From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Jul 12 2001 - 06:59:49 MDT
soth@another.com wrote:
>
> My apologies to Mike, Brian and others whose hackles I have raised, I have reread my first post and confess that it was rather badly written and over the top.
>
> My points are not an attack on the American people or their way of life.
No offense taken. I just see these sort of ludicrous beliefs a lot in
the more reactionary europeans.
>
> > Well, considering that no european nation recognizes the inherent rights
> of its citizens to the degree that our government does our rights, I
> don't see 'selective democracy' claims as having any weight, especially
> considering we are not a democracy, we are a republic. The NSA spies on YOU, not us.
>
> True, America does have far more in the way of rights for its citizens than any European country. The difference arises in the practice, during the McCarthy Era for instance, it didn't matter that you had a right to silence, several left-aligned playri
ghts and actors were ruined by the McCarthy trial simply because they stuck to their right to silence, and they were punished for it. And as for thinking that the NSA really doesn't spy on American citizens, doesn't that seem a little strange when you co
nsider programs such as Echelon (which does operate in Europe AND America).
Did it occur to you that those actors may have stuck to vows of silence
because they were guilty? I recommend anyone who wishes to harp on about
the McCarthy era to study the Venona Files before opening one's mouth.
The V files tend to open one's eyes.... most every person accused or
convicted of being or assisting communist agents during that period
turned out to be guilty according to the KGB's own files.
>
> > Moreover, the claim of us acting like a 'child with a bazooka,
> unpredictable and dangerous' is also laughable, unless you are a
> congenital hoplophobe. The US has not initiated any conflicts at all,
> does not wage open war on its own people, does not commit widespread
> genocide with the flip of a hat, and does not confiscate the rights of
> the accused in the heat of nationalistic hysteria. European countries
> make a career of doing just these things.
>
> True, the US hasn't initiated any conflicts, but the US put an era in fear during the cold war (both America and the USSR were to blame, not just the USSR).
But was that wrong? It took that fear to defeat the worst regieme in
history (with more people exterminated than even Hitler achieved) in the
largest nation in the world. Courage is defined as facing fear with
determination.
> The USA remains the only country to use a weapon of mass destruction on a civilian target (I'm not sure if you are the only nation to use weapons of mass destruction on military targets either) for the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Only if you consider nukes to be such weapons. I also consider chemical
and biological agents to be WOMD. Think about this: if we had not used
the bomb in that instance, a) how many people would have died in the
fight to take the Japanese archipelago, and b) how many bombs would have
been used in at least one mass attack at a later time, say, over the
Berlin Wall crisis, or in Korea. I say the human race got off pretty
easy in this score.
> And as for confiscating the rights of the accused in nationalistic hysteria, how about the McCarthy Era. Also seeing as most of the situations you have mentioned occured in western Europe quite a few hundred years ago (certainly in Britain) then I feel
compelled to mention the slaughter of the native American people by the US government (such as the trail of tears), the confiscation of their land and repression of their culture.
I don't consider: a) the Holocaust, b) Ireland, c) Yugoslavia, d)
Stalin, e) the Armenian Genocide, f) De Gaulle's postwar extermination
of communists, g) Norway's mass postwar institutionalization of the
Norwegian women and children drafted into the Lebensborn program of the
Nazis, and many other instances to be 'quite a few hundred years ago'.
While incidents like the Trail of Tears is abominable, the Indian
culture we encountered during our westward expansion was far different
from that before the original conquistadors from Spain set loose
unwittingly their germs on the virgin field of the continent (90% of the
native Americans died before the English even showed up in Virginia) as
well as the introduction of horses that ran wild, transforming the
remains of a formerly pastoral and slash and burn agrarian culture into
combative nomads.
>
> > And he (Bush) just told you gun grabbing socialists to go stuff yourselves. I note todays headlines in my local leftie rag hyperventilate over the Bush Administration rejecting the bald faced attempt by the UN to get us to surrender our 2nd amendment.
...
>
> Hey! I'm no Socialist, Anyway good for him. But you must admit, the Star Wars program is a bit mental (apparently it's going to be the most expensive project ever undertaken by Man), and my points about the Kyoto talks (Clinton partly to blame here as
well) and the Chemical weapons talks (the name escapes me) still stand.
SDI is the only moral option for a libertarian society based on the
premise of not initiating violence.
As for the Kyoto talks, Clinton was entirely right to demand that the
forest sequestration of our continent be counted against our CO2
production. It is, after all, the product of our free market policies.
While I support the slow introduction of externalities taxes on energy
sources, this is only if these taxes are used in actual abatement. How
likely do you think this is? All the europeans want is to price our
products out of their markets, its protectionism shrouded as
environmental policy.
>
> J.R. Molloy wrote
> > Realistically, what other country do you think might displace the US? Before the evolutionary phase transition? How about China?
>
> I agree with J.R.'s idea. The Chinese are certainly the only other nation I can think off that can be considered a superpower now. Russia has all gone to hell but the chinese have been beavering away quietly(ish). They have the worlds largest populat
ion, a huge army, and communisum seems to work alot better there than it did in Russia, maybe because of the cultural background. Should be interesting to see what they get up to in the next 20 odd years.
Their 'communism' is a much more crass form. I was watching a show on
the construction of the Three Gorges Dam last night, where they were
talking about how much rock dust gets blasted into the air around the
construction site, and all the workers are breathing without masks!!!
Some 40,000 of them. How many do you think will come down with
silicosis?
And using their prisons as organ farms?
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