Have you ever seen a deliciously bad film called the Rivers' Edge? Oh, it's an unintentional riot! Keeanu Reeves and Crispin Gloer trying to out badly overact one another in scene after scene...great stuff...But among it's greatest lines can, with some small editing, be made appropriate here... " All you do is sit around here, and f*ck my mother...and eat our food...Motherf*cker! FOOD EATER!!!!" You have to see it to believe it....
I'd say conservatism does have some tie with sexism. Yet, conservatism is not a one issue thing. I believe both conservativsm and liberalism have things in there that hinder freedom. So, no, conservatism is not the opposite of freedom, imo. BTW, someone mentioned about Puritanism as the lingering influence of sexism (or something like that). The irony is that the Puritans were the liberals who were persecuted by the conservative Queen (yes, female), and fled to the New World to get FREEDOM.
Strange. .. I expect a Female President in 2008 Either a Black President or a Female one [Powell or Clinton] Rocket River
Uh, what? Women have not been the majority for long. Certainly not the last 70 years. That is a fact. Only recently have they become the majority. So you can doublespeak goo goobilly goop all you want, but your initial conclusions are still misleading, more than likely purposely. Not really. This is the problem with your overall outlook that causes so many people problems. Your position is that we would have to be 100% free and equal with no sexism or racism or any other -ism before we could have a proactive foreign policy. That is simply insane. It is also unachievable. NO OTHER COUNTRY has EVER achieved this, nor is it likely that Utopia is around the corner. I'm not saying we don't keep moving that way, but your position is simply too absolute in nature. 'Relative freedom' should be the part of your own post you key in on. Relative to your utopian vision of a democracy maybe we are coming off poorly. Relative to other countries in our present world we do not. You talk about a 'truly democratic state,' so please point one out to us. What amuses me is that you act like you are entirely consistent while everyone else is not. I'll point out that neither the UK nor Israel are 'free' in your sense of the concept, nor is any other country on this planet. Yet you hold them up as comparative examples to the US. The CIA is not the only one 'cherry-picking' data these days... People, keep in mind that MacBeth has his own absolute philosophy. He shares it piecemeal depending on the topic, but it requires that the US be perfect before we engage in foreign policy. His ideology produces conclusions such as 'anyone has the right to own a nuclear weapon, and they should not be hindered by the US in their attempts to acquire such a weapon;' and 'We should not intervene to stop genocide because we committed genocide 150 years ago against the Native Americans;' or what might be my favorite from this thread...'We should not intervene to stop genocide because we haven't had a female President!' In fact, MacBeth requires that we be retroactively perfect. We have to go back in time and stop the nuking of Japan, stop the genocide of the Native Americans, revert from slavery earlier, etc. But of course we can't do that, can we? So really according to MacBeth the US should NEVER have a foreign policy because we really shouldn't risk being hypocritical. Let whoever acquire nukes, let genocide happen instead of stopping it. Much better to be able to sit back in our smoking jackets by the fire and prattle on about how consistent we are across the board!!!
I hope that's not what Macbeth really believes, because it would make absolutely no sense. We still have every moral right to defend ourselves. And we have a moral duty to intervene in places like Bosnia. I mean, should we not defend ourselves? Should we let genocide continue?
Well, you'll find in other threads that indeed MacBeth HAS said both of those things specifically. Anyone should have the right to acquire nukes unhindered by the US, and the US should NOT have intervened in Bosnia or Kosovo. MacBeth is pretty crafty with his Socratic methods of kritiking positions. But when you see his philosophy in action you see how silly it actually is. It is not a moderate philosophy, it is an extremist philosophy.
