"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. Ones standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." -- Theodore Dalrymple
Political correctness is evil. It is the enemy of good, the enemy of truth, the enemy of intellecutal freedom and therefore the enemy of political freedom. That which is politically free can not be politically correct. Those who espose and promote it are the servants of evil and should be treated accordingly.
My mind is a PC-free zone. I refuse to accept lies. My conscience is a PC-free zone. I refuse to live with lies. My sphere of influence is a PC-free zone. I refuse to permit lies in my presence. My life is a PC-free zone. I keep the light of intellectual honesty burning. I hold off the darkness of ignorance and deceit. Our world is a better place because I do this.
When Apple starts selling software that runs on my computer, then I'll think about using it.
Till then, they can all bask in the bukkake of Steve Jobs' and shut the hell up.
The real hot fix is being competent enough that you don't have to rely on proprietary hardware or software.
I don't care what Microsoft does and I sure as hell don't care what everyone's favorite also-ran Apple does either. Choosing Apple over Microsoft is no choice at all. Were the tables turned and Apple in Microsoft's shoes, it would be at least as nasty and domineering if not more. So don't post flippant nonsense about how green the pasture is on the other side, both are equally full of flies and cow shite.
It takes TIME for an ANSI or ISO standard to be created. If ODF were to undergo this process it would create the impression that it was a rough or draft standard that had yet to have all the edges polished and kinks worked out.
It is interesting that they are doing this though since it is a clear indication that they see ODF as a real threat and something that they can really only hold at bay temporarily. Has Microsoft gone into hemorrhage control mode?
What people tend to forget is that problems such as the abuse of prisoners only came to light because they WERE the anomaly.
The reason that they tend to forget this is because our domestic enemies, aka the left, work very hard to create the false impression that our military is in the business of abusing people.
During the last war that was an overseas extension of our ongoing war with our domestic enemies, aka the Vietnam war, the left painted our soldiers as "baby killers," a characterization of the military that is still prevalent among the leftists of that generation to this day. I once knew a girl whose mother "disowned" her when she joined the army after high school. The rationale was that the military was made up of nothing bu "baby killers." I was only 18 at the time, and while I knew her mother was mad, I didn't realize that her insanity was the result of leftist indoctrination. I was too young to realize that large groups of people can be hopelessly and completely full of shit. Impervious to logic, resistant to experience, and all but immune to encounters with the clue-bat. Some forms of insanity are communicable. Some do eventually come to their senses and join the rest of us in the real world, but sadly for many it is a life-long ailment.
The mistake that Americans make when dealing with our domestic enemies is that we allow them to set the agenda. This is why "no blood for oil", "bush lied and people died", "9/11 was an inside job" and other such destructive nonsense is as prevalent as it is. Far too many of us simply don't understand that our domestic enemies are in fact our enemies. They are not the loyal opposition, but our foes. Trying to work with them is like one of the 3 little pigs asking the big bad wolf for advice on how to build a house, or asking a child molester to draft laws dealing with sexual predators. Dealing with them as anything other than the enemy in our midst is a terrible mistake that won't just affect our lives, but the lives of those who come after us.
The good news is that as time goes by the left becomes less and less able to sustain its political standing. The left has become more vocal, more organized, and far better funded than ever in recent years, or at least since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet in spite of all this increased activity they are only just barely maintaining their level of influence. They're also being dangerously frank and forthcoming about their own nature and the purposes of their agendas. Subterfuge and misdirection have always been among their primary tactics because most people want nothing to do with what they are actually about. The more they show their hand, the weaker that hand becomes. So despite all of the problems and destruction that they cause, I'm am hopeful for the future.
The intellectual dishonesty of the left is almost beyond belief at times. They live in their own little fantasy world where our mortal enemies are sock puppets of the president and others within his administration. They're a Darwin award waiting to happen. The only problem is that the rest of us are equally likely to be victims of their immense folly.
