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The Bush Administration Ends
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by OnToMars: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]please ask if something doesn't make sense rather than make an ass of yourself by jumping to stupid conclusions like "he said every NATO country is an enemy!"[/qb][/QUOTE]Is it too much to ask to be respectful towards people even when you disagree with them? [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]These irresponsible banking practices were largely necessitated by the government.[/qb][/QUOTE]No, they weren't. And even if they were, your talking point is out of date. How exactly do a few (supposedly) bad loans plunge the entire planet into a terrible recession? The government encouraging a fraction of the total home loans made does not do something like that. Financial institutions making up imaginary money that manages to exceed the gross domestic product of their countries (by ten times!) does. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]Government's role in the economy should be as limited as possible...keeping on an even keel the natural ebb and flow of unbridled capitalism.[/qb][/QUOTE]Which is precisely what they haven't been doing for the past few years, which is why we're in such a hole now. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]However, beyond that, government becomes the problem.[/qb][/QUOTE]Not government. Bad government, which is not a redundant phrase. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]Further, Wall Street is [i]supposed[/i] to make money[/qb][/QUOTE]But what is good for Wall Street is not axiomatically good for America. Greed is not good. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]In response to your list, though, I'm interested to know . . . what of America's noblest successes and moral triumphs? Why can you not bring yourself to acknowledge those?[/qb][/QUOTE]Because that's not the point he was making in that particular moment. If the conversation were flipped and you said something like, "America can do no right!" He would probably (and rightly) still disagree with you and list points that supported his position. Please, please, I beg you, if you only take one point to heart from all of this, let it be this one: just because there are some of us that acknowledge our country hasn't been perfect and isn't today perfect, does not mean we do not love it or that we aren't proud of the incredible accomplishments of this country and our ancestors. We love this country dearly, we simply acknowledge that it hasn't been perfect and isn't today, and want it to reach its full potential as a beacon for freedom, justice, and equality for the rest of the world. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]Through our capitalist ways came much good.[/qb][/QUOTE]Good came from outside the capitalist system as well. Good things have been done when not in the name of profit. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]And, even before Bush's initial bipartisan administration, folks from the left and the right were saying there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda via Sudan.[/qb][/QUOTE]No, they weren't. And if somebody did, they were wrong. And it doesn't change the fact that they were wrong, and that we have fought and killed over a mistake. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]We kill them there so they can't kill us here.[/qb][/QUOTE]That's right, the Iraqi people have shouldered the immense burden of our fight. Thousands have died, been wounded, lost everything and lost everyone so that I might be (supposedly) "safer" even though I'm not. I'm not okay with that. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]It has everything to do with who we're fighting.[/qb][/QUOTE]It doesn't matter who we're fighting. If we give up the ideals that make us better than them in the first place, then we've [i]lost[/i]. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb]I'm amused that by "untopian" you presumably mean to suggest that Trek shows a leftist utopia. I disagree with that completely. In the Federation, the people are free, possessing their liberty, and do not take it for granted. It is not a nanny state with whiny bleeding hearts who cry when the wind blows . . . the people we've seen are rational and resourceful. Such as economics are shown, Trek is compatible with a post-scarcity economic structure . . . in other words, the Federation has moved past the question of capitalism versus communism. As people become more and more separated from production from nature . . . e.g. when food doesn't come from labor and soil and dirt and blood but from the McDonald's Magic Mystery Truck . . . they lose that understanding of and conformity to nature and nature's laws that make me a conservative of the Objectivist mold. The fact that Trek shows Earth as a paradise of personal responsibility and common sense is hopeful, because it means that somehow we won't become whining Eloi, or a Malthusian ultra-environmentalist micro-society, or lost to evil as the strong, powerful nations standing closer to what is just than most fall to the truly evil ones because they pussed out due to false and weakening philosophies from within. And, of course, as was the Cold War fear, we didn't end up destroying ourselves, either. The way I think such a society would evolve is by colonialism, but I don't know how precisely that would hold. When colonization stops and the colonial spirit no longer moves the people and government, the Federation will crumble soon after. A non-leftist education system, teaching logic and no-BS philosophy early on (unlike the US system), would seem key also. I am a conservative agnostic. This puts me in a unique position, since whereas some conservatives get there via Goddidit and most agnostics just cling to their counterculturalism and go lefty, I was lucky enough to hit it all at just the right time and way to be able to think it all out, and to recognize early on that good and evil and right and wrong really do exist. There are a lot of "Star Trek Republicans", incidentally . . . National Review Online still has its Star Trek week. [QUOTE]I just dont see Picard's morals lining up with "preemptive warfare" or Kirk ordering torture of a prisoner, much less Sisko racial (species?) profiling debarking people from DS9.[/QUOTE]Funny, I seem to recall Kirk threatening (with rope around the neck) to strangle a Klingon on Organia for information . . . surely evil torture and war crimes in your book. Kirk was also prepared to destroy Eminiar VII. Et cetera. Picard had his pajama-clad hippy times, but he evolved. By the time of First Contact he was digging in the guts of his men for tactically useful equipment. As to your thought I do remember him going into the Neutral Zone to search-and-destroy the base from which the Romulans supposedly were going to strike. But that's not "preemptive warfare" in your book, I guess. Your Sisko example is poor because such things were more Odo's role. But indeed, "the only people who can really handle Klingons are Klingons." And indeed, Odo used profiling frequently . . . "Visionary", for instance, featured Odo going on alert because Klingons were around, it figured in his investigation in "Improbable Cause", et cetera. It's not like Odo was putting out APBs for a tall humanoid (ooh, can we even say humanoid without offending someone?) wearing full-body metal and fur and leather protective garments. In a leftist utopia, that would be how to describe a Klingon, because just saying "get the damn Klingon" would be racist . . . hence the silly APBs of some modern police. [/qb][/QUOTE]Thanks for this. I completely disagree with your politics, philosophy, and interpretation of [i]Star Trek[/i], but this is something that I have long wondered about, and I appreciate the insight. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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