Watch the Overheated Rhetoric, PF People - Big Brother is Watching!

Since I'm inclined to agree with everything in your post up to this point, pardon me for proceeding to your last points:

The people who have constructed and bought into the cult of personality that surrounds him. I'm not saying you're one of them, but they're out there...

A fair point in too many instances...

That's not what I said. I said that the there's more to the Patriot Act than constitutionally suspect provisions of the law. As I stated earlier, I don't see maintaining liberty and security as a mutually exclusive endeavor. From what I have read of the Act, it appears to me that the constitutional concerns in the Act could have been addressed.

Granted, I should have stated that some of the provisions in the Act possibly could have prevented the attacks, and that assessment is based on the information that the government had in its hands after it detained Zacarias Moussaoui:

Of course, hindsight is 20/20...

I think you have me confused with several other posters. The closest I came to "defending" the police's actions was to point out that the authorities were acting under the provisions of the involuntary committal law that exists in the Commonwealth of Virginia. To reiterate my own position, I think the authorities overreacted and neglected to exercise due diligence and process, and the Raub case is an example of the troubling mistakes that can be made with laws such as the involuntary committal law in Virginia.

I don't know that it is a matter of honesty so much as a matter of consistency.

 

Fist off let say thanks for the link to the interview with Raub, nice catch!

Sure, I can also say there is (small but) good parts to the Affordable Care Act that we call ObamaCare! Does that mean I want Romney to weed thru it once he takes the Office? No I want it gone! Yet we are at the cross hair in this debate an likely there is no great moment of conclusion. You suggest we can do a little but that person wants more, I say "H-ell" with it all, just live your lives knowing that at any time you could be the next to die. In reality I believe I'm correct, its best to live life freely then to live life worrying an trying to safequard what one can never be safe from.

Yet we are trying to be secure via the government an what has it brought us? You think adding more security will give us greater liberty or less, so far we have less. So I really don't see your search for the balance is going to proceed but we only have to look around an see its been a real clusterf*ck so far! So far within a few short years we seen the Partiot Act, ObamaCare, Obamabank an now the ObamaNet (just to name a few), what is next, what great thing is Romney gonna give us? Gee I can't wait to see what the next Fuhrer has instore for us in the name of "Security". I seriously doubt it will be as good as the Constitution was, "Was" being the keyword for now it stands for nothing according to our Government an Raub incident is just one sample of it.

 

Interesting post but I must pick you up here. For me Empires maintain themselves mainly by soft power - at least that was the case with the Roman and British Empires both of which operated through proxies. It is entirely accurate to talk about Pax Americana as the successor to Pax Brittanica and Pax Romana, after WW2. The weakness of America today is not in its hard power but in its complete renunciation of soft power. That is why not just America but the whole concept of the Enlightenment, the French and American Revolutions, and liberty itself is regarded as hypocrisy in the emerging world. There is always a place for Hard Power but it must be blended with soft power. America also resembles Empires in having people from time to time who do not understand this. All Empires have their thugs and Rumsfeld's determination to project Power rather than ideology has been the undoing of the West internationally. Obama said a lot of encouraging things about soft power but has failed to deliver them.

The US needs to be an Empire. Without this it will decline. And the US seems to be choosing decline as its preference as it lurches twoards isolationism.

 

marxist doubletalk and gibberish

 

I wasn't addressing your post.

I expect to be harassed by those who post neo-Nazi anti-semitic filth. It must be because I am getting to them.

Your response is infantile. Elsewhere you post how much you admire Nazi Germany, and you talk of "**************" and "the Jew". Consequently everything you post has to be taken in this context of race politics and anti-semitism and those who engage with you, unaware of the extremism in what you post, should be made aware of it. Thank-you for giving me the opportunity to do so again.

 

I don't care what you're addressing. Get over yourself, son.

Oh no..I'm crushed by your disapproval. *yawn*

Where did I use the words "**************"? Quote that for me.
"The Jew"..yes..you got me..I call jews...jews..How do they refer to themselves? "theinnocentvictimsofevilnaziswhowantedtokill6millionofus"

More meaningless doubletalk

 

America cannot be both free and an empire. The greatest threat to American freedom is the federal govt.

Either America has a limited federal govt. or it will have no federal govt.

A limited federal govt. cannot pursue an ambitious foreign policy.

