9/11/01

[spence]

Well said Karl...

After 9/11 what did Bush say? Keep shopping.

We do face a serious challenge, but this country has risen to great challenges before. They say this war is different, but reading history it looks like every war has been different.

9/11 certainly shocked and scared the hell out of us all, but it made me think more about what I believe makes America great. This is where I think we should get our passion to solve our problems...not from emotionally charged lessons of the past. Most people tend to use poor judgement when full of rage...

That's my perspective at least.

-spence

[Skip N]

Originally Posted by spence

Well said Karl...

After 9/11 what did Bush say? Keep shopping.

We do face a serious challenge, but this country has risen to great challenges before. They say this war is different, but reading history it looks like every war has been different.

9/11 certainly shocked and scared the hell out of us all, but it made me think more about what I believe makes America great. This is where I think we should get our passion to solve our problems...not from emotionally charged lessons of the past. Most people tend to use poor judgement when full of rage...

That's my perspective at least.

-spence

I find it hard to believe that someone like you would support an all out war on terroism. You would support an all out war against Radical Islam and Terroists??? The people in the US today are a bunch of fairys and would never embrace a full scale WWII type war, even if it meant totally wiping out Terror. They would rather apease the Terroists rather than defeat them.

But hey, that's the liberal way!

[spence]

Originally Posted by Skip N

The people in the US today are a bunch of fairys and would never embrace a full scale WWII type war, even if it meant totally wiping out Terror. They would rather apease the Terroists rather than defeat them.

I think I'm just going to let this broad and absurd generalization stand on it's own...

Nice job Skip

-spence

[Skip N]

Originally Posted by spence

I think I'm just going to let this broad and absurd generalization stand on it's own...

Nice job Skip

-spence

I described you pretty well aye? You and your liberal friends would never support a full scale war on terror, and you know it! The "fairys' i was refering to is the left wing of this country, you guys are all about appeasment and you know it. Why can't you just admit it?

[spence]

Originally Posted by Skip N

I described you pretty well aye? You and your liberal friends would never support a full scale war on terror, and you know it! The "fairys' i was refering to is the left wing of this country, you guys are all about appeasment and you know it. Why can't you just admit it?

Skip, you have no clue as to what you're talking about.

-spence

[Slipknot]

you two go to your corners please and stop hijacking justplugit's thread

[spence]

Originally Posted by Slipknot

you two go to your corners please and stop hijacking justplugit's thread

Skip started it

-spence

[Skitterpop]

Archie Bunker Lives

[Raven]

Originally Posted by Slipknot

you two go to your corners please and stop hijacking justplugit's thread

those two guys need to row a boat together....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

post september 11th... i cannot ever forget because the illness i felt
or sickness.....disturbance in the force if you like....hit me like a ton of bricks
....and i had to leave work.... it shattered me like a mirror.
SO,, (sigh) i have a much different view.....
i have the ultimate respect for what our military has done thus far.
but when you read about the Saudi Cleric giving Osama his blessing

to k i l l 10 million Americans to balance the scales of justice....in A genocidal war...
(thats the number they figure we've killed over time)
it has to make you think that by that idea alone..... there are much larger than
9-11 events planned..... and if this were to happen.... does that entitle us to respond with nukes .
i say yes.

[spence]

Originally Posted by Slipknot

you two go to your corners please and stop hijacking justplugit's thread

Bump

-spence

[stripersnipr]

Originally Posted by spence

Well said Karl...

9/11 certainly shocked and scared the hell out of us all, but it made me think more about what I believe makes America great. This is where I think we should get our passion to solve our problems...not from emotionally charged lessons of the past. Most people tend to use poor judgement when full of rage...

That's my perspective at least.

-spence

Aren't lessons from the past considered History?.............

[spence]

Originally Posted by stripersnipr

Aren't lessons from the past considered History?.............

Ahhh, now you're just mincing words...

I think you know the difference.

-spence

[stripersnipr]

Originally Posted by spence

Ahhh, now you're just mincing words...

I think you know the difference.

-spence

Both you and the detested Neo-cons are driven by your ideology and perception of what you feel America is and should be regardless of Historys lessons. Especially emotionally charged History. Done.

[Karl F]

My Dad had a saying, I am sure most have heard it or versions of it.
It is more of a philosophy, of his generation, the WW2 guys, they lived it too.
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."
They pulled together, and fought a common enemy.

Today, we seem more content, to fingerpoint, and fight amongst ourselves. (this thread, is an excellant example)
Abe Lincoln had a saying some 140-145 years ago..
"United We Stand, Divided We Fall"..

I had a History teacher who loved the saying "He who does not learn from History, is doomed to repeat it."
While this could be interpurted that, this is why we continue to war, it could also be, (if you figure how we handled Korea, and Viet Nam), why we continue to not be able to finish what we started.

I tend to doubt the nation as a whole has the dedication, guts and perserverance, that the WW2 generation did, and this, will ultimatley, be our downfall.

anyway.. just my 2 cents, for what it's worth

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by Karl F

My Dad had a saying, I am sure most have heard it or versions of it.
It is more of a philosophy, of his generation, the WW2 guys, they lived it too.
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."
They pulled together, and fought a common enemy.

Today, we seem more content, to fingerpoint, and fight amongst ourselves. (this thread, is an excellant example)
Abe Lincoln had a saying some 140-145 years ago..
"United We Stand, Divided We Fall".

Unfortunately Karl, at this time, the enemy is more united in their fight to bring us to our knees then we are in wanting to win. Too many woulda, shoulda couldas and not enough let's find a way to get this job done and win.
btw- your 2 cents make alota sense.

