Cycloptichorn wrote:Quote:I've long thought leftists were proud of the fact that they oppose their government during times of war.
Of course, this says much more of you than it does of any Leftist.
As I said in the other thread, it isn't difficult to impugn your credibility.
Cycloptichorn
Well keep trying, you might get lucky Cyclops.
Thomas wrote:Ticomaya wrote:I've long thought leftists were proud of the fact that they oppose their government during times of war.
How did it affect your conclusion that Lyndon B Johnson was a leftist? And how did it affect your conclusions that Johnson was also last American president who went to war on a manufactured
casus belli, and who lied about this to the American people? In your view, does this merit a more nuanced view of the pacifism of "leftists", as you call them?
No. Vietnam was a "Democrat war" (as Bob Dole famously said), but the leftists were those out on the front lines of the protest.
I sit in stunned amazement at the notion that leftists would be anything but proud of their track record of opposing the US government during times of war.
Ticomaya, I still remember how surprised I was many years ago when I learned leftists were out there opposing our involvement in WWII at the time. I was born after it was over and always assumed everybody was in favor. Leftists have always been around.
okie wrote:Ticomaya, I still remember how surprised I was many years ago when I learned leftists were out there opposing our involvement in WWII at the time. I was born after it was over and always assumed everybody was in favor. Leftists have always been around.
That's right, the Leftists have always been around. If it weren't for that fact, we wouldn't have to lock our doors at night. Damn Leftists.
Ticomaya wrote:I sit in stunned amazement at the notion that leftists would be anything but proud of their track record of opposing the US government during times of war.
I agree that opposition to Iraq and Vietnam is something to be proud of -- and I am a libertarian, not a leftist. Moreover, I am not the only one of my kind who thinks this way. For example, the Cato Institute, run mostly by libertarian Republicans, opposed Iraq from the get-go. (But, like the people you call `leftists', they did not oppose Afghanistan.) For an earlier example, a conservative friend of mine, born 1945, told me about Vietnam-era meetings of young Republicans he attended. He said (disapprovingly, for he has always been conservatives), that the libertarians among the Young Republicans frequently and demonstratively burned their draft cards.
I don't know whether this is happening now. But if I were you, I wouldn't be so sure there's a clear left-right devide between those who oppose their government when it fights wars for ficticious reasons -- and those who don't. Consequently, I demand my share of war propaganda scorn, which I feel I deserve as a libertarian.
Thomas wrote:Ticomaya wrote:I sit in stunned amazement at the notion that leftists would be anything but proud of their track record of opposing the US government during times of war.
I agree that opposition to Iraq and Vietnam is something to be proud of --
To each, their own.
Quote:and I am a libertarian, not a leftist.
Yes ... I know.
Quote: Moreover, I am not the only one of my kind who thinks this way.
Do I hear Lennon singing?
Quote:For example, the Cato Institute, run mostly by libertarian Republicans, opposed Iraq from the get-go. (But, like the people you call `leftists', they did not oppose Afghanistan.) For an earlier example, a conservative friend of mine, born 1945, told me about Vietnam-era meetings of young Republicans he attended. He said (disapprovingly, for he has always been conservatives), that the libertarians among the Young Republicans frequently and demonstratively burned their draft cards.
Sounds like something the libertarians I know would do.
Quote:I don't know whether this is happening now. But if I were you, I wouldn't be so sure there's a clear left-right devide between those who oppose their government when it fights wars for ficticious reasons -- and those who don't. Consequently, I demand my share of war propaganda scorn, which I feel I deserve as a libertarian.
Ask and you shall receive. That you believe it to be a fictitious war tells me you have a limited view of the reasons the war was pursued, and/or that you believe the AUMF is fiction. The decision to go to war with Iraq was both wise and necessary, and it's an important front in the war on terror. If you disagree, what can I say ... it's not the first time you've been wrong.
Ticomaya wrote: The decision to go to war with Iraq was both wise and necessary, and it's an important front in the war on terror. If you disagree, what can I say ... it's not the first time you've been wrong.
I can't ever remember a time when you've stated anything right.
