[Rumor]

Did Liberals Cause 9/11?, Bloggers On The Left Bash Dinesh D'Souza's New Book - CBS News

Dinesh D'Souza, a conservative critic and Hoover Institute fellow, has a new book out, and it's generating plenty of its own publicity. In "The Enemy at Home," D'Souza identifies more than 100 people and organizations as part of a "domestic insurgency" that is "working in tandem with [Osama] bin Laden to defeat Bush." But his most controversial assertion is that "the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11."

I think what this guy fails to realize is that we are a Democracy. Which means there are many people who influence decisions. This is a prime example of the blame game. It's similar to all the people who blame Bush for rising gas prices, yet fail to factor in other reasons.

[SirCastor]

Terrorists caused 9/11.

They took advantage of loopholes in our system. Whether those loopholes were caused by liberals or conservatives, democrats or republicans, is unimportant.

[BRussell]

Conservatives have been saying this from the beginning.

What makes this America-hater D'Souza different is that he essentially aligns conservatives with the terrorists. He basically says that conservatives agree with the terrorists about the evils of liberal society, and he says we can improve our country if we only became less liberal, and then we wouldn't be attacked any more. Good luck with that.

[Chuckit]

Hey, I didn't know Abe had written a book.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

Terrorists caused 9/11.

Yeah, I wonder why so many people have such a hard time understanding this extremely simple concept.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Yeah, I wonder why so many people have such a hard time understanding this extremely simple concept.

Because terrorists aren't a political party in America, so it's not as satisfying to blame them.

[Millennium]

D'Souza's assertion that liberals caused 9/11 is probably about as valid as the common liberal assertion that US intervention abroad caused 9/11. Namely, if either of these things had any influence at all, then it was only through so many levels of indirection that the influence is so small as to be ultimately negligible anyway.

9/11 was caused by some 20-30 men: the hijackers and some small semblance of a chain of command above them. No one else, and nothing else: not liberals, conservatives, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bush, Clinton, gays, the religious right, neoconservatism, or anything else. Responsibility lies with the perpetrators.

[Atomic Rooster]

I cannot tell a lie, I did it.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Millennium 

D'Souza's assertion that liberals caused 9/11 is probably about as valid as the common liberal assertion that US intervention abroad caused 9/11. Namely, if either of these things had any influence at all, then it was only through so many levels of indirection that the influence is so small as to be ultimately negligible anyway.

If we weren't allies or enemies with any Middle Eastern countries, what would the motive be for terrorists to attack us?

[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

If we weren't allies or enemies with any Middle Eastern countries, what would the motive be for terrorists to attack us?

It was not a country that attacked us. It was a group of 30 or so men as was stated before a few posts back.

[Kerrigan]

Whose goals and beliefs are strangely consistent with the Saudi state-sanctioned Wahhabist sect.

Our ally...

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Snow-i 

It was not a country that attacked us. It was a group of 30 or so men as was stated before a few posts back.

This seems like a non sequitur. I never said a country attacked us. What are you trying to argue?

[SirCastor]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

If we weren't allies or enemies with any Middle Eastern countries, what would the motive be for terrorists to attack us?

There are a handful of reasons, and probably some that I can't think of:

... I was typing out the list here, but it all came back to the same thing.

Radical response to an ideological difference. It may be religion, politics, socital, you name it, but it isn't limited to our foreign policy. The extremism that has been going on over in the middle east was bound to eventually effect us, regardless of the actions that we took.

[Warren Pease]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

This seems like a non sequitur. I never said a country attacked us. What are you trying to argue?

I think the "if" confused him. Our economy would collapse if we weren't friends (defending) certain ME countries. The terrorists wanted US troops out of Saudi Arabia and three years after 9/11, we were. We just moved next door.

We've maintained a strong military presence in the ME for six decades for a specific reason.

Originally Posted by Jerry Fallwell

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

[Kerrigan]

It's easy to ridicule those types of people, but they have been right in the past. For instance, British conservatives back in the late 1800s warned that tolerance of homosexuality and Materialism (with a capital M) would lead to the decline of British society and the end of the Empire. They were right.

Bin Laden uses this same logic as the underpinnings of his war against the US. 10 years ago, nobody thought the US was headed towards collapse, but after his attacks and his criticisms of Western weakness and tolerance, the US's primacy seems to be on the downturn.

History has shown that technologically advanced, wealthy societies are plagued by moral weakness and then become easy targets for more determined, hardened peoples (like Islamic militants).

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

It's easy to ridicule those types of people, but they have been right in the past. For instance, British conservatives back in the late 1800s warned that tolerance of homosexuality and Materialism (with a capital M) would lead to the decline of British society and the end of the Empire. They were right.

[macintologist]

Terrorists could easily exploit the partisan divisions in this country.

This is how you do it:

You carry out a terrorist attack on the USA.
After the attack, you claim responsibility for the attack, in the speech given, you claim allegiance with one of the two parties, or both.

