DebateGate

Have you noticed those guys over in Red China (yeah, that's right, I called 'em Red China. Deal.) but anyway didja notice they have gotten awfully nervy lately?  I mean, it's been a few years since they did that bump and run on our spy plane and had the nerve to get offended by out teeny, tiny little embassy bombing.  But things happen.  I mean, by cold war standards those were just love taps.  But lately, they have just been getting outta control!  First they were poisoning our pets, then our toothpaste, and lately pretty much everything our kids touch!  And they've been strutting around the world stage acting like they are some kind of budding superpower.  Pah.  Just because they have a few nukes and can shoot down a satellite or two doesn't mean they are technology-savvy.  We all know who the leader in electronic technology is in the world.  But enough about Japan . . .

Now the Chinese are getting all bent out of shape because we have given a medal to the Dali Lama.   What, are they upset that it didn't have enough lead in it?  Here we have a peaceful, elderly, soft-spoken man without a country from a pacificst religion and they consider him a threat.  Yet they are perfectly happy letting the warlike, loud-mouthed President of a terrorist nation who thinks he has Allah's personal permission to kill everybody that doesn't think like him have nuclear weapons.  Confucius say: "Man who embrace tiger on outside end up on inside."  If he were alive today, he would probably say "These Chinese CLAZY!"  

But leaving gratuitous racial stereotyping and irreverence towards ancient wise men aside, I've had it!  It's time we started fighting back in the time-honored American way.  Let's boycott the Chinese!

First, I'm not going to eat at anymore Chinese restaurants!  No more Sesame Chicken, no more General Tso's Chicken, no more Sweet and Sour Chicken, no more Orange Chicken, no more - wait a minute.  Has anyone noticed that the Chinese don't eat anything but chicken? - Sounds like that oughta be French food.  But no more of it.  And from now on the only Rice I'm interested in is Condoleeza!  

But on the other hand, why should we penalize the good Chinese-American people who make a living here?  I mean, who's gonna drop all of those eggs into our soup and do our laundry?   No, there has to be a better way.  

HA!  I've got it!  We'll devastate the Red Menace by CHANGING THE NAMES OF THEIR PRODUCTS!  After all, look how badly it affected the French!

So from now on, we'll give good, American patriotic titles to previously Communistic products.  Anyone care for a game of Freedom Checkers?  How about a nice helping of General Petraeus's Chicken? You can make it fancy by serving it on your finest America.   Hey, next time you stop at a traffic light, what say you have a Liberty Fire Drill?  Perhaps little girls can collect nice little Democracy Dolls!  

Get with the program, people!  Stand up for freedom, democracy and the White and Blue  (Can't include the Red, now can we?)

You say I'm going too far?  You say this is just meaningless posturing?  Well I say you're a dirty commie sympathizer.  You wanna  know what happens to commie sympathizers, huh?  No?  Wanna guess?  Huh?  No?  They lose there noses!

Forget it, Jake.  It's Freedomtown!

This is a reply to Lanya's post about the founder's intent.  It became so long (yep, folks, it's another patented Pooch pontification!) that I decided it might be better as its own thread.

Here are three historical realities:

1)  The intent of the first amendment and of Article VI was to increase religious freedom - not limit it. 

2)  The "wall of separation" as it was described by Jefferson was intended to be between church and state - not between religion and the public.

3)  The first amendment and Article VI were intended to apply only to the federal governments -not to the states.

A simple understanding of history up to the late eighteenth century clarifies the intent of the first amendment (and Article VI which states that no religious test shall be applied to public office holders).  The founding of the United States Constitution was not - in spite of popular belief - the creation of a brand new society.  It was in fact, largely a continuance of British society with revolutionary refinements.  Like eighteenth century Great Britain, the United States federal government is based on a bicameral legislation and a strong, but limited, executive power.  Like Great Britain, the legal system is based on common law rather than civil law.  Refinements concerned such things as legislative election of the executive rather than hereditary accession.  (Popular election is, as most on this site know, not part of the Constitution.)  Checks and balances were built into the Constitution to keep one branch from dominating either of the other or to keep the people of one state from controlling the people of another. Ultimately, the US Constitution was designed to balance the power of the states against the power of the federal government, in order to ultimately protect the power of the people.  This is what is known as the great compromise. 

