General Dwight D. Eisenhower (a well known and respected Republican president), was so against war that when he was president, he formed NATO.
I apologize for my misstatement. Eisenhower was the first Commander of NATO from 1951 until 1953, he did recognize and practiced restraint (from the use of the military). Restraint does not mean we shut down intelligence efforts to monitor and/or identify threats. Eisenhower stated “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” he knew that Communism was a threat. He was meeting with Stalin on the day the bomb was dropped on Japan. At that point, he recognized the danger our nation was in. He saw the dropping of the bomb as unnecessary as we had already defeated Japan. He witnessed first hand how our aggressions put us in harms way, instilling fear and distrust in our allies and enemies. Instead of respect, we were feared and distrusted (sound familiar?).
As for Kennedy's "restraint"..........how "restrained" was he when he:
d. Got involved with two teenaged girls nicknamed "Fiddle" and "Faddle" by the Secret Service, with Marilyn Monroe, and with Sam "Momo" Giancana's girlfriend, Judy Campbell (Exner), in a series of satyriac flings in the White House whenever Jackie was away?
And you chastise me for cheap shots.
What Kennedy did in his private life is of no concern to me. I don’t care what affairs he or Nixon or Washington or Johnson or Eisenhower or any of the other presidents had while in office, it makes no difference to me. I try to look at their accomplishments and how those accomplishments bolstered our standings in this world. In your list you failed to reference the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy’s restraint in October of 1962 prevented a nuclear holocaust. Restraint, yes Ricky, restraint!
Yes, I am young and naïve and hopeful and a true believer in the principals upon which our nation was built. Old wise one, I challenge you to go back and study the Revolutionary War and our founding fathers reasons for fighting it. Liberals, our founding fathers were liberals and I proudly stand by them as a liberal, believing in the values and principals upon which our nation was built.
Your clever quips do not respond to the obvious questions that are out there. How has the “war” in Iraq strengthened our nation? How can the “powers that be” claim to support our troops in one breath, yet pass laws that take away veterans benefits, give the profits of this war to private contractors through outsourcing and restore power to the same political power they “overthrew” in Iraq? Remember it was Dubya who announced the mission was over a year ago. Yet, we remain, our soldiers continue to die and the people of Iraq continue to know terror and abuse at our hands.
The GOP is one grand pyramid scam. Their disguises, rationalizations and defenses have a similar ring to all other pyramid schemes. The party claims that they are uplifting people, setting them free, creating new opportunity, and teaching them a new and better way to live and prosper. As in all such abuses of the past, huge amounts of money are spread to peddle influence, stave off regulation, and maintain the false portrayal of legitimacy. Critics are vilified and threatened with lawsuits and prosecution as "anti-business" "losers" and "traitors." The element of the pyramid scheme that has the most in common with past abuses is its appeal to economic justification. Deceptive practices which take money from millions of unwitting people and enrich a small group of promoters and perpetrators are defended as "legitimate business," helping to build the economy, employ people, and provide economic opportunity. (Privatization, outsourcing, et cetera!)
http://www.pyramidschemealert.org/schemes/schemeindex.htm
I will follow your sage advice and continue to study history. I suggest that you go back and study it again. At the same time, open your mind to the world around you and recognize the precarious position our nation is in.
After 9/11 the world was behind us because the assaults were unjustified. Now, because our invasion of Iraq was unjustified and because we are the “oppressive” power, we are feared and distrusted. Someone on this site has stated “Al Qaida for Kerry” when in fact it is the opposite. (Again, I challenge you to go outside of the United States and study the writings of people from other nations.) Al Qaida wants Bush to remain in power, he gives the terrorists purpose and a cause to fight against. Bush is to Al Qaida and its supporters as Bin Laden is to the United States - the perfect example of evil.
Our nation is vulnerable, our home front is not protected, our military is stretched thin and the obvious terrorist targets are not secure. We need to be protected on the home front. Freedom, security and liberty should start at home before we try to force our values on other nations.
Yeah, Lefty, real familiar. You're channeling the discredited revisionists William Appleman Williams and Gar Alperovitz, who were apologists for Stalin and left slug trails wherever they went. You'd better get a better reading list; the one you've got is rotting your brain.
And you chastise me for cheap shots.
Yeah, because you do that -- you took a couple, and I nailed you. Trying to steal Ike for the revisionist camp isn't going anywhere, either -- Ike let a ton of contracts with the "military-industrial complex", he intervened in Lebanon and made a naval demonstration off Indonesia to chill the PKI -- that was seven years before Col. Suharto and his colleagues staged their coup and pogrom of the PKI, killing over 800,000 Communists.
Ike also supported the Greeks and the Turks in their stand against Russia and subscribed, via the CIA, the attempt to wrest the Ukraine from Soviet control. He also supported the doomed British attempt to oust Enver Hoxha from Albania (which was betrayed by "Kim" Philby), and he himself took care of Gustavo Arbenz in Guatemala.
You are confuted -- Ike was no McGovernite, no trimmer, no compromiser with the Communists as you suggest. He made John Foster Dulles his Secretary of State and embarked on a great tour of alliance-building: CENTO, SEATO, the Anzus Pact, and other regional-security arrangements were taken in hand to oppose the Communist International.