For example, the Al Qaeda guy could say "America is an evil country that allows abortions to happen and tolerates homosexuality." In the same speech the terrorists could say "we are against the US occupation of Iraq" "we bombed America because you don't have universal health care and snubbed the Kyoto treaty"

See where I'm going?

Then both sides start to try to blame the other for causing this to happen and further tear this country apart.

[Kerrigan]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

Wow, very convincing counter-argument.

Enjoy it when the US is overrun by uneducated illegal immigrants who introduce Mexican levels of government corruption and inefficiency, and when there are even more un-winnable international entanglements with what will then be pariah states with nuclear capabilities.

This is the sad but inevitable effect of weakness within society. See: Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc.

[Rumor]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Ottoman Empire

There was an empire of foot stools?

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

Wow, very convincing counter-argument.

One doesn't need a counter-argument against the idea that the British way of life and empire ended because of tolerance of homosexuality and Materialism.

Originally Posted by macintologist

"we bombed America because you don't have universal health care and snubbed the Kyoto treaty"

The absurdity of this quote really does show how D'Souza may be onto something. Terrorist theocrat luddites really do have a lot in common with American conservatives: They both hate liberal society and want it eliminated.

[Face Ache]

Link

Empire v. Democracy
Why Nemesis Is at Our Door
By Chalmers Johnson

History tells us that one of the most unstable political combinations is a country -- like the United States today -- that tries to be a domestic democracy and a foreign imperialist. Why this is so can be a very abstract subject. Perhaps the best way to offer my thoughts on this is to say a few words about my new book, Nemesis, and explain why I gave it the subtitle, "The Last Days of the American Republic." Nemesis is the third book to have grown out of my research over the past eight years. I never set out to write a trilogy on our increasingly endangered democracy, but as I kept stumbling on ever more evidence of the legacy of the imperialist pressures we put on many other countries as well as the nature and size of our military empire, one book led to another.

Professionally, I am a specialist in the history and politics of East Asia. In 2000, I published Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, because my research on China, Japan, and the two Koreas persuaded me that our policies there would have serious future consequences. The book was noticed at the time, but only after 9/11 did the CIA term I adapted for the title -- "blowback" -- become a household word and my volume a bestseller.

I had set out to explain how exactly our government came to be so hated around the world. As a CIA term of tradecraft, "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to, and in, foreign countries. It refers specifically to retaliation for illegal operations carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. These operations have included the clandestine overthrow of governments various administrations did not like, the training of foreign militaries in the techniques of state terrorism, the rigging of elections in foreign countries, interference with the economic viability of countries that seemed to threaten the interests of influential American corporations, as well as the torture or assassination of selected foreigners. The fact that these actions were, at least originally, secret meant that when retaliation does come -- as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 -- the American public is incapable of putting the events in context. Not surprisingly, then, Americans tend to support speedy acts of revenge intended to punish the actual, or alleged, perpetrators. These moments of lashing out, of course, only prepare the ground for yet another cycle of blowback.

A World of Bases

As a continuation of my own analytical odyssey, I then began doing research on the network of 737 American military bases we maintained around the world (according to the Pentagon's own 2005 official inventory). Not including the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, we now station over half a million U.S. troops, spies, contractors, dependents, and others on military bases located in more than 130 countries, many of them presided over by dictatorial regimes that have given their citizens no say in the decision to let us in.

As but one striking example of imperial basing policy: For the past sixty-one years, the U.S. military has garrisoned the small Japanese island of Okinawa with 37 bases. Smaller than Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, Okinawa is home to 1.3 million people who live cheek-by-jowl with 17,000 Marines of the 3rd Marine Division and the largest U.S. installation in East Asia -- Kadena Air Force Base. There have been many Okinawan protests against the rapes, crimes, accidents, and pollution caused by this sort of concentration of American troops and weaponry, but so far the U. S. military -- in collusion with the Japanese government -- has ignored them. My research into our base world resulted in The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, written during the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

As our occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq turned into major fiascoes, discrediting our military leadership, ruining our public finances, and bringing death and destruction to hundreds of thousands of civilians in those countries, I continued to ponder the issue of empire. In these years, it became ever clearer that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their supporters were claiming, and actively assuming, powers specifically denied to a president by our Constitution. It became no less clear that Congress had almost completely abdicated its responsibilities to balance the power of the executive branch. Despite the Democratic sweep in the 2006 election, it remains to be seen whether these tendencies can, in the long run, be controlled, let alone reversed.

Until the 2004 presidential election, ordinary citizens of the United States could at least claim that our foreign policy, including our illegal invasion of Iraq, was the work of George Bush's administration and that we had not put him in office. After all, in 2000, Bush lost the popular vote and was appointed president thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. But in November 2004, regardless of claims about voter fraud, Bush actually won the popular vote by over 3.5 million ballots, making his regime and his wars ours.

