Defense of Liberty

Free Republic ^ | September 23, 2001 | Annalex

[annalex]

I also have a son called to active duty now for the third time. [...] Our policy has been wrong and only gets worse.

There is no excuse for Clinton's shenanigans in the Balkans, but this one is of different cloth. However wrong our policy was, it did not cause this attack, and this time we are justified to strike back, hard.

I say that we ask for forgiveness and offer forgiveness.

.. to the Serbs, perhaps. Forgiveness is a personal act; if you can forgive the mad bombers, you are a better man than I am, but I pray for them. War, on the other hand, is a collective act. A soldier who decides to forgive the enemy on the battlefield betrays his comrades and his country, and he is a bad Christian.

[annalex]

hope that their ideas regarding foreign policy never get the chance to be implemented.

Derbyshire has a fine piece about the Republic vs. Empire controversy in the National Review. The imperial policy can be curtailed through political means; Britain did it. The outcome was more terrorism, welfare state and dependence on the US for defense.

[annalex]

we've supported quite a bit of aggression

That's the nature of the game. One can't have a functioning defensive policy without aggression. That is why the proper yardstick for foreign policy is national interest, and not non-aggression.

[annalex]

.

[annalex]

Holy War isn't a good prescription

Holy War is an old metaphor, I didn't offer it and I don't know what a better one would be. This is a war between civilizations, but it is not a national or religious war. Although led by Christians, it is joined by Jews and westernized Muslims. It is not a war between ideologies or cultures either, because the Western civilization consists of many ideologies and cultures, with individual dignity and rule by consensus as a common trait.

I believe that tactically, many methods seems effective, and war by proxy looks particularly attractive, but ultimately, this war will be won when a Westernized regime controlls the territory and a police force mops up the resistance. The Westernized regime will have the task of winning the hearts of the population with rule of law and a clear path to prosperity. The model of that is General MacArthur and post-WWII Japan.

[annalex]

Yup. Thanks.

[annalex]

fort dix

No wolf nor swine nor dog shall gnaw our bones.

[annalex]

Don't understand you, sorry. What April? What was the reaction of the Rockefellers?

[Benoit Baldwin]

>The word for tulip -you know, the flower-- was a confusion 
>with the word for the turban. 

Tulips, you say.

   In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple, and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the Sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land: another age went mad for fear of the Devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the Philosopher's Stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence in very many countries of Europe to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilized and polished nations as among the early barbarians with whom they originated, -- that of duelling, for instance, and the belief in omens and divination of the future, which seem to defy the progress of knowledge to eradicate entirely from the popular mind. Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

–Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds

>God help us all.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him--and promptly forget His teachings.

C'est Homme.

[headsonpikes]

The risk of having a 'successful' state is that pride, careerism, and complacency speedily lead to the destruction of the values that made the successful state possible.

There is no peace but the peace of the grave; life is a constant, conscious battle.

These are old lessons.

[Lev]

Anyone can rightfully refuse service to a customer without identification.

Absolutely. But this is not what is happening, is it? Private parties will be FORCED to refuse service to a customer without identification.
Regards.

[Storm Orphan]

That's one of those points where I differed.

"Rights" are not involved in private transactions until government begins dictated terms.

[TheDon]

At least the British had an Empire to lose, where's ours?

[lakey]

Just re-read my post...omitted the most important part - her name - April Glaspie, US ambassador to Iraq prior to the Gulf War.

She was Bush's "fall guy." Told Saddam that her instructions were that whatever Iraq did, the US had no opinion or interest in Kuwait.

Do you remember?

[annalex]

I believe that a citizen database is a done deal. The public doesn't make the assumption that the database will be misused. I also think that people have an intuitive sense of natural rights, and understand that the right not to have others keep information on you does not exist.

The right to dictate conditions of a business transaction doesn't exits either. If an airline wants to see an ID before they let you on their plane, you are free to refuse to fly, that's all. When a government agency dictates to the airline how to do business, that is a dispute between the airline and the government. Since the issue is one of national security, the government has a legitimate say in the matter: it is not an instance of intrusive regulation.

I believe that the citizen database will be abused by the government. The pattern of abuse will be that citizens who oppose any facet of the government activities,-- wholly inside the protections given to them by the Bill of Rights,-- will be facing smear tactics based on the knowledge of every transaction they have ever entered with anyone. We saw such abuse employed by Clinton against his opponents, perhaps with the help of the pilfered FBI files. With the citizen database in place, ordinary citizens will be exposed to intimidation just as much as the proverbial glass-house politicians are today.

[annalex]

Thanks.

[annalex]

The epithet "barbarians" applies to the mad bombers better than to the Medieval Saracenes who could teach the valiant Franks a thing or two.

[annalex]

Was Ghandi libertarian?

Not in any meaningful sense. In particular, his insistence of economic self-reliance ("let's make our own cotton") was the opposite of what a libertarian would prescribe. It also put India on a slow economic track from which they are recovering only now.

[annalex]

Time will tell if abuses of liberty, in the name of liberty, will be forthcoming.

I can tell you now that they will be, if you rather not wait all that time.