A more apt symbol of the security most sheeple want...
Happiness is a Big Brother who knows what's best for me.
Posted on 11/28/2001 10:18:12 AM PST by gordgekko
OPEN UP WIDE, RUSSIA!
We're shoveling in MORE American-style freedom (at our own taxpayer expense, of course) in the hopes Russia one day will obligate itself to the same WTO who so consistently makes concessions to them and China in hopes they'll join the Uncle SAM'S CLUB co-opt.
In particular, if the [Jackson Vanick Amendment] is dropped, Russia will have the chance to upgrade military production technology and to help the newly established financial intelligence agency hunt for outrageous tax evaders.
Sorry about that. Take two shots of whiskey and ping me in the morning.
A more apt symbol of the security most sheeple want...Happiness is a Big Brother who knows what's best for me.
Hey, it's the least we can do for our Russian comrades-in-arms in confronting the "evil ones" who seek to undermine freedom and prosperity and bring chaos, destruction, and plight to the civilized world...
Terrorists? Who said anything about terrorists? Those damned people wanting to keep their own money...now THERE'S a threat we need to crush!
We can't run the world. We don't want to. Or at least we don't want to be seen as running the world.
But we can't completely escape the world either. We might try to get away and succeed sometimes but some things will catch up with us.
With luck, though, we may survive the world and its troubles. Don't take on tasks we can't perform or commit ourselves to things we can't manage, but don't think that we can escape from everything going on around us.
Technology drives the world together towards something new and frightening. The neos want to ride that wave and master it and the world. The wave will probably end up destroying them and maybe us as well. But how to respond to it, is another and unsolved question.
In an article in the December Atlantic Monthly Robert Kaplan sees the conservatives somewhat differently. "In the United States, Federalists like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton expounded conservative principles to defend a liberal constitution." In this way conservatism and libertarianism are yin and yang-more complementary than combative.
Good quote, don't quite know how true it is, but it's something to think about.
We have an EMPIRE????????????
redrock-Constitutinal Terrorist
...is a young independent commentator from Vancouver, Canada...
Stay in Canada, please, and try doing it at Free Dominion. Three words I have never before seen so perversely strung together so ignominiously. If you were an American I might cut you some slack.
Defending the American EmpireWell, at least he calls it what it is.
...they are worried that the terrorism has concentrated powers of the president, may erode civil liberties, and could end up returning the big government of the past.When did "big government" ever go away? Was it when Bill Clinton told us that the "era of big government is over"? Was it with the election of the compassionate conservative St. George? Bush's proposals call for increasing government spending, especially in the area of education. I suppose we can now add "defense" spending to the list. (Department of Homeland Security? Please!)
Americans have become more, not less free.This can only be considered a truthful statement if "freedom" is viewed as a relative term. Americans are more free than the British. The British are more free than the French. The French are more free than the Saudis. The Saudis are more free than the Chinese...
The Libertarians are right to be concerned over the erosion of freedom...Make up your mind, Murphy. If we are more free than ever before, why should anyone be concerned? Is this statement implying that Republicans are not concerned over the erosion of freedom?
How long did this golden age of non-interventionist foreign policy last? Not very, if it ever was true it lasted until about 1823 -- but really the US was already flirting with the European powers earlier than that. It would be President Monroe, and his Monroe Doctrine, that laid out a vision for an American Empire that would go from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Less than a century later America waged its first war of conquest-the Spanish-American War in 1898. And by the end of World War I America was showing its economic might which at that time represented 33 percent of the world's GNP.So that justifies our current interventionist policies?
Globalization requires the US to ensure that goods flow. Terrorism, major wars, and intra-state conflict, are all threats to that flow of goods and make pretty much every backwater region in their interest.The GOP cat is out of the bag. Their hand has been tipped. They believe in globalization. So, when Bush says that he will only get the military involved when our "vital security interests" are at stake, he means we will get the military involved whenever we damn well feel like it.
There are intangible goods, say freedom, that are not the sole possession of Americans. Just take a good look at the liberation of Kabul and how happy those people were to do the little things-kite flying, going to see a movie, shaving, removing the veil.I knew it! We are the self-appointed champion of freedom throughout the world because it makes us feel good.
If you are even the remotest bit sympathetic to the state, say during wartime, you are a statist-against freedom and liberty."Defending the American Empire" is being the "remotest bit sympathetic to the state?" Okay...
Remind me to get the exact quote for you from Molnar on "conservatives" from one time he was in town.
Please do. I was dining out with three of 'em last night.
No one has yet explained to me why the so-called "global system" is even worth holding together. For that matter, no one has ever realy convinced me that there is such a thing as a global system. There are merely treaties and conventions and patterns of behavior and trade. These things are temporary and fluid by their nature, and it is dangerous and false to think of them as some sort of enduring structure upon which a permanent peace might be established.
And to say that we are fighting for America Online versus some resurgence of, say, Minitel is outrageous. It certainly lends credence to the likes of LaBelleDameSansMerci, who has suggested since the outset that we are fighting this war on behalf of a hybrid of Western corporatism and modernism.
Anyway, it's chilling stuff, and I'm glad this person doesn't speak for all conservatives.
you may be right
Trouble is, she's always on about Meta-Truth, while the rest of us are still just trying to get the facts straight!
The Idea of a Local Economy by Wendell Berry
and this:
Thoughts in the Presence of Fear by Wendell Berry
I considered posting the articles, but thought I might get booted from FR.:)
No hard feelings, of course ... I'll have fond memories of FR, some good friends and the highest hopes that it will work out as a dating service once it's thoroughly routed of any semblance to its original purpose or profile.
More insidiosly, they both use powerful semiotics (see, "The International Style" in architecture) and a borderline occult (Gnostic?) insight over the human psyche to manipulate the course of history.
Anyway, thanks for the links. I've bookmarked them for later reading.
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