Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it. – Woodrow Wilson
Time and again I have pointed out that the popular American belief that the Democratic Party is “liberal” (in the conventional, though incorrect sense) and the Republican Party “conservative” (ditto, ditto) is not only wrong, but dangerous; naïve people support the candidate of their party of choice presuming that he will act in a way more in keeping with their views and priorities than the candidate of the other party, but this is simply not true. Time and again politicians do whatever is expedient and pleases their masters (the big-money interests who bankroll their campaigns) rather than what the people who elected them expect them to do, and often Republicans act in ways which place them to the “left” of Democrats, and vice-versa. Case in point our current president; the conventional wisdom says that Democrats are supposed to care more about civil liberties, but as Jonathan Turley of George Washington University points out in a September 29th article from the Los Angeles Times, that certainly isn’t the case with Obama:
…Protecting individual rights and liberties — apart from the right to be tax-free — seems barely relevant to candidates or voters. One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States. Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for Obama. After the George W. Bush years, they were ready to fight to regain ground lost after Sept. 11. Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.
However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election…Obama…[announced] that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the “just following orders” defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses. But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama’s personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected…
It’s almost a classic case of the Stockholm syndrome…Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama’s position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him. Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism…[but that] cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama’s policies…It looks more like a cult of personality…Ironically, had Obama been defeated in 2008, it is likely that an alliance for civil liberties might have coalesced and effectively fought the government’s burgeoning police powers. A Gallup poll released this week shows 49% of Americans, a record since the poll began asking this question in 2003, believe that “the federal government poses an immediate threat to individuals’ rights and freedoms.” Yet the Obama administration long ago made a cynical calculation that it already had such voters in the bag and tacked to the right on this issue to show Obama was not “soft” on terror. He assumed that, yet again, civil libertarians might grumble and gripe but, come election day, they would not dare stay home. This calculation may be wrong. Obama may have flown by the fail-safe line…it will be virtually impossible [for civil libertarians] to vote for someone who has flagrantly ignored the Convention Against Torture or its underlying Nuremberg Principles…by blocking the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for torture, Obama violated international law and reinforced other countries in refusing investigation of their own alleged war crimes…
In time, the election of Barack Obama may stand as one of the single most devastating events in our history for civil liberties. Now the president has begun campaigning for a second term. He will again be selling himself more than his policies, but he is likely to find many civil libertarians who simply are not buying.
Since Turley does not specifically mention them, I feel it necessary to add that the present administration’s record on other civil rights issues of interest to myself and my readers is as deplorable as its record on torture, surveillance and the police state. Candidate Obama pledged “to seek a more humane and effective drug policy”; President Obama has expanded the drug war, authorized DEA raids against medical marijuana suppliers and dispensaries in states where they are legal, suspended the first, second and fourth amendments in order to persecute them still further, and ignored scientific findings to pronounce that marijuana has no valid medical use. Candidate Obama spoke of immigration reform; President Obama has deported over one million immigrants, far more than any other US president in history. He went longer without issuing a pardon than any president other than the first two and last two, and has to date pardoned only 17 people in all (mostly for minor crimes). He has repeatedly waffled on gay rights issues, and ignored the recommendations of a group of respected scholars that he reject the policies of the Bush administration that equate all prostitution with sex trafficking, instead choosing to continue the “anti-prostitution pledge” that ties federal funds to an oath that recipients will demonize and support criminalization of sex workers. And he has supported his vice president’s campaign to strip young men accused of sexual impropriety of their civil rights, even when their supposed “victims” deny they did anything wrong.
No matter which party wins the presidency, this trend is likely to continue; Obama has proven himself a foe of civil rights, nearly every candidate in the Republican field considers his opposition to civil rights to be a selling point, and the last time a third-party candidate won the office was in 1860 (and that party went on to become one of the two major ones). But there is hope; as Turley points out, 49% of Americans now consider the government “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens”. At the current rate of increase that should reach 60% in less than four years, and then maybe, just maybe, enough people will become angry enough to launch a new civil rights movement…and it’s about damned time.
One Year Ago Today
“Anatomy of a Boondoggle” dissects a news story about prostitution stings in suburban Pittsburgh, revealing the truth behind “the sort of prohibitionist propaganda which the police love to issue and which gullible reporters swallow whole because they can’t be bothered to investigate the facts or interview anyone with an opposing view (and wouldn’t be allowed to print it if they did).”
The Democrats reaction to Obama remind me of the GOP’s reaction to Bush. As he betrays the principles they supposedly stood for, the find ways to rationalize it. I know Republicans who will still insist that Bush II wasn’t a big government guy. It was all the Democrats fault. And Harold Koh — long time critic of Bush’ WOT — has now thrown in with Obama’s.
Exactly. Americans rationalize more than any other people on the globe; partisan Republicans make excuses for monsters like Bush Jr, and partisan Democrats make excuses for Obama, and both deny that their man is anything like the other even if they’re exactly the same. I honestly worried (and I’m still a little concerned as I type this) that some yahoo will accuse me of being a “conservative” or a “Bush supporter” because I attacked Obama in this column. 🙁
Lol don’t worry Maggie I don’t think you will have anyone accuse you of that today.