Since Henry VIII got the hots for Anne Boleyn the question of establishment had been the cause of massive bloodshed throughout Europe, and in Great Britain in particular.  Catherine of Aragon was deposed, Anne was eventually beheaded, Sir Thomas Moore and many other lost their lives over the Act of Supremacy.  Mary Tudor (aka Bloody Mary) murdered and persecuted protestants. Philip of Spain launched the ill-fated armada against Elizabeth,  The Pope made it legal to kill her.  Scottish Lords murdered a Papal envoy to Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots) and imprisoned their own queen.  Elizabeth beheaded Mary and persecuted many Catholics.  Cromwell ultimately deposed the monarchy altogether, and after it was restored William and Mary deposed James II,  All of these things occurred over the issue of established religion.  Of course the underlying political causes were frequently the real reasons behind these things, but the issue of religion is largely what drove the bloodshed and rallied one part of the population against another.

One of the great things about Elizabeth as a monarch was that she tried - when fear of Catholic plots was not used by her advisors such as Walsingham and the like to persuadel her - to allow religious tolerance in her realm.  She very nearly lost her life to Mary Tudor, and was loathe to persecute other over matters of conscience.  She was also practical enough to recognize the real danger of civil war over the issue.  She resisted the execution of Mary Stuart to the last, and only relented when she was convinced Mary's life was a threat to her own.  In her realm, at least theoretically, a person could openly practice their faith, irrespective of what that faith was, without fear of persecution.  There was, it must be noted, an established faith.  But other sects, notably Catholicism, were not (again theoretically) persecuted.  The caveat here, of course, is that non-Christian religions were generally not tolerated. It was far too early in the course of religious strife to recognize other faiths.as equals.

The men who debated and refined the Constitution had these events and attitudes as their immediate heritage.  With that as a backdrop, they faced a daunting task - uniting peoples of different backgrounds, interests and values in a common cause.  It was unprecedented in history.  Among the many concerns that needed to be addressed, foremost was that of matters of conscience.  The founders of America had behind them a history of centuries of sectarian bloodshed.  A large part of the heritage of the former colonies was the migration to the new world of persecuted religious groups.  Eighteenth century America was also influenced, as was Europe, by the enlightenment.  So there were conflicting ideals - religious and otherwise - inherent in the establishment of a new national government.  These conflicts lead to the great compromise in general.  In particular, they lead to an understanding that the establishment of religion or the application of religious tests at the federal level were counter to the tolerance of religion.  They wished to unite Catholic and Protestant, as well as others who may hold less traditional views, in one whole.  But they did not intend to bury religious expression, nor did they intend to apply the doctrines of the first amendment and Article VI to the individual state governments.  It was understood, in fact it was a matter of strong contention, that the rights of the states to self-government were not to be effaced by the federal constitution.  Without that understanding, the Constitution would never have been ratified. 
 
Since the civil war, the advocates of a powerful central government have all but eradicated the great compromise.  The protections against federal abuses were ignored by Lincoln and drastically weakened by the fourteenth amendment.  (As the electoral system is eroded the great compromise will be destroyed entirely, and the rights of the individual states to self-government will be completely effaced.)  The specific intent of the fourteenth amendment was to alter the relationship between the federal government and the individual states.  It was justified by the rebellion and aimed at the south, but its effect was universal.  The subsequent rise of the judicial branch and the evolution of the body of case law supporting a strong federal government over the power of the states has led to an America that would not be recognized by its founders.  As Andrew Jackson negated the authority of the Judicial branch in the Cherokee decision, Lincoln negated the power of the states with the prosecution of a civil war and his predecessors with the fourteenth amendment.  The end result was that the fight to preserve the union ultimately replaced the union with a hegemony.

What all of this history has led to is a society today that, ignorant of history, claims on the one hand that we are a Christian nation (we are not) and on the other hand that our founders intended to keep religion out of public life  (they didn't).  The fact is, it was never the intent of the founders that people not be allowed to wear crosses, say prayers at school, display manger scenes in a public park or express a love for Jesus Christ while serving in public office.  It was, rather, the intent that nobody be forced to do such things.  Allowing voluntary school prayer is not requiring it.  Allowing a President to invoke the name of Jesus Christ in public discourse is not requiring it.  Allowing the display of a manger scene in a city park, or the display of the ten commandments in a courtroom is not requiring it.  But those who view the role of government as one of protection insist that they should not be "forced" to be exposed to religious expression.  The familiar argument is "Freedom of religion means freedom FROM religion."  That is nonsense.  I have the freedom to speak English, but that does not mean I have a reasonable expectation not to hear someone else speaking Spanish.  I have the freedom choose my political party, but that does not mean I can insist no government entity post a political banner endorsing a rival party.  I have the right to practice my own sexual morals, but that does not mean I have the right to prohibit a school from posting a gay rights poster in the halls.  Yet the same forces who think it is perfectly acceptable to post something I find very objectionable would fight against my right to post a religious poster on a school wall.  Why?

