And I suppose you might mention the Democrats who tried to undermine the constitution?Boss Out of Town wrote:I appreciate that you went to all this work, Sareth, and it makes for interesting reading, but it doesn't affect my argument at all. I didn't say these bills and resolution didn't exist, only that they were not a serious threat to the soveriegn powers of the congress. Most of them won't pass, and if they are passed, they will be ignored, as they have no basis in constitutional law as it has been understood for the last 150 years.Sareth wrote:New Hampshire: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legisla ... R0006.html
Oklahoma: http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/2009% ... 5Fhflr.rtf
Washington: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdo ... eignty.pdf
I am definitely in favor of people getting angry with the elites running the Federal government, both the official aristocracy of officials and lobbyists and the unofficial aristocracy that runs the media and dominates our economic discourse. They are, as a group, corrupt, narrow-minded, dishonest, anti-intellectual, and disconnected with the real world the rest of us live in. If they were not so, George W. Bush would never have been elected president, we would not be entangled in a useless war in Iraq, we would not be infamous around the world for our torture policies and mutilation of international law and custom, and we would never have allowed a dozen or so badly run banking and investment firms the power and opportunity to wreck our economy.
Plenty of anger out there, certainly. The big dispute is who to aim it at.
You are no longer entangled in Iraq, you'll be out of it another 2 and a half years with several hundred more casualties.
Current casualty rates have fallen to less than 10% of Vietnam, suck it up.
The war is not useless, check on what it was like economically, demographically and politically ten-twenty years ago compared to now.
You're not mutilating international law and custom, you're following your own ideas. The US has hardlly signed away sovereignity.
Do you even have any idea what kind of people are tortured?
But I suppose you're just going to keep on making vague, nebulous comments about 'the evil elite' rather than Americans themselves who vote them in, and be inclusive of the ones Sareth just mentioned but yet brand the ones opposing them and only idenitify those you dislike.
Being an American, I would presume from the outside, is accepting your whole nation. I'm sure you do, but you dislike them so bad you seem blinded.
I'm not going to go more into those gunlaws and torture, and wiretapping... except to say the tapping wasn't intruding on privacy... it was shot down on principle, like the gun protesters are doing now. Torture is a common part of war, sign it away if u want, but it's a useful tool and u will suffer for the lack of it and these people really deserve it. Weapons are an integral part of the United States.
What I will go into is the Iraqi war - you have no idea about this subject at all, you just don't like war.
The political gains for the US can be argued to be anywhere between marginal to substantial, but it was, with incompetence in early middle to late middle, a SUCCESS. I study wars A LOT. I say this with absolutely certainty.
The Iraqi state is stronger, healthier and has a vastly superior and quickly improving Human Development Index.
I could listen a thousand strong arguments to every hundred feint ones you could make about the morals of the war, but what does it matter... my point isn't the war. My point is that you're WRONG about Iraq and it makes me hard to trust any of the 'elite-hating spew' you come with, despite succint and well-analyzed thoughts and arguments about certain topics, when your basic view of reality is distorted.
Realpolitik, pragmatism. How things really are. You're right about a lot of it, but provably directly wrong other times. It confuses me mildly, but I guess that's the way with right and left.
Above all, as a foreigner who loves America... much is to blame on your leadership and rich, but ABOVE ALL... you're a strong democracy, and even not in democracies people tend to be rules by what they deserve...
THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA
Everyone in the US seems intent on blaming the leaders. Like they could do any or much better themselves. Hah!
Sure... you have predatorial lenders.
But then again... you could not lend from them!
I guesstimate out of thin air that only 100 million Americans are innocent. At most.
All these derivatives... tax cuts for taking loans, refusal to go for flat taxes or high flat taxes, incredibly complicated tax system... you're a success of a nation, but you seem to have a stronger entitlement of innocence than the rest of the world.
In Norway if you do stupid things like invest in property you can't afford or stocks that are risky and it plummets than you're to blame.
Well, enough ranting, I'm sure you get the general drift of things.
Just because your system of government was revolutionary 300 years ago doesn't mean it has to wow you off your socks now. In fact you might be slightly behind other developed and some developing nations or ahead.
For a people that expects so much of its government America needs to expect more of itself.
If you expect paternalism you get fathers who think they know what's best for the people.
This goes for the anti-gun control crowd too... vote in people who'll do what they say. Get to your roots or don't vote for them.
Maybe what Congress wants to do is sane... I dunno, I don't think so. Obama is doing the opposite of what he said he would do though, in regards to foreign policy. Maybe your paternalistic leaders just don't agree with or trust your judgment.
An armed population is a wise investment, but I guess the politicians want to break the fundamental inherited laws to protect you.
Yup, kind of sounds like revolution time.
I know it's just grumbles though, mostly...
chances are things will continue apace and the US will evolve.
But it'd go faster if everyone pitched in rather than play the blame game.
... sabotaging your own wars... we could've avoided the Khmer Rogue. Oh well, my China was directly responsible for supporting the NV as well.
And now we have Republicans sabotaging Obama's efforts? Possibly, I'm not too aware. If they're breaking the law or making things less efficcienct, even if they disagree with them, then that's bad.
But defending the Constitution HAS to happen. That's the very essence of a nation, the agreements of you and your forefathers.
OK, more than time to quit rambling soz maybe
^^ glad to talk
Nothing personal meant (maybe I did but I didn't mean to consciously, but I did get rather intense there and 2'nd person) BossOutofTown, I just really hate a lot of the values of the left, even if economically I agree with a lot of it as well as issues pro of control and freedom, alternatingly one then the other (and not the other).