By the way did Joe Biden really propose that? And Obama was foolish enough to support it? I swear guys like this piss me off. Your MEN , you know guys should not be supressed in that way so why would you support a plan like that.
As for the whole “liberal” and “conservative” BS, I’m going to be honest about a year ago I acted just like these people. I called myself a “liberal”
But now that I look back, the whole thing is just stupid. Nothing ever changes and the arguments are all the same for everyone. I know that in most situations in everyday life you shouldn’t use the word “all” to generalize. But Maggie you have to agree with me that politics/politicians is the one exception to that rule.
You already know about my “issue”(from what I told u) immigration wise…Obama basically not only pissed off myself but also many other people. Guys like myself had hope in this guy but he is just continuing the same bad trend of politicians.
I skim through CNN/fox news every now and its always the same :
“Your liberal agenda is sickening” “You crazy paranoid conservative!”….”You poopy face..”
Its just sickening.They are a bunch of children who cannot get anything done, and the things that should leave their noses out of and leave alone(prostitution), they tamper with too much.
Joe Biden’s been on the “rape culture” hobby horse since the early ’90s; at least he’s consistent, which is more than one can say for his boss. 🙁
Btw have you heard some of the things this “Herman Cain” guy has said the past several months? God damn…..I have never in my life seen so many foolish comments by one politician in my life….and he shows no signs of slowing down. Pretty soon this guy is going to get his own wikipedia page of “cainisms” like bush had for his “bushisms”
I was persona non grata among most family, friends, and casual acquaintances for not supporting Obama in ’08. I was considered a “race traitor” for not automatically supporting him lockstep just because we both have black African ancestry (of course, overlooking the fact that we both have Irish ancestry, but we’ve talked about this in email before). No, I take seriously the charge set to all Americans to judge someone by the content of their character. And I did and I found that his character was in wanting of actual substance.
Now? Those same people are very silent. I’m not going to lie, I am not magnanimous in victory on this subject. The treatment I endured, the names I was called, no, sorry that can’t be forgiven. The ones who do open their mouths to me on the subject ask, “How did you know it’d turn out like this?” How did I know? I paid attention to his voting record, his actions both as a politician and as a “community organizer”, who he was receiving the most money from. The fact that the infamous Democratic Machine of Chicago backed him wholeheartedly should have been enough to make any Chicagoan suspicious that he was as “Hopey-Changey” as he claimed (the one thing I agreed with Ms. Palin about). Guess what, folks? Your $50 donation and pom-pom waving will never match donations from interests that are more than you make in a year.
I simply refuse to rationalize that much for a politician. I reserve that right for my own self alone.
Not I. I totally hold this against him.
This is true about Obama. He is so moderate he’s on the right. But it was GW Bush and Dick Cheney who vitiated the 2nd and 4th amendment along with the help of some liberal senators like Kerry, who voted for the Patriot Act. They all smell like swamp gas.
Okay … man … this is confusing.
Maggie – I’m not angry – but I have to use some strong language here to get the point across here …
Alright – I’m against the Patriot Act. I think the BATF should be eliminated. I agree that we desperately need a renewed civil rights movement in this nation. I think all drugs should really be legalized. Prostitution should be decriminalized. I should be able to distill whiskey in my back yard for my own enjoyment. I’m Pro-Life, but if someone can deliver on the rest of this stuff – I’ll forget about that.
But this is the problem and this is where the “message” goes off into left field where few will follow …
I am a typical man. My parents raised me not to cry. They raised me to skip the band and play football. I was raised to believe I was blessed with the physical power that I have and my duty was to use it FOR GOOD – and that meant protecting those of MY TRIBE who are weaker than I am.
MY TRIBE – Is the United States of America and all the races, colors and creeds that it comprises. And yes – MY TRIBE includes those illegals that helped me rebuild my house after it was destroyed by Katrina.
Yes, I’m upset that our President assassinated an American citizen without any semblance of due process. That should be a crime – he is guilty of a crime here.
But …
I have to draw the line at this outrage about “torturing” terrorists and “breaking international laws”. I can’t follow you there.
First of all – I was waterboarded in SERE school about 20 years ago. Yeah – it sucks. I mean – it sucks so badly I took a swing at the guy that held me down during the “training”. The only thing that kept me from killing the dude was I heard the head instructor threaten me with another waterboarding if I didn’t stand down. However – I suffered no long term affects from that “torture” and I don’t think you can compare it to the torture techniques of the Nazis nor the Japanese during WWII – and both of those militaries were horrific in their application of torture (I used to have friends who were POW’s in Japan). They were PERMANENTLY scarred by the experience. Comparing the two is hyperboly.
And although I care a lot about Obama assassinating a citizen of the US – I applaud every single terrorist that is killed or even tortured that are out there threatening my tribe. When I retired in 2006, my only regret was that I would not have the opportunity to stand over the body of the last SOB terrorist when he was finally put down.
This is tribal anger and hatred that boils within me for these guys – because they attacked us. You can use any rationalization that we were “asking” to be attacked or that somehow we deserved it because we were “tormenting” them – my tiny mind won’t process that – ever. Because all I see when I think about this subject is Americans jumping out of the WTC to certain death to escape the fires.