Whether Americans intended it or not, we are now seen around the world as approving the torture of captives at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Bagram Air Base in Kabul, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at a global network of secret CIA prisons, as well as having endorsed Bush's claim that, as commander-in-chief in "wartime," he is beyond all constraints of the Constitution or international law. We are now saddled with a rigged economy based on record-setting trade and fiscal deficits, the most secretive and intrusive government in our country's memory, and the pursuit of "preventive" war as a basis for foreign policy. Don't forget as well the potential epidemic of nuclear proliferation as other nations attempt to adjust to and defend themselves against Bush's preventive wars, while our own already staggering nuclear arsenal expands toward first-strike primacy and we expend unimaginable billions on futuristic ideas for warfare in outer space.

The Choice Ahead

By the time I came to write Nemesis, I no longer doubted that maintaining our empire abroad required resources and commitments that would inevitably undercut, or simply skirt, what was left of our domestic democracy and that might, in the end, produce a military dictatorship or -- far more likely -- its civilian equivalent. The combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, an ever growing economic dependence on the military-industrial complex and the making of weaponry, and ruinous military expenses as well as a vast, bloated "defense" budget, not to speak of the creation of a whole second Defense Department (known as the Department of Homeland Security) has been destroying our republican structure of governing in favor of an imperial presidency. By republican structure, of course, I mean the separation of powers and the elaborate checks and balances that the founders of our country wrote into the Constitution as the main bulwarks against dictatorship and tyranny, which they greatly feared.

We are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation starts down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play -- isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.

History is instructive on this dilemma. If we choose to keep our empire, as the Roman republic did, we will certainly lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates. There is an alternative, however. We could, like the British Empire after World War II, keep our democracy by giving up our empire. The British did not do a particularly brilliant job of liquidating their empire and there were several clear cases where British imperialists defied their nation's commitment to democracy in order to hang on to foreign privileges. The war against the Kikuyu in Kenya in the 1950s and the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 are particularly savage examples of that. But the overall thrust of postwar British history is clear: the people of the British Isles chose democracy over imperialism.

In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt offered the following summary of British imperialism and its fate:


"On the whole it was a failure because of the dichotomy between the nation-state's legal principles and the methods needed to oppress other people permanently. This failure was neither necessary nor due to ignorance or incompetence. British imperialists knew very well that 'administrative massacres' could keep India in bondage, but they also knew that public opinion at home would not stand for such measures. Imperialism could have been a success if the nation-state had been willing to pay the price, to commit suicide and transform itself into a tyranny. It is one of the glories of Europe, and especially of Great Britain, that she preferred to liquidate the empire."
I agree with this judgment. When one looks at Prime Minister Tony Blair's unnecessary and futile support of Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, one can only conclude that it was an atavistic response, that it represented a British longing to relive the glories -- and cruelties -- of a past that should have been ancient history.

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.

The Road to Imperial Bankruptcy

The American political system failed to prevent this combination from developing -- and may now be incapable of correcting it. The evidence strongly suggests that the legislative and judicial branches of our government have become so servile in the presence of the imperial Presidency that they have largely lost the ability to respond in a principled and independent manner. Even in the present moment of congressional stirring, there seems to be a deep sense of helplessness. Various members of Congress have already attempted to explain how the one clear power they retain -- to cut off funds for a disastrous program -- is not one they are currently prepared to use.

So the question becomes, if not Congress, could the people themselves restore Constitutional government? A grass-roots movement to abolish secret government, to bring the CIA and other illegal spying operations and private armies out of the closet of imperial power and into the light, to break the hold of the military-industrial complex, and to establish genuine public financing of elections may be at least theoretically conceivable. But given the conglomerate control of our mass media and the difficulties of mobilizing our large and diverse population, such an opting for popular democracy, as we remember it from our past, seems unlikely.

It is possible that, at some future moment, the U.S. military could actually take over the government and declare a dictatorship (though its commanders would undoubtedly find a gentler, more user-friendly name for it). That is, after all, how the Roman republic ended -- by being turned over to a populist general, Julius Caesar, who had just been declared dictator for life. After his assassination and a short interregnum, it was his grandnephew Octavian who succeeded him and became the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar. The American military is unlikely to go that route. But one cannot ignore the fact that professional military officers seem to have played a considerable role in getting rid of their civilian overlord, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The new directors of the CIA, its main internal branches, the National Security Agency, and many other key organs of the "defense establishment" are now military (or ex-military) officers, strongly suggesting that the military does not need to take over the government in order to control it. Meanwhile, the all-volunteer army has emerged as an ever more separate institution in our society, its profile less and less like that of the general populace.

