Understand this Hackney: we've had it with your idiotic wars. Georgia is not a vital interest of the U.S. no matter how many off-point comparisons you make, no matter how many straw men you saly, no matter how much huffing and puffing you do.

Georgia is in the literal backyard of Russia. If Mexico shelled some ethnic American city near the border of Texas you can bet your ass we'd be in there stat in full force, killing whoever got in our way and blowhards like you would be screaming USA! USA! USA! the whole way.

We can't afford your neocon adventures anymore. They are literally bankrupting us financially and morally. You have cost us too many trillions of dollars, too many hundreds of thousands of innocents dead, and our international reputation.

Fuck off and die. I mean it.

You apparently have no conception of the context you are arguing in. We've been led on one neocon adventure after another. The Iraq War is an utter disaster and was the result of neocon railroading of weak liberals and an unprincipled press corps afraid to be seen as weak on defense -- and this phenomenon is all too familiar.

As Glenn argued, the press has been pushing a dangerously false and one-sided line on the war that resulted in Obama and Biden quickly jumping on the bandwagon. We've sent personnel and materiel over there already and the danger is that we send more and the tinder box goes up in flames.

In that context you are fanning the flames even more, jumping down Glenn's throat with some poorly argued tedious quibble, pushing the idea that Russia's grave culpability be taken seriously and acted upon.

You make Georgia a part of NATO, which is where this is all going, and there is the fuse just waiting for someone to toss a match. Hell, Obama and Biden already felt forced to follow the bandwagon and if they and the neocons who manipulate them had had their way, we would be at war with Russia RIGHT NOW defending our NATO ally.

THAT is the context in which you are arguing. I call myself a fool ironically, but you truly are a fool. This is not just an intellectual argument, pal. Get a clue.

Your name is well chosen. You can try to pigeonhole everyone your favorite box but you're way way off, pal.

Here are the basic facts:

1) The Press is giving a completely one-sided picture of events in Georgia

2) Glenn rightly criticizes the Press for oversimplifying the matter

3) But you, in the name of intellectual subtlety, attack Glenn for rightfully pointing out the Press's one-sided depiction.

Apparently, for you, intellectual subtlety and independence includes defending a one-side neocon friendly view in the media.

You are an idiot spewing hackneyed and false criticisms while avoiding people's strongest arguments against you altogether.

The bottom line is I don't really give a shit who did what in Georgia. We can't afford to have another military adventure outside our sphere of vital interests. Especially not one that could lead to WWIII just so Hackney can show everyone he just wrote a term paper on Georgia and fulfill his crusader impulses.

First of all it is based on the notion of natural rights, which, as Bentham said, is nonsense on stilts.

Second, libertarians elevate one value, negative liberty, over all others like positive liberty, equality, security, solidarity, compassion etc. These kind of single value theories are easy to sell rhetorically but don't make much sense.

Third, in practice libertarianism is usually disingenuously held by those who really only seek their own narrowly conceived financial interest and have no concern for other people. That's why we see contemporary Republican extremists spouting libertarian rhetoric while violating libertarian "principles" at the drop of a hat.

Libretarianism is the kind of philosophy that appeals to undergraduates who haven't had much time to think political therory through. It persists beyond graduation for three primary reasons: 1) its undergraduate adherents are either not diligent enough or not smart enough to understand all of its fatal flaws 2)its undergraduate adherents have publicly committed to it and have to stick with it to save face, and most important of all, 3) its a great way to "justify" greedy behavior.

"You see, my dear repository of ignorance, one needs to justify man's inalienable rights in some way. How?... libertarianism starts with the right of the individual to own herself."

In other words, faced with the need to justify their foundational principle from which all of their other conclusions flow, libertarians simply assert it!

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!

How about this. My philosophy of anti-libertarianism, my dear repository of libertarian nonsense on stilts, needs some way to justify its antilibertarinism. How? Antilibertarianism starts with the assertion of antilibertarianism. QED.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Bentham is laughing his ass of in his grave or, more accurately, his mummified remains are laughing their mummified ass off.

I made some pretty devaststing critiques of the simplistic libertarian philosophy and I couldn't help noticing that you completely failed to respond to them, preferring instead to assure us all that libertarians really are nice people once you get to know them.

Its understandable why you would choose not to respond though. Political theories are much harder to defend when you don't get to simply assume the consequent.

You all need to find a more sophisticated and less easily exploited way to defend your intuitions about human liberty.

Libertarianism: Still simplistic. Still for simpletons.