Let me see if I can get them to hurry...
Posted on 08/05/2003 6:29:24 AM PDT by dead
I would wholeheartedly agree. One need only look at 2 critical areas to see the potential for self-destruction: education and personal liberties. Regarding education, we seem to be purposely dumbing ourselves down. It is simply amazing how much our 12th graders don't know about our history, geography or the structure of our government - things that are necessary to make informed decisions (i.e. to vote) regarding foreign affairs. The population is becoming more willing to swallow the leftist/internationalist drivel that says that we should always be restrained in dealing with foreign nations. Second, we have long since begun to dismantle the precious liberties that the Founding Generation fought and bled for. As rightwhale mentioned, the key here is the 2nd Amendment. If it goes down the tubes (de facto, not de jure, as the latter won't occur), then our liberties will be gone in all but name. Abominations like the Patriot Act are bad enough by themselves, but they'd be even worse without 250+ million guns in civilian hands.
I am reminding of the following quote:
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chests; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in the trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Abraham Lincoln, January 27, 1838
Without an enforcement arm of significant strength, any court is an irrelevant dog and pony show.
I agree that our leadership should have rejected it forcefully, upfront, and immediately. But they didn’t.
So now, the ICC, and the UN, could in theory claim some moral high ground if they “convict” an American leader or soldier, but that’s it. They can’t enforce any sentence, or extradite anyone, or invade our offending nation to force regime change. They could only make a political statement. And hopefully our congress/president would react accordingly and defund the UN.
If you seek to claim that you are a bold conservative leader…
That claim would really be a bit of a stretch, ICC or not.
The economy is always a concern. But the economy will always reflect a considerable complex of factors, and will generally solve its own problems, if Governments and politicians can be kept out of its way.
I found the article here somewhat less than insightful. Certainly the writer makes some valid points, valid in the present context, at the present moment in time--part of that present complex, of course. But while he blithely skips over an acknowledgment of the importance of economic and cultural factors, he does not really look at how these factors develop--not even to the extent of spending any time at all, on such questions as to the flow of wealth with respect to Rome--to or from the Romans. He blithely ignores the Asian reality, at the time of Rome, with no understanding of the complex civilizations that existed at the same time in China & India, etc.. He fails to consider the ethnic factors in each of the great empires. And while he acknowledges our Republican institutions, he does not consider how such institutions fared with respect to Rome, or how changes in the constituency of those wielding power, effected the way that power was wielded, nor how wielding that power effected domestic society.
That the Rumsfeld Defence Department was able to function as well as it did in the recent Iraqi war, is certainly a cause for rejoicing. That does not mean that we should plan other such wars, without very careful thought as to their advisability both militarily and otherwise. That we can put together alliances, when we need them, is certainly an improvement over the entangling alliances that others have advocated; but it is not the same thing as our traditional Foreign Policy. We not only kept control of our own policy; we also showed respect for the differences between peoples. We asked only that we be treated with respect; that they leave us alone in our own ways, and deal with us fairly in all our international dealings, and we accorded them the same courtesies. It was that policy that gained us the respect of most of civilized humanity; and we are in grave danger of wasting that capital of good will.
I would suggest that Mr. Joffre look a little closer at Rome, when she was mostly Roman, Republican and free, in the early days of her Empire; and Rome when she became Cosmopolitan and Authoritarian. I am sure that he would not want to see an American Empire--even the invisible sort that he suggests--made possible at the expense of declaring a Hillary Clinton, "Goddess." But many of you will catch my drift.
The Britain of the Empire was a Britain sustained, of course, not by Authoritarianism, but by a British spirit, fuelled by a sense of ethnicity--and indeed a species of lovable arrogance. America, thanks to reckless immigration policies, no longer has such a sense of her unique ethnicity. We are not, even now--even without the further trend that Clinton envisioned--able to act with the sort of unity, necessary to long sustain the sort of intrusive policies that Joffre hints at. We could only do so by suppressing dissent, and going truly Roman; and in that process, we would kill that economic goose--if idiotic foreign aid programs, coupled with idiotic extensions of Medicare, etc., had not already done so.
Just some random thoughts.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Yoda pursues his second career as a political analyst.
The ICC, on the other hand, has a lack of carrots to go along with their lack of sticks.
If we chose to, we could walk away from them at any time. The same is true of any international organization we deal with. We agree to abide by their rulings by choice.
I think Europeans (and Canadians and many Austrailians) fail to see this because they have either lost faith in the specialness of liberty or have become hostile to it.
If you only read their media, they appear more hopeless than France.
But somebody down under elected John Howard, and he's one of the real stalwarts in the ongoing battles.
We're working into a whole new kind of economic jam, one we haven't been in since colonial times when the Brit homeland reserved most manufacturing unto itself. The next few years should be very interesting.
A sampling of the materials on the site you linked left me a little uneasy. I don't know if you actually run it or are just recommending a look, but my reactions to it run as follows:
1) Serbia lost, get over it!
2) I'd rather see immigration issues discussed independently of race and culture. I favor shutting down the flood of illegals with whatever it takes. We don't need anything that can be taken as a racist policy to do that. Illegal immigration is already illegal. Immigration aside, we already have a multiracial society and we'll have to go forward from here as a multiracial society. It's a done deal.
Same here with the 'States. I sometimes wonder if Al Qaeda's underestimation of the USA was because they got a lot of their info from the "news".
Good article, btw.
Let me see if I can get them to hurry...
Not only run it; but write all articles except for those attributed to other authors: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James A. Reed, H.L. Mencken, Edgar Allan Poe, etc..
1) Serbia lost, get over it!
While I respect the Serbian people, as a racial or ethnic group, there is nothing on my site that could be considered a lament over the misfortunes of the Serbs in recent decades. Doubtless you are referring to my essay, American Foreign Policy At The Crossroads, which does indeed deal with the war on Serbia, but from an American perspective, not a Serbian perspective. The immediate subject is the Clinton/Blair attack on Serbia as part of an effort to convert NATO into the equivalent of the Fabian Socialist dream of an "Atlantic Union." The subject is really Clinton, and his deliberate sabotaging of traditional American values, not the plight of the Serbs, per se.
2) I'd rather see immigration issues discussed independently of race and culture. I favor shutting down the flood of illegals with whatever it takes. We don't need anything that can be taken as a racist policy to do that. Illegal immigration is already illegal. Immigration aside, we already have a multiracial society and we'll have to go forward from here as a multiracial society. It's a done deal.
The Leftwing idea that everything they have accomplished is a done deal, and the only issue is how far we will let them push the envelope in the immediate future, is historic nonsense--the equivalent to the Marxist notion that History is driven by Dialectical Materialism. It just is not so.
But rather than take up bandwith, I will simply offer a link to my essay to which you appear to be referring:
An American Immigration Policy.
Of course, to completely ignore the ethnic characteristics and cultural values of those whom you are considering admitting to your body politic is madness. But I will let the essay speak for itself.
William Flax
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