" the outrageous nature of the text of the OP"
ok, ok. The part about “servant of Satan” was over the top…
Not so much over the top, as inaccurate. Satan works for him.
well, I glad we got that clarified…
Y’Know alaric, I half-wondered if you were Muslim when you made th OP.
In the same news, Shodan is resorting to dishonest whining as usual.
The King of the Visigoths is bemused to find himself the object of a moderator’s protection…“The world turned upside down” , as Lord Cornwallis would say…
I adhere to the precepts of the Church of the Gnosis of the New Paradigm:
Just say no to Yahweh; say yes to Jesus.
I guess they didn’t know you were liberal before, so they failed to discriminate in your favor. Now that they saw your “secret handshake”, you can do whatever you want! Your key to the secret back room at the Chicago Reader is already in the mail, where we get together every Tuesday and Thursday nights to drink the blood of Republican babies.
- they didn’t know you were liberal before*
those would be unusually obtuse mods…
(btw–where I come from, “liberal” is an insult, implying moral rot at the core, characterized by temporizing, cowardice, and failure to understand the fundamental dialectic.)
Not really. Shodan is perfectly welcome to demonstrate flaws in your position, logic, or general political posture.
Providing an opportunity to discuss an issue–even after a bad start–is not exactly the same thing as an endorsement of a particular position.
I would strongly urge you to focus on the actual point under discussion and not take this thread further off the rails.
In that spirit, let me turn, albeit untimely, to the equivalence above made between abortion clinic blockaders and the (hypothetical) road blockers who turned out to be a figment of my (fevered) brain.
The manifestation of popular indignation in the face of war crimes is not the same as an attempt to force upon an unwilling woman the consummation of an unwanted pregnancy.
In the one case, there is no palpable harm to the aggrieved president, other than exposure to general disdain, and the necessity of mustering his cossacks to clear the way.
He has within is grasp the immediate remedy to any infringement on his personal liberty.
The woman kept from a legal medical procedure does not.
Two things. I also read the Merc article, which left it very unclear as to the how many students were blocking the road. I see nothing in that article to indicate that misinformation was given by the WH.
Regardless of whether protestors did or did not block the prez, we have had several (anti-Bush) posters say that it would be OK for the protestors to prevent him from going to a meeting. Not one of those posters has been willing to reply to my questions about other scenarios when citizens or politicians would be be blocked from travel in cases where the politics would be reversed. I’m still waiting to see if any of them grant the same rights to their political opponents as they do to those whose politics align with their own.
Forgive me quoting myself, John Mace, but as I had addressed the issue, I thought it best to simply say what I had again. Actually, since I made that post, I’ve thought of a better analogy: the civil rights movement. Frequently (as with the Birmingham Bus sit-ins) the civil rights movement violated the law in pursuit of their goals. Equally, the Klan and other anti-rights groups also violated the law (as with lynching-illegal, even if it often went unpunished). While I am not suggesting any moral equivalency between either anti-abortion groups and the Ku Klux Klan, or the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, there is a reason we now see the civil disobedience campaigns as noble and just and the actions of their opponents as heinous- because the cause of one was right, and the other was wrong*. So yes, I would support this anti-Bush protest, while condemning an anti-abortion one. Why? Because the cause of one is right, while the other is wrong. That’s all IMO, of course, and you are free to justify the extralegal actions of those whose cause you support using the same logic. I just wanted to point out that this isn’t hypocrisy or moral cowardice, as some have suggested, but a logical and consistent policy.
And before you state that the tactics of one were peaceful, and the others violent, I’d like to point out that there were plenty of violent civil rights protestors, some of whom are now seen as having been justified (Black Panthers, maybe- maybe), that there were those who protested non-violently against desegregation et al, and that we now look at them as being unjustified in their actions* and that in any case, the actions of a group of Bush-opposers who peacefully prevent him going to a meeting are very different from fundies who prevent a woman going to a surgical operation that may be vital for her pyschological or, for that matter, physical wellbeing. I might defend the actions of hardcore Republicans who peacefully blocked, say, Senator Kerry’s journey to give a speech somewhere, were Kerry as morally repugnant as Bush.
**For example, I don’t know of anyone other than an out-and-out racist who has complained about Lyndon Johnson sending in the National Guard to protect the first black student at- which university was it?
I didn’t read your original post as condoning the blocking of the roads, so I didn’t put you in the same category as those who did.
But the civil rights protest are admired because the leaders largely used civil disobedience as a tactic. That tactic does not abridge anyone else’s rights, and that is key difference.
I don’t see any of the violent protests as being justified. I welcome you to flesh this argument out in more detail and give us some specific examples that you see as being justified.
How do you “peacefully” prevent someone from going somewhere? If you’re going to convince me that your position is correct, you’ll need to present an argument that doesn’t contain a contradiction.
I agree that the blocking of abortion clinics is different, but that difference is one of degree, not one of kind.
What are the limits that protestors can go to in thwarting Bush, and how do you determine what those limits are. Could they, for example, have stopped him from getting to campaign appointments prior to Nov '04? Could they prevent pro-Bush supporters from voting?
prevent pro-Bush supporters from voting?
to what effect?. The vote count will still reflect their votes, trebled…
How do you “peacefully” prevent someone from going somewhere?
no one is “preventing” a president from doing anything he wants, including plunging the world into utter chaos, as the history of the last six years shows. What is at issue is the confrontation or lack thereof. The “Peaceful” hurdle is met when cobblestones are left in their place, and only the protestors bodies are interposed. These bodies, as we know, are easily moved aside. However, the necessity for the body removal makes the news.
Which, as I am sure you will agree, does not preclude their being charged with any of several crimes that might apply to their actions, correct?
the price of liberty is eternal incarceration, to paraphrase Thomas J.
Sure, the RNC and the white house do it, why not democrats too? 
I, myself, loathe going to jail, which is why I am, at heart, a hopeless punk when it comes to civil disobedience–although I have boundless respect for those who are not so trammeled.
actually, the price of liberty is a good relationship with a bail bondsman…