dys: I would say, "mongrel"...
Is Steissd a racist, or am I misreading?
You obviously misread, Tartarin.
I do not have statistics about ethnic composition of the USA, therefore it is uneasy for me to conclude about the American ethnicity. But, IMO, it is Anglo-Saxon/Celtic. Maybe, I am wrong, and Anglo-Saxons and Celts are the minority.
sofia said
Quote:Ceptin' those Dixie Chicks, right?
sophia...You are continuing to miss this point girl. Criticizing them is fine, and ridiculing them is perfectly ok. That's just more ideas into the mix...it's what we want. Attempting to shut them up is not fine.
If Charlton Heston or Pat Buchanan or Bush give a speech, and folks in the audience try to shout over top of them and effectively disallow their speech, I'll go after those protestors for inhibiting or restricting free speech. I will stop them from stopping speech. But if they want to argue their disagreements, then I'll support them.
Blatham -- I can see only one problem. There are occasions when public officials (this president in particularly) carefully avoids all contact with the public unless it's orchestrated and potential protesters have been screened out. On such an occasion, I think it's fair for a protester to interrupt and try to get a reaction/response, even if it means drowning out some of the official's speech.
Ergo, it may be that there is a difference between shouting down an elected official and shouting down any other person with an opinion to express or speechify about. Maybe that's where the line should be drawn?
tartarin and sofia
This is a very interesting point Tartarin has just made. I'm too tired to lay out my ideas tonight, but I will in morning. Thinking about this has led me to the conclusion that sofia's intutition is onto something, but I think she hasn't clearly worked it out. See you tomorrow.
Tartarin
Interesting twist.
Benny Netanyahu came to a Toronto university about a year ago and was unable to deliver a speech as he was shouted down by a group of Palestinian supporters (mainly white Canadians, just to note). As much as I truly despise Netanyahu, I would have supported the removal of these people shouting, if they continued past a warning and if that shouting actually prevented Benny's speech.
They held that this fellow (and his side of the story) had vast and ample access to media but that the Palestinians did not. There was some truth to this, as Canadian press media, 70% owned now by the Asper family, is consistently pro-Israel. Still, this disadvantage is by no means an absolute, and the Palestinian voice is heard.
This does point to the element which sofia might be getting stuck on - unequal access to media. For her, perhaps, the advantage a celebrity actor/musician has in getting his/her voice heard (because celebrity worship is a dismal reality in our cultures) justifies limiting that person's access. Let's call it the 'balance problem'. Thought of in this light, sophia's argument becomes more compelling.
But that is pretty dangerous, I think. There's the clear problem of measuring, and that is evident to you and I whenever we hear the phrase 'the liberal media' repeated by Anne Coulter or Jerry Falwell speaking in some Rupert Murdoch production (Murdoch being slighly right of Satan).
You and I would institute tough controls on media ownership as a means of addressing the balance problem in a non-partisan way. Or in the case of the Netanyahu invitation, we'd ensure a countering speaker was also invited, in the manner of Jim Lehrer's PBS news hour.
Being liberals, we would hold that such constraints ought to be applied at the institutional level, that if they are not, we fall back into a Hobbesian might 'makes right' set of social arrangements.
And that's the problem with sofia's defence of bullying to stop speech.
A strong argument in support of the maxim "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
Sorry that was a reply to the original post in this thread. Bear with me , I am very new.
(Welcome, very new gozmo!
)
welcome, gozmo
The old maxims, though not perfectly dependable, do stick about for a reason.
gozmo<
Welcome to A2k!
Posting errors are usually overlooked here. We want to know what you
really think :wink:
I never heard any one compare Tony Blair to Hitler .
I think the winner of this war will be determined by various Central Banks and the Euro will win. Cheer while you may
As these discussions become convoluted to the complex -- what does liberation LOOK like, who can exact true liberation and KEEP it, when is liberation called for -- and to the simplistic -- what is GOOD, and what is BAD -- I suggest an occasional revisiting of a great guiding light: The Golden Rule. "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you." As Americans, how open would we be to having a foreign nation "liberate" us from our present government? Would the only necessary justification for such an effort be only that other nation's ability to accomplish a military "victory"? I would suggest that the other peoples of the world are not so different from us, in that they realize their destiny is in their own hands, ultimately. If they weather a dictatorship or tyranny for the time being, it might be they have made the calculations about the cost of change, and their ability to enact that change AT THIS TIME. To presume to do unto others as we would NOT have done unto us, enters into an arrogance that cannot be papered over as altruism.
Welcome back, jeff.
Stay awhile this time.
Clear this up for me....who exactly is it that's been liberated?
Afghanistan from big chunks of exploded land.....
Iraq from it's oil and antiquities....
The USA from it's two party system, personal freedoms, social security, educational system, jobs and confidence in a better or even as good a quality of life for our children.
There's another word for this besides liberation.
starts with an f, ends with a k....not firetruck.
and awe...
