A war to bring democracy to a dictator-state, that simultaneously puts America in control of a vital natural resource, may be a good idea, or it may not.
Unfortunately, nobody ever made that case. Instead, we heard about 9/11, and then "yellow cake," and then we heard about "WMD," and then we heard about toppling an evil dictator and the suffering of the Iraqi people.
This duplicity is what opened up the hawks for all the criticism they have since received.
The Bush administration has been embarassed and disgraced for its claims about Iraq and WMDs. If they had been honest, maybe it would have gone differently.
If the war in Iraq is actually helping the cause of Islamic Fascism, what then?
Iran underscores the point - this has happened before. The end result is an excellent example of the very kind of Fascist Islamic state you are battling against.
We all want the same things. We just disagree on how to go about it. (Yes, it's true. You're being lied to about that too.)
We backed a coup in Iran primarily over oil (Soviets get honorable mention), not because it was the right thing to do. And we are prosecuting a war in Iraq primarily because of oil, not because it is the right thing to do. Certainly not all of the myriad merry-go-round of official justifications, which have been as conclusively debunked as one could ask for.
If our goal was really WMD proliferation, or "being the world's policeman," we would have gone about it very differently... for instance, the way we used to. Everyone knows it.
Bad intentions, bad planning, bad management. And yes, as you point out, now we have no acceptable exit strategy either.
Great example. Clinton's campaign in Bosnia and Kosovo makes the point perfectly. It was clearly in response to an important event. It had wide international support, was run through the U.N., and was generally considered a success.
The loudest objectors were non-interventionists and those with "wag the dog" conspiracy theories about Clinton.
Afghanistan was a direct response to 9/11. Osama most likely really was there, and they nearly caught him. Nobody tried to label it as primarily a "humanitarian" mission, although it certainly was a big added bonus to see the Taliban have to go back to their caves for a while. That was another great success, and not many protested that either.
Iraq was none of those things. If we had gone to Sierra Leone instead and tried to stop the campaign of mass amputations, for instance... but no. We ignored that. We went to Iraq. We went to help the wealthy man, passing over a dozen diseased beggars on our trip across the ocean. We could have been blunt about what we were going to do, I think... anyway, nobody even tried to sell the war as primarily humanitarian until after it became obvious the only nuke program was in Iran.
Go on, if you want to hear the litany of evidence again, I'll oblige but, haven't you already heard it?
Our awful, and bloodthirsty, actions in Iran destabilized a popular, realtively moderate (if nationalist) democracy and installed a pro-western puppet, who clung to power with a secret police described by Amnesty International as the "world's worst" for their unheard-of level of barbarity and disrespect for human rights.
Result: in 1979, our CIA-backed puppet was overthrown, and a Radical, Fascist Islamic Theocracy gained power.
This is what they call a "backlash."
So let's read what you said again:
The US (and/or the West) are not responsible exclusively, or even mostly, for the situation in the mideast.
Let's all reflect on this a moment.
OK, ready to continue?
You may be right that the Middle East has its own problems, and your implied ruthless reasoning about the world's necesity for oil will no doubt resonate, but what you are dreadfully wrong about is that the American/Brittish petroleum-industry campaign of dirty tricks and military intervention works. It does not work.
Iraq will be worse than Iran; I imagine even you are realizing it now.
If you are a Ruthless American (and I imagine this country was built partly on their shoulders), you can say the problem isn't that we tried to exert influence, only that we failed. But, in light of recent history, why don't we leave a little room for alternative interpretations.
You actually believe that "people in Iraq", i.e., normal citizens of Iraq, have anything whatsoever to do with this?
You are trying to minimize the undeniable fact that many Iraqis, not just Iranians and Syrians and Saudis, are participating in guerrilla war against the U.S. military. Many of them out of nationalism, or because of the Sunni-Shiite shuffle, or many just because a relative became American collateral damage.
Maybe even just because their wife and children were dragged outside at 2am and frisked and interrogated by 19 year olds from Kentucky on a tip provided by somebody getting paid to provide tips.
No matter how you justify invading them, being untruthful with yourself and others about the conduct and consequences of the war is dangerous, to your country, to its armed forces (which bear the brunt of the policies we advocate), and to yourself, ultimately, if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time for the next bit of blowback against westerners.
Living in a safer world starts every morning with you waking up and refusing to accept a little more rhetoric, and dealing a little bit more seriously with the truth instead. You urgently need the truth. And you deserve it.
So you're saying that full scale ethnic and religious genocide is the only way to modernize and democratize the mideast, to enable a free flow of information and a free exchange of ideas, and to empower the peoples of said nations to control their own personal and collective destinies in an environment that nurtures ideals of freedom?
If we started with non-oil producers in greater need, people actually would believe that was what we were doing.
You even mix the rhetoric of spreading democracy and going after oil in the same post.
Don't you see it? Or must we still talk about it abstractly, only as "what Iraqis believe..."
This is iffy reasoning. Would a bank be justified in firing someone who admitted that they believed embezzlement was not a crime, or that banks were evil because they charged interest and therefore it is good to steal from banks?
It looks like we used abstraction to dance around common sense.
Firing a bank-robbing-advocate at a bank or a pedophilia-advocate at a nursery school are not the same as firing a Republican at a Democrat-run company or a Catholic at a Protestant-run company. Yet you make them the same.
Yes, Catholics believe Protestants will burn in hell (and used to light them on fire for public entertainment/education), and Republicans may believe Democrats are traitors, but we do look past these differences every day and all work together.
It's not shocking or strange - it just means your attempt at relativism is wrong and there's another test involved here.
