I wasn't sure what the response would be when I first posted here after lurking for a while. The views expressed here are quite often contrary to my own. I expected to be ignored, scorned or even blacklisted. Yet some people had thoughtful replies to my comments. Thank you for that.
But it seems that the First Amendment is being ignored in the United States. The Secret Service has "protest zones" set up far away from the President. A man was arrested for having a "F U G W" sign. The mentality of "you are with us or you are against us" so prevelant nowadays stifles open debate.
Comments, anyone else?
Well... I think that is more of a security issue. Actual danger is an exception to the rule, and there has to be a judgment call.
I don't believe anyone should be arrested for a sign with four letters on it but I can understand why there are 'Secret service protest zones". Security. Half of this country despises Bush and his administration for that matter. Even when Martha Burke protested the Masters golf tourny, they made her stay a good distance away. If the W.T.O. protests that usually turn violent are any indication of what our elected officials might face, then I say keep 'em atleast a few blocks away.
"The Secret Service has "protest zones" set up far away from the President. A man was arrested for having a "F U G W" sign. The mentality of "you are with us or you are against us" so prevelant nowadays stifles open debate."
Are you unaware that this was just as intense, if not more so, when the Clintons were in office? Haven't you read anything about Hillary and her "goon squad"? This sort of thing is nothing new...it's just that it's reported in the mainstream, liberal press now.
The whole issue of patriotism, dissent, with-us-or-against-us mentality, etc. are especially sensitive these days because we are at war. Peace time issues are in a separate league, simply because there will be a winner and a loser in any given war.
If we lose to Islam, I don't even want to think about the consequences.
There seems to be quite an undercurrent of hostility toward Bush over the election and other domestic issues, and all that is understandable as the natural result of politics. But when it carries over into matters of national security and war time issues, the line must be drawn.
Undermining the security of America from within has become a plank of the Democrat platform, and many, many people are running around with an affinity for the destruction of America, insome cases unconsciously, in some cases not.
Truly, those who are not with us are against us. For example, some of the comments made by Sen. Kennedy just this week clearly provide aid and comfort to the enemy. Put yourself in the shoes of an AlQueda operative and imagine reading his comments. How encouraging would they be?
Mc Carthy was right!
So stifling debate has a lot to do with which debate. Debating a tax increase or a budget item, or a welfare bill is one thing, but war time politics are vastly different. There are people out there who want us dead. Dead! They aren't interested in debate, or having demands met. They want to kill as many of us as they can. They want us to not exist.
We are to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Include me in the defenders category.
"FUGW" is not debate. I doubt threatening language was what the Framers had in mind when penning the First Amendment.
That being said, I do support the banning of very Liberal posters from FR, because otherwise, the site would be overrun with Liberal posters, which would defeat the site's primary purpose: (to be) A grassroots Conservative forum.
The right to free association, especially on private property, is an important one.
Protest Zones are a required due to the risk of assassination.
The anti Free Trade protesters are well known for near riots and violence agains the police and civilians.
The antiwar protesters are loaded with Palestenians and other Islamists. We know all to well the tendancy of these folks to resort to violence against the unarmed.
The right to free speech is not the same as the right to be heard.
Bush, and others, represent the ideas we encapsulate as conservatism. They may not embody such to the extent and to the perfection of definition we would like to see but the arrow is pointed in the correct direction.
Both sides attack and parry in an effort to keep their ideas on top, when we openly attack our own we are joining the fray against them - even if it is meant to merely sharpen our sword so as to make it a better tool. Such 'attacks', or introspective analysis of 'our side' deals with in house discussions on how we can better ourselves (or in this case, those chosen to represent our ideals). The problems arising in an open public forum is the supplying of the opposite with ammunition, which would all work out well if both sides were doing the same introspection.
Problems arise in the desire to win with something short of what we want versus losing to the opposition, ie a bad republican is better than a good democrat. Such a loss incurs more work in the future towards the goal.