If these people represent the future of our nation then we're already dead.
"As we make Solaris more familiar to Linux users, we don't [want to] lose what makes it more compelling and competitive."
If Solaris was compelling and competitive, they wouldn't be trying to make it more like Linux.
Solaris is something that we use as a legacy OS where I work. We have well over 700 Linux systems in the school of engineering. At last count we had maybe 35 systems running Solaris still lingering here and there in places where they either cannot be replaced or there is no economy in doing so. There has not been a NEW installation of Solaris deployed in at least two years. We've also got five Tru64 systems, two HP-UX systems, three Irix systems, and I think 4 VMS systems that a dedicated die-hard won't allow to expire.
The bottom line is that the unix wars are over, Linux has won, and whatever contender eventually does take the crown from it will NOT be one of the has-eens of the past.
I'm long past caring what Sun does or does not do with Solaris for the same reason that I don't care what E-com does with OS/2. Both OS's may or may not be configured with fancy new features in the future, but it doesn't matter because they've already lost.
Game over dude, and no you don't get your quarter back.
I oppose discussions of copyright and open source period.
Copyrights are a good idea when applied in moderation.
Open source is a means to an end, not an end unto it self.
Neither are particularly interesting to read about on Slashdot because both issues are plagued with juvenile whining by 35 year old virgins who still live with their parents.
Our understanding of capitalism is akin to our understanding of psychology or sociology, both of which are disciplines which study pre-existing facets of the human experience.
This is why a Nobel prize is given for economics, because the process of discovery is every bit as real for it as it is for chemistry, medicine or physics.
...the person who is actually responsible has a free hand to implement their dastardly designs because no one is looking for them, the "guilty party" having already been apprehended.
Considering the Gramscian front group that the ACLU has become, I don't know if I would want to be remembered as a supporter, even if that support was at a time before the organization had lots its integrity.
The article calls him a "confessed superhacker." He's a punk, a loser. Only losers spend their time breaking into other people's computers, and only an extreme loser would actually leave his computer so wide-open that a university sysadmin would be able to walk into it. I work at a university as a sysamdin. We're not a bunch of uber-crackers.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only things that anyone is ever punished for in this world are being unpopular and being incompetent. This punk definitely fits the latter to a T.
The truly comptent, if evil, crackers out there are not going to be caught...ever. This guy was low hanging fruit and deserves whatever he gets both for being malicious, and especially for being such a complete ass-clown.
Well Europeans are intentionally made ignorant of basic economic, social and political realities. The few that do wake up and smell the coffee are branded as fascists and racists, and that is when their attackers are being kind.
Assuming for a moment that the conclusion proclaimed by the initial poster is correct, that 48% of Americans do not believe in "evolution," I can gurantee you that these very same Americans have a much greater grasp of the realities that actually affect them than do your average europeans.
I'll take a dyed in the wool creationist who believes in hard work, individual rights, and equality of liberty over your average european who has been sold on welfare states, group rights, multiculturalism, and other ideas and policies that are fundamentally destructive to humanity.
Truth is always important, but some truths are more important than others. Communism is far more destructive than creationism. Both are false, but only one is responsible for the deaths of 50 million people and the misery and suffering of countless more.
The problem here is that none of these things have any consistent definition. A Tory in the UK would look an awful lot like a mainstream democrat in the US. A mainstream conservative in the US would look an awful lot like an BNP / National Front supporter in the UK.
The terms left, right, liberal, conservative, all have local definitions that can vary greatly from their meaning in other parts of the world.
Where I come from a leftist/liberal is someone like Michael Moore or Markos Zuniga. In France these two would actaully be seen as moderates or even slightly conservative. A conservative here is someone like Ronald Reagan. Well in Chile or Argentina he would be seen as an extreme liberal.