Copyright laws are in extraordinary, epic-making flux; copyright doctrine we've lived with for hundreds of years is being rewritten, and in every case so far, entirely in favor of special interests. Advocating the DMCA or software patentability is more controvertial than many other reforms I've heard. Yet I wouldn't fire someone for advocating the DMCA or software patents, even if that would destroy my business. Those positions, by the way, do harm everyone... Software Patents harm any software developer, and the DMCA threatens security researchers with immediate jail time. We all just accept that this is one of those issues that's up for debate, and that we'll allow follow the rules while we advocate for change. "Democracy," in other words.
Comparing some P2P advocacy in the off hours to your scenarios of embezzlement is completely absurd. If he gave any indication he's speaking for his company, that's one thing, and obviously if he has a "criminal history" that's another.
Otherwise I maintain that just advocating a liberal copyright regime on TV doesn't meet the standard for "unacceptable philosophical beliefs" that would justify dismissal. Well, do you really think such speech shows you means to do some harm to your employer? Have you looked at the double-standards, then? Do you really think such an advocate really will foul some potential business by their very presence? I don't know... kind of doubt anyone knew who this guy worked for until they fired him.
They didn't teach it in my Constitutional Law court. In fact, they taught just the opposite, that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the job of the Supreme Court is to enforce the Constitution.
So... you deny that's their job?
We can stop right there; there's no point in continuing. I just gave you an authoritative U.S. government source contradicting you. If this doesn't sway you, you are just going to stamp your feet and insist on whatever you want to insist on regardless of reality. I wonder if you can at least agree that is not productive?
But if you want... your "Constitutional Law court?" Let's hear more about that.
The courts don't have armies after all.
Sure they do. It's called the "U.S. Army." Also, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines, the state police forces of all 50 states, the Secret Service, BATF, park rangers, meter maids... the entire rest of the government is their army, because they are required to abide by the rulings of the court, which no president, and no legislator, can overturn, save with a constitutional amendment...
I can't believe you are seriously disputing this. How old do you claim to be?
What does that even mean?
Exactly what it says.
They certainly can't order another branch to infringe my freedom of speech.
Yes, they can.
Well, they could do it, but that doesn't mean the other branch would have to follow the order.
Yes, it does.
A Supreme Court ruling is fairly meaningless if the other two branches of government don't want to follow it.
It's called a "constitutional crisis." No law is perfectly followed (and remember, the surpreme court are the final authority on how we must follow the law). If it grew past a certain point we would call it "civil unrest" or "civil war."
I made the point myself that violence will result from such an egregiously bad decision as the one we're discussing, but it doesn't change the fact that, officially, it's the law of the land.
Is it really your position that any civil disobedience or failure to perform the duties of office somehow meaningfully negates the stated authority of the court? Keep in mind, its stated authority was all I was referring to.
If the Supreme Court ruling is repugnant to the Constitution, then it is the Constitution which must be followed, and not the Supreme Court ruling.
You're a radical. I like radicals. Absolutely, if you think a law is unjust, civil disobedience has a noble history here. But I worry you don't realize that you are actually breaking the law...
In practice the judicial review process is both beneficial and necessary. If the court has no ability, as you claim, to enforce anything it does, there is no purpose for the court except theater, which is absurd. Then again, pardon me, a other parts of your argument so far has been absurd (insisting against basic facts, even in the face of evidence, etc.).
No, I was responding to something you said, that "If the court puts it on paper that they refuse to do that anymore, then they have rewritten [the Constitution] as surely as if they went to the national archives with a pencil eraser."
So you are... you really are stooping that low. I can't believe it.
If the court says, "I refuse to enforce X," where X is an explicit constitutional dictate, you are claiming not to understand that it's functionally identical to the case where they say, "we are not required to do X." That, in fact, they would almost almost never say the former when they could say the latter, because... because, I guess, it confuses people like you.
If your condition is not just for the benefit of argument, I should warn you that you must be highly susceptible to many kinds of persuasion that rely on alternate phrasing to communicate a repugnant idea.
The Supreme Court of the United States isn't the only governmental entity responsible for upholding the Constitution.
They are the last and final word on constitutionality. We all must uphold the constitution, but only they can tell you what exactly to uphold, by interpreting individual cases.
If they declare tommorrow that the first amendment means that speech is not free, their word is final. There is no one else to appeal to; not another court, not Congress, not the President.
I'd like to see where they put on paper that they refuse to enforce the 5th Amendment, because I read the opinion and I don't remember seeing that part.
You're a funny character. Can I get away with robbing you, as long as I don't say that I'm robbing you?
Are you really stooping to this level of argument?
1) A luxury hotel has never before in the history of this nation been a "public good." If the standard is that loose, we are already off the deep end. But it gets worse.
2) The majority opinion not only said that the luxury hotel was a public good, but it effectively declared that there was no longer a standard. Whatever the states say is a public good, is a public good.
This means the state can do anything they want, since they have just been told teh 5th Amendment will not be enforced. If you are a victim of this, you can't sue. There is no redress from the court anymore.
Now, the constitution lays out the job of the court; to enforce the constitution, even against laws written by the legislature. If the court puts it on paper that they refuse to do that anymore, then they have rewritten it as surely as if they went to the national archives with a pencil eraser.
Or perhaps some others will say, they are only ignoring it, and even though we now have to behave as if it's been rewritten, it lives on unmodified in our hearts, or something.
I was tempted to counterpoint each of your misinformed assumptions, but...
But you can't. I know. You haven't been told how yet.
Maybe Ill call my mother that lives halfway around the world. Thank you Nokia CORP. Or maybe Ill take my grandmother to the pharmacy to get her meds that have extended her quality of life and quantity of life. Thank you Merck CORP. Or perhaps Ill fly down to Mexico City to go sight seeing for the weekend. Thank you Airbus CORP. Or maybe, Ill change my mind and just continue to surf the internet and read slashdot. Thank you Dell CORP.
What does every single corporation you just listed have in common?
