The End of America

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

Metalman -

There's a lot of wisdom in what you say.

<< all of the arguments you make about the threats of radical islam are the same that were made about the soviet union that drew us into vietna m. escalating threats and so on. domino theory. they turned out to be paper tigers. so are the radical islamists... unless we give them a nuke and put a strongman in power >>

However you've inadvertently put your finger precisely on the reasons I genuinely hesitate to imagine Ron Paul being a wise or sophisticated steward of the US's foreign policy. This is one of his big plus points for you, but for me it is dangerously naive. His domestic policy for the US is one of the best I've heard, but the conception of which way the world will turn if the US will only 'turn inwards' has truly disastrous implications - which in my view is the only point in your 'world view' where I think you are being really, really naive.

Power abhors a vacuum. Do what Ron Paul suggests we do, and America can become like Switzerland. We'll shore up our finances, create a very sound economy, but we sure as hell will be looking at an uglier world twenty years after embarking on your and Ron Paul's experiment.

You overlook that when the US withdraws, all lessons in history promise that another will step in to fill that large power vacuum - and those other contenders today, whom you imagine to be so harmless, are primarily Russia (which does not inspire great confidence as they are addicted to 'tsarist' rule and cannot get a grip on the democracy thingy) and China, who I think needs no further introduction as to deep cynicality of their own foreign policy.

You are dreaming if you think the US has been the primary agent of creating the problems out there Metalman. This is where you and I part in terms of point of view.

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

WorldTraveler -

<< So there is reason for hope, both in historical context and in the pushback we are seeing from both the Right (Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, etc.) and Left (ACLU, US attorney scandals, etc.). >>

I'm on board with you on this general concern - just please don't let it be Naomi Wolf's insights which carry us there - and please don't let it be Ron Paul's simplistic conceptions of the role of US foreign policy in countering the 'scrupulous interests' of Russia and China.

Anyone who cannot understand the meaning of 'power vacuum' in international affairs needs to take a crash course in history. If you think the US imperium has been bad, you have not seen anything yet.

One of the corrolary effects of the US's inevitable fiscal collapse will be the dawning of a 'new chapter' in international affairs, where we will see China's real ethics laid bare upon the international stage, and I predict many here who feel their blood rise in indignation at the US's iniquities will pine for the 'good old days' twenty five years from now, as they examine the whole new complexion international power politics takes on under the aegis of the Chinese politburo's niceties.

[metalman]

Re: The End of America

You are dreaming if you think the US has been the primary agent of creating the problems out there Metalman. This is where you and I part in terms of point of view.

no, silly. you forgetting all my rants about paul? totally naive. a disaster. every right wing hate group on earth proclaims a love for paul and sends him money and he stupidly takes the money and sits by and says nothing. he's clever but he's not wise.

i'm not saying we stop foreign diplomacy. i'm saying we stop being boneheads. stop helping radical groups by feeding them reasons to lead moderate groups. without bush there'd be no ahmadinejad and no chavez. stop being the counter weight for dictators. trying being the smart guys for a change.

[metalman]

Re: The End of America

If the people who see trouble brewing on the horizon wait until they get thrown in jail, won't that be just a
__ teensy bit __
too late to issue warnings?

zackly. can't wait around for the usa to become russia or kyrgizstan before preventing it. let's hear it for the fringe! the kooks!

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

Metalman -

This is an article of faith on your part. Where did you acquire that faith? According to your logic, if Bush hadn't been elected, 09/11 would not have happened. False. What's more the 'equivalents' of Ahmadinejad and Chavez were approaching inexorably, not because of Bush, but because of the approaching peak of world oil production.

Your thesis remains naive, to my view.

without bush there'd be no ahmadinejad and no chavez

[bart]

Re: The End of America

If the people who see trouble brewing on the horizon wait until they get thrown in jail, won't that be just a
__ teensy bit __
too late to issue warnings?

Cool - one more that doesn't need glasses to see what's likely (but not guaranteed) to be directly in front of us.

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

OK guys, just please, please find someone other than Ms. Naomi Wolf to be the collegiate spokesperson for the heroic civilian resistance to totalitarianism?

How do you call it, when they put the index and ring fingers together on each hand and wave them in the air to say "now I'm quoting this that or the other erudite source for you"?

