Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
With apologies to Archbishop of Canterbury John Morton, I’m offering this version of his famous “fork”:
You’re a young idealist standing for the highest office in the land. Against many odds you’ve offered a candidacy of hope and change to an electorate tired of both war and the prior Administration that got them into those wars. There are rumors of widespread atrocities committed by that Administration in response to a horrific terrorist attack on American soil where thousands of your countrymen died. In your capacity as an US Senator, you’ve been briefed on several of these and you see a pattern developing. You’re a Constitutionalist; a lawyer; and a principled man, but you recognize the nation faces a real threat of nuclear holocaust at the hands of committed, well-funded terrorists supported and protected by renegade states and even some of our allies. These terrorists have a fanatical zeal and value martyrdom above self-preservation. You believe that if they acquire weapons of mass destruction the question will not be if millions of people will die, but which millions of people will die.
Riding a groundswell of promise and belief in your promises to restore American values, the electorate sends you to the nation’s capitol to change the way things have been done. During the course of the election, it has become clear that the drain on the economy caused by war, corruption, and old-fashioned greed has left the country in dire financial straits.
On January 16th you are briefed by the nation’s intelligence communities. You are told definitively that the intelligence community has engaged in extraordinary measures to fight America’s enemies which you conclude amount to torture, illegal renditions, detaining innocent people, and even Executive Orders approving the killing of persons deemed enemy combatants. You’ve inherited a Gulag within sight of the American coast and during the campaign you’ve vowed to close it. You are told that many senior members of the permanent intelligence community were aware of and approved the illegal measures employed in defense of the country. Losing these people would severely cripple efforts to defend the country as they form a sizable amount of the intelligence community’s institutional knowledge and memory. You’re also told that these senior intelligence officers have been promised immunity for their actions by the earlier Administration.
You convene your economic advisors who explain to you that the emergency measures adopted by your predecessor and designed to prop up the failing economy may well work but it will take time,and any shock to the nation could disturb this fragile trust building process. If the stimulus fails, the resulting shock could send the nation and Europe into a full-blown depression crippling the efforts to fight terrorism.
Moderate governments in the Mideast have come to you seeking aid to fight the fundamentalist movements that are fueling terrorist recruitment and sponsorship. They tell you that to continue the fight means more money and intelligence from the US or their efforts will be severely handicapped.
What do you do?
A. Continue the illegal policies of the past Administration reasoning that this is war and that your primary goal is to defend the nation at all costs. These repugnant policies seemed to have had some effect in curtailing the terrorist threat and your calling off the dogs is a real risk to your viability as a leader if you’re wrong and another deadly attack occurs on US soil. Another successful attack could throw the markets into a death spiral and the recovery might not occur for decades. You continue with the stimulus program and avoid any investigation of earlier illegal acts concluding that any shock to the fragile economy caused by the turmoil will reap more evil than it alleviates. You also avoid any investigation to eliminate the possibility of crippling the intelligence community. You share money and both illegally obtained and legally obtained intelligence with the friendly Arab states.
B. You reason that principle trumps expediency and stop all illegality. You immediately order investigations into the prior Administration’s handling of the war. You make public the results and bring indictments against wrongdoers. You do so even in the face of prior pledges of immunity reasoning they are void ad initio given our treaty obligations and on principles of international law. You make Herculean efforts to replace the intelligence officers lost to the investigations and you build morale by explaining your policies as being in the nation’s long-term best interest. You do what you can to stabilize the economy but you will not compromise in your efforts to prosecute those who have violated the law. You tell friendly states and Europe you understand their concerns about such a policy but you adhere to the adage that “let justice be done though the heavens fall.”
C. You adopt a middle ground approach reasoning it is best for the country that the economic recovery not be affected by criminal investigations of the American intelligence community and the prior Administration. You believe any move otherwise could lead to a weakening of American strength at the worst time and make that nuclear holocaust against an American city more likely. You change the illegal policies of the prior Administration to stop torture, curtail renditions and if absolutely necessary only to countries that will not use torture. You employ death warrants abroad and only against those your intelligence agencies tell you present a clear and present danger to the US. You fully support friendly states abroad against extremists and provide intelligence to them as well as cash.
D. Your Choice.
Now, the tough part: Defend your choice — and no changing facts that you don’t like in our “hypothetical situation.”
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
D. All of the above.
By compromising on the principles on which this country is founded on , you have already started slow poisoning of this nation . A strong leader would explain his tough decisions to people and not go against everything one promised in campaign . What if this hypothetical president never really had any core values of intention to do what he had said in the campaign ?
OK,
I have a question. Are you including the stimulus package in choice B? If so, I think the rule of law that I had hoped we would return to is the only real choice under the Constitution. The intelligence officers that are lost to the investigations aren’t needed since they are war criminals. They and the higher ups who ordered and authorized the crimes should be punished if they are found to be guilty of torture. Of course, including Bush and Cheney and Rice and others may be tough legally, but if you don’t fight for justice, it isn’t a fight at all.
I do believe that when Americans hear the facts of the awful deeds done in our name, that they will not object to following the rule of law. If the very top can be held accountable for crimes, then we really are living under the rule of law. Without the accountability for crimes committed by our top officials, none of us are really free and the government can come after any of us. The NDAA as interpreted by Prof. Turley may be evidence of the government gaining extra constitutional control of the population at the expense of the Constitution. Would a law such as the NDAA have been possible if we had prosecuted any and all torture criminals?
Mark,
Thank you for putting this all into perspective. I choose C., with some caveats, which I will lay out and defend tomorrow. From my perspective. this is a wonderful post which attempts a peek behind the curtain of blame raining in from all sides of our political spectrum. When we let ourselves lose sight of the probable reality you’ve laid out, we see with tunnel vision only our disappointments with possibilities lost.
rafflaw:
B suggests that you will continue the stimulus package as best you can but that would be secondary to your goal of pursuing wrongdoing. You can modify this policy by chooing D and giving your solution.
Only a spineless person will try to rationalize why the right thing could not have been done , ( following the oath/ constitution) . only stupid idiots will defend the attack on constitution or pretend that this hypothetical president was really compromised by all these conflicting forces . There is a simple answer he never meant anything he said . If you don’t believe that’s the case , here is an example :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7FR-RQqe14&feature=youtube_gdata_player
When you write “you recognize the nation faces a real threat of nuclear holocaust at the hands of committed, well-funded terrorists”, you render your hypothetical beyond the bounds of reason and beg the question to get the answer (C) that you obviously want. In fact, everything you just constructed here is so obviously begging the question and driving towards the only answer you obviously want so as to render the entire exerciuse moot. Scare tactics. Sorry, but that won’t play. And neither will I.
mespo,
It is your scenario and your rules and I agree to the guidelines you have imposed.
My choice is “D” which would firstly be a complete repudiation of the Gerald Ford legacy (the country and the economy are too weak to handle the rule of law) in that I would hold the top officials responsible and direct the Justice Department to seek indictments against Tenent, Goss, Hayden, Negroponte, McConnell, (maybe Kerr), Bush and Cheney. I would provide total immunity to any personnel who served under these individuals for truthful testimony under oath. Then I would employ the rest of “C”.
My reasoning would be very clear … none of this could have happened on the scale it occurred without the concurrence and orders of the top officials so those same top officials will carry the entire blame. Now, privately, to those who served under these men and followed their orders … career advancement is not something you can look forward to … just thank your lucky stars that this time around the big fish are the only ones who will be looking at four walls in ADX Florence.
p.s. Military? Only Generals and Admirals will be indicted. Civilian? Only CEO’s of private contractors.
Mark’s post is so agenda driven to carry the water for his “hypothetical” president that I can smell the stink of the whole character behind the post !
B.
Rendition “only when necessary?” When is that?
C is essentially a re-statement of A. It is built on a slipper slope.
one actually must question the original assumption, the “young idealist”, as his cabinet was already picked before he entered the White House and was “briefed” and it was already apparent, except to the blind idolatrized populace, that this young “idealist” was but another surrogate for the same ruling elite, but this time a member of the left wing faction of the same party–the Fascist Empire of the United States. Do not be so naive-it turns my stomach to see the brainwashed spout such bull.
D. You realize that our “way of life” is absurd in the short run and KILLING us in the long run – as we run out of oil, pollute the biosphere, overfish the oceans (while polluting them continuously with toxic waste and CO2 absorption – making them too acidic for marine life), and continue the short-sighted policies of the past 50 years, and decide it’s time to speak the truth to the people and lead them to a more community centered way of life based on renewable/sustainable energy (like solar) and begin programs to end the wars and re-allocate that much needed money into infrastructure maintenance, school and hospital revitalization, and massive work projects that need to be done to get people back to work and to clean-up, fix-up and establish new permaculture based centers in communities everywhere.
As a result, you’ll be assassinated by the CIA before your term is through.
I do not see a connection between the need for economic stimulis and separate and unequal foreign policy problems and human rights deprivations assocaited with the Bush administration’s Reichstag Fire Decrees.
yeah, sorry, I’m not buying some of the stuff in your hypothetical so I’m not prepared to answer this either.
Yes or no, do you still beat your wife?
Reading the thread though it looks like the GOP is pouring more money into pay-per-post trolls & this site has been visited. I suppose we can expect clowns with clever names like ‘conman’ to pop up here until November.
Roman Berry:
“When you write “you recognize the nation faces a real threat of nuclear holocaust at the hands of committed, well-funded terrorists”, you render your hypothetical beyond the bounds of reason and beg the question to get the answer (C) that you obviously want.”
*************************************
http://www.eurasiareview.com/29012012-terrorist-groups-that-might-pursue-nuclear-terrorism-analysis/
I’ll put you down for “B.”
Tiredofconman,
If you think about it…in real life we are all conmen or conmomen at sometime in our lives…..For instance…get stopped by a cop….you gonna say give me the ticket and pay for it….no complaints..Most people would try and talk their way out of it….
Mark,
D….Conduct a Nuremberg Trial for all elected officials and folks with any ties to the financial markets….Sometimes you might get two for one….
My choice is “what me worry” … cause the Rev. knows that “God is on our side” … but which god is on our side is a more difficult issue …
Surely that must be known before the devil’s fork is a valid exercise?
… the book Rev. Morton has before him says some things that he probably tends to avoid:
(II Cor 4:4) … and …
(Matthew 4:1-9)… heady stuff … “the kingdoms of the world” …
(II Cor 11:13) … the old bad is good morph is a function of propaganda? See also here …
Indeed some Revs do read these verses to their flock because they believe that human efforts to stave off those things that are beyond their control are vain.
Which God, god, or gods is indeed a prerequisite to the answer. If there be no God, then the Rev has one hell of a fork to bear.
Either way … what, me worry?
Revered Dredd,
I see you have spoken and we are all freer because of this….
AY:
…. smarter, too.
mespo,
All’s we hast to know….we can learn from the holy man with the book….we don’t need no skool of higher learnin..
I’m for plan B and Ron Paul.
B.
Ya the choices are a pretty stretched narrative, Obama has shown little principle that I have seen. Exactly what is different about his foreign policy? Terrorists want America out of the middle east, period. The policies today are what lead to further acts of violence, but only one man speaks of this truth…I think we know who he is.
“What would we say if China had a bases in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting! We need to look at foreign policy from how we would feel if it happened to us”
Ron Paul
Mark,
Thanks for the clarification. I would still stick with B and root out the torture crowd entirely.
I think we’ve gotten plan A, whereas some believe we got plan C.
But this was making our choice. So I’ll choose B.
Reason: Any real change (and this is the only one, but without Ron Paul), has some chance of another outcome. The others have none.
“Frankly”
You don’t think he is a conman ? If you don’t get a life !
