"WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?"

bobdylan.com ^ | 1965 | Bob Dylan

[Cincinatus' Wife]

....Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row... Desolation Row

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"Which side are you on?"

That challenge was shouted at anti-war demonstrations.

In Chicago they shouted, "The whole world is watching!"

Well the whole world is watching again and this time it's Iraq.

We can't win the debate on Iraq until we recognize Vietnam for what it was.

The Swift Boat fracas is the surface manifestation of a large, open, deep divide in American political thought.

***John F. Kerry represents the side that bows to totalitarianism and believes we should comply with international direction.

***George W. Bush represents the side that believes in a strong America and freedom.

(REUTERS/Bri)

***LIBERALS believe there is no right and wrong, except to the extent that America is always wrong - no good and evil
("There ain't no good guys, there ain't no bad guys, there's only you and me and we just disagree…")

Vietnam was wrong, a crime ("America's Great Sin") - American hubris and "imperialism!"

Cold War was American paranoia

Commies were "struggles of national liberation from colonialism" or "building socialist paradises on earth (Soviets)"

USSR collapsed because of "internal contradictions"

LIBERALS won the war with their "superior intellects."

___________________________________________________THE DIVIDE_______________________________________________

(REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

***CONSERVATIVES: believe there IS right and wrong (moral absolutism)

We're right and they (Commies) are wrong.

Communism was an 'Evil Empire' (Reagan)

Vietnam was the right fight.

We cut-and-ran in Vietnam and millions suffered (the conservatives version of "America's Great Sin")

Cold War was right fight -- truth and justice v. lies and oppression.

The Wall came down - (Reagan again), no thanks to the John Kerrys of the world. They STILL don't recognize this! (and never will)

##################################################################################################################

The Vietnam scab is one that NEEDS to be picked - it's the same argument now as it was 30 years ago .

Who's in the right on Iraq?

Which side is the good side? (us again)

Should we do what's necessary to win and triumph? (of course).

The swift boat controversy has brought to the surface a long-suppressed debate about
who we are and what we stand for in the world and in history (space and time).

Which side are you on?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

[Democrat National Convention was this:]*** …"if you can successfully camouflage your own pathology and hatred with a concern for the 'poor' and the 'downtrodden,' then there will always be a 'progressive' milieu to support and defend you." Source

[Kerry represents embodies this:]… That is both the ethical core and psychological heart of what it means to be a part of the left. That is where the gratification comes from. To see yourself as a social redeemer. To feel anointed. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism.

If you were active in the so-called "peace" movement or in the radical wing of the civil rights causes, why would you tell the truth? Why would you tell people that no, you weren't really a "peace activist," except in the sense that you were against America's war. Why would you draw attention to the fact that while you called yourselves "peace activists," you didn't oppose the Communists' war, and were gratified when America's enemies won. What you were really against was not war at all, but American "imperialism" and American capitalism. What you truly hated was America's democracy, which you knew to be a "sham" because it was controlled by money in the end. That's why you wanted to "Bring the Troops Home," as your slogan said. Because if America's troops came home, America would lose and the Communists would win. And the progressive future would be one step closer.

The Dissident Voice October 2003 - One, Two, Three, What Are They Fighting For?***.....No wonder morale is low. No wonder the American soldiers I meet on the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities don't mince their words about their own government. US troops have been given orders not to bad-mouth their President or Secretary of Defence in front of Iraqis or reporters (who have about the same status in the eyes of the occupation authorities). But when I suggested to a group of US military police near Abu Ghurayb they would be voting Republican at the next election, they fell about laughing. "We shouldn't be here and we should never have been sent here," one of them told me with astonishing candour. "And maybe you can tell me: why were we sent here?".....***

[Cincinatus]

Well said, sweetie! :^)

[Howlin]

Bump!

[bmwcyle]

morning bump

[Cincinatus' Wife]

[Kerry represents embodies this:]…................From same source above it.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism. ***

Bump!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I know you agree!

[netmilsmom]

Good Job Lady! I wish I could slap some of my family upside the head with this.

[ClearCase_guy]

Which Side Are On by Florence Reece
Often sung by Pete Seeger

Come all you good workers,
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.

CHORUS:
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

My dady was a miner,
And I'm a miner's son,
And I'll stick with the union
'Til every battle's won.
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there.
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can?
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?

Don't scab for the bosses,
Don't listen to their lies.
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize.

[liberty_lvr]

Speaking of sides...

I see Fox has now planted itself squarely in the Poodle's camp. I just had the treat of excessive morning nausea after listening to that hack, former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke, roundly and thoroughly trash the Swifties and, just for good measure, the Bush Administration for their "gross miscalculation" in Iraq. The Fox 'toons all sat there, nodding quite sagely.

Absolutely DISGUSTING. What a bunch of despicable, sanctimonious jerks.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Well, I can't stand that guy they have on the Sunday show but Brit is there to set things straight.

Brit Hume has been getting the real news out on all of this.

Special Edition is the BEST news show on the air.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thanks!

I wish I could get all of my family to understand it too.

[Liberty Valance]

Well the answer my FRiend
shout truth over the dems
The answer is voting Bush to win

:o)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

And that we will!

[Stars N Stripes]

"The Vietnam scab is one that NEEDS to be picked - it's the same argument now as it was 30 years ago .

Ya know, for 34 years I've pretty much let my service in Vietnam just sit. Every once and a while the subject would come up and I'd feel a little twinge of pride, then let it go. Lately, I have begun to really feel good about it. It's as though after all that time we're finally getting our welcome home parade. I hope I'm not sounding too corny or egotistic, it's just kinda weird after all these years. And maybe a little ironic as well.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Kerry's World: Father Knows Best ….As early as prep school, John Kerry showed signs that he shared his father's suspicions about America's cold war foreign policy. In a debate at St. Paul's in the late '50s, he argued that the United States should establish relations with Red China. During his junior year at Yale, he won a speech prize for an oration warning, "It is the specter of Western Imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating." And, when he was tapped to deliver a graduation speech in 1966, he used the occasion to condemn U.S. involvement in Vietnam, intoning, "What was an excess of isolationism has become an excess of interventionism."

……….."When Kerry refused to speak out against the government [while in uniform], suddenly his father felt like he was being a wimp," says Brinkley. "[So he] encouraged his son to take off the uniform and to become a critic."

John Kerry, of course, did exactly this, first in Vietnam Veterans Against the War and eventually in the U.S. Senate. From the moment he arrived in Washington, Kerry promised that "issues of war and peace" would remain his passion. And, from the start, this meant that he would criticize Ronald Reagan's war against communism, especially when it was fought through proxies in the jungles of Central America. In 1985, he traveled to Nicaragua to meet with the Sandanista government, telling The Washington Post, "I see an enormous haughtiness in the United States trying to tell [the Sandinistas] what to do." Soon after his return, he pressured Congress into investigating the administration's illegal funding of the Contra rebels, opening a trail that culminated in the exposure of the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. And, a few years later, in the late '80s, he repeated this success, launching an investigation that revealed that another of the administration's favorite anti-communists, the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, had been deeply enmeshed in drug-trafficking. Kerry was also skeptical enough of U.S. power that he voted against authorizing a popular intervention -- the Gulf war -- and opposed a 1995 resolution that would have allowed the arming of Bosnians…..***

[bmwcyle]

Did you hear Sean Hannity's man on the street yesterday?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I'm CHEERING you!!!