Posted on 01/05/2007 10:48:25 AM PST by jmc813
Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News has now decided to join Michael Medved in a new ad hominem attack by using a disparaging adjective to call me a name (“kooky”) and placing me No. 3 in the list of the 20 “people on the right” he finds most annoying.
Hawkins places me between No. 2 Mark Foley, whom Hawkins characterizes as a “page-molesting pervert,” and No. 4 Duke Cunningham, the congressman Hawkins notes is “going to jail for 8 years after taking a bribe.” I am honored to be included on any list John Hawkins wishes to create. But, as far as I can determine, my offense to Hawkins involves writing with the scope of the 1st Amendment, an offense that Hawkins considers somewhat worse than taking bribes, but not quite as bad as making salacious approaches to underage male employees.
I first want to thank Hawkins for his continuing campaign to draw attention to my arguments.
Second, I wonder how much additional writing I will have to produce before Hawkins reduces himself to the “liar, liar” ranting stage Michael Medved exhibited in his recent emotional tirade published on Townhall.com. I guess I will have to read more of Hawkins’s writing to determine if I find his views annoying, but upon introspection I find I have no emotional reaction whatsoever, even to his characterization that I am somehow “annoying” to him. Perhaps President Bush drew solace that he was listed seven positions below me on Hawkins’s “most annoying” list. I apologize to President Bush that Hawkins could not find a better pejorative for him than “incompetent.” Clearly in Hawkins’s hierarchy to be “kooky” in writing a political commentary is much more annoying to him than to be merely “incompetent” in conducting the affairs of the nation’s highest elected post.
Arguing that my writings advance a “completely moronic North American conspiracy theory,” Hawkins linked to an old post he had written on his blog last summer. In an exchange published in July on HUMAN EVENTS’ Right Angle blog, I answered these and other objections raised by Hawkins. The exchange ended when Hawkins chose not to respond. Hawkins has never answered my last specific rebuttals published on the blog. Merely repeating his initial arguments would be considered “non responsive” in traditional debate theory.
Besides, I have never argued a “North American conspiracy.” The European Union and the Euro are realities today, not a conspiracy theory. So too, North American integration is proceeding rapidly right now, fully documented, as the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America attests if you reference the Department of Commerce website SPP.gov. Equally, the Trans-Texas Corridor is proceeding rapidly, as documented by the Texas Department of Commerce website. If either the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America or the Trans-Texas Corridor is a conspiracy, the conspiracy is being perpetrated by government officials on their public websites.
We will grant that the now public writings of those who advanced the European Union, such as the memoirs of EU intellectual architect Jean Monnet, confess after the fact that a stealth method was pursued to create the European Union. As Christopher Booker and Richard North, co-authors of the 2003 book, “The Great Deception: A Secret History of the European Union,” write that Jean Monnet “knew that only by operating in the shadows, behind a cloak of obscurity could he one day realize his dream.” Architects of North American integration, such as Robert Pastor of American University, breathe new life into stealth politics when suggesting openly that a new 9/11 crisis may be just the event needed to advance his agenda for creating the “North American Community” he openly professes.
At any rate, I invite Hawkins to resume his debate with me. To make the process easy, we will link to the exchange. Seeing that I wrote the last rejoinder there, the next move appears to be up to Hawkins. Is Hawkins up to calm, rational debate, or does he want to leave his comments at the level of calumny, an ad hominem attack which always belies an inability to win the argument any other way?
My writing has been aimed at making sure that North American integration does not advance to the point where a North American Union emerges after what may be a decades-long incremental process. I want to be sure that the United States does not follow the template set in place by how the European Union and the euro emerged over some fifty years, driven by an intellectual elite and evolving step-by-step from an initial, seemingly innocuous continental steel and coal agreement.
What is it exactly that Hawkins finds annoying—that a NAU and the Amero could be the end result of the North American integration currently happening, or that I might suggest the Bush Administration could be following the Jean Monnet path intentionally?
You never answered. What is the NAU transportation plan?
The terms "public use," and "private use," are not debatable in this context . . . they are legal terms-of-art. If you wish to debate that a road (tollway or not) is "private use," then you need to ask yourself these questions:
Question: who holds title to the land and the improvements thereupon?The second question is what trips most people up, because they associate "public" with "free," not understanding that public use-fees are a fact of life. Take Burnham Harbor in Chicago, for example. It is funded by taxpayers, and operated (on paper, at least) by the Chicago Park District. The Park District also charges yearly slip-fees in the thousands of dollars, and the waiting-list for slips is rather long. One cannot appear there and claim, "I'm a taxpayer, park my boat." Nor can one claim that the Park District's refusal or inability to provide accomodation is evidence that the facility is not "public."