Nonetheless, military coups, however decorous, are not part of the American tradition, nor that of the officer corps, which might well worry about how the citizenry would react to a move toward open military dictatorship. Moreover, prosecutions of low-level military torturers from Abu Ghraib prison and killers of civilians in Iraq have demonstrated to enlisted troops that obedience to illegal orders can result in dire punishment in a situation where those of higher rank go free. No one knows whether ordinary soldiers, even from what is no longer in any normal sense a citizen army, would obey clearly illegal orders to oust an elected government or whether the officer corps would ever have sufficient confidence to issue such orders. In addition, the present system already offers the military high command so much -- in funds, prestige, and future employment via the famed "revolving door" of the military-industrial complex -- that a perilous transition to anything like direct military rule would make little sense under reasonably normal conditions.

Whatever future developments may prove to be, my best guess is that the U.S. will continue to maintain a façade of Constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it. Of course, bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the U.S. any more than it did for Germany in 1923, China in 1948, or Argentina in 2001-2002. It might, in fact, open the way for an unexpected restoration of the American system -- or for military rule, revolution, or simply some new development we cannot yet imagine.

Certainly, such a bankruptcy would mean a drastic lowering of our standard of living, a further loss of control over international affairs, a sudden need to adjust to the rise of other powers, including China and India, and a further discrediting of the notion that the United States is somehow exceptional compared to other nations. We will have to learn what it means to be a far poorer country -- and the attitudes and manners that go with it. As Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, observes:


"U.S. global power, as presently conceived by the overwhelming majority of the U.S. establishment, is unsustainable. . . The empire can no longer raise enough taxes or soldiers, it is increasingly indebted, and key vassal states are no longer reliable. . . The result is that the empire can no longer pay for enough of the professional troops it needs to fulfill its self-assumed imperial tasks."
In February 2006, the Bush administration submitted to Congress a $439 billion defense appropriation budget for fiscal year 2007. As the country enters 2007, the administration is about to present a nearly $100 billion supplementary request to Congress just for the Iraq and Afghan wars. At the same time, the deficit in the country's current account -- the imbalance in the trading of goods and services as well as the shortfall in all other cross-border payments from interest income and rents to dividends and profits on direct investments -- underwent its fastest ever quarterly deterioration. For 2005, the current account deficit was $805 billion, 6.4% of national income. In 2005, the U.S. trade deficit, the largest component of the current account deficit, soared to an all-time high of $725.8 billion, the fourth consecutive year that America's trade debts set records. The trade deficit with China alone rose to $201.6 billion, the highest imbalance ever recorded with any country. Meanwhile, since mid-2000, the country has lost nearly three million manufacturing jobs.

To try to cope with these imbalances, on March 16, 2006, Congress raised the national debt limit from $8.2 trillion to $8.96 trillion. This was the fourth time since George W. Bush took office that it had to be raised. The national debt is the total amount owed by the government and should not be confused with the federal budget deficit, the annual amount by which federal spending exceeds revenue. Had Congress not raised the debt limit, the U.S. government would not have been able to borrow more money and would have had to default on its massive debts.

Among the creditors that finance these unprecedented sums, the two largest are the central banks of China (with $853.7 billion in reserves) and Japan (with $831.58 billion in reserves), both of which are the managers of the huge trade surpluses these countries enjoy with the United States. This helps explain why our debt burden has not yet triggered what standard economic theory would dictate: a steep decline in the value of the U.S. dollar followed by a severe contraction of the American economy when we found we could no longer afford the foreign goods we like so much. So far, both the Chinese and Japanese governments continue to be willing to be paid in dollars in order to sustain American purchases of their exports.

For the sake of their own domestic employment, both countries lend huge amounts to the American treasury, but there is no guarantee of how long they will want to, or be able to do so. Marshall Auerback, an international financial strategist, says we have become a "Blanche Dubois economy" (so named after the leading character in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire) heavily dependent on "the kindness of strangers." Unfortunately, in our case, as in Blanche's, there are ever fewer strangers willing to support our illusions.

So my own hope is that -- if the American people do not find a way to choose democracy over empire -- at least our imperial venture will end not with a nuclear bang but a financial whimper. From the present vantage point, it certainly seems a daunting challenge for any President (or Congress) from either party even to begin the task of dismantling the military-industrial complex, ending the pall of "national security" secrecy and the "black budgets" that make public oversight of what our government does impossible, and bringing the president's secret army, the CIA, under democratic control. It's evident that Nemesis -- in Greek mythology the goddess of vengeance, the punisher of hubris and arrogance -- is already a visitor in our country, simply biding her time before she makes her presence known.

Chalmers Johnson is a retired professor of Asian Studies at the University of California, San Diego. From 1968 until 1972 he served as a consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency. Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the final volume in his Blowback Trilogy, is just now being published. In 2006 he appeared in the prize-winning documentary film Why We Fight.

[davesimondotcom]

SirCastor said it all in one sentence. Nothing more needs to be said.

[Cadaver]

One doesn't need a counter-argument against the idea that the British way of life and empire ended because of tolerance of homosexuality and Materialism.

Yep. Blame the homos. At least we're not blaming the Jews or the blacks this time.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by Cadaver 

Yep. Blame the homos. At least we're not blaming the Jews or the blacks this time.