They are all first-world companies. Every single one run from America and Europe and 1st world Asia.
If two nations are roughly equivalent in their laws and customs, especially in those that relate to labor, trade between them is indeed the great benefit that basic economics teaches us.
What is interesting is that you stumbled rather than acknowledge the single most basic point I raised: the effect of trade between countries with unequal (let along vastly unequal) such laws and customs.
When one nation that has slavery trades with one that does not, then both of those nation's workers ultimately become slaves.
Laissez Faire Capitalism means that anyone can do just about anything they want without the government telling you what to do. Slavery means you are told what to do, how to do it, and the fruits of what you produce are taken from you by force.
The taxation and regulation of Socialism is analogous to Slavery.
So the antebellum South was Socialist?
Oh, I see. You are already familiar with Orwell.
The way you talk about freedom tells me you have never thought very deeply about it. If I wanted to take your tack, I would call you the victim of class-war propaganda; fed a delicately constructed set of lies designed to make you a better servant to the interests who benefit (or so they think) from this broken attempt at philosophy.
Fortunately it's not necessary for me to hatch wild-eyed conspiracy theories. I can simply argue the basics, and we will get to the end much more easily.
Freedom really is slavery, if your concept of freedom is to put yourself in unchecked bondage to the wealthy.
I bet you would like to live in a more perfectly free society, right?
Until I inform you that I might then be free to abduct you, and force you to work in my basement in exchange for food.
I'm sorry that Slavery has now blighted your perfect fantasy of Laissez Faire.
As long as there is more than one person on the earth, neither is free. There is always a contest. This is about how that contest plays out.
So say there are two people on earth, Adam and Eve. What do you think of Adam if he says, this rule against exploiting you is hindering my freedom! I am a slave!
Laissez Faire capitalism means wealth equals power, without any of the mediating effects of democratic government.
Socialism implies that government is mediating quite a bit.
In the USA, this is usually confused with Communism, a futile attempt to end the entire concept of wealth.
Skip to the end if you like. Show me the model nation that already follows your principles of economics and philosophy and has thus arrived at a congenial state. It's not really China, is it?
Government is not magic, and cannot create jobs, wealth, or happiness out of nothing with fairy dust.
I am impressed. I just bookmarked your post. I'd like to address every single point you raise, but let's start with something simple, because I think your entire house of cards falls over with a single push at its base.
Slavery.
Slavery is the ultimate expression of Laissez Faire capitalism. We had it in the USA until a little while ago; China has it still.
Can't a government presiding over slavery create jobs, wealth, and happiness, simply by outlawing slavery - arguably the biggest and most basic "commie pinko labor regulation"?
Horrors! That would be an "economic catastrophe," you say. I want to try it and see. Or rather, go _back_ to doing it. Weren't we protectionist throughout most of the "good" years in the USA, for instance?:)
What would _really_ happen if we just let the countries that practice slave labor (i.e. China) do business with themselves, instead of letting the American and European labor markets be affected by slavery?
I know the canned answer by heart! Spare me! My cup of coffee will cost $100. You know what? I _want_ to see what the world looks like when nobody gets exploited anywhere in the labor market.
If first-world labor conditions are not economically sustainable for all, I want to say we tried and failed. I actually got the impression, from the supposed "good years" of American history, that we tried and had a rousing success!
Free trade, as far as I can tell, is nothing more than crypto laissez-faire capitalism. Plutocrats can undo all of the pro-labor laws in nation X by skipping across the border to nation Y or Z. Yes, it's cheaper to pick cotton with slaves than uppity high-school educated first-worlders. Wow, Adam Smith is a genius. Then a little while later the job market delivers the bad news to the benighted proletariat.
The punch line? The companies just lost to the prisoner's dillemma. They saved a bit of money and (if they needed it) had price leverage to beat their competitors in the marketplace. It takes a while before the macroeconomic reprecussions blow back, and you realize that big economies are driven by "consumers," not aristocrats, only now your consumers aren't so healthy anymore. Welcome back to the 3rd world.
In a global economy, the labor fleet only travels as fast as its slowest national ship.
You tell 'em, brother! Bring us back to the 7 hour work week! The minimum wage is a curse straight from the mouth of Stalin! It's not "child labor," it's "child labor freedom of choice!" Fire codes are socialism! (So what if a few proles burn up because we chose to save money by omitting some windows and exit doors from the factory floor plan.) I think those crippled beggars, missing eyes and hands and legs on the side of the road are truly the sign of a healthy economy! And who dares force anyone to put a coin in their cup. We already bought and paid for their $12.98 acid-wash denim jeans on sale, the transaction ends there, buddy! One day, when the EPA is gone and we handle our environment Russian-style, maybe then, America will be great again!
Base yes, ignorant no. I figured you hadn't made it up, and was mainly being sarcastic.
OK, fair enough.:)
That's great, you would use onelook, I used answers.com, which didn't have that criterium in it.
Point taken.
I fail to see the relevance of that statement, since the government does still feel that it is restricted by the constitution on how it performs eminent domain.
It says it feels this way, much the same way a thief caught in police lights shouts "I'm innocent" as he drops the stolen TV.
I believe it requires nothing less than sub-human intelligence to claim that we are restricted by the term "public use" in the 5th Amendment, yet also declare that we set no judicial boundary on what constitutes "public use."
This is why I use the word despotism - because of the extreme nature of the case, I can only conclude that this is a deliberate and willful refusal to follow the constitution.
When you combine eminent domain with property taxes, I just don't see how you can say you own the land. You really just lease the land from the government.
It's a valid point you make. I look at it the way I do because, my impression of this is, until very recently, property taxes were usually non-predatory, and eminent domain was used for its intended purpose (i.e. road building) - and that, not much.
But hey, if you think eminent domain which must pass a judicial review under a public use standard is still a world with private property, then we still have private property, because that's what we currently have.