I don't try to use any of these terms anymore to describe my political and economic philosophies. I've learned that they have too many meanings and too much baggage. If I were to say I was a liberal then some people would sneer and start bitching to me about people like John Edwards, Howard Dean, or Hillary Clinton when I have nothing to do with any of them and almost nothing common with them. If I were to say I was a conservative then a different group of people would start in with the histrionics about president Bush and about how awful and horrible he is.
The term I use to describe myself is "Anti authoritarian." I believe in individual freedom and individual rights. I believe that the government which governs least governs best. I believe that the authority of the government comes from the consent of the governed and that it is the right of the people to dismantle and destroy any government which violates the social contract. These rights do not come from the constitution but are the natural rights of mankind. I believe that the government has no authority over that which is personal and private, but only over that which is public. In other words, laws that attempt to regulate private behavior are fundamentally invalid because they exceed the legitimate authority of the state.
Some would call me a libertarian. I don't call myself that because unfortunately even that term has too much baggage. A lot of people who call themselves libertarians are complete nutjobs and I don't want to be associated with them. Anyone who believes that all roads should be toll roads for no other reason than to avoid paying the gas tax is a moron. There are some things for which a publicly funded solution is best, and others for which a privately funded solution is best. There is no univeral superiority to private solutions.
The most important thing to understand about beginners is that they don't exist.
The notion that there are all these people in the world who don't know how to use a computer is a notion that has dominated CS and IT long after it was no longer true.
There are two groups of people, those who grew up around computers and those who did not. Those who did do not need their hand held. Those who did not grow up around computers more than likely still know how to use them because they have a job. Anynoe who isn't employed doing manual labor (skilled or unskilled) is going to be a using a computer at some point during the day, often times almost exclusively.
I'm 34 years old, I grew up around computers. Not everyone in my age group had a computer growing up, but a sizable percentage did. Those who did not, had them at school and at work. People 10 to 20 years younger than I am DEFINITELY grew up around computers. Designing a user interface to try and cater to idiots who don't use computers (and never will) is a waste of everyone's time.
Today a beginner when it comes to computer is a 4 year old, not a 44 year old. If the latter doesn't know how to use a computer it is because they have avoided learning. The Gnome guys are really wasting their time trying to create a dumbed-down, open source version of Microsoft Bob for these turkeys. Writing books for people who cannot read just makes the author look like a dumbass.
Exactly what part of "competitive marketplace" does the author not understand?
Ruthless and self-serving behavior is how businesses compete. No one is in business to help their competitors. No one who has to deal with the realities of the business world gives a rat's ass about the ideologies behind Free/open source software. The only thing anyone cares about is whether open source provides a better solution than the alternatives, or provides a similar solution at a lower price. IBM helps and promotes open source projects because these projects help IBM. This isn't altruism, but quid pro quo.
3) Bloggers like Michelle Malkin regularly make a farce of leftists and underscore their intellectual and moral bankruptcy http://www.michellemalkin.com/
4) Unlike the Mainstream Media (MSM), bloggers are too numerous and independent for their integrity to be undermined. Unlike the fourth estate, they are not an institution which can be infiltrated and ultimately captured. Gramscian strategy breaks down because it is impossible for the minority who are leftists to control what everyone else is saying and writing.
In general leftists are all for free speech when you're saying what they want to hear. When you disagree with them they're very quick to try and silence you. This is the purpose behind things like campus speech codes and political correctness itself. They want to silence conservatives and libertarians because they've learned from experience that these philosophies are more pursuasive and compelling than their own, especially the more people learn about them. The reason why you don't see Republicans voting for measures like this one is because they have nothing to fear from freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas.
They would be largely correct. Even the Tet offensive was a horrible defeat for the North Vietnamese.
Vietnam wasn't lost in the jungles of southeast asia, it was lost right here in America. We weren't defeated by the VC or the NVA, but by the communists in our own back yard. It was their Gramscian strategy of undermining our culture and infiltrating our institutions that resulted in us first pulling our punches, and then packing up and going home. The same forces are hard at work today depicting the war in Iraq as an attempt to steal their oil, as American imperialism, as a mercenary war at the behest of Israel, or really just about anything but what it truly is: a war to protect America against an evil regime that was working hard to develop them means by which to hurt us.
