Letters to the Editor
Settembrini
Published Letters: 155
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@shooter242
[Read the article: The Obama passport snooping and the unchecked surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is literally impossible to have government programs and responsibilities without all the information on file, and multiple people having access. You may as well be Canute commanding the tide to stop coming in to the shore.
It's all FDR's fault, isn't it? But it's time to try a new tac.
- 1935: Social security will break small business, become a huge tax burden on our citizens, and bankrupt our country!
- 1944: The G.I. Bill will break small business, become a huge tax burden on our citizens, and bankrupt our country!
- 1965: Medicare will break small business, become a huge tax burden on our citizens, and bankrupt our country!
- 1994: Health care will break small business, become a huge tax
burden on our citizens, and bankrupt our country!
Conrad (editorial cartoon), July 1994
You can also legislate privacy of said info, but that's just like legislating DC a gun free zone. That didn't work very well did it?
You are correct. A person can always cross over into Virginia to buy their privacy.
On top of all this is the absolute straining desire to give government the most intimate details of one's being, via universal healthcare.
That's not how single payer universal works, but I suspect you know that. I don't hear all the other countries complaining, in spite of what you say to the contrary.
And you folks are all upset about border security issues?
Actually, that's the extreme, far right. You are just the extreme right.
It's time for a reality check folks and you may be sure that the only way to escape the information age is to get a log cabin and live off the grid. What a bunch of maroons.
It didn't help the unabomber, but he did have something to hide.
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@Aycharaych- Do the math
[Read the article: The Obama passport snooping and the unchecked surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1 million non-violent drug offenders currently in prison.
They shouldn't be there but that's still just .3% of the total population of the country.
Priorities. It is related to a government out of control but you won't get much sympathy from the average American who has been brought up on the drug war propaganda for the last 40 years.
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Why would I get the impression that...
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]("Being right too soon is socially unacceptable." -- Robert Heinlein)
-- bearpaw1
Heinlein, a navy man, had General Billy Mitchell in mind when he wrote that?
For two reasons: His prescient and tireless promotion of the emerging and decisive role of airpower over seapower and his prediction of the coming future war with Japan, including the attack on Pearl Harbor, back in 1922.
Isolationism, like total disarmament, works best when everyone else is actually practicing it.
William, I hope you aren't seriously suggesting we should have given Hawaii to Japan. They didn't want to share. They wanted it all. That would leave us with Florida as the only American state with a tropical clime. Pleae tell me you aren't suggesting that. Have you been to Florida?
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Shooter is trolling
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]shooter242 I am indeed a conservative and I think it's time to talk about military (sic) isolationism... and demonstrate an unwillingness to interfere elsewhere
He is not suggesting "isolationism" in good faith.
What he means to do is play with your heads. America was no more founded on as an "isolationist" nation than it was a "Christian" nation. But I don't think it was the founders intent that we "interfere" in the affairs of other nations without reason.
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@William, Arne
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I got tired of being stalked. You should try it. It's hypo-allergenic and photogenic.
There has been no mass killing (and AFAIK, not even any killing) "on the behalf of ... atheism".
That's because throughout the darker periods in history, atheists have usually been smart enough to keep it to themselves.
Cheers!
;-)
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@Julia2
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If one took Washington's Farewell address...which outlined basic American principle and warnings to the new America and put them beside Slaughter's views..well you could tell she knows nothing about.."Our founders'.
Let's just focus on this. You are making an assumption that Washington was what?
1. An Isolationist
Or,
2. A non-interventionist
Which one?
Please support this thesis.
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I'm definitely a Pessimist
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sydney Pollack was/is an incurable optimist.
-- William Timberman
Schopenhauer is back in favor and Pessimism is the new black.
A dose of pessimism
The Bush administration must give up the unbridled optimism that has guided its foreign policy to such disastrous results
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/joshua_foa_dienstag/2006/12/dienstag.html
A quick and dirty guide for incurable optimists:
10 Questions for Joshua Foa Dienstag
http://www.today.ucla.edu/people/joshua-foa-dienstag_poli-sci/
He's been attempting to rehabilitate the Pessimists.
Have you read this, William? You'll recognize the "dancing in chains" as an image from Nietzsche.
Dancing in Chains
Narrative and Memory in Political Theory
Joshua Foa Dienstag
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=2818%202924
It sounds like something you would enjoy.
No, I haven't read this yet. Who has the time? You do it.
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@Arne
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It was semi-snark. Even in Jefferson's day, he was careful to avoid publishing the Jefferson Bible. Just being a Deist was ample grist for the mill with his political adversaries.
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@WT
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I tried to warn you.
;-)
It's hypo-allergenic!
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Ding! Dong!
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Avon Calling!
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It has been argued
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That there are some politically (domestic) useful misconceptions in the domain of foreign policy debate. One of the most persistent is that "the national interest" has ever been objectively and narrowly defined. The other is that all politics ends at the waters edge. It does not, nor has it ever. Thi
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Something happened to the tail end of that comment
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thinking about those two misconceptions, or half truths, might be useful.
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@Jkalos
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Luigi or Lodovico?
or another?
Ludovico or Lodovico.
Next week I may be Leo Naphta. I may even try Chauchat.
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Just have a Martini
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Augustini, Settembrini...whatever
I'm an Octobrist myself -- just ask bucky.
-- William Timberman
;-)
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Or a Pomtini
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's what Cocktailhag drinks, right?
I don't know...
Antioxidants are all well and good but alcohol needs oxygen to burn.