 

I'm not sure why we need to be an empire? In fact our system of governence runs against the grain of what an empire would need to sustain itself via policy. How can we be a serious empirical power when every two years a total change of governence can occur, not to mention every 4 years we can have a new potus! Lets not even take into the effect of State Powers. These facts alone would back up the idea that the USA doesn't make a effective empirical power. Our soft power comes via international trade that is controlled via corporations and individuals that is not under control of the federal government. Now some would like that changed but it would take another civil war do achieve it.

Even saying that, the great expierment is about individual freedom, not a powerful federal government, it is here that is causing the great rub today in our political discourse. I for one support the idea or the message that America, is not this day gonna act as the empirical power an that corporations have to understand that the blood of our troops nor the the treasury of our People will be use to defend corporate interest. Why you think corporations are so willing to invest monies into otherwise seemingly volatile nations such as China? Do they actually believe that if one day a Nation such as China or smaller says "Doors Shut" that the People will act on their behalf with force may it be hard or soft? The Progressive Right has suggested the need to keep a powerful military complex just for this reason! Yet when they espouse this nonsense they only say Europe but even at that, what interest does the US have in Europe that would compel us to send in troops? Its all corporate/bank interest! Unless they fall back into a WW then that of course is a different story.

 

This whole argument is based on an assumption of what an Empire is. It completely ignores the reality of Empires. Take the British Empire, for example. Britain ran India, a continent of hundreds of millions of people which was divided into hundreds of statelets, with just two thousand civil servants. Britain's imperial rule was not based on coercion but on "soft" power and the successful indoctrination of those being governed that Pax Brittanica - the civilization brought by Britain - was a thoroughly good thing. The Maharajah's of India were educated at Britain's finest schools with the sons of the British elite. There is no way that India was maintained in the Empire by permanent military force, although some dreadful massacres did take place. Domination was by a combination of military force and soft power (again, trade, but also culture). Even in America this was the case as Britain gave Americans the same institutions that Englishmen had - representative assemblies. They just didn't give those assemblies the same rights that English parliamentarians had: the right to be consulted on taxation. It would have been relatively easy for a wise government in Britain to have kept the thriteen colonies. They would just have to have given into to the initial demands of taxation WITH representation. Historians widely except that radicals like Tom Paine (himself from the school of English radicalism) would have been ignored had not George III totally inflamed the situation. The American Revolution itself is a perfect example of the inadequacy of hard power and the under estimation of the strength of soft power.

The British Empire was always fundamentally about Trade. It operated with a government that frequently changed with elections, largely drawn along the same political lines that Americans were - conservatives and liberals. Whigs and Tories. In fact the USA eventually could not resist imperial temptation and was found in Asia (Chinese people see Americans as no less imperialist than British). Even when the Opium Wars were initiated by the British, there was strong support for Britain from the USA because the USA understood that this was about trade, not conquest. Conquest only existed to facilitate change and no number of readings of the Rights of Man would prevent American concessions in China or the annexation of the Phillippines.

It has been the same with the American post WW2 Empire. Effectively Britain for the second half of the twentieth century was an American vassal state. The USA was the imperial power, with bases all through Europe and Western European politicians did its bidding in exactly the same way that the Indian maharajahs did. The American Empire defeated the Russian Empire (which was a far more despotic affair but one based on vassal states nonetheless). American soft power was not just about Levis and Coca Cola though. It was about democracy. In 1989 Chinese students looked to Lady Liberty for liberation even as they sang the communist hymn the Internationale. The tanks rolled over their bones. But American liberty was their inspiration and it was based on the actions of the State - the Voice of America, and the role of America and its allies in secuing bastions of freedom around the world.

Why would neo-Nazis term this "Marxist"? Well because this is neo-conservativism - the belief that democracy is the last best hope of all mankind ("the cause of all mankind" as Paine called it in 1776) and that Americans and other democrats have a duty to spread this ideology. This is the equivalent of the "white man's burden" in the British Empire, the belief that the USA has a duty to evangelize democracy around the world and to sacrifice short term interests (such as alliances with Saudi Arabia) to this long term objective. This is the Project for a New American Century which most conservatives recognize as being linked to the GOP but neo-Nazis see (as you can see on this thread) as "Marxist". How is it "Marxist"? Well because the neo-ons and PNAC are largely made up of Jews. And Jews are all Bolsheviks, according to the neo-Nazis in our midst.