This to me is the 'hallmark' sign of the "latter day college preppy", either student or prof, who is steeped in the glow of sublime certainty they've seen all the angles and are delivering to their audience the "whole truth that's fit to worry about".

Ms. Wolf has a piece of the story, although her method of delivery replete with "like, you know" and "we're all college educated here" makes me want to reach for the barf bag. But I admit, that's a minor detail. The main thing is, she's got nothing to say about the rest of the story regarding actors outside the US. Nothing at all, but a big fluffy pillow down of silence.

If you rely on the likes of Ms Wolf to lead us into a new crusade against government oppression, we still retain an even chance to get suckerpunched really good by some unsavory characters coming from somewhere else entirely (i.e. NOT Federal Agencies - think religious bigot from some place far away instead) who don't give a rat's ass whether Ms. Wolf is successful in leading us to reclaim our habeas corpus or not.

My candidate for enlightened author would speak lucidly about the risks to civil rights in the US, while also carefully weighing this against some emerging harsh realities abroad. I am guessing this other topic would leave Ms. Wolf sorely perplexed for insights.

[Rajiv]

Re: The End of America

Paul Craig Roberts on Naomi Wolfe and Pat Buchanan - Pat Buchanan’s Day of Reckoning: Good-bye to America?

Pat Buchanan’s Day of Reckoning: Good-bye to America?

By Paul Craig Roberts

Pat Buchanan is too patriotic to come right out and say it, but the message of his new book, Day of Reckoning is that America as we have known her is finished. Moreover, Naomi Wolf agrees with him. These two writers of different political persuasions arrive at America’s demise from different directions.

Buchanan explains how hubris, ideology, and greed have torn America apart. A neoconservative cabal with an alien agenda captured the Bush administration and committed American blood, energy, and money to aggression against Muslim countries in the Middle East, while permitting America’s domestic borders to be overrun by immigrants and exporting the jobs that had made the US an opportunity society. War and offshoring have taken a savage economic toll while open borders and diversity have created social and political division.

In her new book, End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Wolf explains America’s demise in terms of the erosion of freedoms. She writes that the ten classic steps that are used to close open societies are currently being taken in the US. Martial law is only a declaration away.

The Bush administration responded to September 11 by initiating military aggression in the Middle East and by using fear and the “war on terror” to implement police state measures at home with legislation, presidential directives, and executive orders

Overnight the US became a tyranny in which people could be arrested and incarcerated on the basis of unsubstantiated accusation. Both US citizens and non-citizens were denied habeas corpus, due process, and access to attorneys and courts. Congress gave Bush legislation establishing military tribunals, the procedures of which permit people to be condemned to death on the basis of secret evidence, hearsay, and confessions extracted by torture. Nothing of the like has ever been seen before in the US.

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

Hey Metalman -

Looks like I'm bending your ear all over again. Sorry. I keep doing that. Bad. Bad. Bad. Lukester Bad. Go stand in the corner Lukester.

[Rajiv]

Re: The End of America

I think you should read the following

Welcome to the Jackboot State, Ann Arbor Division

Welcome to the jackboot state, not to mention the jackboot campus, anno domini 2007. A doctor gives verbal advice to protect the life of an unconscious man and she duly gets hit with attempted felonies by vindictive campus cops, with the connivance of the University of Michigan. Jury selection for her trial starts on Monday in a county courthouse in Ann Arbor.

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

Great post Rajiv - I am sobered. Please also note, in my above posts nowhere did I state the erosion of civil liberties was not an issue. You who are so punctilious on detail and precision, re-read them carefully to see where my objections lie.

I wish you to know that I greatly respect all your work on this site. If push comes to shove and the erosion of civil liberties becomes yet more egregious, you will probably find me in your camp.

But there are severe shortcomings in the critique constructed by the likes of Ms. Wolf. She succumbs to the same malady which you are susceptible to. In the face of all these dangers, she becomes polarized into a view that cannot admit even the existence of some horrific human rights violations by parties altogether outside of this country, and the social system you are putting here under a microscope. These entities play a very large role in what America is becoming. There is no uncertainty or equivocation in that insight. It's a plain fact, born of the past eight years history.