It was Eisenhower who dissevered South Viet Nam from the Communist-controlled North and delivered the South Vietnamese, Laos, and Cambodia, for 20 years, from the grasp of Ho's cadres of political thugs. Eisenhower also gave his imprimatur to the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran, and the elevation of Shah Reza Pahlevi, to foil the plans of the Tudeh Party (the Communist Party) to take Iran into the Soviet bloc. Then, in his last years in office, he set in motion the plan that eventually became the Bay of Pigs.
Look elsewhere for American leaders who'll posthumously endorse your crayfishing agenda.
You're just saying that because of your need to defend The Rapist.
Jack Kennedy exposed himself to personal compromise with his affairs. So did everyone who took illegal campaign contributions, Lyndon Johnson's "walking-around money" (which is what I think Herman Talmadge's wife found in the famous shoebox that figured in her divorce proceedings -- the shoebox was stuffed with $100 bills, which "Humman" couldn't account for), or late-night electoral help from a gargoyle like Sam Giancana.
Kennedy was screwing a mob capo's favorite squeeze, for God's sake -- Judy Campbell was what they used to call in the 30's a gun moll, and the president was boffing her in the White House. Where is your sense of moral outrage? Your sense of political danger, and of these guys opening themselves to political intrigue? Clinton's presidency was wrecked by his philandering-and-worse, and that wasn't even the worst of it: rape, obstruction of justice, and perjury. They all flowed in a cascade from his personal life.
It doesn't sound like you know what those principles were, much less the principals who articulated them. Any liberal version of revolutionary history that has been articulated in the last 50 years is at least 35% buncombe. You'll have to learn to recognize the mythology that has been inserted into the historical record in the interest of "building socialism". Sorry about that, but it's true. Anyone who talks about national this and national that and the overarching authorship of elite amalgamators and centralizers is channeling Hamilton-worship, which is a necessary antecedent to Lincoln-worship and the cult of the nation-state and socialism. These values were foreign and inimical to Americans of the first two centuries, and if you and your classmates are not being taught that, then you're being inseminated with lies that the inseminators hope will grow into mass political action that will make their causes great at the expense of American liberty.
Acquaint yourself with these ideas, and you'll have an idea what it was like to be a real American, once upon a time:
American exceptionalism
American liberty (not Florentine liberty, or French liberte', or Roman libertas, or the rights of Englishmen -- all, all different, very different)
Manifest Destiny (if they taught you that it was a moral crudity practiced by racist slugs, throw your books away: your teachers are your enemies)
The American Experiment
Limited Government
Subsidiarity
The Social Contract/Compact (the words don't mean exactly the same thing -- if they didn't teach you this, demand a refund)
Express Delegation
Residual Sovereignty and Ultimate Sovereignty
The People (who are the People?)
The Militia (who are the Militia? And why can't they be used in foreign wars?)
Distribution of Power and Consent
Gateways of Consent
This is not a syllabus or an outline. It's just a safety check to see whether your education was indeed an education, or whether it was just a long propaganda preparation for a life of slavery under the heel of the State, "building Socialism" (make that, "sunny new tomorrows") for people who don't give a rat's ass about you.
Think about it.
Old wise one, I challenge you to go back and study the Revolutionary War and our founding fathers reasons for fighting it.
One, I'm not old. I only look old. Two, I did.
Liberals, our founding fathers were liberals and I proudly stand by them as a liberal, believing in the values and principals upon which our nation was built.
The Founders were eighteenth-century liberals, who are called conservatives today. Learn the difference, since you are obviously blissfully unaware of one, thanks to the treacherousness of your professors.
Your clever quips do not respond to the obvious questions that are out there.
This isn't cartoon time, and it ain't funny. It's as real as real gets. How you see your government determines what the New Class cabal can do to you. What you'll take, is what you'll get. Think that's funny?
How has the “war” in Iraq strengthened our nation? How can the “powers that be” claim to support our troops in one breath, yet pass laws that take away veterans benefits, give the profits of this war to private contractors through outsourcing and restore power to the same political power they “overthrew” in Iraq? Remember it was Dubya who announced the mission was over a year ago. Yet, we remain, our soldiers continue to die and the people of Iraq continue to know terror and abuse at our hands.
I don't defend Dubya's budget priorities. Those priorities are made in office towers on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan by money-runners and the people they work for. One of these days, the terrorists will deploy a WMD in Scarsdale or The Hamptons, and the rich people will suddenly come to Jesus on national defense. Historically, they've hated it -- it cost too much.
The GOP is one grand pyramid scam.
If you knew what you were talking about, you would address the subject not in the language of current Buzzflash invective, but with language that shows that you've read someone who knows what he's talking about.
For an introduction to the two wings of the GOP by someone who respected one wing of it as long as it was agreeably losing to the DemonRats, and who utterly hated the other (to which I belong), read Chapters 3 and 5 of The Making of the President 1964, about Barry Goldwater's great challenge and overthrow of the Mugwumps of the Eastern industrial and financial elite, who had ruled the Republican Party without interruption since 1856.
Then let's talk, if you're still interested.
<Kerry-for-President drivel filtered>