[QUOTE] by zipzip+++++
I think it is pretty clear that politicians in the US were using the ends justifies the means mentality to fight Communism. Bad men were allowed to remain in power to stem the tide of what was considered the greater evil -- expansionist Communism and possible Communist takeover of the entire world, including the West. Although I may not agree with the methods, I do agree with the aims.
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Thank you for reiterating my point. We are in complete agreement. It is not the aim, but having adapted the methods of bad men which have made our foreign policy practices inhumane.
[QUOTE] by zipzip+++++
Part of our problem in the prisons is that those people are in prison because they deserve to be there. In China you are probably there for some other reason. We have a lot of very free people in this country who are unfortunately free to do bad things and hurt other people.
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I see, people imprisoned in other countries have been wrongfully imprisoned, while people imprisoned in the US deserve it. And the reason why we have so many more bad people than any other country is because we are so free.
I guess then we should remove our freedoms, so we'd have better people, and need less jails.
Or is it that we should be happy having more and more of our people in prison to show how truly free we are?
Your statement has to be one of the biggest apologies for nationalistic fascism I ever heard.
In reality, our "problem" is that the US uses the justice system to enforce social norms, rather than strictly violent crimes or crimes with victims. And this trend is getting worse. Nonviolent persons who commit victimless crimes make up a large percentage of the prison population. Mostly drugs. Without our "war on drugs" and a few other normative based laws, we would not be where we are today.
I know some argue that drug use is not victimless. All I can say is: Prohibition. Once we stopped punishing people for violating social norms the US became less violent, less imprisoned, and more free.
But maybe you are right... I can't wait to see how free we get when Ashcroft starts his war on porn, and cigarettes and fatty foods are treated like drugs.
[QUOTE] by zipzip+++++
As far as your argument for Europe. Don't get me wrong, I have been to Europe recently and have a number of European friends that I have deep affection for. But by and large, Europeans are dissipated, work 30 h weeks (if you have ever had to work on a European timetable, you start to wonder how anything ever gets done -- these guys are lazy), pay incredibly high taxes (70%) to live in a coddling, stifling socialist network and allow the US to take the brunt of enforcement of UN resolutions when there are any. I do not see how Europe has been a lone champion of human rights in any way.
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That's right, first you say more prisons equals freedom, and now you say more work equals freedom.
Just because Europeans can actually make a living and raise a family and enjoy their lives and only HAVE to work 30some hours a week... that makes people lazy? Uhhhhhhh... things do get done over there, no matter your incredulity at that fact. As a bonus they get to spend more time with their family (if they want to) or work on personal projects. Oh the horror.
They pay such incredibly high taxes that.... what? Other than a high percentage, explain how that effects their livelihoods? Most European countries have living standards equivalent to the US. Scandinavian countries (which are the most socialist) have HIGHER standards of living, and much less poverty.
That is unlike here where we have such low taxes, but have to pay for medical insurance (and the sky high medical bills that the insurance companies refuse to pay), and education, and get little to no family leave, and no unemployment if we get laid off.
Then again only lazy bums aren't working their asses off 80 hours a week at two jobs and deserve to be in poverty, right?
I'll take "coddling, yet stifling" over "negligent, yet imprisoning" any day of the week.
And I love that last point. Europe lets the US take the brunt of enforcing UN resolutions? How about some context on that? The US pushes through resolutions that it alone wants and demands everyone else comply. When the rest of the world demands resolutions, the US shoots them down, or allows its friends to slide on them.
No country on the face of this planet has been the lone champion of human rights, especially the US. We may have attacked a lot of people using the pretext of human rights, but that is something completely different. We also have one of the largets economies (and militaries) so we CAN put more on the table. I'd love to see a percentage breakdown based on size. Anyone?
[QUOTE] by zipzip +++++
As far as the discussion topic of this thread goes -- it is a joke to hear Germany warn about the path to war -- c'mon, you are still smarting from giving the world Hitler. And France -- c'mon, the last time you were in this position, you let the Nazi war machine roll right over you unimpeded. Maybe we shouldn't go to war, but I would prefer that the histrionics not come from our European friends, who have a historical knack for screwing things up.