It was and is an illegal and immoral invasion. With every passing day, the soldiers there commit more war crimes.
The illegal invasion of Iraq is growing more resistance fighters daily. It can only result in greater blowback. When will you ever learn? You can't treat people as you do and not expect blowback. The CIA realized long ago that this would happen. Sensible people realize it. What's wrong with the rest of you wingnuts?
Yes, there are more and more resistance freedom fighters going into Iraq every day. It has been estimated that soon the number of resistance fighters will exceed the 120,000 US troops in Iraq. Then the US army will be slaughtered.
that was real good, possum. Now crawl back in your hole and shaddup.
Ticomaya wrote: Ask and you shall receive. That you believe it to be a fictitious war tells me you have a limited view of the reasons the war was pursued,
"Limited" isn't the same as "wrong", so I don't mind that.
Ticomaya wrote: and/or that you believe the AUMF is fiction.
Alas, the part of it that authorises military force isn't fiction. But the part where it argues that Iraq poses a continuing threat to the United States is fiction.
Ticomaya wrote: The decision to go to war with Iraq was both wise and necessary, and it's an important front in the war on terror.
Indeed it is, now that you guys have screwed up the place terrorism-wise.
Ticomaya wrote: If you disagree, what can I say ... it's not the first time you've been wrong.
If I was wrong on this, it wouldn't be the first time. Indeed, I repeatedly admitted in this forum to being wrong on various non-trivial policy issues. I don't think I can say the same of you.
Thomas wrote:blatham wrote:It is an authoritarian stance, whether or not that is understood by those, like tico, who hold it.
That makes it all the more important to reconnect them to their roots and remind them of the wise words in Reagan's inauguration speech: "In this current crisis, government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem."
thomas
I think you'd better transport them a bit further back. The present government seems little different, in personel, propaganda strategies, and ideologies than Reagan's government. With the exception of Reagan himself, that administration too was mainly comprised of individuals (like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, etc) who have spent the majority of their adult lives in the hated Washington being the government they claim to hate. Reagan's comment is more correctly understood as a sop to anti-northeastern populist sentiment (and as hint of the coming steroid-level governance-by-big-money) than as something truly libertarian. It would have been far more honest (and would be now) for them to say that "Government
is the problem if we aren't it. And by the way, when we are it, the external and internal dangers to your very existence and to all that is good will become clear...we promise."
As the fellow said, "Politics is the shadow cast by economic interests."
Those of us old enough to have been adults during the Viet Nam period are allowed a helpful perspective on an aspect of American mythology, namely, "The Great and Really Really Scary Existential Threat!".
Commies, back then. There are still people kicking about here (omsig, for example) who still speak out of this old frame of reference. It seems rather quaint, like a little roadside shop in Kentucky selling Revolution flintlocks whittled from bars of Ivory soap and cute little cotton-pickers made of licorice.
But the commies disappeared. A damned inconvenience, that. The GARRSET just isn't the sort of mythology to lay down and wait for the neutering to begin. Anyone here ever met a loud, obnoxious bully who got all smiley and contented and freshly-bathed upon the prospect of a peaceful, happy and calm neighborhood?
To the rescue comes the pus-dripping contagious plague of "liberalism".
Wouldn't it be interesting to hear from tico, or foxfyre, or okie, or McG, or gungasnake or or or what "liberalism" means? What liberal theorists they have...uh...let's put the bar fairly low...read anything at all from? For example, we'd inquire, "could you please compose a short 200 word essay on the ideas of JS Mill and how they relate to liberal theory and on why you agree or disagree with these ideas?"
blatham wrote:Wouldn't it be interesting to hear from tico, or foxfyre, or okie, or McG, or gungasnake or or or what "liberalism" means? What liberal theorists they have...uh...let's put the bar fairly low...read anything at all from? For example, we'd inquire, "could you please compose a short 200 word essay on the ideas of JS Mill and how they relate to liberal theory and on why you agree or disagree with these ideas?"
