Jerry Falwell.

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 ;)

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.

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

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.

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.