The reason is that those who object to religious expression wrongly place it in a "special" category.  They incorrectly assume that religion was singled out in the first amendment as particularly dangerous.  It wasn't.  It was one of five basic means of expression for which people had been historically persecuted - all covered under the first amendment.  What that amendment assured was that the rights to speak, publish, peaceably assemble, worship and petition the government without fear of retribution would not be effaced.  These things were intended to make people free not from religion or offensive speech, but rather from fear of oppression based on matters of conscience.  So it was intended that the federal government not be given authority to restrict expression in these areas.  (The states were not held by these standards until the fourteenth amendment and subsequent court decisions.)  But in either case, there was never an intent that people be protected FROM these expressions.  One cannot simultaneously protect the right to free expression and protect others from exposure to that expression. 

Finally,Article VI protects potential officeholders from being required to believe in a particular sect or a particular doctrine in order to hold office.  This is directly linked to establishment.  But again, it does not prohibit an officeholder from having - or expressing - a particular religious view.  The President can - as many have - call upon Americans to ask for God's blessing on the nation.  He may express his love for Jesus, or Buddha or Allah if he so desires.  Those, like Brass for example, who object to such expression misunderstand a basic tenet of America's value system.  A President has an equal right to express religious devotion - irrespective of sect - and to express complete disdain for religion.  It is no more wrong for a President to say "I encourage all Americans to pray to Jesus to help us in this crisis" than it is for him to say "I encourage all Americans to stop believing in this religious nonsense and recognize that the only answers we have must come from within ourselves."  He or she must live with the political consequences of such expressions, but there is nothing inherently wrong with either statement.  The President will never make a statement representative of all Americans, so he must not be prohibited from expressing himself honestly, any more than any other citizen.  While some may argue that religious expression from the National Executive may be construed by other nations as endorsement of a particular religion (and there is some validity to that) the reality is that most Americans are religious - and the vast majority of them are Christian.  For a national leader to ally himself with a particular faith is not a violation of the first amendment.  It is, in fact, an exercise thereof.

In the end, the extremes of both sides of this argument are wrong (as is usually the case).  The founders did not intend this to be a Christian nation but neither did they intend for it to be a religiously sterile nation.  The founder's intent was that religious freedom be preserved, and many encouraged the free nation to remain true to Christian ideals.  In the end, they gave us the tools to create a free society that allowed us to make it into whatever we chose.  That does not mean that they intended for us to choose unwisely.

By Mark Helprin
Sunday, March 4, 2007; Page B07

Before rejoicing over detente with Kim Jong Il, it might be useful to remember that although agreements were reached in the past, his countrymen later built a number of nuclear weapons and carried out a test. Also, North Korea, with a rich chemical and biological arsenal having long ago neutralized American tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, has embarked solely on a program of survival by extortion and will gladly forfeit a power it does not need in exchange for recognition and some essential commodities. The Asian nuclear power of which we must take account is not North Korea but China.

The forerunners of China's government were able to defeat Chiang Kai-shek, fight the United States to a draw in Korea and, merely by means of their country's looming potential, help defeat America in Vietnam. This they did in chaos, poverty and without modern arms, but with strategy bred in the bone. Since 1978, using their extraordinary and sustained economic and technical growth to build military capacity, the Chinese have deliberately modeled themselves on the Meiji (who rapidly transformed feudal Japan into an industrial state able to vanquish the Russian fleet at Tsushima).

In altering their position relative to that of the United States, the Chinese have received generous assistance from the past two American presidents, who have accomplished first a carefree diminution of our orders of battle and then the incompetent deployment of what was left, in a campaign analogous to losing a protracted struggle with Portugal. China advances and we decline because, among other things, its vision is disciplined and clear, while ours is burdened by fear, decadence and officials who understand neither Chinese grand strategy nor its nuclear component.