My point here is – as libertarians – we try to do too much – and we try to drag people where they are not prepared to go. I am not prepared to push G.W. Bush into a prison. That is the man that gave me the authority to unleash hell on the people who attacked us – and I’ll be forever grateful for that.
And I can’t endorse throwing Obama in jail either – because that is the guy that authorized two bullets to be placed into OBL.
We need to scale back the rhetoric here – and keep things isolated to AMERICANS – to OUR TRIBE.
We will have more people side with us.
I’m not angry here – my words are chosen to just get across the point how strongly I, and others feel about this war on terror. And – nothing is going to change our minds on that. I don’t care about the liberties that terrorists have – or the liberties in other nations. I care about my tribe and it’s safety.
There is simply no way I could change this within myself and, I served with a lot of other fine people who are exactly the same way.
Krulac, there’s no need to apologize; I’m glad you feel free to disagree, for several reasons. First, because thinking people often disagree with one another and I would prefer to know that my readers agree with me because they thought it out rather than because they’re mindless followers who just agree with everything I say. Furthermore, disagreement like yours here on this blog serves the same important function as my writing about the bad parts of whoring as well as the good: it demonstrates our honesty, and proves that those who claim we’re spouting propaganda, or that commenters are all sock puppets or “true believers” or members of the “pimp lobby” are full of shit.
My problem with torturing terrorists is that once such precedents are set, they can be used for ANYBODY. Even if you hate terrorists, are you so confident in governmental honesty that you believe every single person accused of terrorism and held without trial was indeed guilty? I’m certainly not, nor am I confident that tactics from the “War on Terror”, which are now being used in the “War on Drugs” as well, won’t soon be extended to the “War on Whores”, and the “War on Illegal Aliens”, and the “War on Tax Cheats”…you get the picture. For example, here’s a chart which shows how so-called “sneak and peek” warrants (i.e. warrants which allow the cops to search without presenting the warrant to the violated party), which were justified under the PATRIOT Act to “fight terror”, were actually used from 2006-2009 (courtesy of New York magazine):
One more thing, regarding waterboarding: As I’ve said before, I’m turned on by BDSM. But there’s a world of difference between being forced, held down, tied up and “raped” by one’s husband and the genuine article with a gun at one’s head. In the former one KNOWS at one’s very core that one is safe; in the latter there is no such assurance. And the difference between being “waterboarded” by one’s own fellows as a demonstration, that one knows is a demonstration, and from having it done by enemies whose plans one cannot possibly know, is equally great.
Maggie – you are absolutely right on most of your points.
First – your comments on my experience with waterboarding are spot on. At the end of that SERE class, I shared more than a few beers in celebration with those instructors that held me down for that “training”. So yeah – you are right – there is no way my experience could be as horrific as the (reportedly) three or four individual terrorists, like KSM, who were waterboarded. However, I’ll still maintain that his waterboarding left him no permanent damage – and would not compare to one – Al Rupp. Al was a friend of mine (now dead) who was dragged out of his POW cell by the Imperial Japanese on a daily basis … stripped naked and repeatedly kicked in the testicles (even when they WERE NOT looking to get information from him). In fact, Al told me a story about his Japanese captors inserting a bamboo shoot halfway up his penis. Sorry to get graphic about this – but these are the stories few in the media will tell you – the same way the 9-11 images were intentionally omitted by the media shortly after 9-11. So I still have a hard time comparing KSM’s treatment to guys like Al’s.
How can I be totally assured that my government won’t abuse it’s powers and capture some innocent kid in Afghanistan on his way to school and then throw him into GITMO forever?
I can’t. When 9-11 happened, I did everything I could to look at the claims of the “truthers” that our government caused it. Everything I looked at disproved them in my mind. I have to kind of “hope” that a Marine Sergeant in Afghanistan is, like me, unwilling to detain an innocent Afghan boy who simply is on his way to school.
Does that guarantee it won’t happen though? Nope. My inability to completely resolve this in my mind is one of the reasons I frequently refer to myself as “tiny minded” – because my animal “wiring” just takes over where my logic ends. I can’t help that. Am I the only male that does this? Well, no I’m not – I knew quite a few like me when I was in the military.
We like to talk about nature here – and how certain things in the animal kingdom can, and should be applied to human behavior. I have read stories of Jack Russell Terriers chasing skunks down holes – grabbing them, and refusing to let go even after the skunk has empty his scent glands right into the dog’s mouth. And the owners of these dogs have to grab a shovel and literally dig these dogs out – they won’t let go – and it’s not logical for the dogs to do that – but that’s the way they are “wired”.
Most men are wired with a protective instinct for their kind. And yes, as a student of history – I well know that governments have abused this instinct for evil purposes. Yet – I can’t get away from it any more than that Jack Russell Terrier can. When one of “mine” gets hurt – the brain shuts off and something else takes over.
Girl – I AM WITH YOU and the others – on 99% of this stuff. I will march right alongside Pro-Choice activists even though I’m Pro-Life if we can make this nation, and it’s people – more free.
But … when it comes to arresting GWB or Obama – different thing entirely. If the government tries to arrest George Bush or Dick Cheney – they’ll have to arrest me also. Yes, GWB was a terrible civil rights President. Yes, Dick Cheney is an ass. No – I don’t like either of them but I’m willing to go to jail for them simply because they allowed me, and others – to respond to the 9-11 attacks in the manner that made sense to us – and they supported us every step of the way.
