kojikun wrote:...But they don't mean just the right, they mean that it is the DUTY of a people to abolish a wrong and injust government...
And therein lies the rub-- one person's tyrant state is another persons Garden of Eden. Sopmetimes it is obvious, ie in Nazi Germany, that a wrong is being comitted but here we have shades of grey and moral relativism being spun by both sides to justify things that others do not want.
I mention gun control because it is a subject I am familiar with not because I want to steer the discussion that way-- but you have, in the same society, one guy who feels he cannot live free and safe unless he is armed against potential criminals; and right next door to him is another guy who feels that the availability of any weapon to the public endangers him.
How can these two people be reconciled?
Same with abortion and several other topics. Privacy is big: when does Public Safety, a good thing, cross over into Big Brother Monitoring?
Something about Libertarianism always bothered me. Then one day, I realized what it was:
Libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to the phrase, "Work Will Make You Free."
In Libertarianism, there is no Government, so the Bosses are free to exploit the Workers.
In Communism, there is no Government, so the Workers are free to exploit the Bosses.
So in Libertarianism, man exploits man, but in Communism, its the other way around! If all you want to do is have some harmless, mindless fun, go H3RE INST3ADZ0RZ!! Grrr! Fight my Brute, you pansy!
I have neighbors who own guns. I feel they should be made illegal by and large, save for light- to medium-power handguns and certain types of rifles. We speak regularly. I am very friendly with several, in fact. To claim that issues like that are irreconcilable is folly. For some people, gun control isn’t exactly an issue on which to develop a lifestyle and outlook.
And by the way, I’m Jewish. I resent all these notions that self-appointed representatives of Zionism run the country. Try to keep in mind that the strong, vocal links between Christian fundamentalists and Israeli hardliners is extremely new; in an infantile state, if you will. Most American ties to Israel can be linked to one of three more basic pillars:
(1) Moral guilt and mistaken impressions of responsibility; most American Presidents fear they’ll ignite a backlash of accusations of anti-Semitism (from all sides) were they to abandon Israel; the move could easily be called arbitrary by an opponent and thus spoil a political career.
(2) Cold War politics; Israel was one a lynchpin of the American proxy system in the Persian Gulf. Not only did the Jewish state develop nuclear weapons of their own capable of reaching the Caucasus, but they also successfully discredited a string of Arab régimes flirting with the notion of Islamic Socialism. The same strings that hold us firm to Taiwan in an age of closer relations to mainland China are similarly – if not even more tightly – related to our support for Israel.
(3) The “American” factor; Israel is home to thousands of dual citizens.
I fail to see how the Zionists control American foreign policy however. Neoconservatives might agree on support for Israel, but that’s as much agreement in the post-September 11th period as anything else. If you ask me, support for Israel has never been more tenuous in the United States – not to mention what some are now calling a similar school of opposite thought in Europe, which is eminently pro-Palestinian courtesy of human rights activists. While I’d chalk up some of the French or German resentment to recent immigrants from North Africa, I’m loath to imply that Jews have nearly as much power in the United States as is reputed.
