pollster like Clinton. He's a man of conviction and I respect that. You can be fairly certain that Bush gets the news and about 10x and indepth coverage about. Just because he doesn't get news of world events from the NEw York times doesn't mean he doesn't get it. It's ridiculous that you would even bitch about that.

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shakran

1) I'm suggesting that perhaps the government is using bullshit terrorist threats that do not exist to continue to scare us into going along with anything they want to do. And so far, it's working beautifully!

2) Iran has a nuclear program. Why didn't we attack them? N. Korea directly threatened us with a nuclear strike. Why didn't we attack them? Saudi Arabia directly funds and trains terrorists, and most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, not Iraqi. Why don't we attack them? If you want to make the argument that we went for Iraq to reduce the threat of terrorism, then our strategy makes no sense. If you're facing 6 enemies who want to kill you, you don't start defending yourself by going after the quadraplegic in the wheelchair. You go for the biggest threat. Saudi is a much bigger terrorism threat than Iraq was.

2.1 - other countries not going in with us. No, if you watched Powell testifying before the U.N, and then watched the comments of the other member nations, you saw that other nations did NOT agree with our assessment of the situation.

2.2 - exit strategy. if you'll recall, Bush et al gave us the impression that we'd rout out Saddam, end terrorism in Iraq, and be done with it. No one, including the soldier, was told they'd be there this long, until we were already there.

3) Bush surrounds himself with yes-men and then believes everything they say, and you're saying he's informed? If you want to be informed, you need to get information from MULTIPLE sources. Surrounding yourself with 10 guys who think exactly like you is NOT the way to be objective about anything, and it's not the way to make informed, intelligent decisions.

irateplatypus

responding to shakran's latest post:

1) Possible, but not likely so far. I think that we should be on guard for that at all times though.

2) Would you feel any better if we had gone after all those countries? And no, I don't agree with the tactic of going after the strongest enemy first. Surely you can't think that going after NK first (i know i'm assuming that you hold the idea that going after it all is necessary, work w/me here) is the best idea. why wouldn't you demonstrate your earnestness and power to the weakest foe first, letting the other ones know how serious you are and how much damage you can inflict? you must bet that some will capitulate by a sense of self-preservation, it only makes sense to use the weakest target first (again, i realize this assumes that there are multiple worthy targets and that force is necessary at all.).

2.1) Simply untrue. Many countries went w/us. some other countries didn't, true. but, not coincidentally, they were also the ones with most to gain by allowing saddam to stay in power.

2.2) I may be able to cede you this point. But still, it hasn't even been a year yet and we're only a few months away from scheduled national elections. Germany and Japan have flourished since WWII, and it took us decades to get that on track.

3) Not true. I'm not sure anyone has an accurate picture of the dynamic in the President's cabinet, but have you not read the numerous reports of Powell and Cheney going at it? Same thing w/Powell and Rumsfeld. I'm not sure where you go that impression. His cabinet has been notorious for debate. The president can only choose one side to an issue. If there is a debate, he has to disagree with somebody.

*edit: i orginally addressed this response to the wrong poster, i apologize for the mistake.

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ARTelevision

shakran,
I read Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" when it was released. Woodward is one of the world's most respected journalists. His well-documented reportage contradicts your opinion of the decisionmaking process of the Bush Whitehouse. It also contradicts your characterization of the man and his motives.

Your views on all this are so strong and you seem so thoroughly convinced of their rightness. It would behoove you to access some information that does not simply reinforce your convictions.

I recommend this book to you.

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shakran

Art:
I've already read it. Bought it the day it came out. I happen to disagree with its propsitions, and in fact I found it to be obviously biased - hardly a good journalistic endeavor. He dismissed - in fact, failed to even talk about - some of the opposition to Bush's actions. That of course is his perogative since it's a book and not a newspaper article, but it does point to the fact that Mr. Woodward obviously had a bias and was writing to that bias in this instance. It should also be noted that since the book was written, a LOT has happened which Mr. Woodward could not predict. I think first off it would be interesting to see what he'd write today.

Also, let's get one thing straight about Bob Woodward's access to information. The Bush whitehouse is certainly not going to tell a reporter "we'll lie, cheat, steal, anything, as long as we get a war." As long as Bush and his people have been to choir practice and are all singing the same tune, they can give out false information all day long.

ARTelevision

OK.
It's just that your arguments are based on your interpretation of events. They rely almost not at all on facts but on your biased view. Do you see how someone could simply interpret things more straightforwardly and see none of the things you are convinced of?

I don't see the dire issues you raise and I'm looking at the same world you are.

Differences of interpretation is what we have here. Nothing more.

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shakran

On that, we agree.