Does this make sense? No. I do not make sense. I don’t understand this. But I can’t change this. Often, I wish I could.
Again – not upset and I still love the hell out of your blog … and I’m sorry for taking so much space in it today – but I just had to say that.
(By the way – this “protective instinct” is one of the reasons I’m still against women serving in direct combat roles. If one of my buddies were captured by the enemy – if I could not save him without getting us both killed in the process I would probably default to a survival mode and make my way back to our side and contemplate some other way to save him. If, however, my “buddy” was WOMAN and she were captured and abused – there is no way I’d leave her – I would get us both killed in trying to save her but there is no way I’d leave her and deal with that the rest of my life.)
Men are pretty ‘effed up huh? LOL
Oh … I forgot to address your “slippery slope” arguments – which are good, by the way.
IF the government were to launch a “War on Whores” – I would be standing with you guys. 😀
You’re part of the “tribe”. 😉
I think that is the good thing about the US military because the volunteers in it would stand with the American people – and not the State, if the State stepped out of line.
My only concern – is that the State is already “out of line” on a lot of things. How did we get here without another revolution? I think it’s because we’ve been like the proverbial “frog in boiling water” … we got used to very small violations of liberty by the government – which have grown exponentially over the years but not too fast for our minds to dismiss them.
It’s definitely a problem.
How do we wake up? Well, there could be an alarm going off soon that will awaken us. The pace of these liberty violations has picked up greatly – and I think we’re one government “overstep” away from a very major conflagration. These are tricky times.
I’m an U.S. Army Iraqi and Afghanistan War Veteran myself, although I never retired like you, but rather ETS(Estimated Time in Service) after 8 and a quarter years after my contract ended with an honorable discharge. on my DD(Department of Defense) FORM 214 on 30 April 2011. Unlike you, I can never be called back into service because I didn’t retire, and the only way I can be called back in is if I’m charged with commiting a crime in the military. You can be called back in even though you are retired, out of uniform, off duty and off installation for a crime you commit and be court martialled for it. I understand your mentality and why you think the way you do to a large degree in a way many if most won’t. Even though I only know you through the internet, you are a brother because you are veteran especially one who served in time of war, our wars of Iraq and Afghanistan to be specific. However, I ask you to read U.S. Marine Corps. Major General(2 star) Smedley Butler’s, 2 time recipient of the Medal of Honor, “War Is a Racket” Speech from the 1930’s when he tried to be the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania to the U.S. Congress and lost the election.
First I consider it admirable that you consider all races, religions, regions and creeds of Americans as members of your tribe. I do too. However, the current course we’re on may see the day when the American tribe breaks up according to race, religion, region and creed. People are inherent ly tribal fools and even though you tell them to stop hurting eachother, they like fools continue to divide up and hurt eachother ususally along the lines I listed above. Once the money is gone, the government loses control, the media is no longer able to get people to believe in diversity, we Americans are in trouble in my humble opinion much as it saddens and horrifies me to say so. I take no pleasure in this, but find it the only logical conclusion. We have less in common with eachother than the people of Iraq and Afganistan do and their sectarian viloence is bad especially in Afghanistan now. I’m a 43 year old White Gentile who was raised Catholic and Christian.
Second, never forget that we once took an oath to defend the Constitution of the USA. Torture in my book is against the Constitution of the USA. If unusual piunishment is wrong after a person is duly convicted, it is really wrong before he has been convicted of anything. It is more honorable to kill these people than to torture them. Torturing them fans the flames of hatred even more than killing because at least they are buried and largely forgotten afterwards whereas a tortured soul will rally believers to the cause behind him. Runaway slave Frederick Douglass would shout and show his whipping scars to rally Northerners to fight the South before and during the American Civil War is a fine example.Only God knows why Frederick Douglass survived assasination attempts more than Martin Luther King as Douglass had more credible threat against him.Douglass was a better leader than MLK in my book although both were men and had serious flaws as all people including myself do.
Torturing anyone before conviction is morally wrong. Killing citizens or torturing citizens before serious attempts to capture them is not even something the brutal Ancient Roman Republic or Roman Empire would do. We should be better than that as Americans as our founding fathers were enamoured of many aspects of the Ancient Roman Republic and instituted many things and adapted them to american ways. George Washington was known to have wept about a play concerning the life of Cincinatus and he emulated his idealized life of him. Ther was once even a Cincinatti society in the early days of the USA, and Cincinatti, Ohio is named after Cincinatus. I don’t like the slippery slope of sliding into tyranny that we’re on either. I take the U.S Constitution and especially the principles behind it seriously and hope, pray and encourage others to do the same
The only thing we are doing in Southwest and Central Asia is stirring up a hornets nest. The United States as the 1st President Bush when asked why he didn’t destroy Iraq and Capture Saddam Hussein is because he said Americans really don’t want to fight and really aren’t prepared to fight guerrilla wars. The last successful Guerilla war the USA fought was the Phillipine Insurrection 1898-1913. The USA is simply not ruthless enough to fight guerrilla wars because we’ve become to soft and everything is a media event. American Indians never had to do half as much as what the terrorists did and we treat war with kid gloves. The Japanese were nuked and firebombed for what they did to military men at Pearl Harbor who signed up for the possibility of death. the Terrorists killed civilians for the most part. We are unwilling to kill the civilian population like we did with the Indians and the Filipinos to a lesser extent in order to win. This is why we fail at these wars. I ilke and respect General Petraus and think he’s come up with the best plan given the limited options he has available. Most Americans have forgotten that war is not about swagger, and it is about ruthlessly destroying your enemies. This sometimes includes killing his wife and children as we did to the Indians in order to win. The First President Bush was right that it is immoral and you don’t even want to deal with the practical consequences of being a parriah nation diplomatically nor have soldiers returning home who were baby killers as it will ruin their minds, emotions and souls. Vietnam Vetrans were spat upon and called baby killers even though they usually tried not to hurt the innocent non combatants. Indian War Fighters were treated as heros, and to be honest Indians would often slaughter innocent non combatant women and children too. The USA needs choose what consequence it wants and live with it. There are trade offs for everything you do. I’d rather be more moral, Christian and Catholic if I can help it.
