Meanwhile a caution that is probably nothing to worry about. Government biohazard monitors detected a tularemia bacteria during that anti-war march in concentrations that are normally not considered dangerous. However the symptoms (fever, chills, headache, muscle ache, joint pain, dry cough and conjunctivitis appear in about 1 week and can cause death if not treated by antibiotics. It is completely unknown where the bacteria came from. It may have been made airborne by so much pedestrian traffic on a very dry mall. But just in case, a medical alert was issued nation wide - only because so much traffic on that mall comes from across the country - is not local.

Again, the tularemia bacteria is not considered a problem but the warning was issued anyway for so many people during that anti-war march, a book convention, etc - all ongoing at the same time.

Goddammit, and me a hypochondriac. Now I've got a headache, muscle ache, and a dry cough.

Worry not about those trivial symptoms. Things we don't know about - conjunctivitis - sounds like it will kill everyone.

Griff, I'm studying neoconservatism, too, and I burst out laughing when you said neocon associates suppress George's libertarianism. The neocon idea -- it's not unified enough to be a movement; it's more of a tendency -- is itself fundamentally libertarian, for it pushes for representative democracies as the single most legitimate form of government. As you can see, I don't find much to object to in this view. It is hardly unlibertarian to progress from the nonlibertarian conditions of autarchy or oligarchy to representative democracy. Libertarianism is about lightening government's yoke, and making the burden of maintaining a society (inescapable in groups of over three people) less. Being overly statist about things makes the burden heavy. Lessened statism may not be perfection, particularly from the radical libertarian point of view, but it is progress.

Irving Kristol, IIRC, was the one who remarked that a neocon is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality." I suppose now is the time to air a notion for discussion: it may be that the most visible difference between a Neocon and a Right-Libertarian is that one of them is a Republican. The same can be said of those neocons who are of the Democratic persuasion, for neocons comprise about equal numbers of the Big Two parties.

Oooookay. Who brought the dead bunny to the march? Fess up? Who did it?

I point out that the Hussein government actively repaired al-Zarqawi's leg. The CIA did nothing active. Stop even seeming to try making it sound like the 9-11 terrs undertook pilot training with CIA knowledge and blessing. That hint, in your sentence, is extremely broad.

Something the domestic devotees of an all-powerful, omniscient, and perhaps thereby omnibenevolent, make-it-all-better US government can't seem to incorporate into their thinking is that the terrs were secretive enough to outgeneral us -- all of us -- in their little act of war.

Schizophrenically, these same devotees seem stone convinced that America is the chronic evildoer here and therefore must lose this war. Well, I've seen America and I've seen non-American tyranny. By this experience, I know these people to be wrong. Thus I oppose them, eternally, and out-argue them often, for they are not in possession of the facts of the matter.

Adding "blessing" to his statement completely changes the meaning, but of course you knew that when you did it. It's the only way to discredit what he said. Slimy...very slimy. :eyebrow:

But you didn't say "I've seen American tyranny and non-American tyranny". Which leads me to guess that you don't believe it exists. Do you believe that we have made mistakes or that we never have? Do you believe that someone who hates America because his unarmed son or nephew was gunned down or bombed is wrong to hold that point of view? Do you believe we were right to annex countries and territories during the early 1900's? Do you believe civilian casualties are acceptable if they are not US citizens and it advances our political agenda?

No, I don't believe American tyranny exists. We are a representative democracy, which makes tyranny nearly impracticable, and we fought a blue-on-gray war to extend more fully the writ of that representative democracy, when all was said and done, and however poorly or slowly it may have been done. The Civil War discredited the idea that any population group should as a matter of nature or of law be second-class citizens, and that view continues to be robustly propounded in today's civil rights movement. The NAACP and the ACLU, give them their due, keep trying to advance and to perfect this, at least when they don't grope down blind alleys.

Turning directly to your post, I see a big problem: if you, Rich, answered yes to any of the questions you put except the one about annexation, you end up saying we should have lost World War Two. If my remark surprises you, go and ask yourself those questions in the WW2 context. Does it not paint you into a corner?

(The countries you speak of annexing would be the Republic of Texas and the California Republic, both of which sought entry into the Union, and got it.)

So I answer with a firm and proud, well reasoned "No" to most of those questions, and "Yes" to the bereaved-father one. He can't love us for that, but he can live a lot better after we've done what we came there to do. Recall that we are there to smash tyranny, regardless of how much in the habit of tyranny anyone there may be. Some of them are very very corrupted by that habit, and it leads them to murder people out of religious brand-loyalty -- that's really all it is, and should this not in righteousness be extirpated? The Sunni-Shi'a brawling sounds a lot like the wars between Catholic and Protestant of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even though the political details of these rough parallels differ considerably. Our foes are tyranny's helpmeets, the Devil's fingertips. We fight against the return of their tyranny, and all who oppose us end up helping that tyranny instead. That's the wrong position. Our political agenda is human liberty; no one in the Administration believes tyranny to be good, which is what sustains our Administration in its thrice-worthy campaign, even in the face of bullshit of the kind you're throwing up, yea, vomiting. The leave-tyrants-alone program, after all, is the minority view, as demonstrated in the '04 election, and the continuing presence of Bush For President bumper stickers. Nobody has taken their campaign bumper stickers off: that bespeaks determination. The silent majority isn't silent: it's making a low, rumbling, determined and sustained growl that says freedom's enemies shall be converted to her friends or shall die. The ones in America who express fear of this have much too soft a spot in their heads for totalitarians and undemocrats.

You'll note I don't. Must we indeed endure control of world-vital resources by the patently hostile or the just plain bigoted? Where is that written? If written, just who was the writer? We need not endure having our chain yanked. That's Seventies "national malaise" thinking. I put to you, Rich, that a fantastical degree of social perfection is not needed to actually be in the right; do not let a leftist rejectionism cloud your thinking, for that permits the great global evil of totalitarianism to ramp unchecked. Right now, I check it, you don't. There are some ugly names for what you're doing, Rich.

The slime is all on him, Bruce.

Now as for you, what part of
did you somehow miss? Can you explain your incomprehension? He did, after all, hint, and I called him on it. Slimy indeed.

No he didn't, not at all. That came from your twisted point of view.
Don't read more than is written. :p

And here I thought you actually knew military history. The two countries I am talking about are the Phiilipines and Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has at least been given some choices, and Hawaii eventually became a state. The Phillipines until recently have suffered under numerous puppet regimes supported by the US.

Bruce, I see that you cannot explain it. Which figures.

Rich, check the histories of California and Texas. The Wikipedia article you cite -- and in my experience, Wiki articles vary extremely widely in quality, so cum grano -- notes the reason nobody thinks of the P.I. as having been annexed: that plans for colonization and annexation were given some thought and both dropped. Things like this persuade me our Republic is the least imperially inclined great power ever seen. We are permanently not in that habit. The peace treaty negotiations described also had precedent in US history: per the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the US paid Mexico 15 million dollars for the territories north and northwest of the Rio Grande. In a somewhat similar spirit, there later came the Gadsden Purchase, which wasn't a war but a real estate deal.

hmmmm...you might wonder why we had to grant them eventual (1946) independence with the Tydings-McDuffie Act (1934) after freeing them from the fallen Spanish Empire. It makes you consider what the rewrite of Iraqi history will look like.

Pokey, yes. Imperialistic? The weight of the evidence says "no."