Posted on 09/11/2001 10:42:01 AM PDT by agenda_express
This is some of the trash that comes from idiots in our country. I received an email from a "friend" who had received this. SICK.
====================================================================================
The facts of what happened at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon are not yet clear. Of course there is continuous media coverage of the disaster, repetition of rumors as fact, and wild speculation as to who might be responsible.
We should spend the coming days mourning the dead. Instead, it's safe to cynically predict that there will be swift, "decisive" military action by the Bush administration against some perceived enemy, any enemy, without regard for the evidence. As in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 disaster, there will be a flurry of "anti-terrorist" legislation that will restrict individual rights and punish foreigners. There will be a sudden bipartisan consensus on huge increases in military spending. None of these thoughtless reactions can work.
National security is not something that can be won by intimidation. Only peace with justice can be a secure peace. We will renew our own efforts to transform the United States into a country that has no enemies---not because our enemies have been vanquished, but because we are capable of getting along with our neighbors.
Don Doumakes
National Co-Chair
Socialist Party USA
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct. And can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it?...In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur.
Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject. At other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility, instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.
So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld; and it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation....
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop...
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why...entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of...ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy....
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences … constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
Just one question. Did you see how orderly the evacuation was? And no reports of looting.
The people who were in Manhattan acted in solidarity using mutual aid - THE HIGHEST instinct for survival.
So this guy is saying that it's our own damn fault that our people died in the WTC and 5Gon? If we'd been friendlier and given in to the demands of every little nut group that wants their own way, then this wouldn't have happened?
Let me tell this fruitcake that the nut groups aren't gonna be happy 'til they have their boots on your throat, and you enslaved to them.
His worldview is so naive and foolish....or sinister -- if you assume he's trying to lure peace-starved children into slavery by promises that require ONLY that you give up your freedoms to big brother.
SOCIALIST PARTY - USA - CONTACT US
Don Doumakes, National Co-Chair
Socialist Party USA
339 Lafayette Street, #303
New York, NY 10012
Phone: (212)982-4586
Fax: (212-982-4586
E-mail: SocialistParty@sp-usa.org
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Yes, and responding strongly to the act of war against our country. As in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 disaster, there will be a flurry of "anti-terrorist" legislation that will restrict individual rights
This is probably true -- politicians can't resist a chance to restrict individual rights -- but when did socialists ever care about anyone's rights but their own?
Just what I've tried telling the libertarians, also. The realities of human nature and all the character flaws that entails is a foreign concept to some. Peace through unyielding STRENGTH is our only option.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.