Posted on 10/17/2006 1:57:30 PM PDT by kiriath_jearim
Uh, no... The author is confused and is no lover of liberty. He is making the same silly mistake that would be made by someone coming across a scene where a big man is pummeling a smaller man, and without understanding the reason for the pummelling, comes to the aid of the smaller man, not realizing that the smaller man has just raped the bigger man's children and murdered the bigger man's wife. The big guy is not always wrong, and the small guy is not always right...
I understand well the distinction you make...on this side of the Atlantic, at this point in time, Liberalism in the current sense means something different than Liberalism in the classic sense.
I am not sure we actually disagree on that point, however I am making my judgement based on the content of the article.
As reinforcement we are on the same page in understanding the meaning, I take your invocation of the classical liberal Friedrich Hayek, whose excellent (and HIGHLY relevant) book "The Road to Serfdom" is one of my favorites.
Boy, I guess so. You hit that one right on the head.
Yes the British rule had similar problems back home internally and with the French. But nothing like America where the press is simply the propaganda arm of the DNC.
World wide the press is just one anti-American leftist institution and our war fighting is hamstringed because of it.
From the Cindy threads:
"Cindy was in Crawford when a process server found her and handed over the lawsuit that would end her marriage. Cindy Sheehan had a boyfriend who is a major anti-war activist, Lew Rockwell. Cindy Sheehan took refuge with a computer that became her companion day and night. Cindy Sheehans former sister-in-law says Cindy had become addicted to online chat rooms of a pornographic nature."
Like a guy who has to go out of his way to declare he is not a virgin...
This is my idea of Patriot Qualification:
LOL...funny how the same piece of text can hit different people the same way...
Freely elected government in Iraq = complete breakdown of the analogy.
The "insurgents" this a$$hat is cheering on are nothing more than out of power thugs that want it back or want to get it the first place, without the boredom of going through a process whereby you PERSUADE most of the voters to pick you.
I share their desire for a small state domestically, but I think it's the government's duty to kill foreigners who try to kill us and undertake a course of action that will improve our overall security (even if it takes time to get there).
They also seem to think that the rational Economic and Political Man sprung fully formed from the Holy Market Place, forgetting that a free market is itself usually a product of a healthy, pre-existing civil society, rather than the reverse. I find assaults on the market to be repugnant not simply because they are likely to result in bad economic consequences unforeseen by socialists, but because such interference is primarily an interference with free association in civil society in general.
In brief, maintaining a healthy civil society and politics means respecting those orders as representing higher and more important goods than the market itself; and this means--in wartime-- recognizing that the political realm not only can but must make legitimate claims to our loyalty and our property in order to defeat the enemy.
Likening the terrorists in Iraq to 18th century rebels for liberty shows that the author cannot distinguished liberty from the unlimited exercise of political savagery and unrestrained passion, something that doesn't speak well of the understanding of liberty by 'libertarians'.
Thank you for that reasoned and thoughtful explanation.
If the central argument of the essay is "an armed populace can keep central authority in check" it fails to support it by citing the Iraqi situation where the rebellion is heavily funded by outside sources (Iran and Syria).
See #32.
Actually, I WAS referring to #32...did I misunderstand your post (is that why you are directing me back to it?)
What an R-Tard.
I thought you being ironic about my first post.
This guy is so full of shiite his eyes are brown! Jefferson sent U.S. forces to North Africa to confront the Barbary Pirates who were attacking our merchant ships. For this moron to infer that Jefferson didn't use the military outside the U.S. is a flat out lie.
I assume that the 25 - 30 thousand figure for a standing army was based on the population of the United Colonies circa 1775. Quotation marks would have been helpful.
I assume that percentage shifted somewhat as industrialization & public education made a bigger percentage of a nation's population 'fit' for military service.
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