[Bronko]

I knew this argument began to sound familiar. It is incredible how both sides begin to gravitate towards party lines and partisan stances as debates evolve. Michael Barone wrote an article that talks about a number of the issues raised in this thread... from terror....to history...to american perception of our government etc... Read this article then go back and re-read this thread. Intersting stuff.


Our covert enemies
By Michael Barone
Monday, August 21, 2006


In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. Their motives are clear: They hate our society because of its freedoms and liberties, and want to make us all submit to their totalitarian form of Islam. They are busy trying to wreak harm on us in any way they can. Against them we can fight back, as we did when British authorities arrested the men and women who were plotting to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic.

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism.

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

These are the ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media. They teach an American history with the good parts left out and the bad parts emphasized. We are taught that some of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders -- and are left ignorant of their proclamations of universal liberties and human rights. We are taught that Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II -- and not that American military forces liberated millions from tyranny. To be sure, the great mass of Americans tend to resist these teachings. By the millions they buy and read serious biographies of the Founders and accounts of the Greatest Generation. But the teachings of our covert enemies have their effect.

Of course, this distorts history. We are taught that American slavery was the most evil institution in human history. But every society in history has had slavery. Only one society set out to and did abolish it. The movement to abolish first the slave trade and then slavery was not started by the reason-guided philosophies of 18th century France. It was started, as Adam Hochschild documents in his admirable book "Bury the Chains," by Quakers and Evangelical Christians in Britain, followed in time by similar men and women in America. The slave trade was ended not by Africans, but by the Royal Navy, with aid from the U.S. Navy even before the Civil War.

Nevertheless, the default assumption of our covert enemies is that in any conflict between the West and the Rest, the West is wrong. That assumption can be rebutted by overwhelming fact: Few argued for the Taliban after Sept. 11. But in our continuing struggles, our covert enemies portray our work in Iraq through the lens of Abu Ghraib and consider Israel's self-defense against Hezbollah as the oppression of virtuous victims by evil men. In World War II, our elites understood that we were the forces of good and that victory was essential. Today, many of our elites subject our military and intelligence actions to fine-tooth-comb analysis and find that they are morally repugnant.

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don't want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.

[Skip N]

Fantastic article above. Couldn't have said it better myself. The truly sad thing is, the author is right on the money regarding the "elite" mentality. Or as i like to call it, the America sucks crowd. No matter what we do, these people will always point out the negative things America has done in the past, and never point out the countless good deeds this country has, and is doing. Why do they hate this country so much, and always feel the need to tear it down and talk negative??

They just can't resist taking a big old %$%$%$%$ on America.

[Skitterpop]

checks and balances yin and yang positive and negative acclaim and criticism good and evil

make a whole..... We do a have a great country but there are problems... most know we have a great country even if they bring up the negatives to discuss. It usually is thrown in as response to blind patriotism.

I know.... we are better off than many countries.... and we are at war relentlessly with terrorism.

We do strive to be better and we should.

[spence]

Originally Posted by Bronko

I knew this argument began to sound familiar. It is incredible how both sides begin to gravitate towards party lines and partisan stances as debates evolve. Michael Barone wrote an article that talks about a number of the issues raised in this thread... from terror....to history...to american perception of our government etc... Read this article then go back and re-read this thread. Intersting stuff.

Bronko, you seriously don't buy this jackass do you?

By declaring those among us "the enemy" simply because they hold alternate viewpoints, Barone is declaring himself the enemy of our society. But hey, I respect his freedom to do so

The reality is that the numbers on the Left who do aspire to such thoughts are such a minority, that if the rightwing pundits didn't give them so much exposure 80% of the population wouldn't even know they exist.

What I find most short-sighted is how quick some (Skipper, I'm talking about you here) are to lump anyone into this camp, simply because they aren't able or willing to take a bit of time and think about what some thoughts might really mean.

Guess what? The very same Islamo-fascisim that threatens us today has been influenced and even encouraged by our own country in the recent past.

Does this make me an America hater?

If so our country is in a heap of trouble...

As the spectre of terror has now made you afraid of the same thoughts and ideas that will lead us to a victory in this fight.

This is the real "covert enemy" that will undermine our success.

-spence

[Bronko]

Originally Posted by spence

Bronko, you seriously don't buy this jackass do you?

By declaring those among us "the enemy" simply because they hold alternate viewpoints, Barone is declaring himself the enemy of our society. But hey, I respect his freedom to do so

The reality is that the numbers on the Left who do aspire to such thoughts are such a minority, that if the rightwing pundits didn't give them so much exposure 80% of the population wouldn't even know they exist.

What I find most short-sighted is how quick some (Skipper, I'm talking about you here) are to lump anyone into this camp, simply because they aren't able or willing to take a bit of time and think about what some thoughts might really mean.

Guess what? The very same Islamo-fascisim that threatens us today has been influenced and even encouraged by our own country in the recent past.

Does this make me an America hater?

If so our country is in a heap of trouble...

As the spectre of terror has now made you afraid of the same thoughts and ideas that will lead us to a victory in this fight.

This is the real "covert enemy" that will undermine our success.

-spence

That article wasn't mean to question your patriotism, I don't even know you. I just read what you and others post. Hell I don't know Skip. You can drawn your own conclusions regarding your own patriotism, I firmly know where mine stands.

Articles, books and free speech as a whole are meant to provoke thought and debate. After reading that article you immediately stood up and defended your patriotism.....good. I applaud that, I wish more people would.

Sometimes the liberals tend to think that their wack jobs and sh*t stirrers (sp) are more correct than those from the conservative side.

Like Michael Moore, Bill Maher and James Carville are any more correct in their rants than Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter???? LOL Absolutely NOT!

I found that article to be a very interesting angle on a portion of society that in my opinion clearly exists.