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The US, The UN and Iraq

 
 
PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 01:43 pm
<Serious attention and effort must be put to the matter of altering such perceptions. The doing so is America's greatest challenge, IMHO. >

<Consider all the energy I have devoted to illuminating Blatham.>


timber, george:

I say with all respect to you (and others who may share this sense of mission) that you will be no more successful at it than Dubya was at finding oil in Texas.

Pick another battle.

Do continue to share your opinions here, backed up with the hyperlinks of those with whom you agree, as I will.

Try to keep in mind that rhetoric is not an empirical exercise.

Cultivate and indoctrinate the minds of the children within your influence if you feel the urge to convert.

Proselytize to the willing, please.

And spare me, also, the view that it is some sort of calling or crusade.



Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 01:49 pm
PDiddie,

It was irony.
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blatham
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 02:15 pm
PDiddie

You and I tend to share a number of notions related to this discussion. But I think timber and george (and asherman and perception and others) are doing what you and I do...arguing for our respective worldviews and values. Like you, I'm more than a little bemused that the two of them maintain their positions even as we helpfully draw back the curtain to reveal the wiz pulling levers and making scary faces, but they seem to think they are us and we them in this scenario. Perhaps the best we can all hope for is that we present our individual viewpoint well enough such that it is at least accessible to others.

I almost did not post that last bit, and sent it off to another member first for a check, fearing I would offend too many folks. But the responses are, if horribly horribly wrong, still reasoned and accepting of my right to express such views.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 02:36 pm
george, I'm hoping for the same fate for GW as his father; high popularity at one time, but no second term. Wink c.i.
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 02:36 pm
Blatham,

No offense whatever. I could have written it myself - and would have had I thought quickly enough. On that underlying view our beliefs are identical.

I too am working to pull back your curtain, expose your wizard, and persuade you through the clarity of my exposition - alas with all too little success.

It is, however, possible, through these dialogues, to sharpen the often vague phrases used in the debate; to debrade the useless and often emotional debris that surrounds the core matters in these disputes - and get closer to a mutual understanding of just what are the issues that divide us. That alone is worth the effort, on all sides.
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ehBeth
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 02:44 pm
I'm one of the very occasional readers of this thread. I'm curious. Do any of the debaters take their well-honed arguments (i mean that most sincerely, you've worked a lot of points over very thoroughly) out into the world where they could make a difference?
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Asherman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 02:45 pm
Blatham,

We disagree. Is the glass half-full, or half-empty? Do we believe in the essential goodness, and good intentions of most people, or do we believe that men are fundamentally flawed? Should policy be driven by idealism, or pragmatic analysis of national interests? Will the future be a nightmare, or something better though short of Utopia? How a person views the world is not likely to change no matter how persuasive the evidence, or how emotional the argument.

We in the Free World value individuality, the exchange of different points of view, and consensous. We have enshrined those values in our written constitutions, laws and in the very fabric of our societies. The individual matters, and progress toward a more perfect world will result when there is a nice balance between the individual and the State. The balance is constantly questioned, struck and restruck. Sometimes the balance favors the individual and other times the State. It must be so, for circumstances change and public opinion/tolerance shifts. I am confident that our system is robust and able to weather the challenges we face. You and others apparently are less confident in the ability of our society to retain a reasonable balance between individual and State.

What we do agree upon, is that our enemies have no compunction about where the balance between the individual and the State should rest. Some of our allies also believe that the State and/or the Church should absolutely dominate the People. The struggle will never end. If every totalitarian state were to be replaced by a true republic, the issue still would teeter from one side to the other. If a totalitarian structure should come to dominate the entire planet, it would rest upon sand. The United States, and the values it represents on behalf of all Western Civilization, is not totalitarian and I sincerely doubt it ever will be.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 03:00 pm
Asherman, That goes without saying; that's the reason why we have extremes in liberals and conservatives in this country. c.i.
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blatham
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 03:23 pm
ehBeth

Can I respond with 'Oh heck, yes!' and leave it at that?

I confess to some embarrassment. I was active in support of any party only at one point, in aid of a man I thought truly exceptional (which he proved to be) and that was in the late 60s. I do the regular citizen things - vote, write tedious letters to editors and Members of Parliament, walk in a few parades, sign petitions to 'save the banana', and give food to folks clearly less well off than I. I contribute in my neighborhood in certain ways, mainly beautification. I consider that my most valuable contribution is assistance that I give to a small network of local people who have been widowed and are without the skills or means to repair or care for their properties. And, of course, I bless many with the light of my presence.