MacBeth; You've got yourself in a tither and have assumed away the responses that don't fit with your thesis. The world in America today is very different than it was 30 years ago. Thirty years ago jobs were still advertised as 'for women' or 'for men.' My mom was told, by her boss, that she would be paid less than a man at the same job because, afterall, she had a husband supporting her, while the man had a family took after. No boss would dare say that today. Discrimination still exists against women, but much of it has been addressed or at least recognized. If you want to start a thread about challenges facing women, I'm sure you, and others could identify many valid examples. Ask a successful business woman in her 50's about the 'early days' when the 'old boys' networks were in full force, and you'll hear some very interesting stories. One of the executives at an office I worked with told me of management training sessions complete with strippers as entertainment. She was the only woman (not counting the stripper). This was in a very large, well respected, conservative international company. Thirty years ago, your contention that most people couldn't envision a woman president would be true. Today it isn't. That's why, in my previous post, I considered only the post 70's era. I wasn't conveniently ignoring the past, but recognizing the evolution in thinking. And why, with so few real changes in leadership since that time, I don't think the 'just wait' defense is so out of line. And people do envision a woman president. They don't know whether it will be Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Condoleeza Rice, or Lisa Simpson. But to say we may not have a woman president for the next 50 years, and that most studies show we cannot envision one is, I think, flat out wrong. You envisioned one when you started the thread. Not one person gave a quasi-logical justification based on a woman’s abilities (too emotional etc). Perhaps if you included a poll and asked if the US would accept a woman president we might convince you we're not as discriminatory as you think. And, as others have said, your link to 'freedom' is really stretching. To suggest that women are not represented is to dismiss the effect of their vote, their lobbying, the women in congress, on the Supreme Court etc. The US did deny the vote to women at one point. It also practiced segregation, slavery, and a whole array of injustices. But worse that Iraq? Not by a long shot. And hypocritical in taking an active role in world affairs? Not at all. In fact, I think the US retention of the Death Penalty while condemning justice of other nations is a lot more hypocritical, but that's another thread! And remember. Freedom includes the freedom not to alternate boy/girl/boy/girl.
That's fine. I always get misunderstood that way. I believe using extreme examples/counterexamples/analogies is the best way to clarify murky issues. But, inevitably, whenever I do that, someone would hold those extreme examples on me and think that I am an extremist. Sometimes it's my own fault in choosing the wrong examples. The reason I chose the housewife thing was because the typical perception is that housewives are less free and career women are more liberated. I deliberately twisted that perception around to make my point. I certainly didn't mean that all career women were forced to work due to financial needs. Anyway, I was in a hurry and didn't give the response your post deserved. While I agree that America is by and large moderate, I believe that America is much more socially conservative than other Western countries which MacBeth cited in his original post. And I don't think it is specifically in the conservative agenda to prevent women from being elected to the highest office, at least not consciously. (BTW, I also don't think that most conservatives are consciously sexists.) What I am trying to say is that the American society is still fairly conservative in their outlook concerning the society and the family. That, imo, is the underlying reason why many people are reluctant to vote for a woman as president.
Sorry to quote myself. I was in a hurry and didn't finish what I wanted to say. Using one issue (i.e. sexism) to negate the whole moral status (i.e. promoter of freedom) is very poor logic. It is like saying that since dribbling is a very important basketball skill, and that Moochie is a better dribbler than Hakeem, therefore, Moochie is a better basketball player. Or Hakeem has no right to claim the Best Rocket Ever status because he can't beat a scrub like Moochie at one of the most fundamental skills in basketball. Moreover, sexism is not the best litmus test for freedom. As I pointed out in my earlier post with the housewife example, what is perceived to be less free in relation to gender role might not be that in reality.