In the spirit of the Devil’s Fork:
Four Psychologists at the Gates of Hell: A Fable for Our Time
Sunday 29 January 2012
by: Roy Eidelson, Truthout | Fable
http://truth-out.org/four-psychologists-gates-hell/1326912829
I’ll pick B. I believe it is always best to do the right thing. I also believe our government could have brought indictments against wrongdoers AND worked on the stimulus program and dealt with the national/world economic problems at the same time.
How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’
by George Lakey
January 29, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/153929/how_swedes_and_norwegians_broke_the_power_of_the_%E2%80%981_percent%E2%80%99?page=entire
Scandinavian workers realized that, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.
Excerpt:
“While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.
Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.””
Apparently I was overzealous with the references to my epistle. Unable to get beyond the “Your comment is awaiting moderation”-door.
Primum Non Nocere (@DrNescio),
Do you have more than 2 links in your comment?
(On occasion, I’ve had problems with more than one.)
Also considering that you are 8 times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist Id suggest using our vast national resources to stopping them first. Seeing as how they are the bigger, more immediate threat to personal safety.
What a great clip, ekeyra. Thanks for posting it…
“Also considering that you are 8 times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist Id suggest using our vast national resources to stopping them first. Seeing as how they are the bigger, more immediate threat to personal safety.”
Yep. Agreed.
As I wrote last night I would choose “C” with certain caveats and in the following remarks I trust people can see my reasons, even if they don’t agree with them. While ideally I would say choose option “B”, as being the correct most principled course, I believe in the current climate that option is not realistic. I think that many may have missed what I see as Mark’s underlying ideas in setting up this thought problem. Tom ended his comment above with this statement:
“As a result, you’ll be assassinated by the CIA before your term is through.”
He echoed the thoughts I was having as I read Mark’s post. Many of us here have recognized for years that this is a country that has long not abided by the vision of our Founding Fathers. These were highly, extraordinary men in not only the massive intellects/knowledge, but in the courage they had risking their lives and their loved ones lives in revolting against the most powerful empire in their world. In the dazzling flourishes of their ideas, we very often lose sight of the personal courage that they displayed in their endeavor.
To return to Mark’s premises, before you decide which option, I would urge you to decide it from the perspective of it actually being you, not some hypothetical young President having to make this decision. We know and can surmise from the history of the last 80 years that taking principled political actions can result in death, disaster or an early retirement
FDR had at least one coup plot and one possible attempted assassination. The coup involved Prescott Bush, curiously. There was an assassination attempt of Harry Truman. JFK, did not follow the recommendations of his Joint Chiefs and others to add US military support to the CIA organized “Bay of Pigs” operations. JFK fired CIA Director Allen Dulles for the planing of that operation. Dulles incidentally had close ties to the Bush family. JFK also over ruled the “Hawks” in his administration who wanted to invade Cuba at the time of the missile crisis. From the “Hawks” perspective this was almost treason. At the time of JFK’s assassination, it’s been rumored that he was going to end the involvement in Viet Nam, which started out as a CIA operation under Dulles in the 50′s. The Warren Commission investigation was incidentally headed up by Allen Dulles.
RFK and MLK were powerful men who were questioning not only Viet Nam, but also the Country’s power structure, only to be cut down by putative “lone gunmen”, with whiffs occasionally surfacing of some powerful agency interceding. George Wallace was crippled by an assassination attempt as he ran for President in 1972, after running on a third party in 1968. The possibility of another Third Party run would have divided the voters Nixon had picked up via his Southern Strategy in his 1968 win. In 1972 powerful Congressman Hale Bogg’s plane went missing in Alaska and was never found. Bogg’s had been a dissenting member of the Warren Commission and had been continuing his investigations into JFK’s death.
In 1978 Senator Frank Church led his committee to investigate illegal CIA activity and the assassinations. The committees determinations cast doubt on CIA operations, leading to restraining laws being passed and called the investigations into the 60′s political assassinations into question. Church was defeated in 1980 by 1% of the vote, after a National Conservative PAC poured huge sums into the Idaho Republican campaign. George H.W. Bush was head of the CIA at the end of the Ford administration to deal with the loss of morale brought about by the Church Committees findings.
Ronald Reagan was almost killed in an assassination attempt in 1981 and had that happened George H.W. Bush would have succeeded to the Presidency, and so it goes, the rest of the sorry, recent history is current to most posting here so I’ll forgo it save for Senator Bob Graham, from Florida.
As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Graham opposed Iraq War II, because he felt it diverted from getting the real terrorists. He wrote a book about his opposition, but mysteriously chose not to run again for the Senate in 2004.
My argument is obvious. It takes a very brave person to stand up to the power of the MI Complex and the Elite, as a politician in this country. While it is easy for us to say someone should risk their life and possibly family in carrying out their elected duties, how many of us really would under that pressure. I unashamedly say that I wouldn’t. This is not to say that I haven’t taken more than a few dangerous political stands in my lifetime, but only my job was threatened, not myself or my family. Some here I think expect more from our politicians, than we would be willing to give if we were in their position. One might answer that by saying then they shouldn’t have ru in the first place. Nevertheless, the readership here is in the main very sophisticated and they already understand that ego plays as much a role in running for office, as does ideals, or even greed for that matter. I only see a few political people who seem to have the courage of the Founding Fathers today and they aren’t/wouldn’t/couldn’t run for President.
So let’s return to this hypothetical young President, with ego to match, who wins election. The real secrets of foreign policy are closely held and perhaps not even Senators know them. The interrelationship of the Intelligence community, military and the private MI Complex Corporations remain hidden in the deep background of “Top Secret” and “off the record”. You are told of a nuclear threat, which both you and I might discount (I don’t believe it at all), but you’ve got the safety of 350 million people on your hands and these are the experts in the field, so do you really take the chance that what your gut tells you is true. I don’t think so. You try to rein them in and try to discover the “real facts” but you’re locked into a security bubble and truthfully are at work every waking hour, being fed information which is not necessarily reliable. Maybe even you are straight out told that if you persist in following your gut you and your young family might have an accident. With these caveats, if I was him I choose Plan C and try to do the best I could to protect people from the worst of the 1%’s agenda. Maybe you are braver than I am, but I know you are not more idealistic. However, my idealism is tempered by the horrid facts of reality and I’m not putting my life on the line unless I’ve got a 50/50 shot at success. I don’t think this young President has those “good” odds.
My take on what’s really going on is why earlier I offered that post on Saul Alinsky. He was an uncompromising idealist, who nevertheless was willing to compromise based on the realities of the situation. His way offers us a path out of this national disgrace, that can compete with the scenarios I’ve just spun, with no direct information of my own, of course.
Mike S.,
How are you doing…But if you’ve nothing to say…ok..I understand….
AY,
@anon nurse, really, really overzealous so about 10. If that is too much I will repost without refs.
Good luck to you…
Anonymously Yours 1, January 29, 2012 at 10:13 am
Revered Dredd,
I see you have spoken and we are all freer because of this….
================================================
Choice E: Choose the Evil ground. Lie to the American people, exaggerate the threat and simultaneously ignore any real threat. Hand money to corporations while pretending to protect people from them. Ignore the need to inspect the most porous entry points in the country, the shipping containers and the wide-open coasts and virtually transparent Canadian border, the way that REAL terrorists and bombs would come in, in favor of strip-searching grandmothers and toddlers and the mentally disabled in airports. Because, of course, real inspection of shipping containers would cost companies money.
Extend the wars you learned were really just profiteering opportunities for companies to be paid millions of dollars for products that cost them about a thousand dollars to make, with no accountability if the products failed and killed a few soldiers or innocent people. It is the fog of war, and there is no telling what really happens in that fog. Companies like it for a reason.
Play on the fear created by exaggerating the threat to strip people of their right to be free from unwarranted search, of their right to free speech, of their right to assembly and protest, of their right to use public spaces freely, and of their right to privacy in any communications. In fact, just redefine the entire justice system, so if you declare somebody a terrorist, you act as judge, jury, and executioner (literally).
Accelerate and expand the police state, and the surveillance state. Tell them it is for their own good. Corrupt the media with the promise of lucrative access to your royal court, so they will applaud your courage in becoming a dictator.
Protect the rich from prosecution, hand public resources into the hands of private exploitation, and brutally punish any low-level insiders that try to tell the truth about what you are doing.
Instead of leveling with people about the economy, and the rip off they have suffered, just let the Federal Reserve print money and give it away by the trillion bailing out the 1% that would be worst hit by their own speculative excess, so you can delay the inevitable financial collapse by further robbing the populace of future value without telling them.
You learn that you cannot tell them, really, because the truth would stop the flow of profits your true masters are enjoying; the people would demand an end to their little game, because the people are the victims of it. They need to keep believing the problems are always somebody else’s problems for as long as possible.
And while you are at it, use the debt you created in those profiteering wars as an excuse to crush the future of the country, by stripping it of its social safety net, robbing workers of what they were promised by the new deal, and doing nothing to stem the flood of jobs leaving the middle class because the corporations prefer the lawless countries, where there are no taxes or worker protections or safety precautions demanded, so workers can be driven like slaves and discarded like toilet paper when they are used up, without any consequences to worry about.
Or we could call that option D: Join the DARK side, Luke. The power is seductive.
mespo727272 1, January 29, 2012 at 10:14 am
AY:
…. smarter, too.
========================================
We are all no longer The Universal Smedley any longer, just doin’ the video game.
Just sayin’ …
Is one to assume that the “young idealist” took the “oath of office?”
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_President_of_the_United_States
“The oath of office of the President of the United States is an oath or affirmation required by the United States Constitution before the President begins the execution of the office. The wording is specified in Article Two, Section One, Clause Eight:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
B.
“Riding a groundswell of promise and belief in your promises to restore American values, the electorate sends you to the nation’s capitol to change the way things have been done.”
The young idealist should do the job s/he was elected (hired) to do.
——
Also, if you do the right thing (B) either a good or bad outcome is to be expected. If you do the wrong thing, either a good or bad outcome is to be expected. IMO one might as well always do the right thing (or try to) and work for the good outcome.
Further on JFK:
He fired Joint Chiefs Chairman Lemnitzer (sent him to SHAPE) who had sent him a litmus test in the form of Operation Northwood ** (a lowgrade paste-up not worthy of a lieutenant’s signature). That confirmed JCS suspicions about him (Lemnitzer was not alone on this, not at all).
Further, Kennedy had issued an executive order which told the Treasury to start printing bills, in competition with the FED.
He also did not pay up on his father’s deal with the Chicago mob, and slipped Bobby free on them (and Hoover).
You are indeed correct (and beautifully put too) in all you write Mike S.
But for my part, I have concluded that in fact the President is a figurehead, with no real power. Why aspire to such an office? Perhaps it is a well kept secret. Or being top dog, no that can’t be the reason. The job, whatever it is, is a killer, even if you’re not assassinated.
I’ll never forget Clinton’s SOTUS when a gargoyle Gingrich smirked at Clinton’s discomfort. The discomfort I presumed to come from his dismay as new President upon being given the facts of life. It is gut feeling, not facts, Take it or leave it, it’s my humble opinion.
**Operation Northwood is available as a facsimile copy on the net.
Lemnitzer ordered all copies to be destroyed. Fortunately, his boss McNamara, did not do it; and it was published in 1989 from his files.
Idealist707,
We’re so far apart on the President’s power, but my guess is there’s some limited leeway as long as you don’t take it too far. Eliminating DADT, was not favored for instance by many of the top brass.
I’m leaning toward B. There are additional steps I would have taken, but all of the elements of B would have been in my plan of action.
B.
Mike S.
DADT??
