I wonder what you think motivated the hijackers on 9/11.
Padeye -
I hope this isn’t a hijack (Duck Duck Goose has produced a marvel of a post, and I would hate like poison to prevent more like it from happening), but I blame Stalin for the famine as well as the murder of the kulaks. I think he engineered the famine to force people into collective farms, and to kill those who wouldn’t go. I suppose Stalin’s attitude towards the general populace was more like Hitler regarded the Slavs than how he regarded the Jews - useful slave fodder rather than evil in themselves. The kulaks were the ones Stalin hated, the rest were peasants he wanted to make use of.
My source is a documentary I saw on PBS, whose name I cannot recall - all I can remember is something like “Harvest of Shame”, and I don’t think that is right. I can dig up cites if you like for my assertion that Stalin engineered the famine that killed so many.
No worries Shodan. The point has been made but the farther I go the more I risk appearing to defend Stalin and that is not the case. There have been some terrific posts in this thread and I don’t want to detract from them.
IMHO, a step into the 19th century is a step forward, not back. We’ve lost our way over the last 100 years. I suppose the government could still have the FDA and such, just for quality control for those products they think need it. Other than that, what need for trade agreements? I have no doubt they’ve become essential today, but that’s because of our outlook, because we think it has to be complicated like that. And as I said, I would only repeal trade agreements to the extent that I thought they hurt our image of neutrality. If a specific agreement is neither an embargo nor a “favored-nation” sort of status, then it probably doesn’t carry enough weight politically to be considered a breach of neutrality.
Since you are in favor of giving a foreign power or organization a veto over who we elect as President of the United States, I’d say you favor going back a bit further than just to the 19th Century–more like back to before July 4, 1776.
The odd thing here is that, as offensive as I find nearly all of what Rex Dart claims to believe, I agree with his OP, in the narrowest sense: I don’t think Lieberman would be a good choice for U.S. President, and I especially don’t think so now at this particular juncture in world events. But plainly what Rex Dart is saying is far more pernicious: he’s saying that as long as Islamic terrorists exist, electing a Jewish President sends the wrong signal to our enemies.
I see the problem of electing Lieberman largely in practical terms–so many Americans would probably perceive his candidacy to be provocative in the sense that Rex Dart does that it would create a whole issue in itself during the campaign. That issue would arise, of course, any time a Jew ran for President, but this is obviously a sensitive moment in history. You could use that sensitivity to elect a Jewish President now to send the signal that America is a pluralistic nation that doesn’t take orders from intolerant foreign bigots, and maybe that would be a good signal to send. It’s just that I don’t think most registered voters would agree. Lieberman would probably get some sympathy votes (voters who wouldn’t ordinarily support his politics but who feel that sending that signal is right) but I think that number would be small in comparison to the number of voters who would resent his “intruding his religion” into a national campaign.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is no perfect historical moment for a Jewish President, and what I’m saying here just supports the profoundly bigoted thinking that Rex Dart is espousing. Maybe America is more tolerant than I’m giving it credit for being. Certainly, the close results of the 2000 election make my point here questionable. But in the narrowest sense, I agree with him that Lieberman 2004 is not a winner.
I should add that I was mightily impressed with the quality of the debate between Cheney and Lieberman - much more than that of the Bush-Gore debates.
Both Cheney and Lieberman struck me as thoughtful people addressing substantive issues. I voted for Bush-Cheney (please try to suppress your gasps of stunned horror at the revelation ;)), but I would have greatly preferred Lieberman at the top of the ticket, just so I could have voted against a better class of politician.
We have actually gone thru something like this debate in the US before. I am old enough to remember (the crotchety fossil wheezed thru toothless gums) the Kennedy-Nixon campaign. There was a good deal of controversy about electing a Catholic president, for fear he would not be neutral (“He’ll take his orders directly from the Vatican!”). There is some of that nowadays, where some groups say that Catholics should not be considered for office because of the anti-abortion stance of the Roman Catholic church.
In any case, not electing a Jew for fear it might piss off the terrorists goes way beyond any kind of isolationism. If threats are seen to work, we will get more threats. Until we have no freedom left at all.
Rex, I just got a new roommate. He’s a Syrian immigrant who is well acquainted, on a first-hand know-the-guys-personally basis with the mindset or radical Islam.
I thought about showing him your post, but I’m afraid he would put a fist through my monitor.