You're at least right about blaming the homosexuals is wrong, but we're attempting to modify our morals. It almost always leads to an economic and influence decline when a power attempts to change it's morals on right and wrong. It leads to infighting and indecisiveness and prevents a country from presenting a unified face. If the moral change takes too long, you risk collapsing from outside forces.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

If we weren't allies or enemies with any Middle Eastern countries, what would the motive be for terrorists to attack us?

If the hijackers hadn't been raised as Muslims, could they have been manipulated by Al-Qaeda so easily?

This last statement is just as absurd as yours: there are too many levels of indirection to place any serious blame.

[Mark Larr]

So in the end, it was truly islam that caused 9/11?

I can agree with that.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Mark Larr 

So in the end, it was truly islam that caused 9/11?

Again, only through so many levels of indirection that its influence was negligible.

The fact is, it was in the power of the perpetrators, and only the perpetrators, to choose to carry out the attacks or to not carry them out. They chose to carry it out, and this is what makes them responsible.

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by Kerrigan 

It's easy to ridicule those types of people, but they have been right in the past. For instance, British conservatives back in the late 1800s warned that tolerance of homosexuality and Materialism (with a capital M) would lead to the decline of British society and the end of the Empire. They were right.

Gee, that's odd. 'Cause I'm pretty sure the American Revolution was the beginning of the end for the British Empire.

[SirCastor]

While that's a very patriotic statement, it's probably false. It may be fair to say that the American Revolution can be used as a time marker to say "This is when the British Empire began to fail", but the failings of the empire had largely to do with economic concerns.

I agree with Kerrigan that societies that become casual in their moral standards find their success will falter.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob 

It almost always leads to an economic and influence decline when a power attempts to change it's morals on right and wrong.

I'd like to see some evidence of this. I think it's crap, designed for conservatives who always criticize the direction a culture is heading and claim it's going to be our downfall. Cultures are constantly undergoing change, for better or worse, and I can't see any relationship to decline or increase in influence.

In US history, probably our biggest "moral change" - for the worse, according to conservatives - took place in the middle of the 20th century, with the women's and civil rights movements, at the same time that we saw our economic influence and power skyrocket.

I do think that when we stop supporting basic moral standards of international conduct, as when we condone torture and imprisonment without trial, for example, we can't really expect other countries to uphold those standards despite us. But that seems to me to be a different issue.

[davesimondotcom]

Usually empires fail because they get overextended - geographically, economical resources, etc. etc.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

I'd like to see some evidence of this. I think it's crap, designed for conservatives who always criticize the direction a culture is heading and claim it's going to be our downfall. Cultures are constantly undergoing change, for better or worse, and I can't see any relationship to decline or increase in influence.

In US history, probably our biggest "moral change" - for the worse, according to conservatives - took place in the middle of the 20th century, with the women's and civil rights movements, at the same time that we saw our economic influence and power skyrocket.

I'm sorry, this nonsense can't stand unchallenged. The biggest change for the worse according to Conservatives is not the suffrage and civil rights movements - Conservatives supported both. The biggest changes for the worse are socialist expansions of government, where it fails miserably. War on Poverty? New Deal? Social Security? Entitlements? These things keep people reliant on the government to solve their problems, rather than helping them improve their lives and become independent of government assistance.

It used to be a matter of pride to not accept a handout, and if accepted, to reluctantly accept it for as short a time as possible - this has changed to a state where people believe they're entitled, owed, even -- and government reinforces that by promising ever more handouts. It wasn't Conservatives that came up with that.

[Nicko]

Originally Posted by davesimondotcom 

Usually empires fail because they get overextended - geographically, economical resources, etc. etc.

Indeed, look at any major empire thoughout history, not one of them held morality as one of their most important achievments.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

I'm sorry, this nonsense can't stand unchallenged. The biggest change for the worse according to Conservatives is not the suffrage and civil rights movements - Conservatives supported both. The biggest changes for the worse are socialist expansions of government, where it fails miserably. War on Poverty? New Deal? Social Security? Entitlements? These things keep people reliant on the government to solve their problems, rather than helping them improve their lives and become independent of government assistance.

It used to be a matter of pride to not accept a handout, and if accepted, to reluctantly accept it for as short a time as possible - this has changed to a state where people believe they're entitled, owed, even -- and government reinforces that by promising ever more handouts. It wasn't Conservatives that came up with that.

Haha, well that wasn't at all the point of my post, which was very clearly to argue that cultural/moral change doesn't harm a country's influence. But I can see you took great offense at this line:

In US history, probably our biggest "moral change" - for the worse, according to conservatives - took place in the middle of the 20th century, with the women's and civil rights movements...

