Teacher: Class, here's a piece that recently ran in The New York Times, called The Limits Of Libertarianism:
By denigrating several of the signal achievements of modern American society, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act, Rand Paul has performed a useful service for voters who are angry at their elected officials. He has helped to illuminate the limits and the hazards of antigovernment sentiment.
Many Americans are sputtering mad, believing that government has let them down in abetting a ruinous recession, bailing out bankers and spending wildly. But is Rand Paul really the remedy they had in mind? His views and those of other Tea Party candidates are unintentional reminders of the importance of enlightened government.
Teacher: Ok, class, does anyone out there see something wrong in that statement? Anyone? Yes, Harry, you had your hand up first.....
Harry Reid: They said "denigrating", instead of light-skinned with no dialect?
Teacher: No, Harry, that is not correct. I won't even say Nice Try. Let's read some more of the editorial.
....Under (Rand's) philosophy, the punishment for a lunch counter that refuses to seat black customers would be public shunning, not a court order.
It is a theory of liberty with roots in America’s creation, but the succeeding centuries have shown how ineffective it was in promoting a civil society. The freedom of a few people to discriminate meant generations of less freedom for large groups of others.
Teacher: Now class, is there anyone who can name the largest group to legally discriminate against black Americans prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Yes, Bobby?
Senator Robert Byrd: It was The White Knights Of The Ku Klux Klan ! !
Teacher: Bobby, take off your Klan robe and sit down. You're an embarrassment. We'll all read a little further. Now children, listen carefully. This part is funny if you've been paying attention all semester.....
It was only government power that ended slavery and abolished Jim Crow, neither of which would have been eliminated by a purely free market. It was government that rescued the economy from the Depression and promoted safety and equality in the workplace.
Teacher: Ok, class, I'll make it easy for you. Which organization WROTE the Jim Crow laws, which made it illegal for Black Americans to attend the same public schools as white kids? Who made it illegal for Rosa Parks to sit at the front of the bus? What organization made it illegal for Black and White people to use the same water fountains? Yes, Barry ?
Barry Obama: George W. Bush ! ! !
Teacher: No, Barry. It was the government. All of these evil practices were approved and enforced by the government. So when you read something like this, you should ask yourself if you would congratulate a man for no longer abusing his children. And then you should laugh at what short memories people have. Because using the phrase "enlightened government" to describe what happened in 1964 is very funny, isn't it class? Yes, Barry?
Barry Obama: The failed economic policies of the past eight years?
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Please reply friend.
Of course, blurring the distinction between federal, state and local government is a convenient dodge.
Disingenuous, but hardly surprising.
Dr. Ralph,
Fugitive Slave Act: state, local, or federal?
Plessy v. Ferguson: state, local, or federal?
Repudiation of Special Field Order Fifteen: state, local, or federal?
And so on.
Doctor,
Same outfit, different hats.
WS -- point taken, as you so eloquently pointed out during the Bush administration, when the War on Terror was used as a catch-all excuse to suspend habeas corpus, institute massive domestic wire-tapping programs and justify an invasion under false pretenses we are still paying for.
I've lost my bookmark to those posts -- could you post those again sometime?
There was no "war under false pretenses." There is only false pretenses of false pretenses.
The Authorization of the Use of Military Force in Iraq was based not on one, or two, or three but over a dozen reasons.
WMD: Saddam had the burden to prove he destroyed WMD. We had no burden to find any. This was spelled out clearly in the Sixth Report of UNMOVIC. His final 10,000 page declaration contained "no new information" - it was a delaying tactic. British Intelligence maintains to this day and Tony Blair maintains that Iraq did, in fact, attempt to buy Uranium in Niger notwithstanding one false documentary source. Saddam's WMD are not "proven destroyed", they are "unaccounted for." They are most likely back where he got them from: Russia.
Support for terrorism: Saddam paid money to the families of suicide bombers, hosted terrorist training camps, and permitted terrorist groups to attack Kurds to get around the No Fly One.
Mass murder: Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of his own people and hundreds of thousands more in Iran and Kuwait. He violated the terms of the Cease Fire repeatedly in attacking dissenters.
Violating the Cease Fire: On numerous occasions Iraq locked radar on or fired at allied aircraft, in violation of the Cease Fire. Those acts ALONE justified a resumption of the 1991 war.
Iraq violated UN sanctions for 12 years. Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 and declared a full year after the war began that the war was justified and Saddam had not complied with UN mandates. He never held a "WMD free" party taking credit for disarming Iraq.
The UN aided and abetted Saddam through the corrupt Oil for Food Program which has never been fully investigated. Russia, France, and China, the chief arms suppliers to Iraq and the chief beneficiaries of oil contracts after sanctions would be lifted did what they could to protect Saddam and get sanctions off of him.
Never forget that if Iraq had successfully met all UN requirements, all the sanctions would have been lifted in 2003 and all monitoring stopped. That's what Iraq, Russia, China, France, and the UN had planned all along. Bush and Blair saw right through the lies.
All the "misled" garbage from the Demon Rats is nonsense. They voted for war with complete access to all US intel available to them. As was the case with health care, they never bothered to read it. Only ONE Demon Rat ever entered the secure room where the top secret documents were kept. They voted for the war either because they supported it or they intended to stage a Gulf of Tonkin claim later. The entire opposition to the war was straight from their Vietnam playbook.
As for habeus corpus, it has often been suspended in time of war, terrorists are prime candidates, most Demon Rats voted for the Patriot Act, and the ACLU has not won a single case for a violation of civil rights under the Patriot Act - not one.
These were all political attacks, not substantive attacks. If there was ANY truth to Bush misleading us into war he would have been impeached. The Demon Rats didn't pull that trigger because their gun was empty.
Nick - while I may not always agree with you, your boundless energy and enthusiasm for your point of view never fails to inspire.
Cheers!
God's purpose for me, Ralph, is to keep you entertained.
Nick: truly you are a gentleman and a scholar. I only hope I am capable of occasionally returning the favor.
What a dull world it would be otherwise.
How dare you call me a "gentleman."
Them's fightin' words. :)
"Scholars" are pointy-headed geeks who dress like flood victims.
I'm more the Ron Burgundy type. I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my house smells of rich mahogany. Seriously. I'm not making that up. Some things I do make up, but not that.
Doctor,
As you well know, those posts aren't available because they don't exist.
Prior to my baptism into Libertarianism, they just didn't happen.
I'm still trying to locate the one from my first meetup, when the scales first began to fall from my eyes.
However, I can refer to you several posts where Bush Lite is doing all of those things you mentioned.
There was a very small libertarian bandwagon pointing out the problems during the Bush era, and I was not yet on it.
But thank God all that's over now. NOT !
WS -- I apologize: that was petty and mean-spirited of me to make that crack.
Let us speak of this no further...
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