One has to presume the hypothetical points are true; so I will assume for the sake of Argument we are not talking about Obama, who lied about all of this stuff, and instead we are talking about the fantasy Obama painted:
A young idealist, a lawyer and Constitutionalist, that according to the hypothetical was making his promises to restore American values/b> despite already knowing that torture was being used and the economy was in trouble.
Is it fair to assume this idealist lawyer has any brains? Because if he does, and he is a Constitutionalist, then presumably he has already thought through what can go wrong. Presumably he does not believe that he must work with criminals within his own ranks in order to keep the country safe.
An Idealist Constitutionalist Lawyer (call it ICL) should not subscribe to the notion that ill-defined and amorphous “noble ends” justify routinely evil, institutionalized criminal means.
Even though as President our ICL must vow to defend the Constitution, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Even Idealists can recognize that, but the logical approach to that dilemma is simple: If one believes that violating the Constitution is a necessity in order to save the country, then one must be prepared to sacrifice one’s life to execute that violation, and throw one’s self on the mercy of the country.
Thus, when told “Losing these people would severely cripple efforts to defend the country as they form a sizable amount of the intelligence community’s institutional knowledge and memory,” the ICL can reject the claim outright. Our ICL would know that in Nuremburg we hung German officers that claimed they were “just following orders,” it is not a valid excuse for committing war crimes. No matter how much sympathy it garners from the public, the implications are inevitable; all responsibility can always be diverted upstream to one man that can be hung only once (if at all). The millions of atrocities committed would be excused.
It is the responsibility of officers in service to the United States to follow the Constitution in defending it. If they violate it then they do it by choice, if they follow an order to violate it they follow that order by choice, and they have chosen to risk the consequences of that in order to defend their country: Just as much as we demand soldiers that have volunteered to serve risk potentially lethal or crippling consequences to defend their country.
What idealists do not countenance is the corrosive cowardice that undermines the Constitution, presenting it as the law of the land while institutionally granting routine immunity for disregarding it so the country can be run as a criminal enterprise.
A smart ICL will also recognize that the “institutional knowledge and memory” of the the Intelligence community is never vested in one man alone, or even a cadre of men.
REAL organizations are holographic; the information necessary to create any position can be reproduced by those answering to that position. No man is indispensable, because every man might die of a stroke at any moment, and need replacement, perhaps by one of his underlings.
The institutional knowledge of the CIA or FBI or NSA can be functionally reproduced by the field agents of those organizations. The premise that we need the heads is simply untrue: If you cut off the top 10%, the remaining 90% can form a new top 10%, and having seen what happened to the old one, a new top 10% that will better adhere to the Constitution.
If, as an ICL, you truly believe the top 10% was acting in defense of the country, and you believe they have knowledge that needs to be retained, then the answer is also logically simple: In return for that knowledge, you can (as President) have a list of charges read against them, present the defense that you believe they were acting in defense of the country, and simultaneously pardon them but remove them from office and command. It might take guts, but it would be the right thing to do.
A real organization cannot have anybody be indispensable, ever. If the organization ever rests on one man and collapses forever if that one man dies, it is bound to die sooner or later anyway. When we design organizations we design them to be robust, not fragile flowers destroyed by the first ill wind that blows.
Further, the idealist does not sacrifice his ideals for money. There are many ways to save an economy, and since the economy rests on the middle class (which is also the source of most entrepreneurship that results in small businesses that generate the vast majority of new job), if money and bailouts are a necessity, that is where they should be directed; because that is where they will be spent rather than saved or put in the stock market or hedge funds betting against economic recovery.
An Idealist Constitutionalist that wants to recover an economy will invest in the Constitutionally provided for investment, “the General Welfare,” which we can justifiably translate into infrastructure of all kinds, and freely available education, from trade school training to higher education and fundamental research in biology, materials and energy that can benefit everybody.
Infrastructure creates jobs, it is not just roads and bridges, it is the electrical grid, waterways and dams, communications super highways, docks, wind farms, thermal solar farms and other green energy systems, trains and inner city public transportation, from hydrogen fueled buses to subways and monorails.
If as an ICL President you are really worried about terrorists getting a nuclear bomb, there are many ways to deal with that without shooting the country in the heart by destroying civil liberties. Close the borders, and deploy the national guard to guard them. (The USA has about 8000 miles of border to protect, we have about 475,000 soldiers in the national guard. We could literally deploy an armed national guardsman every 1/4 mile, 24/7, with about 100,000 of them. Not to say that is how we should do it, but to illustrate that it is possible to deploy enough personnel to make the borders essentially impenetrable at reasonable cost, even if they were new hires. If you wonder what that would cost, probably $5B a year, or an average of $50/yr per taxpayer.)
The first sentence of Option B, “You reason that principle trumps expediency and stop all illegality,” can be executed without committing either economic or Constitutional suicide. Principle does trump expediency. If circumstances demand the Constitution be violated, then those that do it must do it out of patriotism and personal conviction that the country is in immediate danger and accept the consequences, which may be dire. The founders did the same, they broke the laws of King George and pledged their lives, fortunes and honor for what they believed was right.
We cannot accept the excuse that everybody was just following orders, violating the law of the land is always a personal choice. When I entered the military I took a vow to protect and defend the Constitution, not to obey any illegal orders, in fact I received explicit instruction in how to refuse an illegal order. Keeping a job is not a valid excuse when you have literally pledged your very life to defending the Constitution.
The President has the power to pardon crimes, even murders. Let the crimes be shown. Let the President have the guts to pardon them or not. Keeping crimes secret and unpunished is unprincipled and a recipe for further lawlessness, secrecy corrodes principle and endangers people, it becomes its own excuse for persecution, because the only “principle” that remains is that you can do anything you can keep secret, and thus the maximum power is obtained with the maximum secrecy, and government becomes a criminal enterprise where only the expendables get punished; and many of them, like the fall guys at Abu Ghraib, really were “just following orders.”
I choose Option B, without any of the dire consequences. Principle trumps expediency, and unless I am assassinated by the criminals within my own ranks, I can save the country without any sacrifice of the principles upon which it was founded.
@Mike S: The corporatists do not care much about gay issues; there is a small side issue with being forced to provide gay partner benefits, but they really want to stop all benefits, period.
From the corporatist point of view, DADT is a military issue, they really do not care, or eliminating it can be seen as a positive, after all it slightly increases the amount of cannon fodder they need to perpetuate a war. From their sociopathic point of view the soldiers are expendable lives, they are not outraged or concerned by any kind of sexual activity in the ranks, as long as their wars get fought, the ammunition is expended, the money flows and the coveted natural resources get secured and controlled.
The thing about the scenario, and in real life, is that you cannot prove the negative, did what Bush and this ‘hypothetical’ pres stop,nuclear war or terrorism? Their argument would be ‘Yes. I know that because we have not had either on our shore.” Who can argue with that? Then the follow up: “Were it not for indefinite detention, warrantless searches, etc we would have had at least one of the two so these actions I took, that sure look unconstitutional on the face of them, were responsible and necessary.”
I will also note that the founders believed it was acceptable to take a loss to preserve principle; for example to free guilty men in order to prevent the risk of imprisoning an innocent men.
Hence our demand for unanimity in trial by jury, an uncertainty of one in twelve is sufficient to let the guilty walk in order to ensure the innocent do not suffer (or in the case of a hung jury, to defer the decision to a different set of twelve jurors).
The Constitution is not a suicide pact, that is true enough, but simultaneously, not every threat is sufficient reason to ignore it, including the threat of letting murderers walk free and murder again. Principle does trump expediency, and Principle trumps the certainty of eleven versus one.
Generally, most commenters have chose option “B” and as I stated all else being equal that would also be my choice. What perplexes me is that all else isn’t equal. Many who choose “B”, I know from their history here, also believe that a ruthless elite has pretty much ruled this country for quite some time. I also know that they accept the fact that most of those involved in our political process as contestants are as much guided by their egotism and will to power, as they are by their base ideals.
What I know about the human mind is that our ability to rationalize our egotism (I’M THE ONE) and our will to power (I’M NEEDED TO RUN THINGS!) is limitless. Thus one can be an “Idealistic Person” and at the same time not even be aware of the inner forces compelling them to seek
higher office. Indeed, I believe that most people who have done evil (i.e. Hitler, Stalin, GW Bush, etc.) actually have convinced themselves they were doing good.
We come back then to the hypothetical Mark has presented. This fictional, idealistic young President, is on a conscious level convinced that he can make all these changes and that justifies his Presidential run. He isn’t cynical and he isn’t lying, merely sublimating/ignoring realities of which his intellect should have made him aware. His supporters; confidants; advisers in getting him elected all seem good people, with the best interests of the country at heart, even though given political realities many are creatures of the kind of wealth needed to finance political campaigns.
After election he is now being briefed by the “Experts”, be it in “Intelligence”, “Defense”, “Foreign Policy”, and “Economics”. Their job is to apprise him of the “reality” of his situation and the “reality” of his options. That their version of “reality” is perhaps quite skewed to their own self-interests is but their own rationalizations and sublimation’s. The Intelligence/Defense establishment accepts the wisdom of long held “Cold War” doctrines and sees all the world as a potential danger to the US. While many writing here are convinced that the threat of nuclear attack on these shores is remote, the “experts” think otherwise and of course they have the “facts” and their own “analysis” to prove it. In fact they are so convinced in their own beliefs, ideals if you will, that it is possible to imagine that they would see any President trying to limit their actions as a “traitor” to the country and might feel justified in taking extraordinary steps to eliminate this “traitor”, to keep them from doing harm to our beloved country. I believe this is not only possible, but has happened many times before.
The above was made in the assumption that also adding to this situation are the schemes of people of a less idealistic nature who are determined to assert the needs of their own self interests. I believe that the Bush Family represent such a group whose reality is their innate right to power, accompanied by the ruthlessness necessary to pursue their aims. This is analogous to the idea of Royal Dynasties acting to preserve their lineage and preserve their prerogatives.
In choosing “B”, in my opinion, you are choosing to demand that any President be an incorruptible idealist, totally convinced of their own vision whose ideals supersede their own lives, or that of their families. I would respond by asking you just how many of our past Presidents were such people and for those few who were, what were their fates? I would also wonder if such a person wouldn’t be as dangerous to us all as a Hitler?
From Saul Alinsky:
“One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as ‘that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right.’ If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide.”
Finally, to my mind inherent in Mark’s post was the need for all of us to answer from our very personal perspective just exactly what we would personally risk for our ideals, if we are demanding that a President take on that risk. Personally, I refuse to demand that someone else bear the burden of a risk that I wouldn’t personally bear. I have faced grave consequences in my career and life for maintaining my ideals. However, the gravity of those consequences were merely economic and/or social.
To my mind I have stuck to my ideals and personally faced those risks. Without details, one was going from being a fast rising star in NYC’s Special Services for Children (Child Welfare) to being “blackballed” within the Agency, for refusing to follow the instructions of a powerful Deputy Commissioner, which I felt were not in the best interests of our mission.
I’ve never been faced with a choice though, of having my life threatened by standing up for my ideals. Nor have I ever been faced with a possibility that if I made the wrong choice on an issue, that perhaps millions of people would be harmed. Honestly I’m not sure if I could have remained philosophically true to myself in that position. I am older now and have faced the possibility of my mortality and perhaps I would stand up to that threat. Am I that sure of my beliefs that I would be willing to counter “expert” opinion, that if I go against their advice I might be killing millions by not taking certain repugnant actions?
Perhaps many of you are stronger than I am and can say with not a shred of doubt in your mind, that you personally would face any mortal threat to yourself, or many others, based solely on your idealistic beliefs.
If that is the case then “B” is your option.