I'd love to make this experiment, but I'd also like the corresponding experiment with Americans who call themselves "liberal" today. Throw at them the theses in Mill's "On Liberty" and see what they think. My guess is that American liberals would prove mostly out of touch with Mill's liberalism as well. For just one example, imagine how America's teachers' unions, which count as a bastion of liberalism, would react to Mill's thoughts about public education:
"All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."
(
On Liberty,
Chapter 5, paragraph 13.)
It is difficult to imagine a crasser difference to liberal doctrine in today's America, and this was just one example. Unfortunately, when American conservatives oppose liberalism and American liberals support it, they both react to an Orwellian caricature of what liberalism means. The enemies of Mill's liberalism have appropriated its name.
thomas
A fair indictment. It's my opinion that in North American schools, we ask far too little of our students.
In the process of doing my education studies, I was forced to bump up against the significant philosphical and practical problems which attend any design of an educational system. The proper allocation of dunce caps must go to those who think the matters simple.
But take, for example, a "technical" subject area such as biology. Would it be desirous to have its curriculum established by local preference? The present situation of the US makes this a rather more acute problem than it might have seemed twenty years ago.
We both understand from previous conversations that you are more absolutist re Mill than I am. We both understand the problems that accrue to either view.
Your last sentence is a good one. Upsidedownness seems the fundamental characteristic of revolutionary propaganda, whatever its source.
Let me plop this story in here, for lack of a better place. The war industry is an element far too commonly ignored in analyses of modern political dynamics...
Quote:Arms industry 'flouting export laws'
By Kim Sengupta and Jerome Taylor
Published: 03 October 2006
Weapons companies are using globalisation to routinely flout arms control laws and supply lethal products to repressive regimes, according to a new report.
The industryis using outsourcing to breach embargoes. Offshore production companies and foreign subsidiaries are set up in countries which have few controls over where the weapons end up.
The report, Arms Without Borders, by Oxfam, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms, points out, for example, that the European Union prohibits selling helicopters to Israel. But Apache gunships used in the recent attacks in Lebanon, which drew widespread condemnation, were built with components made in Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands. During the same conflict British security equipment sent to Iran for anti-drugs operations was found in the possession of Hizbollah fighters.
By the end of this year world military spending is estimated to reach an unprecedented $1,058.9bn (£562bn) - roughly 15 times international aid expenditure. This is higher than the Cold War record reached in 1987-88 of $1,034 in today's prices.
"This report reveals a litany of loopholes and destroyed lives ... Europe and North America are fast becoming the Ikea of the arms industry, supplying parts for human rights abusers to assemble at home, with the morals not included. It is time for an arms trade treaty," said Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam.
Weapons companies are using globalisation to routinely flout arms control laws and supply lethal products to repressive regimes, according to a new report.
The industryis using outsourcing to breach embargoes. Offshore production companies and foreign subsidiaries are set up in countries which have few controls over where the weapons end up.
The report, Arms Without Borders, by Oxfam, Amnesty International and the International Action Network on Small Arms, points out, for example, that the European Union prohibits selling helicopters to Israel. But Apache gunships used in the recent attacks in Lebanon, which drew widespread condemnation, were built with components made in Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands. During the same conflict British security equipment sent to Iran for anti-drugs operations was found in the possession of Hizbollah fighters.
By the end of this year world military spending is estimated to reach an unprecedented $1,058.9bn (£562bn) - roughly 15 times international aid expenditure. This is higher than the Cold War record reached in 1987-88 of $1,034 in today's prices.
"This report reveals a litany of loopholes and destroyed lives ... Europe and North America are fast becoming the Ikea of the arms industry, supplying parts for human rights abusers to assemble at home, with the morals not included. It is time for an arms trade treaty," said Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1783795.ece
blatham wrote:But take, for example, a "technical" subject area such as biology. Would it be desirous to have its curriculum established by local preference?
Yes I do. As you can glean from Polling Report, a plurality of Americans believes some version of young Earth was created within the last 10,000 years. Sooner or later, this will inevitably screw up the biology curriculum, as democratically controlled institutions will tend to do what the majority thinks is right -- even when it isn't.