So you're claiming that conservatives supported the civil rights movement? Go find archives of all the conservative magazines and editorials from that era and look at them. They unanimously wrote at the time that MLK was a communist and we needed to protect states' rights against these terrible civil rights from infecting the country. They're pretty easy to find: Here's one 1957 National Review editorial opposing the enforcement of universal suffrage, and supporting the South's attempt to prevent blacks from voting.

I don't believe conservatives today want to keep blacks from voting, but your statement that conservatives supported the civil rights movements is truly ludicrous, and easily demonstrably false.

But it's not just "big government" that conservatives were opposed to about that era. They were opposed to the culture, the drugs and sex and music and hippy-ness and just general permissiveness (according to conservatives) of that era. And I repeat: It was roughly during that same period of alleged moral degeneracy that our country rose to its height of economic and military dominance in the world.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

While that's a very patriotic statement, it's probably false.

I'm not sure it's patriotic for a Canadian to say the United States marked the fall of the British Empire. They are still a separate country…I think. Quebec is, at least.

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

I agree with Kerrigan that societies that become casual in their moral standards find their success will falter.

Societies are almost never morally upright, so no matter when a society ends, you can go, "Oh, look, they were being immoral. Obviously that's why they failed."

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Millennium 

If the hijackers hadn't been raised as Muslims, could they have been manipulated by Al-Qaeda so easily?

This last statement is just as absurd as yours: there are too many levels of indirection to place any serious blame.

On further reflection, I think I may need to clarify this.

As stated before, I don't believe that Islam caused 9/11 any more the US foreign policy did. I asked the question of Islam to serve as a metaphor, because many people who believe that US foreign policy caused 9/11 will readily believe that Islam didn't cause it. By questioning Islam's role, I hoped to point out that in the end, these two assertions are equally guilty of playing the indirection game, and just as invalid for that reason. If we are to place blame, then we must look only at direct causes, and as with pretty much any act of humans, there is only one: the perpetrators.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

It used to be a matter of pride to not accept a handout, and if accepted, to reluctantly accept it for as short a time as possible - this has changed to a state where people believe they're entitled, owed, even -- and government reinforces that by promising ever more handouts. It wasn't Conservatives that came up with that.

On a humorous note, in Canada it was mostly Conservative Socialists who came up with the welfare state, and Conservatives like Diefenbaker implemented significant portions of it.

greg

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

Haha, well that wasn't at all the point of my post, which was very clearly to argue that cultural/moral change doesn't harm a country's influence. But I can see you took great offense at this line:

If I had to restrict myself to the point of your post, I would have to restrict myself to wrong-headedness. No thanks.

So you're claiming that conservatives supported the civil rights movement? Go find archives of all the conservative magazines and editorials from that era and look at them. They unanimously wrote at the time that MLK was a communist and we needed to protect states' rights against these terrible civil rights from infecting the country. They're pretty easy to find: Here's one 1957 National Review editorial opposing the enforcement of universal suffrage, and supporting the South's attempt to prevent blacks from voting.

I'm GLAD you asked for this.

Beginning in 1886, Black farmers ran for office to combat Jim Crow laws.

They ran as Republicans.

They were fought by Democrats.

Blacks and Whites voted together as the Populist party and Republican party joined forces and elected Republicans in 1894, and even elected a Republican governor in 1896.

In 1898, there was a Democrat Party Coup de Etat, as the Democrats simply overthrew the elected black Republicans of Wilmington NC. It is the only occurrence in American history where an elected government has been overthrown by violence.

follows is from:
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/.../afro/riot.htm

In the days preceding the election of 1898 Waddell, a former Confederate officer and U.S. Congressman, called for the removal of the Republicans and Populists then in power in Wilmington and proposed in a speech at Thalian Hall that the white citizens, if necessary, "choke the Cape Fear with carcasses." What had particularly incensed Waddell and others was the publication in August of an editorial in the Wilmington Daily Record, a local black-owned newspaper. Alex Manly, the editor, charged that, "poor white men are careless in the matter of protecting their women," and that, "our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than the white men with the colored women." The sexually charged editorial, reprinted across the state, provided Democrats with an issue to inflame racial tensions as election day approached. Yet the day passed without notable incident.

At 8:00 A.M. two days later about 500 white men assembled at the armory of the Wilmington Light Infantry and, after several others declined, Waddell took on the task of leading them to the Daily Record office in Free Love Hall four blocks south on Seventh Street between Nun and Church Streets. The crowd swelled to perhaps 2,000 as they moved across town. Manly, in the meantime, had fled the city, as had numerous other African Americans in expectation of violence. The mob broke into the building, a fire broke out, and the top floor of the building was consumed. The crowd posed for a photograph in front of the burned-out frame.

Dr. Silas P. Wright, the white Republican mayor, resigned under pressure as did members of the city council and other officers, both black and white. Waddell then took office as mayor. The revolt had the support of many of the most powerful men in the city, among them William Rand Kenan and Hugh McRae. George Roundtree, an attorney and advisor to the coup leaders, in 1899 served as chairman of the state legislative committee on constitutional reform that drafted and sponsored the so-called "Grandfather Clause," providing that the male citizens could vote if they could read and write or if their grandfather voted, thereby denying most African Americans the right to vote.