This has led the United States unwittingly to encourage China to move toward nuclear parity. In the next five years, as we reduce our arsenal from 10,000 strategic warheads to 1,700, China's MIRV'd silo-based missiles and imminent generations of MIRV'd mobile and sea-based ICBMs will easily allow a breakout from warhead numbers now variously estimated to range from 80 to 1,800.

Once, the vast imbalance (in 1987, 500:1) might have discouraged China from such augmentation, but no longer. Our reductions and their growth provide fewer targets for more missiles and will create the possibility and therefore the temptation, however remote, of a first strike. As we have cut the stable sea-based leg of our nuclear deterrent from 37 ballistic missile submarines to 14, China works to build its own and a fleet that can provide protected bastions at sea as well as hunt down the small number of American boats on station.

Nuclear competition between mature and newly emerging powers is neither unprecedented nor unexpected, but the rule has always been that if nuclear potential exists it must be countered. Although we may no longer subscribe to this, China does. Aware that the United States planned to use nuclear weapons had China violated the Korean armistice, China would understandably seek nuclear balance, if not preponderance.

The danger lies not solely in quantitative instabilities but in potential nuclear strategies that technical evolution has elevated above Cold War paradigms. It is one thing for a few experts to foresee these strategies but quite another to obtain from a people no longer confident of its right to self-defense the political consensus, appropriations and authority to counter them. Consider just one scenario, highlighted by the recent successful test of China's anti-satellite weapon, part of a strategy to exploit technological asymmetries.

Given China's appetites and our alliances and interests, a war is not inconceivable in Taiwan, or in Korea. To remove American nuclear escalation from the equation, China would need not parity but only a deterrent such as it has long possessed. The Chinese, however, whose nuclear thresholds are dissimilar to ours, would have other options.

They know that every facet of America's economy, military and society depends on individual and networked electronic devices. Were these to fail all at once and irreparably, the nation would seize up, perhaps for years.

Faced with victory, or with loss, they might choose to -- and who would venture to guarantee that they would not? -- detonate half a dozen high-megatonnage nuclear charges in the mesosphere, in an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) strike perhaps not even in American airspace, cooking almost every circuit and semiconductor, rendering the American government blind, deaf and dumber than it is already and the country unable to resist the inroads that would surely follow.

Though we would undoubtedly respond in kind, China is not as technically dependent as are we. Nor, given China's sufficiency for a counterstrike, could we deter an EMP attack with the prospect of massive retaliation, especially because an EMP strike, with no immediate casualties, would seem as peaceful as snow in still air.

The trick in nuclear strategy is to maintain stability by balancing potentials and thus to discourage events from converting the hypothetical to the actual. Required in this case -- only one of many -- is the electronic hardening, redundancy and redesign of essential systems and networks; and missile defense, which would not only close the first-strike window by shielding our second-strike capacity from destruction but protect against an EMP strike directly and dissuade China in the first place by making its deterrent less certain.

Were we to proceed along these lines, we could diminish the chances that China might in the not-so-distant future be tempted to win a nuclear war without fighting a nuclear war. But given that we have ignored explicit warnings of the congressionally chartered EMP commission, what are the chances that we will act on an opinion we dare not even form? In regard to war and the sometimes counterintuitive actions for avoiding it, we are no longer either confident or clearsighted. What a pity to have come so far to find that our rivals and enemies all over the world can run rings around us because half of our politicians have lost their intelligence and the other half have lost their nerve.

Mark Helprin, a novelist, is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and a distinguished visiting fellow at Hillsdale College. This article will also appear in the Claremont Review of Books.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR2007030201402.html

Two months ago my wife got her boss fired for threatening her - after almost five years of working with him on the edge.  He was once actually taken out of the office in handcuffs for beating up his teenaged daughter.  My wife is known well up the chain of command in her company as a superstar.  So after all of these years, when he made a threat in front of witnesses, he was gone.  It got ugly enough that they got a court order barring him from coming near the place.

Now a little over a year ago a man walked into a rival company situated four doors down in the same complex and shot two of the workers to death.  Several of the workers in that office ran into my wife's office.  We were actually prevented from entering the grounds when we go there.  But her boss and a driver coworker who had previously worked at the rival company watched the police drag the boidies past their door as they tried to subdue the suspect.  (He shot himself to death.)