Whoa...go away for a couple of days, and come back and find someone like Hayes paraphrasing your whole philosophy, and amazingly not agreeing with it. Unusual, in that Hayes is typically so open mined about issues like this, and in no way could I have predicted his response to this or any other issue where the USA might be in question... 1) Doublespeak? Goop? What I said is accurate, and I think that your effort to split this particular hair shows how open minded you are about this. Women have consistently been at least half of the population during the 70 years they have had the vote...If you feel that you can dismiss the underlying mindset that causes that demographic to be completely non-represented in the hihest office, and for a period much longer than some other nations which have already addressed it, by virtue of a semantic argument about whether they have represented 49, 50, or 51% of the population....well, that speaks volumes. 2) This is where we are both in line and off line with each other. I am not saying that we have to have to be perfect to have a proactive foreign policy...nice euphemism, BTW...but that if we do we cannotm base it on a moral imperative while remaining immoral and inconsistent with our demands of other nations. We siad we had several reasons...nukes, WMD, 9-11, etc for Operation Freedom Iraq...but have, over time, whittled it down to a moral one, by virtue of the process of elimination. Forget for a moment the incredible blinders we have to have to overlook the fact that we needed other reasons before the war, or the fact that we are willing to ignore the questionable process which has reduced the argument to a moral one, but consider only that we have abandoned 50 years of global will to tell the world we can and will invade other nations when we want to, irrespective of global opinion, and despite all of our protestations before the fact, are now saying it was ok to do so...because we decided that Iraq was below a moral standard we have established for, it would seem, Iraq alone. Now this standard has not been applied to the world at large, nor have we allowed other nations, namely the USSR and China to do the same without reproach. Think back to the Cold War period, if you will...is it likely that the USSR was, at that time, more advanced in many respect than Afghanistan? Absolutely...but would that in any way have excused the invasion from our perspective? Absolutely not...even if the USSR, as is likely, percieved that they were morally superior to the Afganistanians, and probably expected the political and moral/social situation to improve in Afghanastan with the invasion, and establishment of a USSR friendly copy government. If China invaded a nation they considered morally inferior, and used that as an excuse, we would rightfully say that A) They don't have the right to forcibly export their morality, and B) That that is just a conveneint excuse...if, as in this case, we added the fact that their were economic motivations for said action, and an ongoing hostility between China and this lesser nation, and from the outside we would rightfully laugh at the moral excuse for same. But as to our inperfect moral system itself, here is why it is relevent: With WWII along with others, the world saw what happened when you combine military might, and the belief that you possess a morally superior system, and that the combination of the two allow you to override global disapproval merely because you have the might and believe that you are right. Point being, nations almost alway believe that they are right. But we also realized that there were circumstances in the world where externally based interaction was necessary in order to prevent mass 'evils'...and in order to allow the latter while preventing the first, we agreed to a system of global standards and approval for 'proactive' actions...and we stressed this standard for 50 years when other nations called the UN irrelevant, or cited moral superiority while invading lesser nations. I am saying that we shouldn't have abandoned this stnadard when it proved incompatible with what we wanted, as that makes us what we stood against, and self-righteous hypocrites with guns has a scary global precedent. I am saying that abandoning what we advocated for 50 years is wrong...but it is doubly so when our only ( as it now seems ) justification for same is that Iraq falls below a set of standards we have constructed, and have determined that falling below this standard equates to licence for the USA to be 'proactive'...especially when, as this thread addresses, we fall below that standard relative to other nations in several areas. If Canada had our military might, could they site issues like race relations or lack of representation of our demographic majority as justification for invasion? Or could Britain? Could Britain have done so in 1840? I doubt we would agree...and the standard response is: Well, no, because we weren't doing precisely what Iraq has been doing which we find objectionable.... Apologists for our 'proactive' policy always do this...they look at whatever issue we take with Iraq, and say that that is the reason we can invade, and say that only that exact issue justifies action...So we decise that this is wrong, and then when our own wrongs are pointed out, and questioned, we say " But it's not exaclt what we have decided Iraq is doing wrong!" as if that somehow overrides that policy that we are espousing: Nations which deem themselves morally superior have the right to invade nations which they deem morally inferior, and their own moral shortcomings are only relevant if they match those pf the inferior with an exactitude of ridiculous measure. Now this is true, we say, despite two factors...The exactl standard we applied, and excused oursleves because we deemed oursleves above it, has changed since the war itself. Originally it was pointed out that we were not connected to 9-11 type actions, were not developing WMD's we intended to use with nasty connotations, and had not invaded other lesser nations for oil, while claiming other reasons. Since then, the standard that Iraq is