As a military man even a former one I admit I have a killer instinct like most of us do, but it should be used wisely and sparingly. Please watch the movie Killer Elite starring Robert DeNiro, Jason Statham, and Cilve Owen. It’s alegedly based on real events. Two percent of the population is looking for someone to kill is stated in the film. I’d heard it before from a fellow soldier in Afghanistan. I told him that there is a sliding scale on this and most military men are closer to the 2% than most of the population,myself included. The movie states that too many are looking for the action or have misguided loyalties. Smedley Butler said much of the same.
Not “effed up” at all; human behavior didn’t evolve in a vacuum, but in response to survival pressures. None of us can help the way we are, and I have a lot more respect for someone who knows himself and admits the truth than someone who mouths a lot of high-sounding words but acts exactly according to his wiring as soon as the stimulus is great enough. 🙂
The unhelpful truth is that when the chips are down, the pressure is on, and we’re under attack, our intincts kick in.
They kept our species going for 200000 years; let us survive, mate, protect our mate and our young, die if thats what it took to guard them (and not just the males, either) in an unrelentingly hostile environment, and band together for safety, comfort and mutual support.
Other insticts informed us to go the other way : flee, steal, cheat, lie and kill to preserve the self.
Sometimes in the same individual.
I know which set of instincts produces a better result, for more humans, more of the time. It’s not the second set. 😉
And here’s the rub : often we get the drive to protect people when they dont need it. Or want it. Or don’t want it even if they (in our view) should need or want it.
I’m with Krulac; We should protect the people that need it. We have a duty to that cause, that lies outside the military sense, into the instinctive. We also have a duty to establish that the help is genuinely needed, and not for our own purposes.
If this were an ancient age, Krulak, “Not a life of privilege, but a life of service, and the honour would be to serve”, matey. The heart of the old code is not yet dead.
Wait a doggone second. You’re quoting Wilson as an authority on liberty? I’ve always considered him to be something closer to the Antichrist. 🙂
Funny how even the big-government people of 100 years ago were still in favor of less government than the “less government” people are now, isn’t it? 🙁
LOL! That’s an interesting way to put it. Wilson did veto the Volstead Act, so he does have that going for him.
Oh, I have so many feelings on this subject.
I admit I voted for Obama, not because I particularly thought he would do anything special for my interests, but because he was better than the alternative. I’ve been very disappointed in his performance as president and I won’t be voting for him again. However, because of the incredible parade of crazy and absurd candidates the Republicans keep trotting out will basically guarantee a second term for Obama.
I don’t think I’m unlike every other working class or middle class American – I just don’t have the time to research and read the cubic ton of riders on each bill winding its way through congress. Since the corporations who bankroll their political puppets also own the newspapers, TV and radio – good luck finding intelligent and critical summaries of proposed laws. I’m too busy trying to make ends meet and take care of my little family to keep myself informed about issues. A part of me that loves conspiracy theories believes this state of affairs is by design.
As sorry as I am to admit it, this sorry state of politics has made me entirely cynical and apathetic. I am actually preparing to leave the country once I’m done with school. I’m no trust fund baby – I can’t march in the street and lobby my congress critters – not in this economy! So – I’m outta here. Even my daddy, the Vietnam veteran has asked to come with us wherever we end up.
Woodrow Wilson, like Obama, may have talked a lot about Liberty, but that should never be taken to mean that he actually approved of the concept. He was an elitist bigot, and his attack dog Mitchell Palmer should occupy the place in American Legend presently occupied by Joe McCarthy (who was also a swine, but did far less actual harm to anyone).
I’m far from happy about the Patriot Act, but I acknowledge the force of the argument that it would be nonsensical to not use against Terrorists techniques that are (on what basis, God alone knows) considered legal for the War On Drugs …. which is what I’ve taken away from a variety of attempts to parse what exactly the Act does.