When my wife's boss was fired, a new guy came on from one of their stores in another part of the state.  In return, the sales rep from Val's office was sent to that store.  It was nice, because she was NOT fitting in well with the other workers at Val's office.  The new manager seemed pretty cool.  So everyone was getting a clean slate and a fresh start.

Well Last Friday (Feb 23) the sales rep lost her job at the other store.  She just couldn't cut it there either.  Not so good.

On Monday, the new manager gathered the office together and informed them that the Sales Rep had broken into her ex-husband's house over the weekend, broken into his gun cabinet and killed herself.  Her 12 YO daughter was the first to find the body. 

On Wednesday a patient with mental problems who had been stalking the driver who used to belong to the rival company (are ya following this?) actually chased her down the interstate and ended up getting chased down and arrested by the cops.  He was charged with DUI and diriving on a revoked license.  The stalking charges are pending.

And to top it off, the new manager suddenly got into some kind of insanity attack (possibly prompted by dealing with a coworker's suicide and a stalker after another of his employees) and started channeling the spirit of the previous boss for no apparent reason.  The office has been a nightmare.  Everyone has been scared to cross the boss, scared of the ex-boss going nuts on them. scared of the stalker walking in and shooting them and scared of losing their jobs!! 

Fortunately, on Friday the boss apologized and things got a little less tense, but my wife is polishing her resume.  It's a crazy world.

Hi everyone!  Nice new format.  I can't spend as much time as I used to (by far) but I thought I'd drop in and toss up this tidbit.

OK, so for those who may not know me, I'm a Republican, but I am not a wingnut.  I live here in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and we are dealing with Senator Allen's "macaca" comment and now the accusations about use of the "N" word back in his younger days.  Now let me make this clear:  I don't buy for a moment that these accusations are anything but an attempt to unseat a Republican in a red state.  I was talking to our local Dem party worker and he told me that negative campaigning was perfectly OK.  It's not his party's job to try to make our candidate look good.  Spoken like a true Clintonite.  Of course, Repubs are just as guilty of negative campagining and some around here may recall that as the reason I voted Dem last governor's race.

But having said all that, and in spite of the motivation behind the accusations, I'd bet my bippie (age alert!) that the Senator said it.  Come on, is it really a surprise that a southern boy used non-PC terms to describe those of African descent in his youth?  The Dems next door (West VA) have a full-fledged KKK boy in their Senate seat. And they get a whole lotta pork out of that particular barrel.  If Allen is using the "N" word now - THAT's news.  I say dump him and be done.  But if he did idiotic things in his youth, who didn't?  Our generation is the one that finally made racism (and not just discrimination) ugly and unacceptable.  Our parents grew up racist and taught it to us.  We are teaching our kids not to believe that nonsense.  At some point, there has to be a transistional generation in any social change.  Ours was that generation.  That means we started out doing things like using the "N" word and making racial jokes when we were kids (Yeah, I did it.).  But we ultimately rejected that idea and started thinking clearly about racial differences.   It's something to be proud of, yet we are ashamed of it.  If we were cancer survivors or had gone throught the great depression like our parents and grandparents we wouldn't be ashamed to talk about our troubles.  But nobody wants to admit learning - and practicing - racism (even the subtle kinds) as a kid. 

I started losing respect for Bill Clinton (as opposed to just disagreeing with him) when he made that idiotic comment about not inhaling.  Of course he inhaled - and who cares.  I personally never did pot, but most of my friends did. (I was just scared of Dad finding out - thanks, Dad!).  He could have said he spent the seventies high and I wouldn't have had a problem with it.  But he tried to fudge it by appealing to the "cool" crowd without losing the "straight" vote.  Screw that!  Tell the truth and be damned.  Allen is doing the same thing here.  I think if he just came out and 'fess up this nonsense would get behind him.  He should say something like, "Look, I said and did some ignorant, terrible things back in my old college days.  I know it was wrong now, and I'm truly sorry.  But back then, it's the way everybody I knew talked and felt.  We had to get over that and we have.  I hope those I offended back then and now can find some peace in my coming, even belatedly, to an understanding of how wrong what I did was.   But I do not intend to leave this race because someone has brought up old mistakes."    The Dems would be disarmed, most people would forgive and move on, and we could get to some OTHER issues (such as who the candidates are sleeping with and whether they wear boxers of briefs). 

Anyway, nice to see you all.  I'll probably get to spend a bit more time here in a few weeks when I go off to a school for a week.  Have a good one, Saloonies!