Russ makes a fuss

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by glatt

So what's your take on Bush's displeasure in the democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine? Is he inherently wrong for opposing the results of a democratic election?

I seem to recall a fellow named Hitler getting elected too -- once, anyway. And Hamas has a similarly genocidal bent, just to enhance the resemblance! Surely you are not so naive as to expect something good to come out of the genocidal shitheads coming out on top?

Does anyone even expect civility and good order of a state run by Hamas? I'd say the evidence is all the other way: these are people who by their own words are committed to making a people vanish, and from a land they once had, yet, and had it before the current batch of "look at us, we're the victims here" bomb makers. (I don't buy it when somebody claims he's the victim, but behaves like the perp.) Anyone who thinks the Israelis will quietly go along with Hamas' genocidal program has slipped the bonds of reality in a large way.

It's absurd to get grabby over a former Ottoman province that amounted to nothing until a bunch of highly motivated Jews moved in and made a success of the place. Now, we get "give it back!"

[jinx]

Eddie Izzard

We stole countries! That's how you build an empire. We stole countries with the cunning use of flags! Sail halfway around the world, stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain." And they're going, "You can't claim us. We live here! There's five hundred million of us." "Do you have a flag?" "We don't need a flag, this is our country you bastard!"

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I agree with your last point, Kits, though not with much else. While the Democrats haven't been selling anything I've wanted to buy for sixteen years now, and that's a looooong time for a major party in a democracy to lose my interest, the Dems seem to me particularly untrustworthy nowadays. They just keep getting worse and worse, to the point where I am no longer aghast at their antics but merely disgusted. Look at them: tax and spend is still their shibboleth. Socialism and economic illiteracy their policy and watchword. They have no plan to win the war better than the one the Republicans are implementing, so any war-winning effort and policy will be the Republican package with a big donkey sticker on it -- not exactly truth in advertising, is it?

All this says to me, "Friends don't let friends vote Democratic."

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

I knew I was doing some bad writing there but I had to get to work. I was referring to the LPs comittment to the Bill of Rights and to FDR's famous "freedom from" speech. Two different concepts of what constitutes freedom.

[richlevy]

I already heard this ridiculed and lambasted on Fox 'fair and balanced'. One guy even used the 'T' word again.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Griff

I knew I was doing some bad writing there but I had to get to work. I was referring to the LPs comittment to the Bill of Rights and to FDR's famous "freedom from" speech. Two different concepts of what constitutes freedom.

They're the same concept, really. You can't have one without the other in any meaningful way.

[Griff]

No. That is a very personal thing. What you are calling freedom I'd call security and it comes at the cost of others' freedom. I would say that the first generation of Americans were more free than we are now but by the "freedom from" definition they were less free. People chose the frontier because they were free to risk ashedding the limitations of their society. This is why the federal system had so much potential before it was essentially destroyed, folks could choose the level of risk they were willing to take by living in a place that matched their personal definition. I understand that we live in a mass society now and the frontier is closed but people are the constant.