[CyberCowboy777]

Did not see this posted

[js1138]

I could be wrong, but I remember Bush using the word Freedom.

[CyberCowboy777]

As I've said numerous times, in its purest form, democracy is little more than the system by which 51 percent of the people can pee in the cornflakes of 49 percent of the people.

lol

[CyberCowboy777]

When "hanging chad" wasn't just the name of a necrophiliac gay porn movie, it was easier to make jokes about current events.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[hippy hate me]

"Friday" is not gifted by God and deserves no credit. "Friday" was derived from the Germanic Frigga the name of the Norse god Odin's wife. To say, "Thank God it's Friday" is wrong. It's just goofy. </sarcasm>

[Cicero]

What Jonah says here is basically correct. Democracies and Republics are two forms of government. Mixed constitutions and balance of power are an ancient ideas inherited from the Greeks and Romans. But freedom is a gift of God. Westerners crave freedom partly because of the basic influence on their thinking over the centuries of Judaism and Christianity.

Some threads over the past year have pointed out that the religion of Islam leaves no room for freedom. Everything is fated or predetermined by Allah. There's no such thing as free will or free choice. Those are merely ignorant illusions. Islam resembles an extreme form of Calvinism.

Muslims like to have a cushy life, lots of money, plenty of wives, good food, the power to crush their enemies, and such good things. But that's not really freedom, it's an arbitrary gift from Allah or the Sultan. One day on a whim the Sultan may give you riches, the next day on another whim he may execute you. That's why so many Arabic stories are about good luck--people finding genies in bottles, friendly houris, and stuff like that. But there's very little in their stories about choice, freedom, concern for other people, or real merit and virtue, which are found in so many western stories.

[Ohioan]

Better than many things which the writer has produced lately. Certainly the main points about Democracy are correct. It is hardly an admirable idea for most peoples. It almost always becomes downright evil when applied to a non-homogenious third world nation. (See Democracy In The Third World.)

But the assumption that it is somehow the responsibility of America to impose a political system on Iraq is a leap that is unjustifiable in terms of any acceptable ethic. If the present Government of Iraq endangers America, then we are justified in opposing it. That does not translate into a mandate for our Government and our tax dollars to experiment in social engineering overseas, after we deal with the immediate problem.

This confusion in what is and is not our responsibility goes to the crux of policy determination. If Conservatives start letting their wishes become horses, and begin to imagine that pigs really do have wings--just like all the "Liberal" visionaries who helped turn the 20th Century into a succession of bloody and extravagant nightmares. we are in deep trouble.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site