Tony,
Just two replies to what you have written. The first is that you and I have a very different concept of what political systems really are. You see them as a set of guiding principles/precedents, for good or ill, that determine the direction of nations and lives. I see them as the smokescreen set up by people as their will to power impels them to try for higher places on the human pyramid of status.
This is not to say that I don’t have ideals and beliefs as to how the world should be run. I am also quite committed to the Constitution the Founding Fathers devised as a good way to handle human affairs. However, to me the rot in human society is our sublimation of the fact that we tend to organize ourselves as our ancestral cousins “The Great Apes”, into a social pyramid. Therefore to me the cure for humanity’s ills is for us to evolve beyond our “Apish” selves. All political solutions then, are to me necessary palliatives, until humanity can mature. However, how this evolution can be helped along has not yet revealed itself to me.
Secondly, re: DADT. My belief is that the aversion to homosexuals is very strong within the upper ranks of our Armed Forces. I believe that despite the fact that the President is the titular CINC, his orders are not always obeyed. Getting the armed forces to accept DADT was to me therefore an indication that there is still some residual power that President’s have, but it is quite restricted.
Mike,
Still all of B plus some other actions.
Because without the Rule of Law and the equitable pursuit of justice, the vision Jefferson laid out in the Declaration and the Founders codified in the Constitution is meaningless. We need not destroy the Rule of Law or the pursuit of justice to protect national security anymore than we need to sacrifice our Constitutional rights on the altar of national security. That’s the shadow cast large upon the wall of political discourse by little men who would subjugate us all to slake their boundless egos.
Ask yourself this question: Would the “war on terror” have been adversely affected by putting Bush/Cheney and their criminal cohorts on trial? Would pursuing equitable justice under the Rule of Law in any way hindered practical strategic and tactical response to the attacks of 9/11?
If you can come up with a reasonable answer other than “no”, I’d like to hear it. Because, to the contrary, I think showing the world that our laws are equitable and based firmly upon the ideals of the pursuit of equitable justice under the Rule of Law would have sent a stronger message to any potential terrorist than what we did which, to be clear, was giving the terrorists what they wanted: tacit admission that the principles and guarantees of rights that this nation was founded upon are disposable in the face of threats and in the name of fear-mongering and political expediency. The terrorist won at a minimum a partial victory the very first time one of our rights was eroded and when Pelosi said, “Impeachment is off the table.”
Being the President is an inherently dangerous job. If you’re not willing to assume all the risks? Stay out of the kitchen.
“Being the President is an inherently dangerous job. If you’re not willing to assume all the risks? Stay out of the kitchen.”
Gene,
That and what you wrote above it are true. However, I know you understand that we have had few Presidents with the courage of those convictions. My guess is that there are very few people available for the position today with that fortitude, who are willing to run and/or could get elected. I agree with “B” as I’ve stated, but I think the reality of what most of us know is that we are unlikely to have a choice to elect such a person. Give that, the right thing to do becomes a abstraction sadly and we have to make choices between bad and worse. Comes the revolution, we will be able to change things, but when is it coming and can we trust its leaders to do the right thing.
Mike,
One of my favorite rock songs and albums!
Gene,,
I agree that actually following the rule of law and punishing those that authorized and carried out torture would have shown the Middle East that the United States really walks the talk.
I would pick B ideally but thinking practically I would pick C as I don’t think B would have turned out so well. The American people for the most did not and do not support taking action against Bush. The political turmoil would have been overwhelming. The CIA and the SOCJFCOM-Pentagon would have rebelled. It is unlikely that you would have an indictment by now.
@Mike S: Am I that sure of my beliefs that I would be willing to counter “expert” opinion,
In my view, you do not have to be that certain of your beliefs, you simply have to be certain (as I am) of a guiding principle, as follows:
Experts that work for you have to be good enough to explain their positions to you. They need to explain their analysis, and their assumptions, and their axiomatic ideas of of what is unquestionably true. They need to be smart enough that if you challenge those assumptions, they can defend them, and if you reject their axioms, they can either prove they do not need it, or can come to the same conclusion using your axioms.
The point of hiring experts, in intelligence or economics or law or anything else, is to get them to develop policy they believe will work that is consistent with your morality and fundamental belief system. They must be smart enough to work their system and give you the best possible results within the constraints imposed by you. If they cannot work with your constraints, and cannot show you why your constraints are impossible or contradictory or too unreasonable, then they aren’t really the “experts” they claim to be; they are dogmatists.
As for personal mortality; it isn’t a possibility, it is a certainty. At least that is my belief. The good one can do and the enjoyment of life one may have is finite. What is the difference between whether I live four more years or forty? Really none except what I can accomplish in that time. I have already faced my mortality, the only question remaining is what I might get for it in trade, and since I believe in no afterlife, the benefits are entirely psychic in nature. I have foregone greater financial reward for greater psychic reward already; I could certainly see sacrificing the rest of my own future in a bid to save the country.
(I can, however, imagine a more impossible demand that I could not risk: Are you ready to sacrifice the lives of your wife, your children, your grandchildren, your siblings, nieces, nephews, inlaws and all of your closest friends in the bargain? Because they can prove to you they are serious without harming a hair on your head, or even raising public suspicion.)
“(I can, however, imagine a more impossible demand that I could not risk: Are you ready to sacrifice the lives of your wife, your children, your grandchildren, your siblings, nieces, nephews, inlaws and all of your closest friends in the bargain? Because they can prove to you they are serious without harming a hair on your head, or even raising public suspicion.)”
Tony,
I’ve already mentioned that if my own mortality were at stake I could see myself taking the risk, but as in your quote above, I do believe that they are capable of taking such action against those to whom oe is close. I find it interesting that JFK, RFK were murdered. Teddy Kennedy almost killed in a plane crash and car crash. Finally, JFK Jr., who was a lock to become President if he wanted to, dies in a mysterious plane crash, a year after founding a political magazine that could have been his Presidential springboard. I have no proof, but considering the reckless personal activities of many of the 1%, it seems more than coincidental that this particular family has had such bad luck.
I thank you though for your response, since you have replied honestly to my implicit question, as to the fact that dire personal consequences could conceivably be at play here. Whether they are, or not, I’m not sure that either of us wants to really know all the evidence.
@Mike: You see them as a set of guiding principles/precedents, for good or ill, that determine the direction of nations and lives.
Whether it is the reality or not, I see government as a servant. Celebrities have bodyguards. Their bodyguards do not become their masters and end up commanding the celebrities, taking their money and keeping their books in secret. They stay bodyguards.
I think government should be the same way, our bodyguard, our servant, not our master.
We have lost control of our government, because (as you should know) it is very atypical of human nature to be vigilant about principles when even relatively small gains are to be had and no downside is immediately apparent, or even if apparent, seems statistically unlikely.
The noble sentiment that “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” is nothing but a noble sentiment. You will not find a person in a hundred that would take a punch to defend a person with whom they totally disagree.
So perhaps my view is naive, perhaps it is impossible to engineer a government that remains a servant of the people, perhaps people are simply too gullible and easily manipulated and emotional and un-analytical to ever stop the sociopaths from rising to the top.
But that is my idealist view: The government OF the people should be determined BY the people, and the government should be FOR the people, i.e. a servant to the people that protects and benefits them as the people demand, not a master that rules them or decides how they should live or keeps secrets from them.
My first principle of government is that the government stops predation, it protects the weak from being exploited by the strong, including the strength of the government itself.
My second principle of government is that the government oversees the collective actions demanded by the people, and ensures nobody is profiteering from those collective actions and public services; i.e. we get the goods at a fair price.
To me if those principles are met, the rest is details.
Concerning the line, “for good or ill,” I disagree. I think you confuse short term and long term thinking there. I believe that sometimes you have to suffer now to have a better outcome later; some diseases require surgery to correct and if the surgery is refused on the grounds that it will hurt or be dangerous, the illness cannot be cured and will prove ultimately fatal. I believe very FEW social and political problems can be corrected without causing any pain, it is impossible to beat the enemies of change without suffering any damage.
I do not follow principle for good or ill, I follow principle only when I think it is ultimately for the good, even if it causes severe pain along the way.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/impeach-obama–20120126 Here is a dose of reality. Grover Norquist wants to impeach Obama if he is re-elected if Obama does not extend the Bush tax cuts.
Swarthmore,
I saw that story and almost wrote about it this weekend. Grover Norquist is a prime example of what is wrong with the Republican Party. It is entirely and officially for the 1 per cent.
Grover Norquist, The Man Who Really Runs The GOP
Grover Norquist: The Billionaires’ Best Friend
How the anti-tax activist hijacked the GOP on behalf of the rich
By Tim Dickinson
November 9, 2011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/grover-norquist-the-billionaires-best-friend-20111109
Excerpt:
Grover Norquist has never held elected office. He’s not a political appointee or a congressional staffer, and few voters know his name. Yet this anti-tax lobbyist wields immense power over the Republican Party, enforcing a hard-line position that compels the GOP to protect tax breaks for the rich and billions in federal subsidies for America’s wealthiest corporations. “It all comes from a single guy,” says Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator. So how does Norquist do it?
Norquist’s influence over the GOP began in 1985, when Ronald Reagan tapped the little-known staffer at the Chamber of Commerce to head up Americans for Tax Reform, a pressure group organized to push a comprehensive tax package through Congress. With backing from the Chamber, Norquist – a Harvard MBA and former head of the College Republicans – challenged GOP candidates to take a two-part pledge: that they would never raise taxes, and that they would only close tax loopholes if the additional revenue was used to pay for further tax cuts. Before long, he had 102 congressmen and 16 senators signed up.
Over the past 25 years, Norquist has received funding from many of America’s wealthiest corporations, including Philip Morris, Pfizer and Microsoft. To build a farm team of anti-tax conservatives, Norquist shrewdly took the pledge to state legislatures across the country, pressuring up-and- coming Republicans to make it a core issue before they’re called up to the big leagues. “We’re branding the whole party that way,” Norquist says. “The people who are going to be running for Congress in 10 or 20 years are coming out of state legislatures with a history with the pledge.”
Dickinson did not give us much insight into why polliticians honor the pledge, they sign all kinds of pledges and break them.
I am not a lawyer, but I believe it would be illegal for a politician to sign a contract that bound him to vote a particular way on issues, in return for support in his campaign, or even just a vote in the election. So the “signed pledge” is as worthless as any other campaign promise.
Why would they keep it? How does Grover Norquist leverage a worthless promise? That is what I would like to know.
Elaine,
What would you expect the government to do with that money except hire more TSA agents to monitor twitter all day and protect us from mouthy british teenagers sent here to “destroy america” ?
Breaking Grover Norquist’s spell
Editorial
His grip over the nation’s budget will only be loosened if more GOP lawmakers find the courage to defy him and his no-tax-hike agenda.
November 04, 2011
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/04/opinion/la-ed-norquist-20111104
Excerpt:
Norquist’s bugaboo isn’t communists, but taxes. As head of Americans for Tax Reform, he pressures lawmakers — overwhelmingly Republicans — into signing his organization’s pledge not to raise taxes, and then threatens the political careers of those who deviate.
Tony,
It sounds a bit like extortion, doesn’t it?
Elaine,
It is extortion plain and simple.
Elaine,
Federal workers owe billions in back taxes
Two percent of the president’s staff, 3% of the Senate staff and 4.2% of the House staff are among the 279,000 U.S. government employees who owe the IRS a cumulative $3.4 billion.
http://money.msn.com/tax-tips/post.aspx?post=ab789642-9f66-414f-8683-8dbc20504dc0
Huh, seems norquist isnt the only one who is anti-tax…
Elaine: Well it is extortion, but it doesn’t explain why it works, unless he has been funding them all along. Why Norquist and not any other lobbyist? Heck, most corporate lobbyists wouldn’t mind tax increases on the middle class, or even on other corporations as long as they were not the target.