Actually, no, judicial review is what we just lost. Hence my comment.
How base, and ignorant, of you, to suggest. Go to onelook and try the word yourself. I would, before I accused you of making it up.
whether or not the actions of the government are restricted by a constitution doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the constitution contains a protection from eminent domain.
You seem to imply all eminent domain is a problem, which is a different discussion than we're having now.
What we're talking about now is the constitutional restriction on eminent domain.
If the government no longer feels that it is restricted by the constitution on how it performs eminent domain, it is indeed despotic.
Because regardless of any desire to make it so, it's never black or white.
To me, a world where eminent domain must pass judicial review under a public use standard is still a world with private property, because in practice, there's just not that much public use going on, and there aren't any other ways to build a road.
A world without that standard or that review is a very different world.
The same way that we say speech is free, but allow for fake fires in crowded theaters, threats on the president, slander, libel, false advertising and so forth... Yet it is quite meaningful to say America has freedom of speech. You can turn down your eyes at the first impingement on absolute freedom, but that is a pre-adolescent exercise. The fact is, absolute freedom is quite literally a fantasy, and when we say speech is free, we mean free in terms of a given standard.
When the standard is abandoned, it's meaningful to say freedom was lost.
Must everyone short circuit at the slightest subtlety?
Despotism is "a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)," the parenthesized portion being the operative part of the metaphor here. Only difference is that there's not a single despot today (though in practice, many state governments are effectively controlled by a very small number of people).
The practices in New London and (soon) elsewhere have as much in common with Georgian ideals as Stalin had in common with Marxism.
Further discussion of the "always been the case" thread here.
Somewhere in your possession there is probably at least one thing which you would not willingly give up for just it's "fair value" - that is, merely what it's worth in the marketplace.
If I break into your house tonight and take it from you anyway, even if leave some cash behind equivalent to its fair value, you would still call the police and say you were robbed.
Now imagine how people feel about their homes. Territory is an ancient human, nay animal, issue. Taking yours away from you against your will, even if I leave you some cash, is an act of violence.
Imagine if you were born there. If you moved there 50 years ago with your late husband and raised your family there. Imagine if you're 80 years old, and you have no living relatives, and moving is an unbearable hardship for you.
I doubt you treat your own life as the cold, detached 24-hour market you seem to expect others to.
You also can't dump toxic waste in your back yard, and there are water rights, and you can't open a store in your garage, and this is only scratching the surface.
Of course by an absolutist definition private property has never existed anywhere in the world at any time, unless you count well-defended ground during a state of anarchy.
Hell, you can go all the way around the back door and say that since the local majority could at any time change the laws to give themselves the power to take property, property is always at the sufferance of the local majority.
The problem with all these approaches is that they are unconstitutional, whether they use selective regulatory enforcement or tax assessment to evict someone, or they make no excuses and just brazenly admit what they are doing. The minute these things stop being the everyday necessities of finance and keeping the public order and become predatory, is the minute they become unconstitutional. This is a determination that has to be made by a court.
The court has now officially bowed out. This is why I say, private property ended today.
SCOTUS' job is to review state laws for constitutionality.
If they refuse to apply any standard for "public good," then it is exactly the same as if they had erased the words right off the parchment.
States can make all the laws they want. If SCOTUS fails to follow the constitution in reviewing them, they have, as they did in this case, rewritten the constitution by fiat.
Your knee doesn't jerk when someone whacks it? You will now never own real property in your life, unless you emigrate. All you can ever do is occupy some space, under the perpetual consent of the local majority government.
the supreme court doesn't feel it's their job the decide what falls within the "public good" clause of eminent domain.
It's the court's job, and indeed a grave necessity, for them to rule on matters of constitutionality. Whether or not states set limits on eminent domain, the court must decide if those limits are constitutional.
By taking the position you describe, SCOTUS has nullified the entire concept of "public good." Since anything can now qualify as a public good and pass the constitutional test, it is exactly as if they redacted the words directly from the parchment.
Yes, this means that they effectively repealed a rather important portion of the 5th amendment by fiat.
Private property is now a fiction in the United States. "Property" is now redefined as something that you temporarily occupy under the consent and sufference of your local political majority.
This signals the beginning of a campaign of legal home invasion, as wealthy and politically-connected people will wield the government to transfer the property of others to themselves. Despotism, by any other name.
The end result will be familiar to anyone who'se lived in a radically unjust society: violence.
OS X not finished? Of course it is. They had rigorous plan, and it ended with an announcement and a big party. Why try to confuse "finished" as in "avowed to be functional" versus "finished" as in "no more work will be done on it."
No such avowal has ever taken place for "Desktop Linux," except nominally at little places like Lindows/Linspire.
Linux is just people messing around. Some of them talk big, have big plans. Nobody with any brains is saying it's finished in the sense that MacOS and Windows are.
Inability to take valid criticism?
The "FOSS community" is not an entity that takes criticism or doesn't.
If there's a problem with a particular piece of software, maybe someone fixes it for you. Maybe you fix it yourself. Maybe if you can't wait you pay someone to fix it for you. That's about it.
If your attitude is to say "you suck," "do this," "go faster," "take my criticism," etc. then clearly you are going to be happier with commercial software... or at least, you _might_ be.
Ironically people went to FOSS for choice, because places like Apple and Sun and Microsoft didn't give you any. "Don't like living with that bug? Wish you could have this feature? Too bad. Suck it up." And there really was nothing you could do about it, before things like Linux.
Individual people don't take valid criticism, because that's a human trait, and it is hardly a "FOSS community" problem - in fact, the FOSS community is your exact refuge from that problem, because it resists that human tendency better than any other model of software development. The FOSS community doesn't have to take your criticism. You can take the code and do it yourself, and when it rocks that'll show them.
