Why Obama's Association with Bill Ayers should disqualify him from the Presidency
I've heard several people claim that it is unfair for John McCain and Sarah Palin to attack Barack Obama over his association with Bill Ayers. They say alternately that the association was not a close one, or that Bill Ayers is a perfectly respectable figure in Chicago politics who many people associated with
( Read more... )
Reply
Reply
Reply
Please, open your eyes!
Reply
Only fools believe that only wars waged in evil causes kill innocents.
Reply
The US government is elected democratically through elections, and has a system of checks and balances in place. That you disagree with its actions doesn't change that it was sent there by the populace as a whole, and that does give it moral legitimacy beyond that of a single citizen or dictator deciding to take violence into his or her own hands. Indeed, the capacity for any government to reserve the right to violence to itself is an excellent barometer of its capabilities as a whole: if a private citizen is permitted to commit acts of violence without sanction by the standing government, the situation is little different from anarchy. I, for one, do not see the romance in a Hobbesian state that the anarchists do, given what tends to happen after governments collapse (which see: looting in Iraq after GWII, Somalia, Haiti, etc).
Reply
Indeed. Not only was their last bomb meant as a shrapnel anti-personnel device to be targeted against civilians, but according to an FBI undercover agent, the Weathermen talked openly among themselves of having to re-educate and possibly murder at least 25 million Americans once they were victorious.
The US government is elected democratically through elections, and has a system of checks and balances in place. That you disagree with its actions doesn't change that it was sent there by the populace as a whole, and that does give it moral legitimacy beyond that of a single citizen or dictator deciding to take violence into his or her own hands.
Ayers and Dohrn were perfectly free too, for instance, campaign to get people to vote against the war. They chose violence because what they wanted was a revolution which they knew they lacked sufficient support to achieve electorally.
Indeed, the capacity for ( ... )
Reply
It is a "crime" to come to the aid of an ally under attack?
If flying to the other side of the world, and dropping napalm on poor men, women and children, and burning their food and homes, is not terrorism, then nothing is.
Separating and answering your (implicit) propositions:
(1) Why does the fact that the ally under attack was on the "other side of the world" render coming to the defense of that ally immoral? Might this same argument be used against, for instance, intervention in Darfur (which is also located at such distances)?
(2) You wrongly characterize the Vietnam War as "dropping napalm on poor men, women and children." This is a common misstatement, but it betrays a considerable ignorance of the military history of the war. In fact, American attacks were far more precisely targetted than was common in 1960's warfighting. What makes your statement especially disgusting is that we were fighting an enemy which ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Such is necessary to avoid worse evils. If governments are not morally permitted to defend their people, the people who form such governments will be conquered by other governments lacking those scruples. If individuals are to be granted the same moral authority to make war as governments, then the inevitable consequence is violent anarchy, with each group or individual killing at will, until one group strong enough to impose order conquers all.
I prefer liberal democracy to such an outcome.
Your abstractions are meaningless.The abstraction of the "state" is quite meaningful, and indeed it is impossible to understand history at all without reference to the existence of ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Quite true. It was a war in defense of the Republic of Viet Nam, which was an ally of the United States of America. The United States of America was quite representative of the American people, because it was a functional liberal democracy; the Republic of Viet Nam only imperfectly so, because it was an authoritarian dictatorship. OTOH, the People's Democratic Republic of Viet Nam was even less representative of its people, because North Vietnam was a totalitarian dictatorship and hence needed even less than South Vietnam to please its populace.
The known history of East Asia (North Korea and South Korea, Red China and Nationalist China) strongly implies that East Asian dictatorships of the South Vietnamese type tend to evolve into actual democracies; while those of the North Vietnamese type at best evolve into merely strongly-authoritarian dictatorships (modern Red China) and at worst into monstrously-totalitarian dictatorships (modern North Korea). ( ... )
Reply
Based on my study of history you are mostly right about the origin of states. However, you are assuming too much when you assume that the Big Men who made themselves rulers of the first chiefdoms had evil intent, and that all their successors did as well.
Furthermore, you are making the seriously-flawed unexamined assumption that the alternative to states would be freedom: historically, the alternative to states is usually violent anarchy, the cessation of all but the most heavily-escorted trade, and the common folk living in constant terror of violent death. There is a reason why most states have had little difficulty finding loyal supporters, and the reasons ( ... )
Reply
Reply
If you don't have a better alternative, then all your verbiage amounts to meaningless griping -- a man saying "Damn, it's hot today!" while doing nothing to either change the weather or seek the shade. Logically, when presented with a number of choices, such as between political systems, one chooses the best of the AVAILABLE ALTERNATIVES, one does not whine "I don't like any of these" and sulk. And if one does so, one would be a fool to expect others to mistake this sulk for a well-thought-out political position.
I have studied history, I am aware of many political systems which have existed or been proposed. Of these, the one which seems to have worked best now, and have the best chance of working well in the future, is liberal democracy with respect for the life, liberty and property of its ( ... )
Reply
Logically, when presented with a number of choices, such as between political systems, one chooses the best of the AVAILABLE ALTERNATIVES...
And who presents me with these choices, if not my fellow men - specifically, those who would rule over me? And why are they any more fit to impose their social arrangements onto me than I am to impose mine onto them? I refuse to make a choice between political systems because I choose to reject politics, i.e. institutionalized murder, robbery and fraud. If asked by a sadistic doctor to choose, out of myriad horrible diseases, the one with which I would like myself and others to be afflicted, I would likewise reject such a self-destructive choice, and choose to remain healthy instead.
...the one which seems to have worked best now, and have the best chance of working well in the future, is liberal democracy with respect for the life, liberty and property of its citizens central to its constitution.If you believe, regardless of what the Constitution says, that the U.S ( ... )
Reply
Leave a comment