The Way I Figure It

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yes, but some yes or no questions are a trap and require further clarification.

[Cyber Wolf]

Ahh, political jargon and the Language of the Law.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Yes, but some yes or no questions are a trap and require further clarification.

Agreed. In which case, the answer should be carefully parsed to find out precisely what was said.

[Radar]

Any votes for Kerry or Bush are wasted votes. Actually any vote for Bush is a vote for treason, violations of civil rights, irresponsible decisions with the economy and environment, violations of the Constitution and international law, tyrrany, injustice, spying on Americans, lies, and a vote for the destruction of everything that is great about America....and a vote for Kerry is a wasted vote because it says you want more of the same crap that brought us to the brink of destruction.

Kerry and Bush are two heads on the same monster.

[garnet]

Originally Posted by Radar

Any votes for Kerry or Bush are wasted votes....and a vote for Kerry is a wasted vote because it says you want more of the same crap that brought us to the brink of destruction.

Kerry and Bush are two heads on the same monster.

I agree to an extent, but it seems that voting for Kerry is the only way we're going to get Bush out of office. I'm not a huge Kerry fan and I know voting for him is basically a sell out, but isn't it better to vote for Kerry and get someone in office who is at least a little better than Bush?

[Trilby]

Define "a little better" please. I want to know what side dishes come with my order.

[Cyber Wolf]

"A little better" basically means "not Bush."

[Trilby]

I am going (against all better, higher-functioning, judgment) to play stick-poke with all-you-all ("all you all" is a Southern expression--ask anyone)---Look. I recall the march of the Nazi's only through my boyfriend, I've no first hand experience, but doesn't evil need to be confronted? No matter what? Hitler himself was amazed that he was not challenged when he took over the Rhineland. What to do?

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by Brianna

... but doesn't evil need to be confronted? No matter what?

Sure, but the catch is if you try to confront this evil, you're corraled in a Free Speech Zone far enough away from the evil so it won't notice you, or in more extreme cases, you get teargassed, nightsticked or shot at with non-lethal-but-still-capable-of-inflicting-serious-injury bullets.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Brianna

Look. I recall the march of the Nazi's only through my boyfriend, I've no first hand experience, but doesn't evil need to be confronted? No matter what? Hitler himself was amazed that he was not challenged when he took over the Rhineland. What to do?

First, the idea of 'good' and 'evil' exists in fictions such as Star Wars and with those who are the victor (therefore rewrite history for 3rd grade children). Who was good and evil during the Crusades? Who was the good and evil in Vietnam?

Was a pre-WWII Hitler evil? Perspective must be from that time; what was known then and not from what is preached today.

In reality, there are many opinions. Some are so extremist as to not be logically acceptable. But there is no evil. There are those who would pervert the fundamentals on which we live - ie they advocate that religious principles must be imposed on all others and that government should provide financial assistance to religious programs. If evil exists, then this religious extremism (ie Israel's Likud or Muslim Brotherhood) is classic evil in god's eye. If evil exists, it most often exists in perverted religions - the most common reason for the most deadly wars.

Return to the Rhineland (I assume you are talking about Czechoslovakia?). Who is suppose to confront 'evil'. The 'confronters must be defined before 'evil' can be defined. Therein lies the real problem. Those whose job it is to confront Hitler simply chose to pretend he did not do what he did. So where, back then, did evil exist? Those to confront evil did not exist, therefore evil did not exist. (Again you must use the prespective of those times to define evil).

WWII is a example of how powers are suppose to respond to aggression and fundamental violations of international order. First the local powers must do the job. If they fail, the region must take on responsibility. IOW many reasons for US wealth, power, scientific advancement, world leadership, etc is that we stayed out of the local problems until they became large enough to even involve us (we must wait for 'smoking gun' reasons). As a result, those problems costs America the least and left America with the most. It resulted in a more stable international community. It is a concept best described as 'containment'. A policy that works quite well all through history. The antynom of containment is pre-emption that creates things like a 30 Years War and a WWIII that started in Cuba).

