You both could talk to your hearts content among nice people at:

http://www.wendymcelroy.com/smf/index.php

It will take a day or two to get 'approved' but would be worth it to see a real debate without hate mongers destroying the conversation.

I take it that William has decided not to respond to my follow up of his response. Fine, but it does seem a bit odd given what you wrote.

Mmm...I was under the impression that I'd responded to your latest. (Mine at 8:40 a.m.)

WT: Not inconsequentially for my argument, it also allows you to assure the gullible of the purity of your own doctrine while casting aspersions on those who've had to wrestle ingloriously with real issues of governance in the mass societies of the present century. Yes, the U.S. kept slaves and butchered native Americans and runs an imperial war machine. Did/do the Swedes, or the Finns, or the Swiss?

What aspersion did I cast your way? Please be specific.

What argument? You are keeping anything you believe very close to your vest. You seem to hint that you believe in big government and can not imagine society without it. You ask me if there is anyway a society could exist without a strong government.

At least that is what I think you are asking. Is it?

What you overlook -- what every so-called libertarian seems to overlook -- is the extent to which concentrated economic activity, and the wealth it produces, acts against democracy. The sad condition of the fourth estate in our era is as much a product of this concentration of wealth as that of the Congress. Can you make that go away? Are you even interested in it? It doesn't seem so.

The above is unproven conjecture. But let me stipulate that point for a moment; Democracy is that form of government where the winners plunder the weak. Ask the natives, blacks, poor, homosexuals, ...

This is good in what way? The question I thought you wanted to know was how can the common man seek protection if there is no government. Was that not it?

what does it mean to you to ...work toward returning to the original republican form of representative democracy? You know, in a world which contains Exxon and Shanghai, as well as Osama bin Laden and SLBMs?

You missed the point entirely.

I was saying that since I live in an empire, at this time the best I can hope for is a return to the republic. Is that a hard concept? Sometimes we must work for the possible, even if the ultimate good is unobtainable.

If your answer amounts to anything more than don't tax me, don't let brown people live next to me, and don't tell me I can't ride a motorcycle without a helmet, it would behoove you not to stop where you've stopped. Otherwise, it leaves you in a place most serious people have already left.

That may have made sense when you wrote it, but it seems to be bluster to me now.

First: my answer to what? What would be the ultimate good; no state? --- Or, what seems to be obtainable in the near future; a return to a constitutional, representative democracy?

Both have little to do with motorcycle hats.

Did you scan over the url I left?

Shooter has appeared on other blogs, message boards etc. His purpose is to disrupt normal conversation. It is a waste of time to argue. He is served best by ignoring him, and he'll go away to bother others elsewhere. His agenda does not yield, either because he is paid not to, or he is a volunteer zealot that spews G.O.P. talking points as if they are fact. His script is memorized so there is no getting through to him. He simply doesn't care about anything except to cause friction. No friction, no Shooter, it's that simple.

exactly was it that Americans agreed to torture in their name? When did Americans decide that torture was not the behavior of the sick and twisted sadists? When did it become acceptable to order, carry out, or witness torture without stopping it? Did Americans agree to allow megalomanics to govern them? How foolish would that be? There should be a psychiatric evaluation before anyone is allowed to run for office. We do not need sociopaths and psychopaths leading our nation, no matter how macho the cowards "sound".

Funny you should mention the Nazis. You might enjoy reading about the Nuremberg trial that involved the Nazi jurists. See:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/Alstoetter.htm

The most interesting defendant in this case was Judge Schlegelberger, who was clearly a reluctant Nazi and claimed he stayed in office as long as he did because, had he left, they just would have replaced him with someone worse. He had a fair point, and if Will Taft and/or John Bellinger were to make that argument one day, they'd have a fair point, too. I'm sure Colin Powell and Tony Blair, as well, felt that they were an important mitigating influence. Who's to say when the right time is to bail out?

Who's to say when the right time is to bail out? -- captainlarab

...the judgment of history will have to do, I suppose. I don't think history will judge either Powell or Blair kindly, no more than it did the Nazi jurists in question. Certainly I do not.

The freedoms and civil liberties we have people fought and died for. Not one of them was given to us. We had to denounce those who had no respect for people, and condemn those who did not believe in human dignity. Respect for the individual in law did not come all at once, in fact it remains a remote goal, but in a sane society it remains a goal. People are made noble in their efforts to maintain a civil society not with the naive belief that a perfect society is attainable, but with the knowledge that without the effort we deteriorate into barbarism.