Slashdot Mirror
We all want the same things. We just disagree on how to go about it. (Yes, it's true. You're being lied to about that too.)
We backed a coup in Iran primarily over oil (Soviets get honorable mention), not because it was the right thing to do. And we are prosecuting a war in Iraq primarily because of oil, not because it is the right thing to do. Certainly not all of the myriad merry-go-round of official justifications, which have been as conclusively debunked as one could ask for.
If our goal was really WMD proliferation, or "being the world's policeman," we would have gone about it very differently... for instance, the way we used to. Everyone knows it.
Bad intentions, bad planning, bad management. And yes, as you point out, now we have no acceptable exit strategy either.
Great example. Clinton's campaign in Bosnia and Kosovo makes the point perfectly. It was clearly in response to an important event. It had wide international support, was run through the U.N., and was generally considered a success.
The loudest objectors were non-interventionists and those with "wag the dog" conspiracy theories about Clinton.
Afghanistan was a direct response to 9/11. Osama most likely really was there, and they nearly caught him. Nobody tried to label it as primarily a "humanitarian" mission, although it certainly was a big added bonus to see the Taliban have to go back to their caves for a while. That was another great success, and not many protested that either.
Iraq was none of those things. If we had gone to Sierra Leone instead and tried to stop the campaign of mass amputations, for instance... but no. We ignored that. We went to Iraq. We went to help the wealthy man, passing over a dozen diseased beggars on our trip across the ocean. We could have been blunt about what we were going to do, I think... anyway, nobody even tried to sell the war as primarily humanitarian until after it became obvious the only nuke program was in Iran.
Go on, if you want to hear the litany of evidence again, I'll oblige but, haven't you already heard it?
The US (and/or the West) are not responsible exclusively, or even mostly, for the situation in the mideast.
Are you familiar with what we did in Iran?
Our awful, and bloodthirsty, actions in Iran destabilized a popular, realtively moderate (if nationalist) democracy and installed a pro-western puppet, who clung to power with a secret police described by Amnesty International as the "world's worst" for their unheard-of level of barbarity and disrespect for human rights.
Result: in 1979, our CIA-backed puppet was overthrown, and a Radical, Fascist Islamic Theocracy gained power.
This is what they call a "backlash."
So let's read what you said again:
The US (and/or the West) are not responsible exclusively, or even mostly, for the situation in the mideast.
Let's all reflect on this a moment.
OK, ready to continue?
You may be right that the Middle East has its own problems, and your implied ruthless reasoning about the world's necesity for oil will no doubt resonate, but what you are dreadfully wrong about is that the American/Brittish petroleum-industry campaign of dirty tricks and military intervention works. It does not work.
Iraq will be worse than Iran; I imagine even you are realizing it now.
If you are a Ruthless American (and I imagine this country was built partly on their shoulders), you can say the problem isn't that we tried to exert influence, only that we failed. But, in light of recent history, why don't we leave a little room for alternative interpretations.
You actually believe that "people in Iraq", i.e., normal citizens of Iraq, have anything whatsoever to do with this?
You are trying to minimize the undeniable fact that many Iraqis, not just Iranians and Syrians and Saudis, are participating in guerrilla war against the U.S. military. Many of them out of nationalism, or because of the Sunni-Shiite shuffle, or many just because a relative became American collateral damage.
Maybe even just because their wife and children were dragged outside at 2am and frisked and interrogated by 19 year olds from Kentucky on a tip provided by somebody getting paid to provide tips.
No matter how you justify invading them, being untruthful with yourself and others about the conduct and consequences of the war is dangerous, to your country, to its armed forces (which bear the brunt of the policies we advocate), and to yourself, ultimately, if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time for the next bit of blowback against westerners.
Living in a safer world starts every morning with you waking up and refusing to accept a little more rhetoric, and dealing a little bit more seriously with the truth instead. You urgently need the truth. And you deserve it.
So you're saying that full scale ethnic and religious genocide is the only way to modernize and democratize the mideast, to enable a free flow of information and a free exchange of ideas, and to empower the peoples of said nations to control their own personal and collective destinies in an environment that nurtures ideals of freedom?
If we started with non-oil producers in greater need, people actually would believe that was what we were doing.
You even mix the rhetoric of spreading democracy and going after oil in the same post.
Don't you see it? Or must we still talk about it abstractly, only as "what Iraqis believe..."
This is iffy reasoning. Would a bank be justified in firing someone who admitted that they believed embezzlement was not a crime, or that banks were evil because they charged interest and therefore it is good to steal from banks?
It looks like we used abstraction to dance around common sense.
Firing a bank-robbing-advocate at a bank or a pedophilia-advocate at a nursery school are not the same as firing a Republican at a Democrat-run company or a Catholic at a Protestant-run company. Yet you make them the same.
Yes, Catholics believe Protestants will burn in hell (and used to light them on fire for public entertainment/education), and Republicans may believe Democrats are traitors, but we do look past these differences every day and all work together.
It's not shocking or strange - it just means your attempt at relativism is wrong and there's another test involved here.
Copyright laws are in extraordinary, epic-making flux; copyright doctrine we've lived with for hundreds of years is being rewritten, and in every case so far, entirely in favor of special interests. Advocating the DMCA or software patentability is more controvertial than many other reforms I've heard. Yet I wouldn't fire someone for advocating the DMCA or software patents, even if that would destroy my business. Those positions, by the way, do harm everyone... Software Patents harm any software developer, and the DMCA threatens security researchers with immediate jail time. We all just accept that this is one of those issues that's up for debate, and that we'll allow follow the rules while we advocate for change. "Democracy," in other words.
Comparing some P2P advocacy in the off hours to your scenarios of embezzlement is completely absurd. If he gave any indication he's speaking for his company, that's one thing, and obviously if he has a "criminal history" that's another.