I do not understand why Norquist’s pledge is honored more than others, there are plenty of places for politicians to get money besides Norquist, I should think.
When I see these commercials, lately on a lot, lawyers soliciting clients who owe $10,000 or moere in back taxes “I can help you pay 1% of that” it makes me wonder how low the deficit might go if all the tax avoiders paid what they owe.
Looks like the federal workers will have to pay up, but they don’t earn that much. They are all taxed at a higher rate than Mitt Romney who earned all his income from capital gains and dividends. I doubt they have Swiss bank accounts or offshore shelters,
Swarthmore,
You dont the slightest whiff of hypocrisy when a president admonishes a nation that we should all “pay our fair share” and then selects cabinet members that dont?
Carol,
Its not a revenue problem, its a spending problem
ekeyra, Obama is not responsible for federal workers tax returns. He does not see their returns. Now if you are talking about Geitner, his infraction was rather minor. He took a day care credit for pre-school tuition. It did not not involve that much money, and he paid it. It was miniscule in the scheme of things.
Ekeyra, after checking out that guys blog, nothing he says carries any valifity with me. (Have to admit I did not listen to the utube – wanted first to see from whence this fellow, and clip, came)
(and Ekeyra, it is a both problem.)
ekeyrah,
“Its not a revenue problem, its a spending problem”
The Bush Administration spent billions on two wars–one that was preemptive and completely unnecessary–and deferred the payments until a later date.
Carol,
You cant argue with numbers just because you dont like who is presenting them. I dont even know who he is.
Also yea i guess you could classify the federal government spending more money then is available on the planet a “revenue problem” if you really want to see it that way…
swarthmore,
I didnt say he was responsible. I said he was a hypocrite. Its also telling that he nominated a man for treasury secretary who couldnt figure out his own tax returns. But thats ok, apperently if you work for the government you dont have to pay your taxes cause your already working so hard for the country anyway it would just be unfair to ask you to pay more right?
also this : http://www.1115.org/2009/01/15/geithners-tax-explanation-just-doesnt-wash/
Elaine,
Yes thats kind of my point. Although the real horror as pointed out in the video is that relative to TOTAL government expenditures theyre a drop in the bucket. Thats not to say that ending them immediately shouldnt be a top priority, but even if we did, we would still be in a gigantic hole.
Thank you all for playing The Devil’s Fork. The point to be made here is the same one I make to my client’s every day: All principles comes with steep price tags and the payment may be exacted over time. It’s nice to see who is willing to pay what and why.
mespo,
I believe, too, that politicians and government officials who act in unprincipled ways can exact a terrible toll upon those whom they are committed to represent.
I think this administration has damaged the image of politicians much more than any previous administration or president . Majority of People had voted for him not because he was not white but because they had trusted him . He had said we have to do the right thing not only when it is easy but also when it is difficult . However all those were empty words as further proved by the internal memos published in the new Yorker . It will take decades to heal the damage that this president has caused in people ever trusting a smooth talker again .
Frank,
One thing’s for sure: Although the Bush/Cheney Administration damaged the reputation of this country immeasurably–Bush was definitely not a smooth talker.
Elaine , I had never expected anything good from bush , but a lot of people had expected better from this guy and that is why in my view he has damaged this country more .
Frank,
Is the killingof more than 100,000+ civilians in an unjust war, by a man from who you expected little, preferable to unfulfilled promises from a man from whom you expected a lot?
Mike I just expected honesty , maybe that’s a lot in your world or the world of fork writer
Frank,
Apparently Mr. Joel has a problem finding honesty too.
Obama is regarded much more highly than Bush in most of the world. That does not include the southern states of the USA.
once people get to know his real character, that will be hard though because of the wonderful mainstream media here, the less will be number of sheeps, however, since Bush won two terms i guess anything is possible. When 93/100 senators can help pass a bill like NDAA anything can happen.
Swarthmore,
I dont think afghans, iraqis, and iranians are big fans of his either.
Frank,
With people I deal with on a personal basis I expect honesty, or I don’t deal with them. When I’m a consumer I expect fakery and many times surprised and pleased by honesty. With politics having watched the Army/McCarthy hearings at ten, I stopped expecting honesty from then on. With politicians and “Statesmen” my expectations are set at a low bar. Nations have always been ruled by spites playing a con game on the people.
Obama should have been better, but the Reagan years and the Bush years (I&II) represent the nadir of the last 80 years.
I consider your point of view just a rationalization for dishonest people that hey look what is out there . Fact is that there are still honest people out there but because of the msm and rationalizers for the dishonest people, those honest people get marginalized . It’s sad but true .
Frank,
I’ll bite. Who do you consider honest who is on the political scene?
Mike,
I have a hunch that if I name a person who i believe is honest , you will give me reasons to think otherwise. I do believe that Ron Paul is an honest person, maybe not perfect but honest. Ralph Nader is another i can think of. The MSM and the rationalizers for the dishonest politicians will try to suggest that they are just crazy men. The result is that we cannot elect those people to a higher office as MSM just brainwashes a large segment of the population. Dishonest people tell people that their campaign is fueled by small donations of average donors so they wont be held hostages to the big corporations, remember that stump speech? Whereas Obama’s biggest donors were corporations.
I am in no way anticipating to changeyour mindset , as people build there beliefs from their life experiences and cannot just one day wake up and based on a post change their mind as that can shake their entire being. In order to keep ourself stable we use all kind of defenses including rationalizations, intellectualizations, but none of those defenses can change the truth. Truth is that this person that you are wanting to defend is not an honest person. Yes every other president may have been dishonest, as you said, but every other president may not be dishonest in the future if people stop rationalizing and supporting people who are dishonest today.
.
“I do believe that Ron Paul is an honest person, maybe not perfect but honest.”
Frank,
Compared to most Ron Paul is refreshingly honest, except about his bigotry, which makes him quite problematic. I think Nader is an honest, yet egotistical man. My idea of political honesty runs to Bernie Sanders and few others.
“but every other president may not be dishonest in the future if people stop rationalizing and supporting people who are dishonest today.”
That may happen in the future if money is removed from politics, but until things change, we have to decide on the lesser of two evils.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/exploiting-the-rubes-how-ron-paul-once-betrayed-those-who-trusted-him/252249/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ron-paul-signed-off-on-racist-newsletters-sources-say/2012/01/20/gIQAvblFVQ_story.html Not so honest……….
OT:
“Watch Democracy Now! Intv. With Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón Who Probed War Crimes, Now On Trial Himself”
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2012/1/31/watch_democracy_now_intv_with_spanish_judge_baltasar_garzn_who_probed_war_crimes_now_faces_trial
Frank, ‘honest politician’ is an oxymoron.
‘Gasland’ Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans (UPDATES)
Posted: 2/1/12 11:45 AM ET
by Zach Carter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/house-republicans-order-j_n_1246971.html
mom swathmore, i had not expected that someone here, on jonathanturley.org will bring the newsletter otherwise I would have preemted that argument, and to actually give a link of those msm or anti ron websites is even more disappointing as i had thought better.If this is all you can say about Ron Paul then great you are in the majority and deserve presidents like Bushobama! Please check this out:
Mike let me end this exchange on this, I do agree Sanders is another one I respect. I have also started to respect 7/100 senators who voted against NDAA and some of them I had never liked before, but I am willing to ignore the things that I did not agree with them on before because I totally agree with Jonathan Turley on this, this is undermining the whole foundation of this country and that mind u, that particular portion was at the request of the “lesser of the evil”.
Why is anyone still talking about Ron Paul? It’s like discussing the viability of Herman Cain’s nomination. Paul garnered single digits in FLA and barely crossed that threshhold in wacky SC. He is polling at a whopping 13% nationally in the 4 horse Repub field. On his best showing in NH, Romney doubled his vote count. He’s irrelevant.
mespo, why dont you write another agenda driven fork and try to defend the indefensible dishonest pathetic president who in your world is the man to talk about!
and mespo, try to expand your awareness of the national polls, though this may not be relevant to your world view:
http://www.ronpaul.com/2012-ron-paul/ron-paul-polls/
frank:
I see ol’ Ronnie Paul this way. He’ll win right after Lyndon La Rouche does. He’s a pipe dream:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/02/us-usa-campaign-trump-gingrich-idUSTRE81109A20120202 Trump to endorse Gingrich.
Mespo, In a world where people boo on golden rule, where people who write forks to rationalize the indefensible, where msm asks the most disgusting questions to someone who is not part of status quo, yes it is very hard to defeat the corporate dollars and the full force of the pathetic msm. In a world where harvard produces constitutional lawyers with no respect for the constitution, yes it is very hard. In a world where a lecturer calls himself a constitutional law professor and the university of chicago defends that self title by saying that yes we do call lecturers as professors too, yes it is very hard. However, you think thats something funny but to me thats pathetic!
frank:
Paul’s a wacky old man with ties to both fringe thought and even “fringier” people. Like his fervent supporters he’s got no sense of humor and to him the sky is always falling. Riding a 38% unfavorability rating, Americans like him about as much as they like jock itch and that’s not likely to change. We know the guy; he’s been running long enough. He reminds me of Lyndon La Rouche — right about somethings but wrong about most — in lots of ways including a complete lack of Presidential bearing.
Say what you will about Obama but he got something on the first try that Paul won’t ever get despite running and running– an elected national office.
Keep talking frank. I bet you think the Cubs will be in contention in the fall too.
your post tells me more about your character than the character of Paul or hos followers. Thanks for showing even more clearly your real intent to post your fork writing. Winning sheeple vote to be president on the first attempt with the wallstreet support must be a real virtue and attraction to a character like you and sadly most of the average characters who vote for characters like bushobama. I would rather fail than to mislead people or to rationalize disgusting behaviors
Frank,
Are you aware that all you present is diatribe. Try cogent refutation for a change.
Mespo,
Maybe your perception of politics as “your team” verus “my team” is the root of your problem. Its very clear that integrity and concistency are not your priority, “winning” is. Thats very sad, considering how many other people have to live with the consequences.
Mike , try to learn some humility and instead of calling other “bigots” for a change get your head out in sunshine!
Oh wait, true humility comes from self knowledge! Disregard my last comment Mike, I dont think you can learn humility. Arrogance comes from ignorance.
Frank, that is the problem, people with a very little knowledge have all the confidence and they patronize others , and people with a lot more knowledge are full of doubt.
Frank, responding to my statement:
“I dont think you can learn humility. Arrogance comes from ignorance.”
My statement which Frank responded to above:
“Frank,
Are you aware that all you present is diatribe. Try cogent refutation for a change.”
With all due deference and humility, I rest my case.
“Maybe your perception of politics as “your team” verus “my team” is the root of your problem. Its very clear that integrity and concistency are not your priority, “winning” is. Thats very sad, considering how many other people have to live with the consequences.”
Ekeyra,
You’re a regular around here, do you really think that Mark is a “team partisan”? I’ve been around here almost as long as Mark has and to be honest I’m not quite sure where his politics lie, but he hardly appears to be a partisan Democrat, or Liberal for that matter, in his comments and his posts. I think you’ve missed the point of his experiment, by reading into it a false partisanship. This is not a justification of Obama’s actions so much, as it is the presentation of a viable scenario which gives a possibility of why he has behaved in office, differently from his campaign behavior. I think many people have missed what Mark is trying to show. When it comes to the behavior of Presidents, we the public are mostly not party to the internal pressures that exist. We demand that everything is laid out in stark polarities of true or false.
