DEATH BY BLOOD ATONEMENT FOR ALL LIBERAL APOSTATES!

[_Droopy]

In my experience the Left tends to trumpet support of Free Speech more then the Right. Both try to suppress the other. The Left tend to label it as 'hate speech' to bring it down. The Right tends to appeal to the people to support their suppression. Neither side has done much to destroy Free Speech in the general sense though they have manipulated it so that some forms of speech are unacceptable. Try writing about how the gay lifestyle is unhealthy and be condemned. On the other hand try writing about how the U.S. has lost all moral authority due to our use of torture and our use of offensive (defensive/preemptive) war and see condemnation from others.

If you do not comprehend the difference between outright censorship, or enforceable legal/social sanction for the expression of an opinion ("hate speech" (whatever that actually is) is thought crime, period, and can get you expelled from an American university, fired from your job, or extra time in jail imposed for a otherwise normative crime) and "condemnation" in the marketplace of ideas, I have no idea how to proceed in a serious political discussion with you.

As a side note, I'd like you to provide one, single, solitary example of anything remotely resembling what reasonable people would term "torture' being applied by U.S. personal on terrorists in the custody of the military.

[_Hally McIlrath]

In a nutshell, the idealistic fetishization of individual liberty,

I HIGHLY doubt there are people out there receiving sexual pleasure from the ideas espoused by Libertarians, but if you say so... :P It wouldn't be the first time I'd made a mistake about obscure sexual proclivities.

Anyway. Thomas Jefferson was one such "fetishist," I think you will agree. Just about everything he ever wrote supports the assertion that he believed in limited government, perhaps even more so than men like Hamilton. The Libertarian Party is, by their own mission statement, committed to "a free-market economy of abundance and prosperity, individual liberty and personal responsibility, [and] a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade."

So....

and a tendency among some to moral relativism and utilitarian ethics that cripple the the relevance of their philosophy to social and cultural issues and even handicap some of their otherwise excellent critiques of the nature of the state and economics.

Is the "moral relativism" of which you speak the "personal responsibility / individual liberty" of their mission statement? How do either of these things NOT neatly dovetail with the Mormon church's belief in "free agency?"

[_Hally McIlrath]

As a side note, I'd like you to provide one, single, solitary example of anything remotely resembling what reasonable people would term "torture' being applied by U.S. personal on terrorists in the custody of the military.

Okay, here ya go:




If you don't think being naked on the end of a dog leash held by Lindy England after you've been forced to publicly masturbate yourself is torture, Droopster, I'd like to know just what you DO think it is.

Perhaps being sexually humiliated is not under your definition of torture. It certainly is MINE, but maybe your standards are looser. Maybe this, then, would suffice for you:

[_Runtu]

Hally,

Those pictures are out of context. The soldiers were helping the injured victims, not hurting them. ;)

[_Hally McIlrath]

Hally,

Those pictures are out of context. The soldiers were helping the injured victims, not hurting them. ;)

Yes, how nice....they put a bandage on the prisoner's kneecap they just broke...

[_The Nehor]

And the Right gave us McCarthy. There's enough blame to spread around here.

Hmmmm. Tell me what you know about McCarthy and what he did, and how the Right "gave" him to us.

Hint: regardless of McCarthy's abrasive and improper use of his authority, and regardless of the few times he did indeed defame or impugn innocent people, are you aware of what the documents from the Soviet archives made available to western scholars since the fall of the U.S.S.R. and the publishing of the Venona transcripts have shown regarding the vast majority of those McCarthy accused?

I am actually. Yet what did his tactics accomplish? Nothing except for the fallout of his abuse of governmental power. Please tell me you are not going to try to show that McCarthy saved the western world from anything. The Cold War did little but cost us a fortune and bankrupt the Soviet Union. That, and give the world a ton of bastards running tinpot dictatorships throughout the world and we put them there.

[_Droopy]

As a side note, I'd like you to provide one, single, solitary example of anything remotely resembling what reasonable people would term "torture' being applied by U.S. personal on terrorists in the custody of the military.

Okay, here ya go:




If you don't think being naked on the end of a dog leash held by Lindy England after you've been forced to publicly masturbate yourself is torture, Droopster, I'd like to know just what you DO think it is.

Perhaps being sexually humiliated is not under your definition of torture. It certainly is MINE, but maybe your standards are looser. Maybe this, then, would suffice for you:

Try again, and this time, let's be serious, OK?

Do you understand who these people are, Hally?

Oh, and by the way, what, precisely, does your second photo show (I'd be much more impressed with some actual facts and evidence, than with images - I'm not a Gen Xer.

[_The Nehor]

Do you understand who these people are, Hally?

Children of God who if you saw in their true form you would be tempted to bow down and worship.

[Guest]

Oh, and another 'by the way": the unprofessional little twit in the photo above was dealt with by the UCMJ.

And no, I do not consider what went on at Guantanamo Bay "torture" by any reasonable standard of semantic usage or coloration. That says nothing regarding whether it was proper or not.

Ask John McCain or Jeremiah Denton about that Hally. They were tortured. Our servicemen to not "torture' prisoners, and until I see a scrap of evidence otherwise, this MoveOn.org slander will go down in political infamy as just one step below the Winter Soldier circus.

[_antishock8]