What concerns me far more than the encroachments on Civil Liberties that are happening now, is what will happen if there is a really successful terror attack on the U.S. . 9/11 was a moderate failure, in that better timing could have resulted in ten times the casualties. America has not – in spite of the beliefs of a lot of protesters – really lost our collective temper over terrorism. Witness that Mecca does not, YET, glow in the dark. But we could, if goaded sufficiently. The terrorists do not have the strength to destroy us, but they could goad us into destroying not only them, but the culture that spawned them. In doing so, we would become a truly Imperial power, and it would not be good for us, though it would be far worse for the Arab World.
I’m far from sure what the answer might be. Bush tried what used to be called Gunboat Diplomacy; demonstrating that we could take down any State that harbored the terrorists if we wanted to. The success of this ploy can only be called mixed at best, though if the country had united behind the effort and sent a clear signal (not politically possible) it would have done better.
The Cold fact remains that the terrorists are barbarians, that the vast majority of Islamic States are pestholes, and that the United Nations model of ‘let’s get everybody to sit down and talk out their differences’ has been given decades to work, and has failed spectacularly. The used to be really moderate countries with large Islamic populations, but the world punished those that dealt harshly with gun- and bomb- wielding extremists, while rewarding those that gave way. Consequently Iran is run by lunatics and Lebanon has (for all intents) ceased to exist.
What makes matters worse, from where I sit, is that BOTH Presidential candidates last time around struck me as insufficiently serious about the terrorist threat AND likely to react badly if embarrassed in office by a major attack. Both Obama and McCain struck me as the type to overreact (possibly with nuclear weapons); they both have a reputation for lashing out at people who make them look bad.
Bush, whatever his other faults, did not do that. He invaded Afghanistan, which at the time wholeheartedly supported the Jihadists, and Iraq, which had never complied with the surrender terms of the Gulf War, and thus made us look too weak to be taken seriously. He refrained from attacking the Saudis, even though they were the country of origin of a lot of the 9/11 terrorists, and I hope he did so because he was aware that if he did we would win, and that would put us in control of Mecca and Medina – which would be endless trouble.
*sigh*
I don’t like where this is going. I wish to hell I thought there was somebody in the “Arab World” who had some grasp of just how ugly life is likely to get if the terror attacks don’t stop. For them AND us.
Admitting we’re not angels is extremely difficult for most people. Even harder is admitting that it’s okay not to be angels.
I’d go a step farther and say it’s good that we’re not angels. In the Middle Ages there was a notion bopping around called the felix culpa (the happy fault or “fortunate fall”) which proposed that maybe Eve didn’t fail the test at all…maybe God wanted man out of Eden, to grow into adults rather than living as eternal children. It never grew into the level of a heresy so most people who weren’t educated by subversive nuns have never heard of it, but I think it’s dead on the money. Obedience and conformity to the pack, or “universal harmony” as envisioned by Buddhists, is what we’re growing out of; free will, individuality and noncomformity…in other words, decidedly non-angelic behavior…is a good thing as long as we allow each other the same latitude.
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
— James Madison
All this time I’ve been attributing it to Benjamin Franklin. Sorry, James!
I voted for Obama as the lesser of two evils, but all the evidence since then has shown that he was not lesser at all. I voted for Bush for the same reason, and we all know how badly that turned out.
I wish they would allow us more choices. Oklahoma hasn’t permitted more than two presidential candidates on the ballot since 2000.
At the moment, every candidate looks really bad except for Ron Paul (who tends to be too extreme for most people) and Gary Johnson (whom the media ignores entirely).
Excellent article! Fortunately, the Bush Administration’s “abstinence only” web site is finally down. Unfortunately, the current President tolerates the continued terror against innocent parents by Immigration and Customes Enforcement under the guise of investigating kiddie porn.
First, there’s no voting block for liberalism in the USA. Oh, there are a scattering of pro-rights people here and there, concerned about this and that, who want small adjustments to the major scheme, but there are very few of us who believe that the major scheme is the problem.
But there’s scarcely a arm of American life that’s working well for the people. And the reason is that the ultra rich, the big time capitalists, have so corrupted the system that democracy it’s self is on the way out. Yet from birth, Americans are brain washed into a horror of socialism, or any other adjustments to the system, so on it rolls, crushing the majority.
We are so deluded in this nation- We think we are the freest- We’re not. We think we are the best off, economically, we’re not. We think we have the best health care, and education- We don’t.
What we do have is tremendous potential and resources, probably more than any other nation on Earth. But control of all that is in the hands of a very few, and so the vast majority doesn’t benefit.
I agree. We’ve allowed an oligarchy to form; I’m in favor of absolutely banning campaign contributions and lobbying. In a free country the concept of professional sycophants whose job is to get politicians to do what their employers want is anathema. Politicians should be forced to get by on volunteers and public appearances; the internet enables both.
The trouble with banning campaign contributions entirely, is that it would result in most elections being won by the richest candidate who spends his own money on his campaign. At least with campaign contributions those who aren’t rich stand a chance.
I don’t know what the solution is.
That could be controlled as well by requiring that ALL campaign workers be volunteers, not employees, and banning political advertising entirely. Candidates would be forced to stand on their records, on actual, physical speaking appearances, on websites putting forth their credentials and platforms, on televised debates and on word-of-mouth discussion.
Banning all campaign donations means that poor people wouldn’t be able to launch a campaign due to travel expenses alone. When the Supreme Court allowed foreigners to contribute to presidential campaigns, that was a terrible error.