By failing to understand the situational inside pressures, we make judgments colored by emotions, rather than logic. This is a problem for Democracy in that the emotions of us all can be easily manipulated and our emotions inform our logic. Mark’s piece was not a judgment of the correctness of Obama’s actions, but a kind of Rorschach Test of how we judge them. This is not, however, a justification for the Obama activities that have extended the G.W. Bush/Cheney illegalities, but a way of coming to grips with the rationales that must be understood if change is to be effectuated.
Missy ,
I think with age a lot of people get contaminated by moral corruption and they call it being wise . Just look at the senators who engineered/supported the NDAA, they are full of the same condescending grandiose and obnoxious behavior(as graham said ” shut up you don’t get a lawyer”). I think once these morally corrupt individuals/leaders retire and finally let this country be free of their despicable thinking ( where they justify singing bomb bomb Iran by saying that that’s how military men joke ) this country will come back to its roots . Talking to these “seasoned” lawyers/politicians is a waste of time , you can’t reason with decades of narcissism . Thank God the younger generation is very different and its much easier for it not to confuse wisdom and experience with dishonesty and psychological bankruptsy.
I agree it’s hard to be very confident when one knows a lot because with more knowledge , self or otherwise , also comes the knowledge how little we really know . That’s where we need to rely on the security of dynamic thinking vs that super confidence /arrogance that comes from static thinking .
Frank – let’s not forget Reagen in 1984: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
frank:
“your post tells me more about your character than the character of Paul or hos followers.”
*****************
I try to deal in reality. The reality is that your guy is irrelevant to the election. You may want him to be relevant. You may really, really, really want him to be relevant but polling says he’s not. We can talk character all you want. We can talk who has the best ideas or who would be better for America or whose supporters are most sincere, but the simple fact is that your guy doesn’t appeal to enough people in his own party to merit nomination.We can even debate, as ekeyra does, about whether elections are all about winning or not — although it would be a short debate — but none of those issues makes Paul any more electable. He may be the right message in the wrong bottle but that won’t help him either.
Yours and ekeyra’s are the arguments of the rationalizer and if that is the “character” your selling, I’ll pass. Personally, I haven’t decided who to support in the election, but I have no desire to cast a wasted vote in some forlorn hope that others might “see the light.” That’s Pollyanish.
Mark , you totally missed my point , but I’m not surprised . We live in different worlds behind our eyeballs and I’m so glad that we do . Mike was working on your shoes hope they are shining like new
I agree the post as written is clearly biased toward the most generous possible interpretation of Obama’s betrayal of his promises, to the point of partisan fantasy.
Obama did NOT have to immediately betray us with secrecy when he promised transparency, with the persecution of whistleblowers when he promised leniency, with the appointment of lobbyists to his cabinet when he promised none would be, with immunity for criminals when he insisted the country must be a nation of laws, with the extensions of tax cuts for the wealthy that he promised they would end, with his craven sacrifice of the public option he promised (on camera) would have to be in any health bill he signed, with his refusal to close Guantanamo, with his willful subterfuge of creating more black-site foreign prisons, with his knowingly unconstitutional claims of the right to assassinate American citizens without any due process whatsoever, with his ridiculous “heads I win tails you lose” redefinition of the criminal justice system to ensure that nobody accused of terrorism, citizen or not, can ever get a fair hearing, trial, or ever be released from prison, innocent or not.
There can be no internal pressures that demand this level of willful betrayal, and those that pretend otherwise are essentially just claiming the same “mysterious and unknowable plan of God” that religionists use to excuse all evil in the world.
Just on the lobbyist front: Obama could have chosen from any number of Ivy League well respected, extensively published, PhD economist, Business, and Finance professors with zero lobbying background that would have been proud to serve their country in finance or economic positions, and their colleges would have happily given them sabbatical to do it: Elizabeth Warren being just one of them. The idea that the people he chose were somehow the best people for the job is ludicrous: Unless the job was keeping Wall Street from panicking by being regulated by somebody that wasn’t a Goldman Sachs legacy steeped in their corrupt, inside-trading, government-bribing ways. Of course in Obama’s eyes, that was the job, because he is a corrupt corporatist that is not on your side.
For all of Mark’s protestations about not drawing parallels, the “young idealist” is transparently Obama, and this is a completely transparent and partisan presentation.
Tony C.
I’ll admit my biases if you admit your prejudices.
Frank:
Don’t feel bad, we’ve all missed Ron Paul’s point whatever it was. As for MIke S, he’s no shoe polisher.
Totally agree with you Tony ! It’s just sad how brainwashed people are and since the age group that votes the most is similarly clueless we end up with the kind of morally corrupt people we have seen lately in the that position . Guess they ARE representing the voting majority .
Blouise: “mespo, It is your scenario and your rules and I agree to the guidelines you have imposed.
My choice is “D” which would firstly be a complete repudiation of the Gerald Ford legacy (the country and the economy are too weak to handle the rule of law) in that I would hold the top officials responsible and direct the Justice Department to seek indictments against Tenent, Goss, Hayden, Negroponte, McConnell, (maybe Kerr), Bush and Cheney. I would provide total immunity to any personnel who served under these individuals for truthful testimony under oath. Then I would employ the rest of “C”.
My reasoning would be very clear … none of this could have happened on the scale it occurred without the concurrence and orders of the top officials so those same top officials will carry the entire blame. Now, privately, to those who served under these men and followed their orders … career advancement is not something you can look forward to … just thank your lucky stars that this time around the big fish are the only ones who will be looking at four walls in ADX Florence.”
=========================================
Blouise,
Excellent answer. I concur.
Something a bit telling in the scenario and the guidelines though; don’t ya think?
Frank,
“It’s just sad how brainwashed people are and since the age group that votes the most is similarly clueless we end up with the kind of morally corrupt people we have seen lately in the that position .”
Are you talking about elderly people like me? I don’t consider myself brainwashed or clueless.
“It’s just sad how brainwashed people are and since the age group that votes the most is similarly clueless we end up with the kind of morally corrupt people we have seen lately in the that position.”
*********************
Just priceless! Will you true patriots be picking up your marbles now or do you have more pouting and sulking to do. GIve us “brainwashed” folks a call when you decide to enter the real world and we’ll explain that life is full of grays and lots of contradictions.
By the way, please have at cleaning up all the corruption. Can’t wait to see how you do compared to our generation. I’ll match score cards with you.
We’ll see your Ron Paul and raise you a King — and a Bobby Kennedy.
Your highness you are the one who knows the truth. We just don’t understand your wisdom forgive us for “pouting and sulking ” Guess Steve jobs was also pouting when he said that he is annoyed by this president as all he can do is to give reasons why he can’t do something !
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/02/change-you-can-believe-in-two-wars-ended.html Another opinion from a Ron Paul sympathizer
FRank:
Steve’s dead and worse yet was over 50 when he died. I ‘m surprise you listen to him since since he’s one of our generation’s corrupt brainwashed folks. He was an expert in Presidential politics, too … wasn’t he? Or do you just pull out the musing any famous “old” person to prove your points?
Keep talkling. I feel like I’m contributing to your education. Maybe we’ll get you to the point of edification where you can tell me where I went wrong factually to suggest that Paul has no chance to get nominated much less win, and therefore is irrelevant. Looks like an all-nighter to me.
Your highness if you use the leftover brain cells you will realize that Ron Paul is 76 and I admire and respect him . I don’t admire and respect the old people who confuse dishonesty with wisdom , get it ?
“Your highness if you use the leftover brain cells you will realize that Ron Paul is 76 ….”
***************
You’re right. He’s 76;he just has the ideas of an 18-year-old freshman, political science major from East Bumfuque, Texas.
Frank:
Our generation got screwed by the one before ours. The 60′s saw the rise of the progressives writ large. It didnt really get going until the children of the depression started coming to power. But I dont know if you can blame them, my grandmother and grandfather had a real hard time in the depression and it scared the everlovin S out of them. It was so brutal it changed lifetime behaviors for both of them.
Government certainly isnt the answer to curing the ails of society, each of us needs to do his/her part. Be as self reliant as you can and dont expect other people to pay your way, but you have to admit that when you reach the end of your rope there should be some options open to you. Like charity or maybe a mutual aide society you can belong to, to help defray costs or provide retirement or health care.
Any government instrument for social welfare could be privately funded and operated by individuals. Some individuals, such as the mentally or physically handicapped, who cannot work or dont have access to charity or family do need to be helped by society, meaning government. Some very few individuals truly are in need of government help.
Actually doesn’t matter old or young , I don’t care for either if they support or are dishonest themselves . I know that must be odd to hear for you as in your world those are the people to be admired for their wisdom .
Sorry bron my above comment was in response to his highness, not directed to you .
Mark , “18 year old” , guess you don’t know the 18 year olds who can teach you a few things about honesty. If age is something you are going to put someone down then I feel even more sorry for you .
Frank:
no worries.
Read these other people from East Bumfuque, Texas:
Jean Baptiste Say
John Locke
Frederic Bastiat
Walter Williams
Thomas Sowell
Peter Schwarz
John Lewis
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/aclu_sues_obama_administration_over_assassination_secrecy/singleton/?mobile.html
Frank:
Mespo is just too old to realize there are absolutes [not vodka]. And that most things are black or white when you get down to the bone. The gray comes in when you start making excuses for bad actions or behaviors.
Lawyers make a living finding the gray, translation: figuring a way to blame someone else so their client doesnt take the full brunt of the punishment for his stupid act.
Bron, Thank God there are lawyers like Jonathan Turley as otherwise after seeing some of the posts here I would have started to believe what people say about lawyers. Some of the comments here suggesting that this post was some sort of neutral intellectual exercise stink so bad of narcissism that you literally have to pinch your nose . By the way , sometimes those punishable acts are not just “stupid” they are very well planned evil acts . But I do believe in the right to have a lawyer unlike this president who wants to detain people indefinitely without access to a lawyer .
Thanks for the reading list .Have you read Erich Fromm ?
Mespo,
“I try to deal in reality. The reality is that your guy is irrelevant to the election. You may want him to be relevant. You may really, really, really want him to be relevant but polling says he’s not.”
The only candidate that isn’t trying to start a war with iran is irrelevant?
The only candidate who wants to end the massive police state we are erecting in america is irrelevant?
The only candidate who actually believes in due process of law is irrelevant?
Elaine , I was talking about those who consider that because they have lived longer they can tell others that it is wise to be dishonest and suggest that anyone who does not agree with them is just naive . I hope you are not the one I was referring to.
Binary thinking is a trap for the small minded and those incapable of dealing with complexity. The nature of reality is analog, not binary. Absolutes are more defined by preconceptions of the viewer as skewed by point of observation than they are created by actual transaction. Very little in the world is purely one thing or another.
Ron Paul is not relevant to those who don’t have to worry about losing cognitive functioning because of traumatic brain injury . Maybs they think that they wont have much to lose if its already impaired … However i doubt they can think through that much..
Ron Paul is relevant to the troops though , and I do support our troops !
@mespo: I’ll admit my biases if you admit your prejudices.
My only “prejudice” is against irrational thinking that is impervious to reason. If you think you know differently, you are wrong.
Frank,
Seriously, all you’ve done here is make assertions and call people names. The only “facts” you’ve presented are from FOXNews, the American version of Pravda. Put very plainly Ron Paul is a racist, bigot, not just from his newsletters but from his being a guest speaker at the John Birch Society
40th Anniversary Bash. Probably, in your world being a bigot is not telling lies. “Asperse” me all you want, it’s deliciously funny and makes me look good with each flailing diatribe.
You have to be out of your mind . You believe that foxnews is pro Paul ? Incredible ! Anyway get back to polishing
Frank,
You wrote: “It’s just sad how brainwashed people are and since the age group that votes the most is similarly clueless we end up with the kind of morally corrupt people we have seen lately in the that position .”