What makes this conflict different from Vietnam is that we can't turn our backs and run away. Both Iraq and Vietnam are merely battlefields in much larger wars. For Vietnam that war was the cold war. With Iraq it is the war against islamic imperialism. The difference is that this war isn't only being fought overseas. Our enemies can and will hit us right here at home. Their reach and their ambitions span continents. Their desire to see us dead drives them to suicide missions. We must not only prevail in Iraq but also in the approaching war in Iran and Syria as well, and even then we will not see the end of it. I'll be old and gray before the ultimate outcome of the conflict that will come to be known as WW-III will be realized. I hope that we will be victorious over our enemies, but with the way things are doing I'm anything but sure of our victory. The greatest enemy we face is not Al Qaeda, but elements within our own nation that are working to ensure our defeat.
Slashdot Mirror
"Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. Ones standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." -- Theodore Dalrymple
Political correctness is evil. It is the enemy of good, the enemy of truth, the enemy of intellecutal freedom and therefore the enemy of political freedom. That which is politically free can not be politically correct. Those who espose and promote it are the servants of evil and should be treated accordingly.
My mind is a PC-free zone.
I refuse to accept lies.
My conscience is a PC-free zone.
I refuse to live with lies.
My sphere of influence is a PC-free zone.
I refuse to permit lies in my presence.
My life is a PC-free zone.
I keep the light of intellectual honesty burning.
I hold off the darkness of ignorance and deceit.
Our world is a better place because I do this.
Can you say the same?
When Apple starts selling software that runs on my computer, then I'll think about using it.
Till then, they can all bask in the bukkake of Steve Jobs' and shut the hell up.
The real hot fix is being competent enough that you don't have to rely on proprietary hardware or software.
I don't care what Microsoft does and I sure as hell don't care what everyone's favorite also-ran Apple does either. Choosing Apple over Microsoft is no choice at all. Were the tables turned and Apple in Microsoft's shoes, it would be at least as nasty and domineering if not more. So don't post flippant nonsense about how green the pasture is on the other side, both are equally full of flies and cow shite.
Leftists lie, even when they tell the truth.
It takes TIME for an ANSI or ISO standard to be created. If ODF were to undergo this process it would create the impression that it was a rough or draft standard that had yet to have all the edges polished and kinks worked out.
It is interesting that they are doing this though since it is a clear indication that they see ODF as a real threat and something that they can really only hold at bay temporarily. Has Microsoft gone into hemorrhage control mode?
What people tend to forget is that problems such as the abuse of prisoners only came to light because they WERE the anomaly.
The reason that they tend to forget this is because our domestic enemies, aka the left, work very hard to create the false impression that our military is in the business of abusing people.
During the last war that was an overseas extension of our ongoing war with our domestic enemies, aka the Vietnam war, the left painted our soldiers as "baby killers," a characterization of the military that is still prevalent among the leftists of that generation to this day. I once knew a girl whose mother "disowned" her when she joined the army after high school. The rationale was that the military was made up of nothing bu "baby killers." I was only 18 at the time, and while I knew her mother was mad, I didn't realize that her insanity was the result of leftist indoctrination. I was too young to realize that large groups of people can be hopelessly and completely full of shit. Impervious to logic, resistant to experience, and all but immune to encounters with the clue-bat. Some forms of insanity are communicable. Some do eventually come to their senses and join the rest of us in the real world, but sadly for many it is a life-long ailment.