Not much, is it?
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 03:28 pm
ehBeth,

No doubt you were referring to Asherman and myself - not Blatham and his bad boys.

No, sadly we, like Wordsworth's Lucy, "...dwell among the untrodden ways".

However, we do talk a lot.
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blatham
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 03:47 pm
Asherman

Just quickly, on your last post...you acknowledge something of the give and take of discourse, but you continue to place your points in the framework of binary opposites (eg practical vs utopian, freedom vs totalitarianism). If there is anything I would love to see disappear from American political thinking and discourse, it is precisely this terribly limited either/or architecture. Usama has you guys wrong, but not entirely. Didion's lament, in the piece I linked much earlier, was to this point...that an opportunity arose where folks began to question "what are we getting wrong in the world?" and the opportunity evaporated in a rousing wave of "they are evil, we are good". As I've tried to argue, I think this reluctance to acknowledge how you are screwing up in the world (and why) is the self-inflicted wound most likely to do you and the rest of us great disservice.
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 03:49 pm
What an interesting, and perhaps telling, contrast between the last two posts, deliveres almost simultaneously in response to ehBeth.
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 03:54 pm
Yeah, especially, since Lucy is in her grave now.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 03:56 pm
Hey Walter, Watch that! My wife, Lucy, is still healthy, and I want her to stay that way. Wink c.i.
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timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 04:19 pm
I participate vigorously in local politics, and with some enthusiasm in State and National Politics. Pragmatically, The Town Council and The County Board have the greatest immediate impact on my person. I am a "Character" at lots of nearby Civil Administration Meetings. Ethically, I endorse and support or criticize and oppose candidates and issues of broader concern, despite not sitting on directly related boards or commitees. I do consider myself an active member of The Polity.



timber
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timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 04:28 pm
PDiddie wrote:


Proselytize to the willing, please.

And spare me, also, the view that it is some sort of calling or crusade.


Now, that's a bit limiting toward those whose crusade is not your own, isn't it?



timber
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Asherman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 05:15 pm
I shun the public forum now, but there was a time when I might be found waist deep in the political hogswallow. There are many principled people within the bureacracy and that passing crowd appointed or elected to public office. There are also some of the shallowest, self-serving, lazy and risk-adverse people on the planet. There are highly educated and skilled people working for idiots whose only skill is in navigating the political maelstrom. Sometime that is reversed, and incompetent subordinates can not be gotten rid of even though they are an organizational disaster.

Mostly I chose to work at the local level, where an individual had some reasonable chance to make a real difference in citizen's lives. I'm not sure how much of a difference I made, but I did try. On occasion my opinion has been sought, and given. Mostly my advice went unheeded. Today and tomorrow I will merely speak my opinon as plainly as I can. I don't expect to take part in any marches, or demonstrations.
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 05:39 pm
blatham wrote:
Asherman

As I've tried to argue, I think this reluctance to acknowledge how you are screwing up in the world (and why) is the self-inflicted wound most likely to do you and the rest of us great disservice.


My problem with your argument, Blatham, is that you require that we accept, unmodified, your view that we are screwing up the world, that our political leaders are ignorant, unwise and ill-intentioned and the examples you allege illustrate these things. However, you persistently fail to respond to the (mostly) reasoned responses that outline the case (such as it is) for our actions, the reasons many of us believe they are called for, and the beliefs of our elected leaders.

You have asserted that the U.S. defies settled world opinion and our rejection of the Kyoto, ICC, and Law of the Sea treaties proves it. I have pointed out to you that the governments representing a large majority of the world's population have soundly rejected each of these treaties. You have not responded.

You are welcome to your views and the repeated expression of them. However mere repetition of them does not illuminate the question or issue: it just puts dust in the air.
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perception
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 05:56 pm
Apparently Ben Franklin was often quite persuasive in his writings---would anyone care to speculate how he would have approached the debate on this thread and which side he would have been on?

As an occasional cheering fan but mostly just an observer to this interesting debate----I am fascinated by the deepening entrenchment of each side manifested by the total lack of change in the statements of each side.
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 2 Feb, 2003 06:18 pm
Well perception this is a debate over political issues, and the likelihood of really changing anyone's views - in either camp - is remote. However it is occasionally possible to sharpen the collective definition of just what it is we disagree about, and the thinking of all the parties in the discussion.

Hasn't been much of that either.
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