******
With that comment, you cast the people of my generation as clueless individuals who vote for morally corrupt politicians. So…should I assume that the people of your generation have never voted for the same types of candidates?
How is it that you and your morally superior generation can just dismiss the things that Ron Paul does/has done that aren’t of the highest moral order?
If you are referring to reality check , that’s not “foxnews”
You and your master are amusingly sad people
Elaine I’m not writing a fork under the pretense of some grandiose intellectual exercise . I already explained in my last comment to you who I was referring to when I said what u responded to .
By the way I’m glad Mike that my comments make you look good to yourself . Thanks for proving narcissism is alive and healthy.
Frank,
I know who you were responding to. I’m not as clueless as you suppose a woman of my age to be. I understand the written word. You didn’t single out anyone when you wrote “since the age group that votes the most is similarly clueless we end up with the kind of morally corrupt people we have seen lately in the that position.” You included my entire age group…didn’t you?
I believe some people think that everything isn’t a black and white issue. Many people believe that one has to make some compromises in life. Some politicians compromise too much. Some politicians may be too rigid in their stances. People look at things differently. It’s complicated.
That said, I have been very disappointed in many of President Obama’s actions/decisions. I have also been extremely disappointed in elected politicians who have refused to work with our president–especially those who said they didn’t want this president to succeed. Shouldn’t t our elected representatives work with the president in order to do what is best for their constituents and this country?
Elaine , when 93/100 senators vote for NDAA and then patronize their constituents by suggesting that they are the ones who don’t understand how wonderful this bill is , then I think we have to conclude that there is something very wrong with the mindset that votes for these people . Unfortunately most of the voters in their later ages , I said most not all , are very set in their ways and they keep on voting for people like McCain and Levin .
Again please don’t take that original comment wrong . I respect people no matter how old/young they are , However I can not respect anyone who defends dishonesty by confusing it with wisdom and experience of having been longer on this planet .
“when 93/100 senators vote for NDAA and then patronize their constituents by suggesting that they are the ones who don’t understand how wonderful this bill is , then I think we have to conclude that there is something very wrong with the mindset that votes for these people .”
Or you could just as easily conclude that there is something very wrong with the process that picks and presents candidates to the public for selection, namely campaign finance.
Who is to blame when your choices are crap and crap-lite?
The person choosing or the people defining the field for choice?
It’s little details like this that can be important and easily overlooked when one insists on putting things into orderly little boxes.
I agree Gene , there are flaws at multiple levels . We cannot exterminate them , though, by not calling dishonest as dishonest . That’s all I’m saying . When some try to rationalize indefensible , in my view , that makes it even harder to exterminate the parasites.
Frank,
It’s our system that is corrupted and has to be fixed. We need to get the money out of politics and out of our elections. Citizens United aggravated the problem. We should also demand more of the news media and debate moderators. If the system remains as is, I think there is little hope for the future.
Again I agree with you , now let me ask you this which presidential candidate is not part of status quo ? Which candidate had predicted years ago what will happen if we don’t change our domestic or foreign policies ?
Please check this out , maybe it will give u a different perspective : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGDisyWkIBM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Frank:
I’m still waiting and waiting for one “honest fact” to prove Paul is relevant. Why don’t you be honest with your ideologue little self and admit that Paul is a weird little man with weird ideas and is perceived so much so by the American electorate that he’ll never be President. Oh he can find his way around a chat-room and mug for his supporters but down deep he’s that captain of the sinking ship who thinks “women and children first” is a moral outrage. He talks a good game about morality until you ask a question or two and then the crazy comes out and voilà, he’s just another fringe candidate. Once you’re honest about Paul’s chances we can talk about that moral superiority issue you have. Mike S has it right. Paul never distanced himself from his racist past and everyone knows that. Bye, bye Ronnie. The dust heap awaits.
ekeyra:
‘The only candidate that isn’t trying to start a war with iran is irrelevant?
The only candidate who wants to end the massive police state we are erecting in america is irrelevant?
The only candidate who actually believes in due process of law is irrelevant?”
***************************
You can be an angel from Heaven but if you only poll 13% nationally in your own political party, you’re irrelevant.
Bron:
“Mespo is just too old to realize there are absolutes [not vodka]. And that most things are black or white when you get down to the bone.”
**********************
You know better than that. Explain to me how the Arab-Israeli conflcit is a black and white situation when you “get down ot the bone” and then we’ll talk.
Hey I found a classic depiction of Ron Paul and the libertarian aversion to helping people in the personage of none other than George Costanza:
Mark , keep on waiting:-) you have to be out of your mind if you think I’m going to waste my time to help you see what honesty looks like . It has been an interesting experience . Mark calls people as bigots and then complains that I called him names . You pretend like you are wanting to have a discussion when in reality you are so full of yourself that you can not even have a clue about what’s outside your bubble . I see you and mike as people who when hit by reality right between their own eyes they would say huh ? So no I’m not wasting my time on helping you see the light . Paul’s name will always be remembered as the refounder of the united states whether he wins or not, whereas you and mike no one will even know whether you ever existed . so please don’t wait . Have a good evening in your bubble
Frank:
“Mark , keep on waiting:-) you have to be out of your mind if you think I’m going to waste my time to help you see what honesty looks like .”
***********************
You could have fooled me since you spent six reply comments trying. I’ll keep waiting anyway since you graciously prove my point every minute you delay. By the way, I didn’t call Paul a bigot. I called him a racist and weird. Paul might be transformative. He just won’t do it from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, and wasn’t that my point all along? As George says, “Who would lead? The clown!” I guess for you the answer is “yes.” How do you live with yourself?
“I’m not writing a fork under the pretense of some grandiose intellectual exercise”
Frank,
You do’t have to explain anything to us, it’s obvious what you’re not capable of doing and we’d never confuse your unbacked assertions with intelligence. That clip you put up was FOXnews. But hey Frank, it’s obvious you prefer the Racist/Bigot in the race, so we expect little from you except for type of insult that we grow out of when we age past ten.
Your comment speaks for itself and further confirms everything I have said before about you . Enjoy your highly evolved being .
Frank,
A song about your thought processes and the end result of Ron Paul’s Libertarian politics after the end of government and the Corporate Takeover. That he won’t win is irrelevant to the harm of what he preaches. You know Racism, Bigotry, Misogyny. He does hate war, but will love it when it’s privatized.
Hey stop making yourself feel so good about yourself by calling other all these racist words as to some of us less evolved they maybe signs of projection . We already know your other defense mechanisms of rationalization and intellectualization , don’t have to expose yourself totally here .
You deserve the clown that you got . Enjoy . Peace !
Mike is a lot of things, but racist isn’t one of them.
Then again, anyone who criticizes someone with demonstrable ties to racist organizations (JBS) and racist newsletters (in his own name as publisher and editor) as being a racist in action if not in word and/or a panderer to racists is clearly a racist themselves against Whitey McCracker & the White Supremes.
Yep.
You should learn how the mechanism of projection works before you use the word, Frank.
Gene, wasnt there a pastor who was recently convicted of molesting boys and even had a male prostitute, who prior to getting exposed was calling gay people all sort of names, do you remember that? its not uncommon for people to call other those names/behaviors that they dont want to accept in themselves. I am not saying that your buddy is, but what i am saying is a fact too. If i were u i will not be that sure. Lot of time even the wifes of these individuals dont know the reality of their partner. By the way, i think you are jumping to a conclusion that may not be very correct, you assume that you know better than me how projection works. You may, but at this point I think you will agree with me that you dont have the evidence to conclude that. However, I understand the automatic conclusion of some is that if some one supports Paul they must not be very educated or qualified. I would suggest one thing, next time you run into a 18 year old paul supporter ask him about the monetary policy, you maybe surprised. Have a good night!
Gene,
You are right about Mike. Frank is way off base thinking he is a racist! Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Rafflaw , I maybe way off base . But as I said a lot of times even wives don’t know the hidden secrets and the person himself may not be aware of that , as projection happens at a subconscious level . That’s what happens with those involved in church abuse cases . Again I’m not saying that anyone is racist or not I’m just describing a proven phenomenon . Life some times is not what it appears to be , but for some it appears pretty black and white .
Frank,
You are way off base and you know it.
Actually I don’t know that . My analysis of him through his posts does not allow me to say I know anything . I do however believe that people who call others racists and bigots , like Glen Beck , usually have some deep underlying intra psychic conflicts .
Frank,
Are you describing yourself?
Oh yes I’m the one who has been calling people racist bigots 10 year old
I see you have a need to defend your buddy . Listen you don’t have to . It’s not that important . I just wanted to check the calliber of grandiosity , and I think I have a pretty good idea now .
Frank,
I understand perfectly well how projection works. I did not suggest that you needed to learn how it works because you don’t know how it works, but rather to illustrate that you were displacing attributes made to Paul by others back on them. When something is done like that subconsciously, that’s classical projection. When it is done consciously, that’s the Rovian propaganda tactic of accusing others of your sin.
I also know how denial works. The facts regarding Paul are he’s been associated with the John Birch Society and newsletters with his name on them that have born his name as publisher and editor have carried racist content. At worst, that makes him a racist himself, but as there is no direct evidence of that, I go with option number two, which at best makes him a panderer to racists. Projection. Denial. Purposeful political propaganda redirection and displacement. Whatever. It’s your opinion that Paul is suitable and relevant for public office. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. The relevant fact is that Ron Paul has connections to organization and events that make questioning his possible racial prejudices a valid criticism. No amount of rhetoric, no matter the motive or underlying psychological mechanism, changes those facts.
There is also nothing anyone could say to about Paul’s economic policies I’d find surprising. In that area, I’ve heard it all already. Ad nauseum. I have yet to find any of it convincing. While there are a select few social policies of Libertarians I agree with, by in large, I find their economic policy to be fantasy based and recipes for both social and economic disaster like all laissez-faire economics. The assumptions that laissez-faire economics makes about human nature are as disastrously wrong as the assumptions communism made.
Then again, Ron Paul or Libertarian economics isn’t the relevant issue here.
The relevant issue is surveying the variety of responses to the hypotheticals set forth above. A Rorschach test isn’t interesting for the ink blots proper. It’s interesting because reactions to the ink blots and when those reactions are across a spectrum of viewers, the differences in the reactions between viewers.
Like you Frank, I am just calling them as I see them. Mike doesn’t need my help.
No one need defend me against this ass. He doesn’t care about Paul’s bigotry and misogyny so it’s a reasonable assumption he shares it. In his remarks about 18 year olds knowing economics, Von Mises no doubt, it shows he’s just another libertarian ass, incapable of following the logic of his beliefs to their conclusions, which would be the law of the jungle. He is using the childish tactic known as “I’m rubber, your glue….etc.” to call me what his esteemed leader is really guilty of being. All in all the rhetoric of a “true believer” who uses invective, rather than skill. Pathetically sad, but somehow funny. It’s impossible to take him seriously, which coincidentally also is the fate of his idol. Altogether a phony man down to his nomme de plume, meant to convey the honesty he so lacks.
Yeah mike does not need anyones help . He is pretty good at calling others names like “ass” like “bigots” etc .
Now dOnt regress too much , your BP may get high , that’s not good for your health . Take a chill pill .
Mespo,
Popularity trumps principles.
Freedom and human dignity are only relevant to how many people think its a good idea?
Ekeyra:
The majority in society always sets the principles – for better or worse. You know that didn’t you?
But mespo,
Shouldn’t they have principals when they set the principles?
prin·ci·pal [prin-suh-puhl]
adjective
1. first or highest in rank, importance, value, etc.; chief; foremost.
prin·ci·ple [prin-suh-puhl] Show IPA
noun
1.an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct: a person of good moral principles.