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The past is THE PAST. Start living in this millenium.
Or if you want to bring history into it, how about our running roughshod over the native americans and trampling the human rights of blacks and women. Looks like we have a historical knack for butchery, inhumanity, and ignoring the soveriegnty of other nations.
Hmmmmm, in fact the French supported our founding fathers and prevented us from being conquered (or retaken) by the British. Come to think of it they freed their slaves before we did.
But that's if you must keep looking backward rather than keeping your eye on the present.
[QUOTE] by zipzip +++++
As far as Israeli human rights...what exactly would you do different? The Arab world is rabidly anti-Semitic, period. These two groups cannot live together and never will, and I see no way out except isolation of the two groups. Obviously suicide bombings need to stop --these are murder and an act of war. If Canada started sending suicide bombers across the border, the border would be closed and/or we would go to war. I realize that the occupied territories are not Canada, but there is not good analogy because the PA is a demonstrably corrupt organization that funds terrorism against Israel.
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Wow, you got me on that one. I started by writing what I thought was a well reasoned argument which included:
1) observations of how the US handled similar situations in India-Pakistan and how we treated Milosevic when he handled Islamic terrorist organizations the same way Sharon has,
2) demonstrations of how corrupt Sharon's machine is, with his ties to terrorist groups (including the assassination of an Isreali Prime minister), his oft spoken policy of expansion and revenge for anyone trying to stop it, and his censure by both the UN and the Isreali government,
3) the possibility of defusing the popularity Islamic fundamentalist groups have by removing reasons for the general public to side with them, including ending the occupation and expansion of Isreali settlements as well as restoring basic human living conditions to the Palestinians,
4) creating networked law enforcment agencies to seek out terrorist groups on both sides and remove the revenge policy of Sharon.
But you know I just couldn't get over your point about the Arabs and Jews never being able to live next to each other, especially those rabidly anti-Semitic Arabs. You know they will never rest until the Jews are dead. And how can you keep them separate permanently?
That's when it hit me. The solution to all of the problems we've been talking about (from prison to palestine).
1) We reduce prison populations in the US by sending all the blacks and mexicans currently in jail over to Europe where they'll be better accepted than they are here and get to take drugs (in Holland) while getting to be lazy like they always want to be, period.
2) Then we send any Jewish prisoners over to Isreal to help defend their homeland of Zion.
3) Then we execute any arab prisoners we have... just to be safe.
4) Then we can send the orientals back to China so they can either liberate it or end up in prison where we can feel sorry for them and know it must be unjust (unlike how they got jailed here).
4) That'll leave the wops and krauts and frogs and limeys and other whitish prisoners we have, but that's okay because it'll be much less crowded now and they deserve it anyway (especially those wops who you know are in the mafia).
5) Once that is done we encourage to leave or actively deport the rest of the Jews to help defend Isreal by conquering the Arabs once and for all.
That last point is a total win-win situation. If the Zionist-Islamic war triggers the apocalypse, well that speaks for itself. If it doesn't, then they'll definitely win with the backing of the US, and that means we don't have to worry about the MidEast anymore.
As an added bonus it will give the Jews their own country and free us from their porn producing, money-hording tendencies. I mean that's fine for them, I'm not anti-semitic or anything, but we don't need that messing up our culture, and you know that's how they are, period.
Yeah, what a plan.
No wait...
It's pretty ignorant isn't it?
Ya know one thing that sucked worse than the French "rolling over" to the Nazi war machine?
It was the germans who "rolled over" intellectually and bought all the fascist propaganda about people deserving to be in prison if they were in prison, that freedoms needed to be limited to make people better, that only lazy people didn't work a lot, that other countries deserved to be invaded for national security, and that whole groups of people needed to be eliminated (or segregated and dealt with harshly) because they would always hate and attack the german people.
period.
holmes
{Shortened long lines of +'s
(STOP IT HOLMES!), to restore page width to normal (ps - for some reason, trying to edit this message kept locking up Mozella - I had to go back to IE) - Adminnemooseus}
[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 02-07-2003]
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