Otherwise I maintain that just advocating a liberal copyright regime on TV doesn't meet the standard for "unacceptable philosophical beliefs" that would justify dismissal. Well, do you really think such speech shows you means to do some harm to your employer? Have you looked at the double-standards, then? Do you really think such an advocate really will foul some potential business by their very presence? I don't know... kind of doubt anyone knew who this guy worked for until they fired him.
I remember something like that, from around that time.
Was it called the Sparcbook?
They didn't teach it in my Constitutional Law court. In fact, they taught just the opposite, that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the job of the Supreme Court is to enforce the Constitution.
So... you deny that's their job?
We can stop right there; there's no point in continuing. I just gave you an authoritative U.S. government source contradicting you. If this doesn't sway you, you are just going to stamp your feet and insist on whatever you want to insist on regardless of reality. I wonder if you can at least agree that is not productive?
But if you want... your "Constitutional Law court?" Let's hear more about that.
The courts don't have armies after all.
Sure they do. It's called the "U.S. Army." Also, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines, the state police forces of all 50 states, the Secret Service, BATF, park rangers, meter maids... the entire rest of the government is their army, because they are required to abide by the rulings of the court, which no president, and no legislator, can overturn, save with a constitutional amendment...
I can't believe you are seriously disputing this. How old do you claim to be?
What does that even mean?
Exactly what it says.
They certainly can't order another branch to infringe my freedom of speech.
Yes, they can.
Well, they could do it, but that doesn't mean the other branch would have to follow the order.
Yes, it does.
A Supreme Court ruling is fairly meaningless if the other two branches of government don't want to follow it.
It's called a "constitutional crisis." No law is perfectly followed (and remember, the surpreme court are the final authority on how we must follow the law). If it grew past a certain point we would call it "civil unrest" or "civil war."
I made the point myself that violence will result from such an egregiously bad decision as the one we're discussing, but it doesn't change the fact that, officially, it's the law of the land.
Is it really your position that any civil disobedience or failure to perform the duties of office somehow meaningfully negates the stated authority of the court? Keep in mind, its stated authority was all I was referring to.
If the Supreme Court ruling is repugnant to the Constitution, then it is the Constitution which must be followed, and not the Supreme Court ruling.
You're a radical. I like radicals. Absolutely, if you think a law is unjust, civil disobedience has a noble history here. But I worry you don't realize that you are actually breaking the law...
In practice the judicial review process is both beneficial and necessary. If the court has no ability, as you claim, to enforce anything it does, there is no purpose for the court except theater, which is absurd. Then again, pardon me, a other parts of your argument so far has been absurd (insisting against basic facts, even in the face of evidence, etc.).
No, I was responding to something you said, that "If the court puts it on paper that they refuse to do that anymore, then they have rewritten [the Constitution] as surely as if they went to the national archives with a pencil eraser."
So you are... you really are stooping that low. I can't believe it.
If the court says, "I refuse to enforce X," where X is an explicit constitutional dictate, you are claiming not to understand that it's functionally identical to the case where they say, "we are not required to do X." That, in fact, they would almost almost never say the former when they could say the latter, because... because, I guess, it confuses people like you.
If your condition is not just for the benefit of argument, I should warn you that you must be highly susceptible to many kinds of persuasion that rely on alternate phrasing to communicate a repugnant idea.
Really? The constitution says this? I must have missed that part.
You certainly did. Do they not teach this in school anymore?
Check out the "brief overview" for a background on the court's origin and jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court of the United States isn't the only governmental entity responsible for upholding the Constitution.
They are the last and final word on constitutionality. We all must uphold the constitution, but only they can tell you what exactly to uphold, by interpreting individual cases.
If they declare tommorrow that the first amendment means that speech is not free, their word is final. There is no one else to appeal to; not another court, not Congress, not the President.
I'd like to see where they put on paper that they refuse to enforce the 5th Amendment, because I read the opinion and I don't remember seeing that part.
You're a funny character. Can I get away with robbing you, as long as I don't say that I'm robbing you?
Are you really stooping to this level of argument?
I think that's the case for two reasons:
1) A luxury hotel has never before in the history of this nation been a "public good." If the standard is that loose, we are already off the deep end. But it gets worse.
2) The majority opinion not only said that the luxury hotel was a public good, but it effectively declared that there was no longer a standard. Whatever the states say is a public good, is a public good.
This means the state can do anything they want, since they have just been told teh 5th Amendment will not be enforced. If you are a victim of this, you can't sue. There is no redress from the court anymore.
Now, the constitution lays out the job of the court; to enforce the constitution, even against laws written by the legislature. If the court puts it on paper that they refuse to do that anymore, then they have rewritten it as surely as if they went to the national archives with a pencil eraser.
Or perhaps some others will say, they are only ignoring it, and even though we now have to behave as if it's been rewritten, it lives on unmodified in our hearts, or something.
Just because I don't want the supreme court to repeal part of the 5th amendment by fiat, doesn't mean they didn't.
And if you think you can make a case why this isn't what happened, be my guest.
I was tempted to counterpoint each of your misinformed assumptions, but...
But you can't. I know. You haven't been told how yet.
Maybe Ill call my mother that lives halfway around the world. Thank you Nokia CORP. Or maybe Ill take my grandmother to the pharmacy to get her meds that have extended her quality of life and quantity of life. Thank you Merck CORP. Or perhaps Ill fly down to Mexico City to go sight seeing for the weekend. Thank you Airbus CORP. Or maybe, Ill change my mind and just continue to surf the internet and read slashdot. Thank you Dell CORP.
What does every single corporation you just listed have in common?
They are all first-world companies. Every single one run from America and Europe and 1st world Asia.
If two nations are roughly equivalent in their laws and customs, especially in those that relate to labor, trade between them is indeed the great benefit that basic economics teaches us.