This is why I’m in favor of splitting up the USA. The New England and Middle Atlantic states, which did not have to write and approve a new constitution post Civil War which prohibted secession, are free to do so. Small governments can be held much more accountable than large governments. The New England Town Meeting is democracy at its best.
Dear guinevereschamption, THANK YOU for speaking up for the poor! I think an exception should be made in their case. Too many people now are unemployed through no fault of their own (layoffs) so it wouldn’t be unreasonable. Thanks again my friend!
I do. Public financing of elections. And before anybody cries “more government spending!?! BOOO!!!” think of this: the first time some big corporation doesn’t get some special subsidy, contract, or tax break as a payback for campaign contributions, enough money will have been saved to more than make up for the cost of public financing of elections.
Your boss is who pays you. Right now, politicians’ biggest expense, campaigning, is paid by corporations, PACs, unions, and other special interests. So of course they are the boss. Public financing means that the politicians biggest expense, campaigning, is payed by the American people, who after all are supposed to be the boss.
Hear, hear! 🙂
And who decides which candidates get the funds?
THAT is a very good question. For now, I’ve only got a so-so answer.
The leading four candidates in each district for the House of Representatives and in each state for the Senate would get public funding. Candidates running unopposed would get 10% (or 15% or 25% — I’m flexible) of the funding that would be available if that candidate had an opponent. Each candidate gets the same amount.
For President, again the four leading candidates would get the funding. Presumably this would include a Republican, a Democrat, and whoever else managed to squeeze in. Again, each candidate gets the same amount.
But how do you determine who “the four leading candidates” would be? Polling. Polling after the primaries.
Again, I’m flexible. I could be talked into the top three candidates or the top five, but NOT for the top two.
Ah, but how do these candidates win their primaries without any money? Not sure. Perhaps that gets funded by individual human beings making donations of some small amount. That probably requires a Constitutional amendment, though, stating that corporations, unions, PACS, religions, etc. are [b]not persons.[/b]
Wanted to say that what I think is disturbing is that we are still talking about the two-party system. My belief is that we need a third party, and need to break the two-party system. And if not in 2012, then when. I know there are a lot of people here who are more libertarian-capitalist than I, but I think a choice between two parties that answer financially to the 1% will never work for the rest of us. (addendum for clarification, you are not a 1% until you are making over 1.25 million dollars a year.)
I agree. The two parties are both controlled by the same oligarchy and represent no more of a difference than the two teams competing in a football game, some of the players of whom may have played for the other team in the recent past.
But Maggie let’s be honest……eventually such a third party would be just like the two parties we have now. I think the problem is the politicians. I don’t think adding another party will do anything. Simply put these people don’t understand what the hell they are doing.
I see today they are all bouncing around in excitement over Gadaffi’s death(obviously I’m exagerrating), but cannot seem to focus on domestic issues.
How can they all get paid so much with such a lack of…actions? What would possibly be on their resume(of actual importance) after they retire? And by “they” I’m also including:
O.B.A.M.A. aka One Big Ass Mistake America
Yes, ONE third party would be, but a constant field of new parties coming and going would result in a loss less entrenched power than is possible now.
There is a party that does not ever take corporate contributions – SP-USA. This is not like sending twenty bucks to the democratic party for one of their so-called memberships. A lot more grassroots, with the money coming from those same roots. They also have a commitment to not becoming a “fusion” party like “Working Families Party.”
Dear Deep Geek, would you be able to post a link for this SP-USA Party?
Hey, Laura
http://socialistparty-usa.org/
And if you’re a facebook person, you can “friend” Billy Wharton, one of their co-chairs.
You might also like these links….
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/690 Bertrand Russels book “proposed roads to freedom” about the difference between Anarcy, Socialism, and Syndicalism.
And maybe….
http://www.stewartalexandercares.com/
Stewart Alexander is hoping to run for president on the SP-USA ticket. He is a real socialist, as opposed to the fake socialist we currently have in the white house.
Enjoy,
—
DG
Dear DeepGeek, I know it’s a very late “thank you” but thanks for posting this link for me.
I had written most of a fairly long post, I got up to talk on the phone, and when I came back it was gone. I don’t feel like retyping it right now. Perhaps tomorrow.
Talking to people who aren’t on the internet. Pfft.
Yeah. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.
I’m going to the Front of the Line if a Civil Rights movement starts.Prostitution,Marijuana and now online Gambling illegal.You can’t figure a way to tax it and want to control our lives.It’s the same thing every year on numerous human rights abuses from the USA government.I vote 3rd party because I can’t stomach myself to vote for the big 2.
Dear ThugObama, I love your screen name!
I think we need changes far, far beyond banning campaign contributions or a third party.
Ban corporations. Require any business over a certain size (like a partnership) to be employee or cooperatively owned. Get rid of the electoral college. Require any politician who takes money from business or organizations to wear a jacket with the logos, just like a race car.
I think banning corporations over a certain size would do a lot more damage to the modern world than good, but I’m strongly in favor of repealing the legal fiction that a corporation is a “person”.
This is 1 thing I’m with you 100% on. You and I are in agreement on something? I feel faint… 😉
LOL! 😀
I get to agree with both of you. At the same time! [shocked look]
At least about getting rid of corporate personhood I do. As for breaking up big corporations… if they are Too Big to Fail, then yes, break them down to a size so that a couple of them can fail without taking the world economy along.