The mistake that Americans make when dealing with our domestic enemies is that we allow them to set the agenda. This is why "no blood for oil", "bush lied and people died", "9/11 was an inside job" and other such destructive nonsense is as prevalent as it is. Far too many of us simply don't understand that our domestic enemies are in fact our enemies. They are not the loyal opposition, but our foes. Trying to work with them is like one of the 3 little pigs asking the big bad wolf for advice on how to build a house, or asking a child molester to draft laws dealing with sexual predators. Dealing with them as anything other than the enemy in our midst is a terrible mistake that won't just affect our lives, but the lives of those who come after us.
The good news is that as time goes by the left becomes less and less able to sustain its political standing. The left has become more vocal, more organized, and far better funded than ever in recent years, or at least since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet in spite of all this increased activity they are only just barely maintaining their level of influence. They're also being dangerously frank and forthcoming about their own nature and the purposes of their agendas. Subterfuge and misdirection have always been among their primary tactics because most people want nothing to do with what they are actually about. The more they show their hand, the weaker that hand becomes. So despite all of the problems and destruction that they cause, I'm am hopeful for the future.
The intellectual dishonesty of the left is almost beyond belief at times. They live in their own little fantasy world where our mortal enemies are sock puppets of the president and others within his administration. They're a Darwin award waiting to happen. The only problem is that the rest of us are equally likely to be victims of their immense folly.
If these people represent the future of our nation then we're already dead.
We dont' use "toy hardware"
http://hpc.asu.edu/index.php
And its all running on Linux.
http://hpc.asu.edu/index.php
All of it runs on Linux.
"As we make Solaris more familiar to Linux users, we don't [want to] lose what makes it more compelling and competitive."
If Solaris was compelling and competitive, they wouldn't be trying to make it more like Linux.
Solaris is something that we use as a legacy OS where I work. We have well over 700 Linux systems in the school of engineering. At last count we had maybe 35 systems running Solaris still lingering here and there in places where they either cannot be replaced or there is no economy in doing so. There has not been a NEW installation of Solaris deployed in at least two years. We've also got five Tru64 systems, two HP-UX systems, three Irix systems, and I think 4 VMS systems that a dedicated die-hard won't allow to expire.
The bottom line is that the unix wars are over, Linux has won, and whatever contender eventually does take the crown from it will NOT be one of the has-eens of the past.
I'm long past caring what Sun does or does not do with Solaris for the same reason that I don't care what E-com does with OS/2. Both OS's may or may not be configured with fancy new features in the future, but it doesn't matter because they've already lost.
Game over dude, and no you don't get your quarter back.
I oppose discussions of copyright and open source period.
Copyrights are a good idea when applied in moderation.
Open source is a means to an end, not an end unto it self.
Neither are particularly interesting to read about on Slashdot because both issues are plagued with juvenile whining by 35 year old virgins who still live with their parents.
"Hate speech" is the invention of leftist subversives who got tired of losing all the arguments and decided upon a strategy of outlawing the debate.
"Hate speech" is therefore the expression of ideas and especially facts that the left cannot competently refute.
It is easy to ID hate speech. it is the expression of any idea or fact that the left wishes would go away.
The less success the left has arguing against a particular idea or fact, the more likely it is to be branded as "Hate Speech."
A milder version of this is the "I'm offended!!" strategy whereby the left silences its political opponents through the over-application of etiquette.
....it evolved.
Our understanding of capitalism is akin to our understanding of psychology or sociology, both of which are disciplines which study pre-existing facets of the human experience.
This is why a Nobel prize is given for economics, because the process of discovery is every bit as real for it as it is for chemistry, medicine or physics.
Yes, and we all know how honest islamofascists are.
...only reinforce the view that Stallman and his crowd are a bunch of communists.
He should stick to what he's good at, writing software.
I wonder how he managed to visit Cuba without violating the federal law that prohibits US citizens from trading with our enemies.
...the person who is actually responsible has a free hand to implement their dastardly designs because no one is looking for them, the "guilty party" having already been apprehended.
Considering the Gramscian front group that the ACLU has become, I don't know if I would want to be remembered as a supporter, even if that support was at a time before the organization had lots its integrity.