not meeting has changed, thereby suggesting it is a flexible one, but we remain inflexible in it's exactitude when it is applied to us, saying that we have not done exaclt what Iraq has done, therefore we cannot be compared. Hayes, you will doubtless find nothing wrong with the convenience of this reasoning. And secondly, when it is pointed out that have done all of the things which Iraq has done, and worse, we merley respond with something like " The world has changed." I am not sure what that is uspposed tomean..of course the world has changed since we practiced mass genocide, slavery, or used WMDs...but our perspective on ourselves hasn't. At the time we did all of those things we thought we were correct, irrespective of what the world thought. We have never been particularly aware of our own moral wrongs while they are in play, and to say that 'back then we may have been wrong, but now...why now we're just better than everyone else. Point being we thought we were just as right back then, how can we be so certain that we are right and the world is wrong...again? The world is constantly changing, true...but then you could say that the world has changed since Hussein invaded Kuwait...etc. What the hell does that mean? Either thinking you're right makes you right or, as our record demonstrates, the two have nothing to do with each other. When you look at that and consider that, once again, we are having to say that the world is wrong while we are right, it should give any objective observer pause. Or you can just say that this time we are right because we think we're better, than we were before, than everyone else, whatever... In terms of past actions, I did agree with the 1st Gulf War, thereby showing that this idea you have that I maintain our need to be perfect in order to be pro-active is silly. I say that we need to be perfect, or a hell of a lot closer to it than we are, if we are doing what the majority of the world says we shouldn't, and our only justification is a moral one. Add to that all of the other crap we have been spewing, our admitedly poor intel we used to support our claims, etc., and it pretty much reinforces my stance. But you seem to suggest that my 'silly' philosophy reflects an unrealisitc expectation, and that this applies to the USA alone, as a reflection o some sort of anti-USA bias. I have shown that I supported the USA's position in several instances...the 1st Gulf War, WWII, etc...and what is more I think that there are other instances when our involvment might have been more positive had it happened at all or sooner. I have stated what my standard is, and it is the same one we espoused for over 50 years until now. So it;s hardly USA: wrong, as I've shown...But I'm guessing that you are as open minded, and it could hardly be assumed that you are guilty of exactly the opposite of what you suggest (wrongly, as it happens) I do, ie assume that USA position = correct...right? There are probably several times you have said at the time that we shouldn't do what we have done, in our lifetimes...right? Your philosophy couldn't be reduced to something as 'silly' as USA is automatically right, and fill in the blanks to support that stance...right? And you wouldn't be so 'silly' to say that you have supported the USA without pause, not because they are the USA, but objectively, and ultimately beacuse the USA is always right...right? I could point out examples of states which are relatively much more 'democratic' (Iceland,for ex.), and do not have the history of mass atrocities that we have (Canada, for ex.) but that would only be relevant were Iceland or Canada invading other nations and siting their moral superiroty as justification. There is only one nation currently advocating that position, hence their is only one which should be under that particular microscope...
Defend ourselves from whom? And, re: genocide, we need to allow the world at large set the standard for that...as frustrating as that might be, it is far safer than allowing individual nations to set thier own standards of morality...and apply them...as their military might allows. We have said this for 50 years. You can do great and actual ( ie deaths, wars, etc.) global damage while wanting to do the right thing...See Ike, exec. power, and Tail Gunner Joe for a domestic example.
Take your argument, apply it to civil rights, and go back to 1960 Mississippi, and it would be accurate as well. Had things not improved? Was there still slavery? Were blacks 'legally' restricted from excercising the right to vote, etc.? But none of that made it right, nor did that take away it's relation to freedom. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding...and our Presidential pudding still requires a penisas an essential ingredient.
Defend ourselves from whom? Looing back at the 20th century I can think o fmany examples. Is that even a serious question? What makes you think the world at large is even capable of setting any standards? Many countries are struggling for stability and survival, they hardly have the capacity to enforce what is right in other countries. The US, with its military power and liberal ideas, has the ability to stop atrocities such as the Holocaust.
Yes, it's a serious question. When have we abandoned global approval to defend ourselves from a real threat? That was the nature of HS's point which you somehow correlated to defending ourselves. Were we realistically defending ourselves from Iraq? Or in Bosnia? I don't see the correlation. What makes me think so? Uh...among other things I have some faith in the stance we took for 50 years; ie that we could. I won't bother with the lawyer trick regarding our credibility if you now say we were wrong all that time... You say 'like the holocaust' in full recognition of the Holocaust in particular not being relevant, right?
In regards to Iraq, we were not defending ourselves from an imminent threat (at least judging from the evidence so far). I meant we have needed to defend ourselves generally over the 20th century. No I don't agree with you that the Holocaust wasn't relevant when we decided to send troops to Europe.