---- follows from http://www.townhall.com/columnists/B...tic_party_coup

Chief spokesman for the racist Democrats was Josephus Daniels, owner and editor of the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper. The publication was unrelenting in depicting blacks in the most negative possible light, especially in its editorial cartoons, many of which are reprinted in the state report.

In his memoirs, Daniels freely admitted his role in the white supremacy campaign. Said Daniels, "The News and Observer was relied upon to carry the Democratic message and to be the militant voice of white supremacy, and it did not fail in what was expected, sometimes going to extremes in its partisanship."

Amazingly, Daniels remained a pillar of the national Democratic Party until his death in 1948. He was Woodrow Wilson's campaign manager in 1912 and was rewarded by being appointed secretary of the navy, where he immediately reinstituted racial segregation throughout the department. Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to be ambassador to Mexico.

----
That's right, liberal Democrat hero, FDR.

So really, it was the Democrats who opposed black voting and black elected officials, like the black Republican city councilmen of Wilmington.

Republicans were true to form when they helped Johnson pass Civil Rights in the 60s.

Meanwhile, it took nearly a hundred years for Republicans to regain anything resembling a slim majority in the state.

I don't believe conservatives today want to keep blacks from voting, but your statement that conservatives supported the civil rights movements is truly ludicrous, and easily demonstrably false.

mmhmm.

But it's not just "big government" that conservatives were opposed to about that era. They were opposed to the culture, the drugs and sex and music and hippy-ness and just general permissiveness (according to conservatives) of that era. And I repeat: It was roughly during that same period of alleged moral degeneracy that our country rose to its height of economic and military dominance in the world.

Actually, wherever tax rates are low, wherever states do not collect an income tax, you'll find the most economic growth and self-sufficiency.

The hippies did not cause the military dominance. The hippies did not increase the US economic dominance in the world, unless you know something about the 1960s drug trade that I do not.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

On a humorous note, in Canada it was mostly Conservative Socialists who came up with the welfare state, and Conservatives like Diefenbaker implemented significant portions of it.

greg

<hippy>
What, get a job?

Work is for squares, man.
</hippy>

[Buckaroo]

Hmmm. I don't know. Maybe indirectly, but they didn't call up Osama Bin Ladin and ask him to crash those planes. Liberals don't have any qualms forcing law abiding citizens to live with the scum and lawlessness criminals as neighbors. They want to force lawlessness on all of us. They believe all criminals are created by law abiding citizens, aka it's "socieities" fault that criminals are the way they are.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Beginning in 1886, Black farmers ran for office to combat Jim Crow laws.

They ran as Republicans.

They were fought by Democrats.

I never said anything about Democrats and Republicans, that's your straw man. I said conservatives, and provided one piece of a mountain of virtually unanimous evidence showing that conservative groups, magazines, editorials, and individuals opposed the changes of the middle of the 20th century in the US, including the civil rights and women' rights movement, and the voting rights act and its predecessors. Oh sure, they have their explanations - states' rights is the typical one. But conservatives always oppose these things, and then after they become accepted in the mainstream they always try to revise history and convince people that they didn't oppose them. I'm sure that in 30 years or so conservatives will be trying to convince people that they didn't really oppose gay rights issues.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

<hippy>
What, get a job?

Work is for squares, man.
</hippy>

Is that a pop-culture reference? I'm confused.

greg

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

On a humorous note, in Canada it was mostly Conservative Socialists who came up with the welfare state, and Conservatives like Diefenbaker implemented significant portions of it.

Canada's ideologies are arranged in a circle. Like this:

..............................Classic Liberalism
............................/............................\
Traditional Conservatism............Welfare Liberalism
............................\............................/
......................Red Tory ---- Welfare Socialism

Red Tories like "Dief the Chief" or Bill Bennett probably appear pretty strange to Americans.

edit: fixed formatting.

[vmarks]

Originally Posted by BRussell 

I never said anything about Democrats and Republicans, that's your straw man. I said conservatives, and provided one piece of a mountain of virtually unanimous evidence showing that conservative groups, magazines, editorials, and individuals opposed the changes of the middle of the 20th century in the US, including the civil rights and women' rights movement, and the voting rights act and its predecessors.

You admit you provided only one piece, and you know there is a correlation between Conservative and Republican. That you call it a strawman is your own denial speaking.

I think you'd find that the hippies weren't derided by Conservatives for their appearance alone, but for their lack of interest in being productive members of their communities, and their opposition to their own soldiers.

Every generation has someone decrying the behavior of the next generation's youth. It's flappers! It's those rock n rollers with their Bill Haley! It's those hippies! It's that rotten disco! Sheena is a punk rocker! That accursed rap music! Spare me. The biggest disagreements are with the message, whether it's love free of responsibility, drugs free of responsibility, or abusing women and capping people free of responsibility. See a theme? Conservatives like this concept of personal responsibility.