The article calls him a "confessed superhacker." He's a punk, a loser. Only losers spend their time breaking into other people's computers, and only an extreme loser would actually leave his computer so wide-open that a university sysadmin would be able to walk into it. I work at a university as a sysamdin. We're not a bunch of uber-crackers.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only things that anyone is ever punished for in this world are being unpopular and being incompetent. This punk definitely fits the latter to a T.
The truly comptent, if evil, crackers out there are not going to be caught...ever. This guy was low hanging fruit and deserves whatever he gets both for being malicious, and especially for being such a complete ass-clown.
Well Europeans are intentionally made ignorant of basic economic, social and political realities. The few that do wake up and smell the coffee are branded as fascists and racists, and that is when their attackers are being kind.
Assuming for a moment that the conclusion proclaimed by the initial poster is correct, that 48% of Americans do not believe in "evolution," I can gurantee you that these very same Americans have a much greater grasp of the realities that actually affect them than do your average europeans.
I'll take a dyed in the wool creationist who believes in hard work, individual rights, and equality of liberty over your average european who has been sold on welfare states, group rights, multiculturalism, and other ideas and policies that are fundamentally destructive to humanity.
Truth is always important, but some truths are more important than others. Communism is far more destructive than creationism. Both are false, but only one is responsible for the deaths of 50 million people and the misery and suffering of countless more.
If only OpenBSD were suitable for anything beyond a firewall.
The problem here is that none of these things have any consistent definition. A Tory in the UK would look an awful lot like a mainstream democrat in the US. A mainstream conservative in the US would look an awful lot like an BNP / National Front supporter in the UK.
The terms left, right, liberal, conservative, all have local definitions that can vary greatly from their meaning in other parts of the world.
Where I come from a leftist/liberal is someone like Michael Moore or Markos Zuniga. In France these two would actaully be seen as moderates or even slightly conservative. A conservative here is someone like Ronald Reagan. Well in Chile or Argentina he would be seen as an extreme liberal.
I don't try to use any of these terms anymore to describe my political and economic philosophies. I've learned that they have too many meanings and too much baggage. If I were to say I was a liberal then some people would sneer and start bitching to me about people like John Edwards, Howard Dean, or Hillary Clinton when I have nothing to do with any of them and almost nothing common with them. If I were to say I was a conservative then a different group of people would start in with the histrionics about president Bush and about how awful and horrible he is.
The term I use to describe myself is "Anti authoritarian." I believe in individual freedom and individual rights. I believe that the government which governs least governs best. I believe that the authority of the government comes from the consent of the governed and that it is the right of the people to dismantle and destroy any government which violates the social contract. These rights do not come from the constitution but are the natural rights of mankind. I believe that the government has no authority over that which is personal and private, but only over that which is public. In other words, laws that attempt to regulate private behavior are fundamentally invalid because they exceed the legitimate authority of the state.
Some would call me a libertarian. I don't call myself that because unfortunately even that term has too much baggage. A lot of people who call themselves libertarians are complete nutjobs and I don't want to be associated with them. Anyone who believes that all roads should be toll roads for no other reason than to avoid paying the gas tax is a moron. There are some things for which a publicly funded solution is best, and others for which a privately funded solution is best. There is no univeral superiority to private solutions.
The most important thing to understand about beginners is that they don't exist.
The notion that there are all these people in the world who don't know how to use a computer is a notion that has dominated CS and IT long after it was no longer true.
There are two groups of people, those who grew up around computers and those who did not. Those who did do not need their hand held. Those who did not grow up around computers more than likely still know how to use them because they have a job. Anynoe who isn't employed doing manual labor (skilled or unskilled) is going to be a using a computer at some point during the day, often times almost exclusively.
I'm 34 years old, I grew up around computers. Not everyone in my age group had a computer growing up, but a sizable percentage did. Those who did not, had them at school and at work. People 10 to 20 years younger than I am DEFINITELY grew up around computers. Designing a user interface to try and cater to idiots who don't use computers (and never will) is a waste of everyone's time.
