Letters to the Editor
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On facing death..
"Look, friends, the only possible way to enjoy life is not to be afraid to die. A zest for living requires a willingness to die; you cannot have the first without the second. The '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s can be loaded with the zest for living, high excitement, and gutsy adventure for any truly human person. "Truly human"? I mean you descendants of cavemen who outlasted the saber-tooth, you who sprang from the loins of the Vikings, you whose ancestors fought the Crusades and were numbered the Golden Horde. Death is the lot of all of us and the only way the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all eternity."
-Robert A Heinlein - Guest of Honor Speech at the XIXth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961
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um... shooter
When you assert: " Actually there was no reason to secure cockpit doors. FAA policy was to negotiate with hijackers in order to assure passenger safety. Kind of like relying on the UN to protect Darfur. It works until the aggressors change the rules of engagement," you are mistaken, both in your premise and your analogy.
Israel had been correctly observing the need for hardened cockpit access for years, in addition to on-board tactical security personnel. US intel predicted more terror attacks (after WTC 1993) well before 2001. Any analysis of consequences (in aviation safety) vs. costs yields only one conclusion, which Bush Republicans and the airlines continued to deny.
I don't think Americians are stupid. Why do you?
Gordon
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Neoconservative Radicalis
Why does NO ONE take the next logical step in discussing the neo-cons ideas and actions - namely, that their desired "permanent Republican majority" would be a one-party state - and this is at least totalitarianism. The political result that they hope for would be either facism or a "banana republic" - depending on circumstances.
This seems very obvious to me ( I am a historian) and yet NO ONE has pointed this out!!!!
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Re: Neo-con radicalism
is really nothing more or other than totalitarianism (specifically early model Soviet totalitarianism, without the soviets) masquerading as tub-thumping All-American Conservatism.
Which every true American Conservative recoils from as if from a live wire.
Ruling the World is not exactly in the playbook of American conservatives; that is what their enemies want to do. And BTW, their enemies have mostly been the very totalitarians who have infiltrated and subverted American Conservatism, taken it over, and now parasitically operate the political mechanics of what once was an honorable (if gravely mistaken) American political movement. And because they did, and their agents were able to convince the Supreme Court to rule lawlessly in the 2000 election controversy, those very same totalitarians were able to infiltrate and subvert the United States Government, where they still perch, menacingly, even as some of their masks are pulled off.
Brooks has done something terribly shameful here. As others have pointed out, his formulation -- "Security Leads to Freedom" -- is little different than that of "Arbeit Macht Frei" -- which of course was the most horrible of the many Nazi lies, this one emblazoned on the gates to the death camps.
Surely he is not unaware. For though he is a tool, he is generally alert to the manipulations of the totalitarian cabals he serves. And he often tries to acknowledge -- and even sometimes condemn -- the subtrefuges and lies of his masters. It's quite a juggling act.
No, I think he may have done this deliberately to expose the utter rot and complete amorality of those he serves. WE, certainly, are not the only ones who see the parallels of his formulation with that used on the gates to the Death Camps. Untermenschen marching to their extermination were secure -- weren't they, Little Mister Brooks? Slaves on the Old Plantation, they were secure, weren't they Little Brooksie? The Death Squads and the ethnic cleansing and all the rest of it in the Balkans (and, oops, now in Iraq) are making the survivors secure, aren't they, little Mister? No? Do I have it wrong, somehow?
As others have also pointed out, in order to gain the nation's freedom, our ancestors deliberately sacrificed their own security (yes, dear hearts, the Declaration of Independence was a suicide pact, quite overtly so.) And in the nation's expansion into the West, every step was taken (by the settlers... we won't discuss the Natives at the moment) at the risk of any security at all.
Brooksie knows this. The piece itself is arguing for a "revolution" in conservative thought, to divorce it once and for all from the tired nostrums of limited government, to force it to embrace the Full and Glorious Future -- the New Model (Neo-Con) Totalitarian State.
My guess is that by putting it this way, he is trying to get the real conservatives to recognize just how dreadful the Neo Con Future really will be if it is allowed to continue.
But maybe I am giving him more credit than he deserves.
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Jim
I'll ask the question again...
If one does not have the right to end one's own life at the time and in the manner of one's own choosing, then what rights does one really have?
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@ No Name
Actually, it's been pointed out many times in Unclaimed Territory threads, just not in this one, although many of the comments today have been informed by that understanding. Patience....
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@Jonathan
Are you a college freshmen? Been reading Rand lately?
Equal means politically equal, not identical. Inalienable means not alienable by a legitimate government, not inalienable by any government. Jeez, finish reading the comic book version of Atlas Shrugged before muttering.
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Gordon213
I don't think Americians are stupid. Why do you?
Bush is in his second term as president?
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Not the Jews fault
I blame the filthy Irish.
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uh
This seems very obvious to me ( I am a historian) and yet NO ONE has pointed this out!!!!
I just said in this thread and have been saying that the movement is nascent totalitarianism and yesterday I linked to a book called Banana Republicans.