Yes this is the usual economic illiteracy that underpins the New Right. Don't be captivated by its folksy appeal! Do you really believe that the USA can continue to grow without new markets? Liberty, if you really belive in it, surely means that an owner - even a collective owner such a group of shareholders in a public company - can choose to move their money wherever they like. How is a government imposing barriers on that freedom any kind of liberty? Trade with China is already creating new markets for Western goods (just as Europe opened up new markets for both American capital and American goods). The potential scope for mutual benefit of a quarter of the world's population enjoying an Industrial Revolution - with the vast new markets that would create - is enormous. This potential can only really be realized on the same basis that the USA and Europe realized it - with an emerging middle class that enjoys political power through democracy.

Innovation for America has not all been "Made in America" either. The proliferation of the internet, i-phones, computers etc. could never have been possible without cheap Chinese labour. Designed in California, Made in China has been a blueprint for economic development in the last decades. American conservatives would still have North Carolina a home to textile mills, rather than the new technology that is springing up in places like Raleigh Durham. These are short sighted troglodytes just holding onto some folksy vision. When asked how they would get economic groth they start to resemble the half crazed ecologists on the Left - "what's so good about economic growth?" they will argue, as they start to spin their primitive visions about taking America backwards to the nineteenth century. What is needed is American Leadership, that was so good for the world post WW2 and eventually prevailed over communism. There is still a job to do here. The prize is the American Revolution being "for all mankind" and the rights of man to be really universal, as Thomas Paine intended way back then.

 

Yet our leadership, that made America such a succesful Nation is not immediatly transferable with Soft or Hard Power. Paine's writings and beliefs were base on limited understanding, as so noted here by Franklin that a lot of People will not except but yet proven at the end of the French Revolution.

The soft power you speak of, the power of America as seen in the days of the founding an I would argue the power that inable us to move forward an get pass such things as the Civil War without really missing a beat is that we as a People have the sensiblity to understand that there is something greater then ouselves. Yet with out that what would we be? That is what Paine had problems with and why he was so disgusted with the end of the French Revolution, because his ideas failed an he knew Franklin was correct.

Yet if you can figure a way to export American Freedom to others in a way that the others except it and understand that their is a greater good to be served in the idea that every man that pursues his self interest is indeed serving the best interest of the society then yes you might have something, but I would suggest it is folly. Yet if you do please start here in the USA, it seems in the last 100 years that ability is quickly evaporating from our society.

 

Thank-you for an intelligent reply (such a rare thing round these parts!!!). It is a very interesting (and beautifully written of course) piece from Franklin. It seems that he is basically telling Paine though to hide his principles (and it is this message you want to get to me). Just to be clear, because I don't think you mean this, the point is NOT that American values require religion for their universality. Religion, in this sense, can be seen as an "anti-Enlightenment" philosophy and therefore you are arguing (I think) that American values (which are no different from British Whig values when all is said and done) will have a problem with the denunciations that they will receive from the cultures of Confucianism, and Buddhism and Hinduism etc. that they will need to engage in to prevail in these societies. Franklin argues for a more subtle and less open approach. Some might even say a Straussian approach, that pure reason is too much for the common people to digest without their "God" being accommodated somewhere. Franklin, the atheist, the first neocon, requiring a God to keep the masses in line.

Paine didn't take much notice though, did he? I think that you only have to look at the writings of Zhao Ziyang to see how Franklin's lack of confidence in reason certainly does not prevail today (if it ever did). Zhao was the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party who supported the Tian an Men students (those who raised Lady Liberty as their icon outside the seat of power in China only to be mown down by the military in the streets of Muxudi). Of course this movement for freedom and democracy was imbued with Chinese - and Confucian - thinking and confidence, but perhaps (possibly thanks to Marxism, ironically) also imbued with Enlightenment Thinking and "Western" liberalism. Zhao supported the students openly when General Secretary and paid for this by being put under house arrest for the rest of his life. But we have his writings now and he increasingly saw Western democracy as an unstoppable world-wide trend. He also saw this in the tradition of the British educated "Father of Modern China" Sun Yat Sen. He called for this though in a Confucian way, suggesting that the Communist Party needed the competition of free elections for its own benefit. This was a powerful voice to challenge the corrupt oligarchy that has been emerging at the helm of Chinese power. It is becoming clear that this prescient man was the force behind Deng Xiao Peng and the modernization of China that has led to hundreds of millions of human beings being lifted out of brutalization and poverty.

