My view, to the surprise of no one, is that the best support of the troops is victory. Pursue that, and your support for our loyal brave soldiers, sailors, zoomies and jarheads, even our Coasties, is unmistakable.

Pretending to claim good feelings for our military while undermining a can't-be-wrong war against antidemocracy simply wraps fascist-symp villainy in a socially acceptable American flag -- and the people in uniform would hawk a lugie up on your shoes. Better not wear sandals for that occasion.

Thank you, Serp. I seem to be the Carborundum (tm) that makes 'em sore. UT told me I'm abrasive. He doesn't -- yet -- credit that should the opposition come up with a good idea, I'll listen. Until they do, traction they don't get -- with or without abrasives.

Converted him away from communism. He remained, nevertheless, a socialist.

Please, UG, don't start throwing Runnymede at me. Runnymede was not the beginning of limited monarchichal prerogatives. The Charter of Liberties was declared invalid before it ever took hold. It contained a few nice ideas and the beginnings, of a nascent sense amongst the Baronage, of themselves as a seperate set of interests from the King. It also contained a hell of a lot of individual grievances and claims which were entirely in keeping with the times. It was signed as a timebuying measure and failed to prevent the civil war which followed. It was lost and rediscovered centuries later and has become considered great only in retrospect.

America's cause is not Humanity's cause. No more than the British Empire's cause was Humanity's cause. There are many ways to forge democracies and America's democracy is not the only model nor America democracy's only purveyor.

Arrogant. Arrogant, arrogant fool to think you are the One People who can save the world. The One People who have the answer.

Corrected.

I'm an American too, and UG speaks for me with the same authority as he does when he speaks for Humanity. He's one guy--not America, not Humanity. Quit enabling his delusions of grandeur.

America's cause is democracy's cause, and humanity is best served by democracy -- the more of it the better. DanaC, you cannot show the thesis to be false. Quit living in denial. Where did you ever get the idea that I only believe in America's particular take on democratic social order? I don't; I've seen plenty of workable democracies elsewhere in the world.

It is that which is not democracy against which I set my face. If it takes arrogance to win out against the idiot brutalities of less-than-democracy, by all means pile on the arrogance and make humanity's worst temporal foe extinct. No one on God's green Earth need live any other way, and usually living some other way sucks to a great or a greater degree. I've seen non-democracy, I've seen fake-democracy, and neither are worth more than the powder to blow them up. Once they are blown up, how much misery will have fled the world?

Why tolerate a political order where only one man, the dictator, has any rights? Is or is that not a recipe for maximum misery?

I tell you, arrogance is far better than the supineness you're propounding as a virtue, DanaC. Quit your complaining and devote your energy to breaking fascists so they stay broken, impotent, emasculated, and eviscerated. Fascists in one or more of these conditions are good and beautiful fascists -- for they cannot get in the way of democracy, the enlightened social order.

Orwell is one of the people who made certain the English speaking world understands socialism and totalitarianism are bad ideas, to be rejected.

I'm afraid I must reject your pleas of "please." They are the worst advice I've seen this week. You don't want to turn into the kind of nutter tw is. I hadn't considered before today that you might risk that.

Bleh.

What the Berkeley CC did was absurd.

Hey, the Marines are our guys. We need them and they are accountable to us.

Blackwater..now that I'm not so sure of. As a private contractor, they are beholden only to their stockholders. The less Marines, the more Blackwaters.
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/job_fairs/default.asp

I'm not too sure if I want anyone from Berkley in my Army.

It's the aging Hippies that are in power. They don't necessarily represent the whole population, older, younger or non-activist.

I am with BigV, you don't speak for all Brits, at least we understand that.:cool:

Here's Berkeley's pinkos.

The "Travel to Exotic Lands. Meet Exciting and Unusual People -- And Kill Them" quote is a copy from 1960s anti-Vietnam posters.

Too bad the protesters haven't figured out that Marines aren't the ones that declare war. Their protest has no larger impact than annoying an office of Marines, and pissing a few people off that they are so stupid.

Again, why aren't they protesting at their state representatives office? That's the appropriate forum.

I have no problem with protesters. I do have a problem with protesters that take their frustration out on the wrong people.

They seem to be more effective at getting their message heard this way You are on the other side of the country, and you have heard their message. It's working.

Getting the message heard is not the same thing as bringing someone over to your way of thinking. My guess is that most people who have heard about this who aren't already strongly and resolutely anti-war were turned off by this form of protest.

the method of protest/argument DOES matter. Think it doesn't? Think about some of the points that Radar argues. If he were to drop the "I'm right and you're stupid approach" followed up with repeating the previous point with larger type, would you have such a strong gut reaction of disagreement with his posts?

I'd agree with that.

Phelps and the Westborough Baptist Church are good at getting their message heard too, but are converting no-one. These guys are the flip side of that same coin.