Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
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No Surrender Adnato
[Read the article: The great right-wing fraud to repudiate George W. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"It must be a magical word this word "conservative." We have people clinging to it and incorrectly ascribing positive positions to it. Let me ask you a question their MacK - What the hell are the "liberal" positions to those issues you have listed above?? Is it "liberals" that consistently ignore the rule of law? Do liberals think the 4th amendment should be done away with? Liberals must be the ones that want to throw out Habeas Corpus and.... why do liberals hate all that is good?"
Why do you want to surrender to Rove and his buddies - the guys who have hijacked language to make Liberal a dirty word. Why let them claim the adjective and noun conservative, when they simply are not . . .
Call them what they are radicals, extreme radicals. Don't let them co-opt conservatives by dishonestly suggesting they are conservative.
As to your questions -- Is it "liberals" that consistently ignore the rule of law? many liberals support and supported civil disobedience -- does that make them consistent?
Do liberals think the 4th amendment should be done away with? Some do, depending on the issue. Liberals are for change.
Liberals must be the ones that want to throw out Habeas Corpus . . again it depends, at times in history PROGRESSIVES have had a more restrictive view on habeas corpus
why do liberals hate all that is good? They don't, but they try less to require people to be "good," "straight," "sexually conventional," of a fixed religion. I suppose that makes them enemies of the "good"
The oddity in the current environment is that being "liberal" makes one conservative (in the proper meaning of the word.)
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Kitt -- Liberals and the 4th amendment
[Read the article: The great right-wing fraud to repudiate George W. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kitt,
There were historic circumstances in which Progressives and liberals were willing to constrain Habeas Corpus and the 4th Amendment
Lincoln for example suspended habeas corpus. Rooseveldt during WW II was willing to limit the scope of 4th Amendment protections -- the 4th Amendment was also raised as an issue with income tax, all sorts of business regulation, etc. Despite broad views in favour of these protections, progressives and liberals have, from time to time, considered constraining them. Remember neither the 4th of 5th Amendments are regarded as absolutely sacrosanct in law, rather they are subject to balancing tests -- it is the interests that are weighed and the weights alloted that underline the difference between right and left.
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OK -- I'll give you a list of prominent conservatives who held office
[Read the article: The great right-wing fraud to repudiate George W. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can name many Republicans who held office and were decent people, and not all Americans:
Winston Churchill
Count Klaus von Stauffenberg
William Hartman Woodin
Harold L. Ickes
Teddy Rooseveldt
I could go on. My point is simple, that the right has tarred liberals and progressives with attachment to the extreme left, while at the same time claiming the mantle of being conservatives when they in reality are not.
Just as much as we have allowed them to redefine the word liberal, you are allowing them to get away with redefining conservative to encompass a radical agenda.
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Adnoto as waste of space
[Read the article: The great right-wing fraud to repudiate George W. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Holy Shit
I said (sarcastically): Why do liberals hate all that is good?
MacK replies: They don't, but they try less to require people to be "good," "straight," "sexually conventional," of a fixed religion. I suppose that makes them enemies of the "good"
Ok. I was working under the assumption that MacK wasn't a complete waste of time. I now see that I was very wrong.
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Jeeze -- Adnoto, Liberalism is a philosophy that includes not dictating to people how they should live -- it is that view that historically caused liberals to be called enemies of morality and goodness -- the point that almost any other reader but you would have picked up.
Of course you just demonstrated that in you frothy, limbaughesque vapourings you did not know that.
I may be a waste of space - you are a gobshite!
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I predict
[Read the article: Libby sentenced to 30 months]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]George W. Bush begging off going to the next inaugeration on the basis that he has writers' cramp from signing so many pardons for the week before.
Seriously though . . . this appeal will go the the DC Circuit, a court with 10 very conservative judges and 3 Clinton appointees. What do you think will happen?
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BBC and European Reaction -- Nuke Iran? What about no first use?
[Read the article: What you missed while watching "Deal or No Deal"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The big point on the BBC and in other European media was that most of the Republicans either agreed or tacitly indicated agreement with the use of Nuclear weapons against Iran to destroy its nuclear industry.
I am really quite shocked -- the US (and every other nuclear power) has, since Hiroshima, held firmly to a no-first-use doctrine, i.e., that the US would not be the first to go nuclear in any situation. This was a controversy during both Korea and Vietnam, when both Republican and Democratic administrations held to the rule . . . now these bozos are casually suggesting the use of nuclear weapons on a first use basis against Iran (i.e., not in response to an Iranian first-use.) Have they any idea how big a foreign-policy Rubicon they have just crossed? This is a line that non-one else has crossed, the Chinese against non-nuclear Vietnam, the US against non-nuclear Vietnam, then non-nuclear Korea and China, the Chinese against India, the Russians in Afghanistan, even Israel on numerous occasions has suggested (to the extent that it admits having nukes) that it holds to a no-first-use rule.
I thought some of these guys were supposed to be the sane, mature, statesmen like successors to Dubya! They sounded even nuttier!