Oh sure, they have their explanations - states' rights is the typical one. But conservatives always oppose these things, and then after they become accepted in the mainstream they always try to revise history and convince people that they didn't oppose them. I'm sure that in 30 years or so conservatives will be trying to convince people that they didn't really oppose gay rights issues.

Um, go back a year or so, and re-read your recent history, even in these forums. Conservatives did not oppose gay rights issues. Conservatives noted that the matter belonged to the states and not the federal government, and that forcing it down people's throats with the federal government would cause a backlash. (search on those words, even- you will find the answers you search for.)

By your post, we know that you don't believe there's any such thing as states rights, and that's part of the reason you'll continue making false claims about Conservatives and what they do or do not believe. According to the Constitution, all rights not assigned to the federal government belong to the states and the people - nevermind that the federal government doesn't really act in accordance with that, it's a principle that Conservatives hold dear.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Um, go back a year or so, and re-read your recent history, even in these forums. Conservatives did not oppose gay rights issues. Conservatives noted that the matter belonged to the states and not the federal government, and that forcing it down people's throats with the federal government would cause a backlash. (search on those words, even- you will find the answers you search for.)

Okay, now that is damn funny.



greg

[vmarks]

So, did you run the search, or just content in your preconceived notions?

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

You admit you provided only one piece, and you know there is a correlation between Conservative and Republican. That you call it a strawman is your own denial speaking.

Oh come on. Are you really saying that conservatives supported the changes of the civil rights era? You really can't be serious. Again, look at the premier conservative thinkers and magazines of the time, in particular National Review. They opposed every bit of the civil rights era, from Brown v. Board to the voting rights acts. And again, I'm not talking about party. Region was more important than party - the conservative south opposed passage of the civil rights laws and the north supported them. But I'm not just talking about laws, I'm talking about the cultural changes as well, which conservatives still criticize today. It's probably the one thing that all conservatives agree on: They hate the 1960s. We relived it yet again when Kerry ran for president and conservatives talked on and on about Hanoi Jane and all the rest.

For you to deny this is like me denying that economic inequality is a big issue for liberals. It's not only false, it's profoundly, spectacularly false.

Um, go back a year or so, and re-read your recent history, even in these forums. Conservatives did not oppose gay rights issues. Conservatives noted that the matter belonged to the states and not the federal government, and that forcing it down people's throats with the federal government would cause a backlash. (search on those words, even- you will find the answers you search for.)

Sure, conservatives like the 1964 nominee and "father of modern conservatism" Goldwater opposed the civil rights measures of the 1960s on states' rights grounds. But giving a reason why conservatives opposed them hardly negates the fact that they did oppose them, as you earlier tried to deny.

On gay rights, I'm sorry, but I don't get my information about American conservatism by looking at MacNN threads. Conservatives are the ones who wish to pass constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and abortion for all states. Those are in the Republican platform and supported by Bush, in particular the denial of states' rights on gay marriage. They also want to use the DEA to override states' medical marijuana laws.

It's simple: Conservatives throughout history and today support states' rights when it furthers conservative ends: slavery in the late 1800s, denial of voting rights 100 years later, anti-drug today; and they want to deny states' rights when it furthers conservative ends: trying to stop gay marriage and abortion and drugs.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

So, did you run the search, or just content in your preconceived notions?

What, go back a year and read these forums as you suggest to get your viewpoint on Conservatives and the gay-rights issue? That's the most stupid ****ing idea I've ever seen. A YEAR?! The issue is over now! It's more or less dead! Political will is the only significant thing that remains! Of course Conservatives weren't against gay rights a year ago. Try 10 years ago though, or 20, and you'll get a far clearer picture of Conservative viewpoints and gay rights.

Your comment perfectly illustrates BRussell's prediction about the covering up that will go on. For you to suggest that the conservative right-wing side wasn't against gay rights but rather the political appropriateness of those rights is just plain insulting. Not only that, it's a goddamn lie, and you know it.

greg

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Um, go back a year or so, and re-read your recent history, even in these forums. Conservatives did not oppose gay rights issues. Conservatives noted that the matter belonged to the states and not the federal government, and that forcing it down people's throats with the federal government would cause a backlash. (search on those words, even- you will find the answers you search for.)

On the federal level, they said it should be a states' rights issue. On the state level, they opposed it.

[BRussell]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

On the federal level, they said it should be a states' rights issue. On the state level, they opposed it.

Hmm? I'm sure people here on MacNN have a large variety of views. But the Republican party platform and president Bush advocated a federal constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage in one way for all states. It's just not true that Republicans or conservatives as a group supported a states' rights approach to gay marriage on the federal level.

They also support human life amendments that make abortion illegal for all states. There's no basis to say that conservatives as a whole support states' rights as a principle.