2.a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived: the principles of modern physics.
3.a fundamental doctrine or tenet; a distinctive ruling opinion: the principles of the Stoics.
4.principles, a personal or specific basis of conduct or management: to adhere to one’s principles; a kindergarten run on modern principles.
Mespo:
“You know better than that. Explain to me how the Arab-Israeli conflict is a black and white situation when you “get down to the bone” and then we’ll talk.”
OK. On the one hand you have a democracy dedicated to individual liberty. On the other hand you have a totalitarian society dedicated to human subjugation.
Seems pretty black and white to me. It only becomes gray when you bring in peripheral arguments.
As Mr. Locke says when you are attacked you have a moral right and duty to protect yourself by all means necessary and to treat your attacker as nothing more than a beast to be dispatched (eliminated, killed, deep sixed, 86).
I would say the Israelis have shown remarkable restraint seeing as how they have atomic weapons.
The gray area is for people who wish to engage in moral cowardice or who have other fish to fry.
When your wife is being raped are you going to care about the reasons why the perp is doing it? Are you going to care he may have had a lousy childhood or his mother beat him or his dog pissed on his leg? But as a lawyer you would if the rapist was your client, you would want to find the gray area so you can cloud the mind of the jury just enough to keep them second guessing themselves as to a fitting punishment.
The gray area always supports evil.
Bron,
“On the one hand you have a democracy dedicated to individual liberty. On the other hand you have a totalitarian society dedicated to human subjugation.
“Seems pretty black and white to me. It only becomes gray when you bring in peripheral arguments.”
*****
I’m not sure what you mean by what you wrote–that Israelis are good and Palestinians are bad because of their different types of governmental structures…that Israel has a right to exist but a Palestinian state doesn’t? Could you clarify this for me?
Frank, I think you need to look at your statement about brainwashed people and projection. Sure looks like projection to me (and I only have A B.A. in psych. Imagine what someone really versed in it might say.)
Frank
1, February 2, 2012 at 3:58 pm
Totally agree with you Tony ! It’s just sad how brainwashed people are …”Frank
1, February 3, 2012 at 1:08 am
the person himself may not be aware of that , as projection happens at a subconscious level .
Elaine:
My personal feeling is that a state like the Soviet Union or Communist China has no moral right to exist. In other words a society that is not dedicated to human liberty has no moral right to exist. That they exist is a fact of reality and that some people like totalitarian states is also a fact of reality.
A totalitarian state has no right to force itself on another state which does not wish to become totalitarian or to be destroyed. The right of the Palestinian state to exist is not at issue, it does exist and Israel has a right to deny it any moral standing by not calling it a state.
Personally I will take a liberal, democratic society which believes in individual rights over a society which trains children to blow themselves up for the greater “good” of the “Palestinian” people.
I for one dont know why you need the issue clarified. Unless of course you support suicide bombers and jihad.
Bron,
Do you believe that the Palestinian people should have their own country? Would you have them live as a people without a land forever because you don’t approve of their government?
You wrote: “A totalitarian state has no right to force itself on another state which does not wish to become totalitarian or to be destroyed.”
Do you think the US should do what it did in Iraq to help spread democratic principles in a Palestinian state? Is it okay if a “liberal, democratic society” wages a preemptive war on a country ruled by a dictator/a totalitarian state?
Do you believe that all Palestinian people are suicide bombers and jihadists?
*****
BTW, our so-called “liberal, democratic society which believes in individual rights” isn’t as liberal and democratic as we would like to think. Our government keeps whittling away at our civil liberties. If the Enemy Expatriation Act (EEA) becomes law, Americans could even have their citizenship revoked.
I wrote about the EEA in a recent post titled “The Enemy Expatriation Act: Learn How Your Government Could Strip You of Your Citizenship If This Legislation Becomes Law.”
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/29/the-enemy-expatriation-act-learn-how-your-government-could-strip-you-of-your-citizenship-if-this-legislation-becomes-law/
Elaine , please also check out greenwald’s new article , if you have not already read it , on salon.com to see what our democratic govt. is really doing .
Things you mentioned are important to me too and that’s why I support the candidate that I do .
Frank,
I read Glenn Greenwald regularly. There are many things that trouble me about Ron Paul. I wrote about them on other threads on this blog. It is for those reasons that I could not support him as a presidential candidate.
I’m sure you must have weighted pros and cons carefully to reach your decision . I don’t agree with everything that Ron Paul says , but the reasons you mentioned above are overriding factors for me . I cannot support anyone who has no respect for the due process and constitution . To me honesty and the things you mentioned are non negotiable .
I respect Your right to arrive at Your own conclusion .
Frank,
At the moment, I’m not supporting anyone.
Bron:
“On the one hand you have a democracy dedicated to individual liberty. On the other hand you have a totalitarian society dedicated to human subjugation.”
*********************
The Jewish terror gangs were formed in 1922 and ultimately they killed many Arabs and 400 British peacekeepers. The blew up the SS Patria in Haifa harbor and the King David hotel. They also murdered Count Bernadotte who saved over 10,000 Jews from the holocaust. Hamas and the PLO were guilty of similar attrocities. Which group of “terrorists” are you supporting? Or maybe you judge only by the final result. You can’t see much history with blinders on.
Mespo:
how many of those people alive in 1922 are alive today? Maybe 1 or 2? That is an inapposite statement. It is like saying that since you are white and living in the south, you must be complicit in owning slaves.
From my understanding there is no “Palestinian” people, they are indigenous Arabs.
The US should not spread democracy, in fact the US should leave most countries it currently supports.
It doesnt matter if some Palestinians are not suicide bombers, I am sure some Germans were not Nazis. It is irrelevant and a distraction.
Bron:
“It is like saying that since you are white and living in the south, you must be complicit in owning slaves.”
**********************************
No, Bron it’s like saying you like who you like because you like them. Bottom line– there are no angels in that situation and yet you choose to make one side angelic. Palestine is where the State of Israel was in 1922. That’s the point and that’s why it’s gray not black and white. Sorry, but the world and its inhabitants aren’t so simple. And simplistic solutions usually result in more chaos. That’s Paul’s basic problem: he sees the peaks but the rest of the mountains elude him. History’s no consideration because, as you say, not many folks are around who were there then. Problem is those descendents aren’t so easily convinced that the attrocities committed against their ancestors aren’t relevant today. The world didn’t start when Ron Paul and his supporters were born. Thats frank’s problem along with those who would seek to solve complex problems with “simple” solutions they invariably believe they thought of first.
As to the slave issue, the analogy would be you live on a plantation built off the sweat and blood of African slavery but feel no obligation to rectify the wrongs of the past that benefitted you and your ancestors directly. That’s Prep Boy Biff logic and again evinces that “life started when I was born” mentality.
Come to think of it, Ron Paul would look good in a beanie hat and crest blazer. Maybe he should run a prep school.
“Come to think of it, Ron Paul would look good in a beanie hat and crest (-j)blazer. Maybe he should run a prep school.” (mespo)
I know it was written in jest but quite frankly, sums it all up nicely.
Bron,
“From my understanding there is no “Palestinian” people, they are indigenous Arabs.”
You mean they could be compared to the indigenous people of North America? We all know how the settlers from Europe took their lands from them because the indigenous people weren’t “real” Americans.
First definition given for “indigenous”–taken from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language:
“Originating and growing or living in an area or environment.”
Bron:
“From my understanding there is no “Palestinian” people, they are indigenous Arabs.”
*******************************
Not sure what you mean by indigenous Arabs, but Palestine is one of the first known inhabited areas of the world. It includes Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan. It’s traces its heritage back 3000 years to the Caananites. The Romans expelled the Jews from the area in about the Second Century BCE. By 1800 BCE, Jerusalem was a massive fortified city populated by Palestinian people. In the 7th Century the Moslems converted the mostly agrarian locals to their faith. By the end of the 7th Century the area was mostly populated by Arabs. In 1919, there were 700,000 Palestinian Arabs living there. No one really disputes they inhabited the land they live on and the lands they were displaced from for thousands of years before the Israelis arrived. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised a Jewish homeland and “Britain’s high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture. He said ‘all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators’…The Colonial Office rejected the recommendation.”
“That’s Prep Boy Biff logic and again evinces that ‘life started when I was born’ mentality.”
You expected something else from an Objectivist, mepso? They are the center of the universe, the standard by which all else is measured. That’s what happens when you worship your own ego.
Gene H:
Good point Gene. I like your language better, but, like Blouise, I like my image.
I’ll not contest the power of the image.
Mespo,
“The majority in society always sets the principles – for better or worse. You know that didn’t you?”
You let the majority determine what principles you live by? That sounds like a terrible way to go through life.
What happened to give me liberty or give me death?
ekera:
“What happened to give me liberty or give me death?
********************
That was Patrick Henry. He was in the majority.
Then who was he demanding liberty from if everyone already agreed with him?
Mespo:
OK, then give your land back to the Pamunkeys. Your ancestors stole it and you have benefited from that theft. You say your ancestors werent here then and you had no direct responsibility? You took stolen land, isnt there a law against receiving stolen property?
Personally, I think what Harry Truman did was pretty stupid but what is done is done and the facts are as they are. And the Palestinians are a bunch of nitwits who could have played the sympathy card 50 years ago and they would have had a state by 1970. But they chose death and destruction instead.
The Jews won that land in 3 different wars, I would say to the victor belongs the spoils and I would also say since most of the Arab world supported Hitler during WWII they dont have much moral standing and they have yet to distance themselves from their desire for the destruction of an entire country.
@Bron: By the same token, the land was lost in WW II, and to the victor go the spoils. Right?
Personally, I think that between countries or between persons, it is the attacker that assumes the risk for their life and everything they own. Those countries on the wrong side of WWII risked their land, and the victors awarded the land to Israel. Those that then attacked Israel risked their land to do it, and Israel had the right to take it.
I say the same for all countries, including ours: If you do not want to risk the loss of your country, land, property or citizens, do not bet them on a war, declared or undeclared.
Fidel Castro views on the Republican presidential primaries, Time 2/13 issue:
“The greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”
Tony C:
I agree completely with that statement.
When you attack your neighbor, you better be willing to take the consequences of your actions. If you cant fight, you better not start the fight.
Typically it is not liberal democracies which attack their neighbors, usually it is totalitarian societies done at the behest of their leader.
Castro should know all about idiocy and ignorance, the farmers in Cuba use oxen and iron age ploughs to farm the land.
Who cares what a thieving, murdering Marxist/socialist dictator thinks? I guess fellow travelers would.
Here is a bright spot for the Cuban people:
“HAVANA (AP) — Cuba has distributed nearly 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of unused state land to private farmers and others trying their hand at farming, more than half the territory it hopes to give out in an effort to revitalize an agriculture sector hampered by decades of government mismanagement.”
We should do the same with our government land for farming and mining and timber production. Hampered by decades of government mismanagement is about right.
Carol,
I am sure that this is not totally true….but….the contenders left proves that he might be onto something….
Bron – the point wasn’t Castro but his comment. Even he sees what is goinig on. and AY, Yep. ((*_*))
I dont see any ignorance or idiocy among them. They are all smart people even if you dont agree with them.
Romney has both a business and law degree from Harvard.
Newt has an undergraduate degree from Emory University, and then earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from Tulane University.
Ron Paul earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from Duke University’s School of Medicine in 1961.
Santorum earned a B.A. with honors in political science from Pennsylvania State University in 1980, an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981, and a J.D. with honors from the Dickinson School of Law in 1986.
Fidel Castro graduated with a doctorate in law from Havana University in 1950.
Maybe they dont teach so good at HU, because he clearly fucked Cuba up.