Dissent within the ranks is needed to better fine tune and focus, dissent coming in from outside from those of obvious opposition to our goals is intended solely to weaken the overall goal.
In such a public arena as FR we often try to post and analyze the problems of society and discuss how better to fix them utilizing the methods of our general, sometimes multi-interpreted, philosophy of conservatism. Within that confine dissent is often productive both internally as well as externally as we are building in plain view arguments as to why our way is the best way overall to accomplish the common goals. Those from without looking in can analyze ideas and their projected consequences and come away with a broader view on tangible object - versus the other side where the thing we are attacking and discussing is embodied in the personhood of the elected official whom we have chosen to assist in implementing such ideas.
Criticizing the job of the person you elect is a duty when you feel they are not performing properly - but what has happened in this country (and others) is that politics has become involved where one side attacks the other side without intent to better things but to destroy them all together. It is a desire I would almost say that those elected keep the people fragmented so as to induce loyalty without performance through creating fear of loss of the goal should they not be able to keep their job. We lose the ability, or have it lessened, to attack a poor employee's performance because we want the greater good to overcome - we take the bad with the good so as not to be left with only bad. When we attack our employee we confirm to others that they are correct in stating that said employee should be replaced - and when, in the case of an election between two people, you only have one employee to offer you find yourself in a bit of a quandry.
Dissent over ideas is welcome here, true analysis of the performance rating of the employee we hired is worthwhile as we the people can join forces to put pressure on that employee to change their course when needed. Dissent from those who only want to attack our employee every chance they get reveals an agenda of replacement and not one of enrichment.
A public forum created to discuss the core beliefs of it's founder, christian and conservative, should (imho) be populated with people who share those core ideas and want to discuss not only their implentation but also their internal differences - ie, they share a baseline but have differing opinions on where variances occur, much like a board devoted to the discussion of the constitution would not want to waste time/space/bandwidth arguing with communists and anarchists. It is a place for those with similar ideas and beliefs to discuss those ideas and beliefs.
In our case we extract from news and other items of local interest the core of news stories (crime is an example) and discuss amongst ourselves the reasons for such things and how we feel about them, and more importantly how the path which leads away from our general beliefs has contributed to such a state of things. Dissent is normal and welcome on such things (see the war on drugs threads) as is causes us to look deeper into our beliefs and examine how we can better understand and apply them. While we don't always agree with the best method within our framework to handle such things we do at least share the framework which the founder of the board has set out.
He made the forum based on a core set of ideas and fundamental beliefs, if one does not share such then why would we want them here peddling their wares? It we believe we need such input it says that perhaps we have not come to a logical conclusion ourselves to our beliefs already - that somehow along the way to conservatism and faith we lacked the intelligence to have already looked at the opposite side and found it wanting. We have seen the other side, we have found it the wrong path to be on, and we don't need to continual input which we have already generated and analyzed interjected which takes away from the intelligent debate on the gray areas we already have to discuss within our own system of beliefs we have adopted.
I often like to view things from all sides, and I visit liberal boards to see such (though I do not post there as I don't share their common beliefs). I come here to discuss beliefs I share with others (would one go to a computer forum and discuss your dog's health problems?).
As far as dissent and the constitution go, would we welcome the communist chinese into the congress to debate issues of our government? Would we want them giving input on each law which was passed or decisions made? We don't welcome them because at the core they want something different than we want, and we as a people have already made the choice of what we want. We welcome dissenting voices in our congress and public arena from those who share the common bond of being members of a free society. We may disagree on a lot of things, but most share a common belief and ideal in the American way. I welcome democrats who hold the same core love of America but disagree over the implementation of things and how we can better America. Problem with many democrats nowadays is that they do not hold those core values, and their methods lead to the downgrading of our freedoms in America. The dems have lost their way as they have moved further to the left, though I hold out hope for some.