just a humble question for all you master debaters. If America somehow came under authoritarian/dictatorial type rule, would you sacrifice the 3 most important people in your life (not including yourself) if it meant the POSSIBILITY of winning back our freedom? please elaborate.
What did you expect?! Well, my answer is no; I wouldn't sacrifice my wife and kids for a chance at my own freedom. How would one go on in that aftermath?
you'll find very few takers on that. but also it really depends on how harsh this new rule is. if it's tolerably brutal, then most people will just go on with life. there is a chinese movie by zhang yimou called "To Live" about China during the turbulent years. and his thesis is that EVEN AFTER losing the people you love most to the regime, most people will still just learn to live with it. without a charismatic, visionary leader, the human race is surprisingly easy to enslave. let me finish with a quote: "How fortunate for leaders that men do not think." - Adolf Hitler
My answer to that is I would risk the possibility of members of my family dying in the fight that would possibly regain our freedom. However there are a number of people on here that are willing to sacrifice thousands of other people's families for the slim possibility that it might make them more secure.
I'm willing to let other people make up their own mind about the risks and the careers they pursue. They weren't conscripted into the army to go to the Middle East and face death every day. Can't you answer a simple question without foisting your agenda on us all!
I was also referring to the thousands of civilian deaths in other countries. Also, I place extremely high value on the lives of our soldiers whether they volunteered or where drafted.
a large percentage of the news we get seems to be "fed" to the media anyway, so aside from putting a spin on a press release they have been handed, this seems to be a fairly moot point. especially if you know how to read critically. the great thing about this country is that we have so many news sources. if you WANT to know the truth about something it is not hard to find (library, internet). we are all biased to some degree. the question is, why do you read the news. to support preconceived notions? to confirm opinions of partisanship? to understand what is actually happening in the world? How many of use will pick up, say, The Weekly Standard or The Economist along with The Nation or Mother Jones? If you're not reading both sides or looking at sources, how can you tell if or to what degree something is biased? as for your point burlesk, I have heard of many instances of the bosses nixing a story for being too "controversial." Journalism, though, looks at itself as a guardian of the people type institution (dating way back) and the big boss media conglomerate is a relatively new trend. Although it has gotten worse in the past couple decades, I think if there was too much of a control put on the press, you would really start to hear about it. I know I've heard plenty of problems when a story conflicts with an advertiser, but those types of problems have been around for decades and most reporters know its a losing battle. One thing that has gotten bad is outright manipulation of the press by both parties. If a paper runs too controversial a story, often times they will be "frozen out" of any exclusives or breaking stories. the bosses know this, thats why, for example, the cia-crack connection story was renounced. It has to be a tough call, though. Conservative boss or liberal boss, they both know big stories sell and thats the, ahem, bottom line.