Today a beginner when it comes to computer is a 4 year old, not a 44 year old. If the latter doesn't know how to use a computer it is because they have avoided learning. The Gnome guys are really wasting their time trying to create a dumbed-down, open source version of Microsoft Bob for these turkeys. Writing books for people who cannot read just makes the author look like a dumbass.
Lee
Exactly what part of "competitive marketplace" does the author not understand?
Ruthless and self-serving behavior is how businesses compete. No one is in business to help their competitors. No one who has to deal with the realities of the business world gives a rat's ass about the ideologies behind Free/open source software. The only thing anyone cares about is whether open source provides a better solution than the alternatives, or provides a similar solution at a lower price. IBM helps and promotes open source projects because these projects help IBM. This isn't altruism, but quid pro quo.
I can give you 5 reasons:
1 5&only
9 1_Fauxtography_Updates&only
c rats-seek-to-resurrect-dead-fairness-doctrine/
1) Bloggers stopped CBS news from passing off a fake memo impugning the president before the 2004 election. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=126
2) Bloggers revealed the prevalence of faked and photoshopped photos being passed off by the AP as genuine.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=223
3) Bloggers like Michelle Malkin regularly make a farce of leftists and underscore their intellectual and moral bankruptcy
http://www.michellemalkin.com/
4) Unlike the Mainstream Media (MSM), bloggers are too numerous and independent for their integrity to be undermined. Unlike the fourth estate, they are not an institution which can be infiltrated and ultimately captured. Gramscian strategy breaks down because it is impossible for the minority who are leftists to control what everyone else is saying and writing.
5) Forcing bloggers to register is only one part of a two pronged assault on open dialogue. The democrats are also attempting to reintroduce the so called "fairness doctrine" in an attempt to undermine conservative talk radio.
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2007/01/18/demo
In general leftists are all for free speech when you're saying what they want to hear. When you disagree with them they're very quick to try and silence you. This is the purpose behind things like campus speech codes and political correctness itself. They want to silence conservatives and libertarians because they've learned from experience that these philosophies are more pursuasive and compelling than their own, especially the more people learn about them. The reason why you don't see Republicans voting for measures like this one is because they have nothing to fear from freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas.
They would be largely correct. Even the Tet offensive was a horrible defeat for the North Vietnamese.
Vietnam wasn't lost in the jungles of southeast asia, it was lost right here in America. We weren't defeated by the VC or the NVA, but by the communists in our own back yard. It was their Gramscian strategy of undermining our culture and infiltrating our institutions that resulted in us first pulling our punches, and then packing up and going home. The same forces are hard at work today depicting the war in Iraq as an attempt to steal their oil, as American imperialism, as a mercenary war at the behest of Israel, or really just about anything but what it truly is: a war to protect America against an evil regime that was working hard to develop them means by which to hurt us.
What makes this conflict different from Vietnam is that we can't turn our backs and run away. Both Iraq and Vietnam are merely battlefields in much larger wars. For Vietnam that war was the cold war. With Iraq it is the war against islamic imperialism. The difference is that this war isn't only being fought overseas. Our enemies can and will hit us right here at home. Their reach and their ambitions span continents. Their desire to see us dead drives them to suicide missions. We must not only prevail in Iraq but also in the approaching war in Iran and Syria as well, and even then we will not see the end of it. I'll be old and gray before the ultimate outcome of the conflict that will come to be known as WW-III will be realized. I hope that we will be victorious over our enemies, but with the way things are doing I'm anything but sure of our victory. The greatest enemy we face is not Al Qaeda, but elements within our own nation that are working to ensure our defeat.
I thought that the driving principle behind Google was "Don't be evil."
If helping our enemies attack our soldiers in the field doesn't qualify as evil, then I don't know what does.