It is in my opinion essential that new Zhaos arise, in China and India etc., as learned political leaders who can solve the problem that Franklin presented - that of squaring the rationalism of the European Enlightenment with their "religion" or culture. We will really have liberalism with Chinese characteristics. These new leaders will be highly sensitized both to the history of liberty and freedom and its culture as well as the rich cultural inheritance that they have in their own part of the world. It is essential then for both Paine and Franklin's ideals, of universal inalienable rights and for the "free world" as a whole, that we see the world's six and a half billion people take up the heritage of the American (and even the French) revolutions. America simply must not lose its way into an isolationist nationalism and fundamentalist Christian superstition.

If Franklin wished to "spin" Paine's words so they accommodated these Tories then he was wrong. Even brilliant men can be hesistant when faced with the unpredictability of the people. Paine lacked this condescension. He was not coy. Gentle doctors leave stinking wounds. Paine pulled no punches in the end and his writings turned colonies that would have settled for any reasonable compromise from the Crown into radical nests of rebels. America must continue to lift the lamp beside the golden door. When Zhou En Lai was asked if he thought the French Revoltion had been a success he quipped: "it is much too early to say". He was right. The struggle for liberty is the "cause of all mankind". It is yet to be won.

 

yet another foreigner chiming in.... how very quaint, thanks so much for your worthless opinion, I'm sure our own in house idiots couldn't have provided such stupid insights... you out do yourself in this drivel... Stay the (*)(*)(*)(*) out of our workings, lest you give us a reason to get into your (*)(*)(*)(*)hole nation's internal workings... Please temp me.... Which exact (*)(*)(*)(*)hole are you in today??? No fears, I'll hit them all if needed...

 

Do you know who said "the world is my country, to do good is my religion?".

Do you know where he was born? I don't know whether this post of yours here is the usual fratboy infantilism that you post or just a result of frustrated incoherence as I pick your drivelly posts to pieces so easily.

You know I might actually have the beginnings of a serious conversation going here with someone. You can try and flamebait and derail it if you want, but if you follow it you might learn something about "your" country.

As to where I am, that made me chuckle. I know it's frustrating for people who never leave their county to read about citizens of the world like me and Tom Paine. The frog in the well had the same problem. Oops, there I go, giving you the answer to the opening question I posed here. Well, now you can google him and find out who he was...and the relevance this freethinking radical had to your own country.

This is an international site. If you don't want to talk to anyone but merkuns then why don't you find another forum to illuminate with your intellectual brilliance. I dare say Paine and Franklin will be having a good laugh at your expense seeing as you could hardly get them away from Paris or London in their day!

 

You drink Dos Equis, don't you, Heroclitus? The commercial is a fantasy, dude. What you drink doesn't really make you interesting.

 

I see the posse is out doing border patrol tonight! Don't shoot too many Mexicans please.

Here is some news for you boys. Other countries don't carry the same commercials as the USA. If you think about it hard enough you might grasp it. Maybe.

Corporations use different marketing methods in different markets.

In the USA, for example, some corporations (particularly those who cater to racist fratboys with no taste and no brains) like to market beer to knuckledragging meatheads. They don't use these commercials in more discerning, sophisticated markets.

It's a long time since I was south of the Mason Dixon line, where I have many good friends. But this means that I haven't seen the favourite commercials of white trailer trash for a long time too. Still, once you get away from the freedom luvin dry counties, I expect anyone who does drink beer over sweet tea is a tad more interesting. In the rest of the world we have other ways of distinguishing between the ignorant and the cultured.

You live in Alaska, so you know I couldn't possibly be talking to you bruv. I mean that's a haven of elitism and sophistication compared to Dixie now 'aint it?

 

Sure he took notice, he seem to have great respect for Franklin. Yet he did not take Franklin's advice, after his book was published he took a monstrous beating in the public eye. Everyone came against him, he lived the rest of his life basic isolation, he had no one. When he died they buried him in a middle of a empty field as the population didn't want him in one of the graveyards.

I surely wouldn't say that Christianity is a superstition, an I don't remember Franklin being a athiest. Yet in America there is a strong bond to Nationalism/Patriosism like any other Nation, yet our enlightenment I do believe came from a healthy belief of Christianity and a Church that thrive peacefully within our Nation. You might even say a strong community or a local downhome type of Christianity. I'm sure other religions have the same effect if peaceful an its teaching is that of personal and moral duty of a greater good. I do agree with Franklin, a society if it to be kept together has to have a common thread of moral and intelligence to guide its people, we seem to have lost both of late.