Question: who is being excluded from the land?
It is the inability to make the above distinction(s) that sends people into mental vapor-lock when discussing Kelo.
Sheesh! Something new here, folks. Ficklin needs a spokesperson.
Good question. But not nearly as definitive practically as you might conjecture. Since the promoters have been fudging the relevance...or practical meaning... of legal concerns...it is almost touching that they suddenly assert what must seem to them a quaint notion: title interest. An interest that is now conveniently waived with the stroke of a government's pen...declaring a general "public use" that in fact is slanted for a distinctly special interest.
One notable beneficiary, clearly, is an accommodating foreign interest, the Spanish toll-road operation which will have the franchise to collect the tolls. But that is tangential to the larger intentions behind the promised "public" use.
More centrally, I was explicitly questioning the purported "Public use" broadly-speaking. At the policy claim level of the promoters. Who is it burdening, and who it is benefiting. That is where the apologists for the TTC go into mental vapor-lock.
Note also, those same TTC promoters have gone way out of their way to prevent the actual public from having a say, or a vote on this matter, in Texas or anywhere else it appears to be heading...
So it would appear to not be a "public" use that the promoters wish to risk public opinion being put to the test.
Question: who is being excluded from the land?
How are the burdened land-holders "included" in the decision-making of the takings? How are they benefitted? How are the General taxpayers, and the Public as a whole? How is the Particular case of the U.S. tax-paying competitors...domestic manufacturers...compared to the duty-free Importers "benefitted"? Also the relative burdening effects of having Mexican cartage firms, and their truckers suddenly erupting into U.S. territory [another "qaint notion"?]...running up to Canada, where they can then head back with another full load of imports to the U.S. instead of dead-heading as the U.S. cartage firms are forced to do.
[One almost might think it was a scheme to destroy them...must not be regarded as "stake-holders" LOL!]
Clearly, there are welfare-effects...redistributions... here, a taxpayer financed subsidy to the Importers, that "are not debatable in this context."
And you need a dictionary. "Spokeperson," being a compound noun, is beyond your reach.
Just add a "s" where it belongs. I figure that most get my drift, but you might not.
How about dams? powerplants?
Dams and powerplants are okay, as long as they aren't connected to a yucky foreign country.
Internet publishing is great. It has already changed the world for the better, but I stand by what I said. No silly internet forum fight has ever changed anything that really matters. :)
Shouldn't you have said, add AN 's', not a 's'. Correct an error with another error. For a second there I thought you fixed spokes for a living.
I've had my say, asked my questions, and provided my links. Sufficient for the day.
You never answered my question. What is the NAU transportation plan? Maybe you have a link?
I certainly respect your views and I could lean all the way if in all cases that's all there is, the fight.
But at least there's communication sometimes narrowing until a crucial difference is defined. Then the contumely yields to substance.
True, it ain't no Rathergate but IMO we learn something.
Apparently, even the alphabet is beyond your reach. "S" is a consonant, not a vowel.
That's the problem when you start speaking in generalities. There is no difference between taking land under eminent domain for a foreign-operated wastewater plant, a foreign-operated airport, or a foreign-operated tollroad (all are "public uses," by the way). That's where your analysis breaks down, and I still see no reason to debate the meaning of the term itself instead of whether it applies to the examples above.
And pointing-out the difference between a sale and a lease is not "splitting hairs," since I've observed others confusing the two countless times in the past. In fact, one shouldn't even dare discussing a Supreme Court ruling of any kind without understanding that words have meanings apart from one's own opinion of what they should mean.
Finally, I will emphasize that a road is a "public use," even under a pre-Kelo standard. Even if the Kelo ruling did not exist, the State of Texas would still have the legal (and Constitutional) authority to "take" land in order to build the TTC, regardless of the national origin of who or what ultimately operates it. A sad fact, maybe . . . and we should be wary of how eminent domain powers are excercised. But one cannot expect to appear on a thread yelping Kelo, or "Kelso," without others wondering if he or she has bothered to read the opinion, or even has a basic understanding of eminent domain in the first place.
The NAU "transportation plan," as can be surmised from some of the links provided on this thread, appears to be revolve around those FEMA "cattle-cars" shipping us to concentration camps south of the border, and returning with loads of illegal Mexican aliens. It's just a matter of when W. declares martial law.
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