Even better than local preference would be the outcome of a free schooling market with vouchers, where you and I can send our kids to Montessori schools, George can send his girls to a Jesuit school, and Foxfyre can send hers to Jerry Falwell High. I think even Falwell High, relieved of the pressure to replace Evolution with a bogus alternative, would end up teaching a respectable curriculum. I imagine they would strongly de-emphasize science, might turn biology into an elective to be taught at 7a.m., and would evolve into a mostly humanist kind of school. (Of course their humanism would emphasise the classical and Christian traditions from Augustin to Aquinas to Luther.) I see no problem that Falwell High would pose to society, or to the children it teaches.
Ticomaya wrote:
I sit in stunned amazement at the notion that leftists would be anything but proud of their track record of opposing the US government during times of war.
No, you're not getting what we are saying to you. The left is not alone in its objection to war. Nor do all leftists oppose all wars.
Remember hearing about Charles Lindberg? A conservative, he was the symbol of the anti-war movement during the Great WAr or WWI.
One of the conservative objections to war stems from isolationism, a prime conservative value.
okie wrote: I was born after it was over and always assumed everybody was in favor.
Two things. You once gave your birth date as a year in the 1930s. Was that a lie or is this?
Also, some leftists were in favor of America's entry into WWII. Some made the US role in that conflict an exception to the idea of war during the debate over Vietnam. History doesn't tolerate broad generalizations, which is what we're trying to get Ticomayo to accept.
blatham -- I've been trying to get some of those people to give a RATIONAL definition of what they think liberalism is for years. Exclude gunga if you want a rational answer.
To suggest that John Stuart Mill has anything to say about what is known in the world today as "liberalism"--and i refer to the European model, not the just left of reaction American modle--is more than a little naive and historically ignorant. Those parties which would, in the early 1830s at the time of the Reform bill strife in the English Parliament, become known as "liberal" and "conservative" were, as is the case in the United States today, both simply different degrees of "right of center" conservatism. Basically, the Whigs who were to become the liberals, protected the interests of monied men and their enterprises, while the Tories who would become known as conservatives protected the landed interest and the oligarchic ascendancy. The mobility of person between the two interests, and the commonality of the intersection of the two interests are stark evidence that neither, Mill nor anyone else accounted a political theorists, was referring to anything about the differences between liberality and conservatism which would be recognizable to modern Europeans, including the English. The only ones who might fall for such a dodge might be the Americans.
Among the Tories, the so-called conservatives of their day, there were Peelite and Canning Tories, as well as the garden variety Tories. Peel was responsible for the creation of the metropolitan police and the repeal of the corn laws, and sponsored public education--all of these measures on the basis of a concept that a well-educated and "enlightened" working class would support the conservative values of the landed interests--he fel that the "commons" and the aristocracy were natural allies. The Canningites were as amenable to "social reform," but opposed parliamentary (i.e., electoral) reform. The last thing which Whigs had ever envisioned for their party was parliamentary reform--formed during the Restoration of Charles II, they were originally an alliance of aristocracy and merchants and bankers, with those aristocrats whose monied interests lead them to abandon the landed interests and to join those mercantile members of the middle class whose wealth had lead to rise above "the common run." They were the power behind the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, and, just like their Tory opponents, inherently believed in the right of the aristocracy and the monied men to lead, and of the commons to be lead. The principle difference between them were simply matters of degree of conservatives, with the Whigs wanting to strip even more power from the crown to the benefit of Parliament--and the Tories simply wanted the same class in power, but had fantasies of the excellence of the concept of the divine right of kings.
The Whigs self-destructed with the Reform Act of 1832, which Lord Grey had passed amid great political strife, and had cannily laid the lap of the Tories by appointing a committee of Tories to actually carry out the specific terms of reform. But the electoral reform brought in the real middle class and some of the "better sort" of the working class, and the old Whigs died in the creation the Liberal Party. As in all such revolutionary situations, once assured of their franchise, those who gained it in 1832 were no longer interested in parliamentary innovation, and stood four-square behind Palmerston, who declared that there would only be parliamentary reform over his dead body--which was literally true, he died in 1865, and there was not another reform bill until 1869.
Claiming that Mill speaks for liberalism is ludicrous, to say the least.
