Henry David Thoreau vs. Iraqi innocents

Jerry Falwell.

[Spinzgirl]

Yeah, I get where you're coming from and you're right. Unfortunately I have to go to work so I can't go into detail. My complaint was that many folks have no argument for war except that it's "patriotic" and that if you don't want war you're "anti-American". But that's why I came here, in search of intelligent discourse. Just keep it on a cool level, that's all I ask. And I'll try not to post at night after my bedtime

[russotto]

Originally posted by smoothmoniker
hermitt - I think Locke and Hobbes might argue that every state exists as a permissive democracy; the masses are either ruled by their own consent, or they "vote" by revolution.

Hobbes, apologist for authoritarianism, might; his position was that you should accept any government you have and like it, for only it stood between you and a life which was primitive, nasty, brutish and short. Somehow I can't see Locke expressing similar disingenuities.

There is certainly no "divine right" being asserted by Kim or Saddam. They rule through the consent of the governed, such consent being granted by the failure to take up arms in protest.

They rule by naked force, said force being exemplified by their shooting anyone who opposes them.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally posted by sycamore


On another level, whose really to say whether our system is the best thing going? . . . The easy way to solve this is to show both sides of the picture...but each side is going to push so damned hard, it would be hard to get an unbiased presentation.

I can answer this one, Syc -- I just point to how many tens of thousands of people are literally kicking our border fence down to, ah, immigrate informally, and get their piece of the American Dream. That happens almost nowhere else, not on our kind of scale. Guess they figure it's poor business practice to shell out money on fees! "Our system" should not be the exclusive property of Americans alone -- not even just of the English-speaking world. Political freedom, necessarily hand in hand with economic freedom, works for human beings of any stripe or texture of hair.

Our most prominent immigration difficulty is really Mexico's difficulty in growing a large middle class. If Mexico had a visible middle class, we wouldn't be fretting about undocumented Mexicans all over the southern tier of states. Trouble with Mexicans in Mexico is they're overtaxed by the time you add taxation to mordida. It's too large a percentage of their average per capita income. See above smartass remark on shelling out fees.

The way to deal with opposing biases, I should think, would be to kinda lean the opposing biases together and drop a plumb line -- that's going to be pretty close to the reality of an issue. Granted, this faculty is not much developed in a one-party state like Iraq or Arkansas, but that doesn't mean the learning curve is never going to have a beginning point. It just means that the steep part of the learning curve may be tumultuous.

[xoxoxoBruce]

My complaint was that many folks have no argument for war except that it's "patriotic" and that if you don't want war you're "anti-American".

I'd add to that I don't want people telling me I'm anti-American if I don't have a flag on my antenae or red/white/blue ribbon on my chest. Support the troops? You bet I do. The IRS makes sure of that.