What is interesting is that you stumbled rather than acknowledge the single most basic point I raised: the effect of trade between countries with unequal (let along vastly unequal) such laws and customs.
When one nation that has slavery trades with one that does not, then both of those nation's workers ultimately become slaves.
Laissez Faire Capitalism means that anyone can do just about anything they want without the government telling you what to do. Slavery means you are told what to do, how to do it, and the fruits of what you produce are taken from you by force.
The taxation and regulation of Socialism is analogous to Slavery.
So the antebellum South was Socialist?
Oh, I see. You are already familiar with Orwell.
The way you talk about freedom tells me you have never thought very deeply about it. If I wanted to take your tack, I would call you the victim of class-war propaganda; fed a delicately constructed set of lies designed to make you a better servant to the interests who benefit (or so they think) from this broken attempt at philosophy.
Fortunately it's not necessary for me to hatch wild-eyed conspiracy theories. I can simply argue the basics, and we will get to the end much more easily.
Freedom really is slavery, if your concept of freedom is to put yourself in unchecked bondage to the wealthy.
I bet you would like to live in a more perfectly free society, right?
Until I inform you that I might then be free to abduct you, and force you to work in my basement in exchange for food.
I'm sorry that Slavery has now blighted your perfect fantasy of Laissez Faire.
As long as there is more than one person on the earth, neither is free. There is always a contest. This is about how that contest plays out.
So say there are two people on earth, Adam and Eve. What do you think of Adam if he says, this rule against exploiting you is hindering my freedom! I am a slave!
Laissez Faire capitalism means wealth equals power, without any of the mediating effects of democratic government.
Socialism implies that government is mediating quite a bit.
In the USA, this is usually confused with Communism, a futile attempt to end the entire concept of wealth.
Skip to the end if you like. Show me the model nation that already follows your principles of economics and philosophy and has thus arrived at a congenial state. It's not really China, is it?
Government is not magic, and cannot create jobs, wealth, or happiness out of nothing with fairy dust.
I am impressed. I just bookmarked your post. I'd like to address every single point you raise, but let's start with something simple, because I think your entire house of cards falls over with a single push at its base.
Slavery.
Slavery is the ultimate expression of Laissez Faire capitalism. We had it in the USA until a little while ago; China has it still.
Can't a government presiding over slavery create jobs, wealth, and happiness, simply by outlawing slavery - arguably the biggest and most basic "commie pinko labor regulation"?
if the message they got was, end free trade?
:)
Horrors! That would be an "economic catastrophe," you say. I want to try it and see. Or rather, go _back_ to doing it. Weren't we protectionist throughout most of the "good" years in the USA, for instance?
What would _really_ happen if we just let the countries that practice slave labor (i.e. China) do business with themselves, instead of letting the American and European labor markets be affected by slavery?
I know the canned answer by heart! Spare me! My cup of coffee will cost $100. You know what? I _want_ to see what the world looks like when nobody gets exploited anywhere in the labor market.
If first-world labor conditions are not economically sustainable for all, I want to say we tried and failed. I actually got the impression, from the supposed "good years" of American history, that we tried and had a rousing success!
Free trade, as far as I can tell, is nothing more than crypto laissez-faire capitalism. Plutocrats can undo all of the pro-labor laws in nation X by skipping across the border to nation Y or Z. Yes, it's cheaper to pick cotton with slaves than uppity high-school educated first-worlders. Wow, Adam Smith is a genius. Then a little while later the job market delivers the bad news to the benighted proletariat.
The punch line? The companies just lost to the prisoner's dillemma. They saved a bit of money and (if they needed it) had price leverage to beat their competitors in the marketplace. It takes a while before the macroeconomic reprecussions blow back, and you realize that big economies are driven by "consumers," not aristocrats, only now your consumers aren't so healthy anymore. Welcome back to the 3rd world.
In a global economy, the labor fleet only travels as fast as its slowest national ship.
You tell 'em, brother! Bring us back to the 7 hour work week! The minimum wage is a curse straight from the mouth of Stalin! It's not "child labor," it's "child labor freedom of choice!" Fire codes are socialism! (So what if a few proles burn up because we chose to save money by omitting some windows and exit doors from the factory floor plan.) I think those crippled beggars, missing eyes and hands and legs on the side of the road are truly the sign of a healthy economy! And who dares force anyone to put a coin in their cup. We already bought and paid for their $12.98 acid-wash denim jeans on sale, the transaction ends there, buddy! One day, when the EPA is gone and we handle our environment Russian-style, maybe then, America will be great again!
Base yes, ignorant no. I figured you hadn't made it up, and was mainly being sarcastic.
:)
OK, fair enough.
That's great, you would use onelook, I used answers.com, which didn't have that criterium in it.
Point taken.
I fail to see the relevance of that statement, since the government does still feel that it is restricted by the constitution on how it performs eminent domain.
It says it feels this way, much the same way a thief caught in police lights shouts "I'm innocent" as he drops the stolen TV.
I believe it requires nothing less than sub-human intelligence to claim that we are restricted by the term "public use" in the 5th Amendment, yet also declare that we set no judicial boundary on what constitutes "public use."
This is why I use the word despotism - because of the extreme nature of the case, I can only conclude that this is a deliberate and willful refusal to follow the constitution.
When you combine eminent domain with property taxes, I just don't see how you can say you own the land. You really just lease the land from the government.
It's a valid point you make. I look at it the way I do because, my impression of this is, until very recently, property taxes were usually non-predatory, and eminent domain was used for its intended purpose (i.e. road building) - and that, not much.
But hey, if you think eminent domain which must pass a judicial review under a public use standard is still a world with private property, then we still have private property, because that's what we currently have.
Actually, no, judicial review is what we just lost. Hence my comment.
Is that the portion you added yourself?