I like your ideas!
Comixchik, I’m all for a sweeping revolutionary change (not violent revolutionary change,) but to get all this done at once would be a miricle. It would take literally an overwhelming majority of people in all the states to simultaneously vote all dem/repub/indy billionaires out at the same time. Not likely, we can barely get most people to bother voting. Most people are for a mixed economy, not what we have now. The important thing is to discredit them, and educate people so that there is a change in consciousness about the way things should be run. I’m favorable to building a world without the two-party system myself.
While we work toward change, may I recomend “From Dictatorship to Democracy” by the “Machiavelli of Nonviolent Protest” Dr. Gene Sharp?
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html
(free in both pdf and audiobook versions.)
OK, so here’s a part of what I was going to say yesterday before my phone rang.
Barack Obama lost my vote for exactly this: giving a universal pass on the war crimes of the previous administration. And, he put pressure on Spain
Public financing of elections. More detail in an above post.
You don’t have to get rid of the Electoral College, which would be difficult. But states should quit with the winner-take-all system. If next year Mitt Romney (probably him) gets even one more vote than Barack Obama, Romney gets all of Texas’ Electoral votes, just as if the vote had been unanimously rah rah Romney. If in New York Barack Obama gets one more vote than Mitt Romney, Obama gets all of New York’s Electoral votes. This isn’t what the Founders had in mind, and it’s anti-republican, anti-democratic (please note the lower-case “r” and “d”).
This is why Barack Obama isn’t concerned about losing my (or anybody else’s in Texas) vote. For all that my voting has to do with choosing the next president, I might as well stay home and jerk off, which would be more satisfying considering what my choices are.
What should happen is that when a presidential candidate wins the most votes in a congressional district, he gets one Electoral vote. Whichever candidate wins the most votes state-wide, he gets two more. That’s how many Electoral votes each state gets: one for each Representative, and one for each Senator.
This makes third parties viable, which they are not now. Ross Perot got more of the popular vote than any third party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party. Ross Perot also got exactly zero Electoral votes.
These two changes, public financing of elections and doing away with winner-take-all in the Electoral College, would go far towards fixing our nation.
Dear Sailor B, THANK YOU! The whole electoral college system is evil ###***. Ross Perot is a wonderful example of this! Yes, the 3rd parties need all the help they can get. They are LITERALLY PERSECUTED. I’m SICK OF IT! I joined a 3rd party in the past few years and was furious reading about all the HELL they were put through just to get their candidates as “write-ins” in the last US presidential election. It’s an outrage. I left the Democratic Party for many reasons. I just couldn’t in good conscience stay part of it. However, I won’t EVER write off EVERY politician in that party because the truth is there’s some good 1’s in it. I admire them more if they’re working for reform within their party and stay in for that reason. People have to work to at least try to change things. If we don’t even try, then nothing will ever change. And if things don’t change, then at least you know you did all you could. About the 3rd parties, here is some very encouraging, needed information:
One quarter of all voters nation-wide are registered as independent or as members of a ‘third party’. Over the last 10 years this has been the largest growing segment of voter registrations. Some states’ third party or independent registrations approach 1/3 of all registered voters.
This is from the Constitution Party’s official website. Also, in the last US presidential election ALL 3rd parties had HUGE GAINS. YES! I’m so glad many more are fed up with what I call the “evil 2-headed monster”! 3rd parties also have a wonderful legacy of helping end slavery in the US, getting women the right to vote and exposing the evils of unbalanced government budgets (that 1 was thanks for Ross Perot, who I voted for). Thanks for listening.
A correction: the winner take all thing is totally evil, not the whole electoral college. Sailor B, you don’t stay home and jerk off on election day (but I can understand it being tempting!) and that’s 1 of the things I love about you. You were way more politically involved when I met you than I was and you’ve been a big part in getting me into political activism (I don’t have much spare time, but I do what I can with it) and thank you for that. You don’t take part in the very popular apathy and “gloom and doom” mentalities when it comes to voting. You keep trying and won’t give up on changing things for the better.
Thanks TO Ross Perot…sorry…have limited time to post (as usual).
Barack Obama has my vote because whether there are two candidates on your state’s ballot or six, your actual choices are Obama and the Republican. And so long as the Republican party remains in thrall to the Teabaggers, voting Republican is simply treason.
IMHO, that kind of partisan thinking is exactly what got us into this mess. 🙁
To clarify: I mean that you either vote for Obama, or you vote for anyone else and it helps elect the Republican.
@doctorpsycho1960 depends on your state. I marginally degree that “dividing a vote” can be bad, but depends on state. My state always goes democratic, so in my case, if I vote third, it won’t help republicans because (barring a mass consciousness change) the dems are taking it here. In a state that normally goes republican, then a protest vote may very well “help” the repubs. However, bad karma on you not to fight their system. In short, Vote against them, but that won’t change the world; then go out and protest, call reps on the phone, encourage runaway grand juries and regular juries refusing to work for prosecutors-these things change the world.
I second that; jury nullification is the single most effective means of protest available in any police state, including our own.
And most jurors don’t even know about it.