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. However, there have been (again, in my opinion) dangerous precedents set here. The very idea (btw, this is a fact) that your credit rating can get you kicked off of airplanes under the new airline scrutiny following the terrorist attacks is appalling. Credit rating has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you have a bomb in your shoe, yet it is being used as a criteria to violate the rights of our citizens. That isn't right, and it's not hard to see this and other wrongs happening, and to then look down the road and see the potential for a bleak future.

Also, I'm not sure where you say I have so few facts. I based all my arguments on facts.

It's a fact that we have the terrorist alert system.

It's a fact that it's been elevated many times.

It's a fact that nothing has ever come of those elevated states.

It's a fact that we have found no WMD's.

It's a fact (and I didn't even get this detailed) that the chief weapons inspector resigned and said there aren't any WMD's to be found.

It's a fact that Bush told us and the world that Saddam definitely had WMD's.

It's also a fact that Bush and company (again one I didn't mention) told us that this intelligence was corroborated by multiple intelligence agencies throughout the world - yet if that is true why is it that now, only the CIA is to blame?

It's a fact that Bush and his cronies led us to believe the war would be an easy victory. ("Any war with Iraq would be swift and would not require full mobilization . . . It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months" -Rumsfeld. )

It's a fact that Bush gave the State of the Union speech, leaving the part about yellowcake from Africa in even though the administration was aware that the information was probably false.


*shrug* I'd say I have a good number of facts to back up my opinions.

silent_jay

Has the world post 9\11 turned into an alarmist society with all these colour coded threat scales and flight cancellations, I agree that it is just feeding into the people fears.

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arch13

Thats the point Art.
No argument will ever be put to rest, nor will any comprimises ever be reached here (in politics) because were here for the endless debate.
It's not posible for us to interprete straight fact becuase where human and subconsciosly inject our bias into anything we interprete.
You've got it dead on in your last statment.
I find it rather interesting reading the viewpoints of others on the same event and comparing their interprtation to my own.

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Pacifier

why do you see them as communists?

because they said they were?
because your goverment told you they were?
because you think you know what communism is?

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— Albert Einstein

Prince

I've to say I agree with everything you've said so far, Shakran, except perhaps for the inner going-ons of the Oval Office, as I don't know how the dynamics there work, and don't really care.

But then I'm just a dumb European.

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Pacifier

Oh and another reason for the hate for commies perhaps is that the CIA recruited too much Nazi agents after the war...

(http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/20...azi/index.html)

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"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

Holo

Communism can work, provided that all participants agree with it. If you have a member who dissents he should be free to leave with no harm done. The Shaker community lasted for decades and they were a communistic society. They pooled the resources and sold goods to the outside world, and threw the profits in the pool for all to use. If a member wished to leave the commune he was given money to start out and wished well. THAT is communism at it's best, not the forced communism we were taught to hate, and rightly so. Communism isn't evil, it's the false application or perversion of it's tenets that are.

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I happen to like the words "fuck", "cock", "pussy", "tits", "cunt", "twat", "shit" and even "bitch". As long as I am not using them to describe you, don't go telling me whether or not I can/should use them...that is, if you want me to continue refraining from using them to describe you. ~Prince

Mojo_PeiPei

How many people are we talking about here? It's really different to compare the dynamic of a few hundred people who are all onboard for something, then trying to 200+ million who have no idea what the hell is going on.

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To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

shakran

plus, the more people you bring into the mix, the more likely it is that you'll get some greedy bastards that want to exploit the system for their own personal gain. That's what killed it for the USSR.

I'll put it this way. If the USA were a communistic society, we might all be able to drive Honda Accords, but we probably couldn't get ahold of a ferarri for those who want them. Someone would get annoyed at that and start trying to amass more wealth than everyone else.

Holo

I didn't say communism was scalable, just that it does work in the right conditions. It would take an incredible cultural revolution to make a society of millions agree to a communistic society. Greed and acquisitiveness would have to be gone for good for a start. Those two factors alone make it well nigh impossible to achieve. But the point is the ideal isn't the fault it's the corruption of human nature or the greed of those in control that make it what Soviet Communism was.

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I happen to like the words "fuck", "cock", "pussy", "tits", "cunt", "twat", "shit" and even "bitch". As long as I am not using them to describe you, don't go telling me whether or not I can/should use them...that is, if you want me to continue refraining from using them to describe you. ~Prince

gibingus

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.

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if everyone is thinking alike, chances are no one is thinking.

Ustwo

So are all laws bad? EVERY law takes away freedom, every single one, and thats all bad huh?

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Mojo_PeiPei

It does alot more to take the fight to them and make them sweat then to sit around like a bunch of cowards.

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To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.