How base, and ignorant, of you, to suggest. Go to onelook and try the word yourself. I would, before I accused you of making it up.
whether or not the actions of the government are restricted by a constitution doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the constitution contains a protection from eminent domain.
You seem to imply all eminent domain is a problem, which is a different discussion than we're having now.
What we're talking about now is the constitutional restriction on eminent domain.
If the government no longer feels that it is restricted by the constitution on how it performs eminent domain, it is indeed despotic.
Because regardless of any desire to make it so, it's never black or white.
To me, a world where eminent domain must pass judicial review under a public use standard is still a world with private property, because in practice, there's just not that much public use going on, and there aren't any other ways to build a road.
A world without that standard or that review is a very different world.
The same way that we say speech is free, but allow for fake fires in crowded theaters, threats on the president, slander, libel, false advertising and so forth... Yet it is quite meaningful to say America has freedom of speech. You can turn down your eyes at the first impingement on absolute freedom, but that is a pre-adolescent exercise. The fact is, absolute freedom is quite literally a fantasy, and when we say speech is free, we mean free in terms of a given standard.
When the standard is abandoned, it's meaningful to say freedom was lost.
Must everyone short circuit at the slightest subtlety?
Despotism is "a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)," the parenthesized portion being the operative part of the metaphor here. Only difference is that there's not a single despot today (though in practice, many state governments are effectively controlled by a very small number of people).
The practices in New London and (soon) elsewhere have as much in common with Georgian ideals as Stalin had in common with Marxism.
Further discussion of the "always been the case" thread here.
Somewhere in your possession there is probably at least one thing which you would not willingly give up for just it's "fair value" - that is, merely what it's worth in the marketplace.
If I break into your house tonight and take it from you anyway, even if leave some cash behind equivalent to its fair value, you would still call the police and say you were robbed.
Now imagine how people feel about their homes. Territory is an ancient human, nay animal, issue. Taking yours away from you against your will, even if I leave you some cash, is an act of violence.
Imagine if you were born there. If you moved there 50 years ago with your late husband and raised your family there. Imagine if you're 80 years old, and you have no living relatives, and moving is an unbearable hardship for you.
I doubt you treat your own life as the cold, detached 24-hour market you seem to expect others to.
You also can't dump toxic waste in your back yard, and there are water rights, and you can't open a store in your garage, and this is only scratching the surface.
Of course by an absolutist definition private property has never existed anywhere in the world at any time, unless you count well-defended ground during a state of anarchy.
Hell, you can go all the way around the back door and say that since the local majority could at any time change the laws to give themselves the power to take property, property is always at the sufferance of the local majority.
The problem with all these approaches is that they are unconstitutional, whether they use selective regulatory enforcement or tax assessment to evict someone, or they make no excuses and just brazenly admit what they are doing. The minute these things stop being the everyday necessities of finance and keeping the public order and become predatory, is the minute they become unconstitutional. This is a determination that has to be made by a court.
The court has now officially bowed out. This is why I say, private property ended today.
That was a cool-headed, nuanced and unbiased interpretation of a political story.
I think you must have the wrong website.
SCOTUS' job is to review state laws for constitutionality.
If they refuse to apply any standard for "public good," then it is exactly the same as if they had erased the words right off the parchment.
States can make all the laws they want. If SCOTUS fails to follow the constitution in reviewing them, they have, as they did in this case, rewritten the constitution by fiat.
Your knee doesn't jerk when someone whacks it? You will now never own real property in your life, unless you emigrate. All you can ever do is occupy some space, under the perpetual consent of the local majority government.
the supreme court doesn't feel it's their job the decide what falls within the "public good" clause of eminent domain.
It's the court's job, and indeed a grave necessity, for them to rule on matters of constitutionality. Whether or not states set limits on eminent domain, the court must decide if those limits are constitutional.
By taking the position you describe, SCOTUS has nullified the entire concept of "public good." Since anything can now qualify as a public good and pass the constitutional test, it is exactly as if they redacted the words directly from the parchment.
Yes, this means that they effectively repealed a rather important portion of the 5th amendment by fiat.
Private property is now a fiction in the United States. "Property" is now redefined as something that you temporarily occupy under the consent and sufference of your local political majority.
This signals the beginning of a campaign of legal home invasion, as wealthy and politically-connected people will wield the government to transfer the property of others to themselves. Despotism, by any other name.
The end result will be familiar to anyone who'se lived in a radically unjust society: violence.
OS X not finished? Of course it is. They had rigorous plan, and it ended with an announcement and a big party. Why try to confuse "finished" as in "avowed to be functional" versus "finished" as in "no more work will be done on it."
No such avowal has ever taken place for "Desktop Linux," except nominally at little places like Lindows/Linspire.
Linux is just people messing around. Some of them talk big, have big plans. Nobody with any brains is saying it's finished in the sense that MacOS and Windows are.
Inability to take valid criticism?
The "FOSS community" is not an entity that takes criticism or doesn't.
If there's a problem with a particular piece of software, maybe someone fixes it for you. Maybe you fix it yourself. Maybe if you can't wait you pay someone to fix it for you. That's about it.
If your attitude is to say "you suck," "do this," "go faster," "take my criticism," etc. then clearly you are going to be happier with commercial software... or at least, you _might_ be.
Ironically people went to FOSS for choice, because places like Apple and Sun and Microsoft didn't give you any. "Don't like living with that bug? Wish you could have this feature? Too bad. Suck it up." And there really was nothing you could do about it, before things like Linux.
Individual people don't take valid criticism, because that's a human trait, and it is hardly a "FOSS community" problem - in fact, the FOSS community is your exact refuge from that problem, because it resists that human tendency better than any other model of software development. The FOSS community doesn't have to take your criticism. You can take the code and do it yourself, and when it rocks that'll show them.