It is the willful myopia towards those massively contributing issues, which actually weakens her (and your!) cause, because it prevents agnostics like me from joining her struggles wholeheartedly.

I cannot abide condemnation of injustice which turns a blind eye to yet more atrocious murderousness elsewhere. It's simple. I've PM'd you on several occasions and explained this in quite fine detail. You must surely understand my points Rajiv?

[Rajiv]

Re: The End of America

a view that cannot admit even the existence of some horrific human rights violations by parties altogether outside of this country, and the social system you are putting here under a microscope.

I cannot abide condemnation of injustice which turns a blind eye to yet more atrocious murderousness elsewhere. It's simple. I've PM'd you on several occasions and explained this in quite fine detail. You must surely understand my points Rajiv?

Lukester, I understand your point of view. In fact I and others whose POV you now object to, have been outspoken about those Human right violators for over 30 years -- and have found that those same human right violators were tacitly supported by one or another super power - and have found that the operating principle has been - on all sides - "Our dictators are not human right violators - but are great benevolent statesmen - greatly beloved by their countrymen -- This by the way included Sadaam Hussain circa 1979 -1990

See also Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power

What you will find is that human rights have been the sacrificial lamb in the chess game of the superpowers -- it is only now that the chickens are coming home to roost -- and I had hoped that you would realize that what is happening now in the US is only just a faint hint of a stench in the air compared what the US and other super powers have been doing in other parts of the world for more than a century!

[bart]

Re: The End of America

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of Human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt, Colonial America sympathizer, British House of Commons, November 18, 1783


Stop quoting laws to us. We carry swords.
-- Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus


“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.”
-- Thomas Paine

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

Rajiv -

As Bart has posted in the words of Thomas Paine, this is the standard we are indeed measured by:

< “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.” >>

-- Thomas Paine

Now show me one country in history that ever lived up to it as it grew to any preeminence. The "stench" we are smelling only a trace of in our own country in a state of sheeplike and privileged innocence is the same stench that has permeated the history of nations. That which outrages you has been there for centuries, and untold numbers of other countries. Once you widen your field of vision and take in the entirety of it, you lose your innocence in believing that "this time it will / must be different" in our own age.

It was even worse under the "pan-humanist" experiments in socialism in the first half of the twentieth century, and therein lies a clue. As we reach out to withdraw, and correct, our own cynical dealing in the world, inspired by the words of Thomas Paine, there are invariably others who will reach in to grasp what we withdrew from, because they could care less about the words of Thomas Paine.

That is the difference of understanding between idealism and pragmatism. You know it on some level, probably better than I, as you are more widely read than I. But you do not wish to acknowledge it, and I certainly cannot draw you to it, as there is nothing admirable about it whatsoever. It is what it is and has been for centuries. What conceit of the present makes you think that in our generation, after hundreds before us, it will be different?.

[bart]

Re: The End of America

Rajiv -

As Bart has posted in the words of Thomas Paine, this is the standard we are indeed measured by:

< “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.” >>

-- Thomas Paine

Now show me one country in history that ever lived up to it as it grew to any preeminence. The "stench" we are smelling only a trace of in our own country in a state of sheeplike and privileged innocence is the same stench that has permeated the history of nations. That which outrages you has been there for centuries, and untold numbers of other countries. Once you widen your field of vision and take in the entirety of it, you lose your innocence in believing that "this time it will / must be different" in our own age.

It was even worse under the "pan-humanist" experiments in socialism in the first half of the twentieth century, and therein lies a clue. As we reach out to withdraw, and correct, our own cynical dealing in the world, inspired by the words of Thomas Paine, there are invariably others who will reach in to grasp what we withdrew from, because they could care less about the words of Thomas Paine.

That is the difference of understanding between idealism and pragmatism. You know it on some level, probably better than I, as you are more widely read than I. But you do not wish to acknowledge it, and I certainly cannot draw you to it, as there is nothing admirable about it whatsoever. It is what it is and has been for centuries. What conceit of the present makes you think that in our generation, after hundreds before us, it will be different?.

Although what you say is true, defending freedom starts at home and expands from there. My take is that is what Rajiv is saying.

There are very serious challenges and issues and factually almost heinous things going on the the US... and being sanctioned. There are even certain areas or issues on which I will not comment in public these days, and for the first time in my life too.