So what does that mean we should be doing? Sticking our head into the sand like as ostrich? Obviously not. First we should do as we have been doing - ie. OAS (Organization of American States). It means we should be encouraging the world to do as Clinton was. Local powers must responsiblity for their own local problems. In Africa, we now have:

from The Economist of 11 Mar 2004
28 countries had ratified a protocol bringing an African Security Council into existence. This month foreign ministers meeting in Ethiopia will elect its 15 members for terms of three to five years. By next year the council may have an army to command. Leaders of the African Union agreed last weekend to form five brigades of soldiers, policemen and military observers, 15,000 people in all, to be led by South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt. There will be one brigade in each of five regions of the continent. Luckily, a barmy idea by Libya's President Muammar Qaddafi to scrap all national armies and form a single pan-African one was rejected.

This is not all. Five eminent Africans will form a “council of the wise” which is supposed to help prevent and resolve conflicts. A military committee will plan operations, just as military advisers help the UN's peacekeeping department. An “early-warning system” is supposed to tell officials when a war is looming. Malawi's President Bakili Muluzi suggests that a first test could be tackling the Lord's Resistance Army, a vicious Ugandan rebel group.

When we are so mentally deficient as to declare the world in terms of good and evil, then we get a President that does not even read his own memos; who waits for others to tell him what to decide. There is not 'good' and 'evil'. That is for religious extremists where anything contrary to their religious beliefs is evil. We have a world more complex - that means one now worships better 'bibles' - such as the Fundamental Declaration of Human Rights.

[Undertoad]

The Ds have resurrected the draft point and hard, when W clearly and pointedly answered the question in the second debate... even semantically to your liking, HM.

No excuse for this kind of behavior but we notice it on both sides

[Trilby]

You know what? There is such a thing as evil. Hitler's Germany was evil, what is going on in Darfur is evil--genocide is evil--I don't care what perspective you look at it from. The wholesale slaughter of human beings simply because they exsist and muck up your world view is evil. You are frightening.

TW's posts remind me of the conclusions in regard to the nature of evil made by Hannah Arendt:

"I mean that evil is not radical, going to the roots (radix), that is has no depth, and that for this very reason it is so terribly difficult to think about it, since thinking, by definition, wants to reach the roots. Evil is a surface phenomenon, and instead of being radical, it is merely extreme. We resist evil by not being swept away by the surface of things, by stopping ourselves and beginning to think, that is, by reaching another dimension than the horizon of everyday life. In other words, the more superficial someone is, the more likely will he be to yield to evil. An indication of such superficiality is the use of clichés, and Eichmann, ...was a perfect example."

[tw]

Originally Posted by Brianna

You know what? There is such a thing as evil. Hitler's Germany was evil, what is going on in Darfur is evil--genocide is evil--I don't care what perspective you look at it from. The wholesale slaughter of human beings simply because they exsist and muck up your world view is evil. You are frightening.

Either one is good or is evil? There is no other condition? Everything is judged in 'black and white' - also called extremism. 'Black and white' is how we teach primary school children who do not yet have the mental capacity to understand an adult world. In a real world, only those with child mentalities still see everything in terms of 'black and white' - 'good and evil'. Even adult Boston fans don't view the Yankees in such extremes. Unfortunately, those extremists are the same people who would also invade other nations for no legal or logical reason. It was called the Crusades. It was called the 30 Years War. Those who react to the world with a 'black and white' simplicity would then meet the definition of evil.

When asked how to identify good Christians from the bad Christians, the general said, "Kill then all. God will know his own." What happens when everything is viewed only in terms of 'good and evil'? Those who view the world with such simplistic judgements are frightening. It was called the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expected the Spanish Inquistion until everything was suddenly and only about 'good and evil'. Simplistic thinking is how George Jr will get relected: claiming everything only in the simplistic terms he understands - 'good and evil'.

Yes it is a rather serious problem. An easy mistake to make. Those who judge only in simple terms - 'good verse evil' - may be doomed to become evil. Explains why children make poor judges and leaders.

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by tw

(most recent post with lots of words)

That would explain what's going on in Bush's head, I suppose.