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Lessig: We Are Squandering Away The Future
Illissius writes "Lawrence Lessig has a new article up on Wired, with the title Our Kids Are in Big Trouble. I suck at summarizing, so here's a choice quote: 'Gone is the sense of duty that made so compelling Kennedy's demand "ask what you can do for your country." We don't even ask what we, as a nation, can do for our kids. The rhetoric of self-interest so deeply pervades politics that an ideal as fundamental as building a better future has been lost.'"
Government data shows Democrat and Republican spending patterns.
Actually, Adam Smith would disagree that free markets increase prosperity in many cases. There are chapters in Wealth of Nations that discuss the benefits of protectionism. Remember- he was NOT discussing a political philosophy of privatize everything and free markets are good. Wealth of Nations was a scientific discourse attempting to describe an emergent system, not an endorsement of it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
In the State Department's assessment, Iraq was one of the few Middle-Eastern countries which didn't have a significant al-Qaeda presence before we invaded. The only al-Qaeda associated terrorists that we know of in Iraq were in Kurd controlled territory, inside the Northern US No-Fly Zone. Three times the military presented plans to take out those terrorists before the invasion. Bush refused 3 times, because it would undermine the case for war. There are more terrorists being "harbored" in Iraq now than there were before we invaded.
If offering moral support to al-Queda is your bar for invading a country, there are a lot more countries we're going to have to invade.
The preponderance of evidence was that Iraq had no meaningful ties to al-Qaeda. The preponderance of evidence once the inspectors were in Iraq was that Iraq had no significant WMD program. The preponderance of evidence was that Iraq's conventional military capability had been signifcantly degraded since the end of the Persian Gulf War. The preponderance of evidence is that Iraq was no threat to its neighbors or the United States. The preponderance of evidence is the Bush Adminstration made one of the greatest strategic blunders in history by invading Iraq.