[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
The Iraq war is going very well right now, the only people who say otherwise have a strong partisan interest in promoting Iraqi civil war and genocide.
[/QUOTE]
Are we allowed to say “Fuck you” in great debates? I hope so, for several reasons:
(1) Fuck you for poisoning the well. If you don’t know what that means, try reading something.
(2) Fuck you for claiming that those who think the war is going badly are in favor of genocide. That is a disgusting accusation, and it makes me want to say things about you that would even be hot for the Pit. Maybe some of us actually care about human life, and think that 600,000+ civilian deaths does not represent a military triumph. (That’s a PDF, by the way.)
Jesus, Martin, and you used to be one of the conservatives I admired on this board.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I guess if I was one of the moronic people who burnt flags and wore shitty clothes and grew their hair too long I could claim I got drunk and out of hand as a teenager because it was civil disobedience against the evils of government. But that’d be intellectually dishonest, I did those things because it was fun, period.
[/QUOTE]
Grew their hair too long for what?
And what did you do during academic years 1972-73 and 1973-74 (between high school graduation and your matriculation at West Point)?
[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion]
Jesus, Martin, and you used to be one of the conservatives I admired on this board.
[/QUOTE]
Why? It’s been obvious he’s a sociopath since shortly after he joined.
Who would have an interest in promoting Iraqi civil war and genocide, ?
Thats what Bush has foisted on them but people who want it to end have had no part in the creation of this mess.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Then I guess Lincoln was a “batshit crazy fascist.” It is my contention that during a war in which the State is fighting for its very existence the government is justified in doing just about anything to neutralize people who hurt the war effort. Lincoln summarily imprisoned 18,000 Copperhead Democrats, and he was justified in doing so. These were people who were advocating that Union soldiers desert on the battlefield, that the U.S. make peace with the Confederacy, and that individuals start taking violent acts against the government (such as sabotage and freeing CSA POWs.) Both history and the courts have completely vindicated Lincoln, you’re the only one who looks batshit crazy here.
I explicitly made it clear that in a war like WWI, the government wouldn’t be justified in doing these things. That was an action that occurred more than 3,000 miles away and was never a significant risk to the United States at all, a fundamentally different conflict from the ACW, the Vietnam War, or the current war in Iraq.
[/QUOTE]
Lincoln was wrong, although he had far more justification than the current regime has for the shit it’s doing.
[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
Speaking as a recidivist protester, I’ve always hated that first line – it always makes it sound like we’re saying that Santa Claus is against the war in Iraq.
Nevertheless, protest chants aren’t supposed to be cogent arguments. The cogent arguments are hopefully the ones being made when members of the protest get interviewed or published because the size or even just the presence of the protest made news.
[/QUOTE]
I graduated from college in 1973. Though they didn’t show up so well on TV, the cogent arguments were made during teach-ins, where well respected professors talked about the history of the war and the situation.
Marching down the street was not a good place to scream out debating points. The pro-war marches had shouts every bit as idiotic as the worst of the anti-war shouts, by the way. I went to one in New York.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Yes, and those people can be classified as such: 1) People you knew personally and felt obligated to read your crap, 2) Educators who were required to read your writings as part of their job or 3) People who were generally stupid
[/QUOTE]
Right. The O. Henry panel was one of those three you fucking ignoramus.
Liberal, one of your best OPs, and I’m impressed by your writing recognition. Shows what you were able to accomplish when you were an atheist.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
The problem is, when people are often interviewed you find out that protesting both during Vietnam and during the run up to the current war in Iraq was like a “vacation” for these people. They’re protesting because its fun, not because they have any greater concerns. Did some people genuinely care? Sure. But most of them were just wastrel scofflaws.
[/quote]
I was in college then, graduating in 1973, and in Cambridge, and I can confidently say you are full of shit. I wasn’t even against the war then (I was stupid, I confess) but I knew plenty of people who were, and no one did it for fun.
I wish you’d let me know about the protests against Iraq. Aside from a few, I don’t recall a lot, certainly not like against Vietnam. Maybe we could use some, considering that Bush is ignoring both the majority of Congress and the majority of the country. Maybe 100,000 people around the White House every day for a week would drive some reality into that moronic skull of his.
As for integration and voting rights - do you think the majority of the American public would have believed what was going on in the South without a peaceful protest drawing out Jim Clark and his dogs? The will was there, and LBJ had the political smarts (and the moral courage) to get the bills passed.
As for Nixon - his secret plan to end the war involved Cambodia for some strange reason. I even voted for Nixon, but he ended the war (kind of) because he had to, not because he wanted to.
[QUOTE=H3Knuckles]
I kind of have to side with you on this. Many in that movement cared about the cause, but many, many more (especially the wanna-be’s that act like they were a part of the movement now, but had nothing to do with it at the time, like one of my neighbors) seem to have been mostly about the drugs, sex, and general sense of teenage rebellion than any cause.
[/QUOTE]
I knew plenty of protesters who wished it was about sex. But it had nothing to do with sex, not in Cambridge Mass. at least. And nothing to do with drugs either - those who imbibed didn’t do it out of protest.
[QUOTE=NinjaChick]
You’re right, all that fantastic, idealistic, effective protesting you all did in the Vietnam era, you’ve certainly made the world a great place for my generation. You’re right, we definitely should try the same tactics again since they worked so well! It saved the environment, reduced the omnipotence of Big Businesses, got rid of corruption in the government, and ended unjust wars!
[/QUOTE]
Well, global warming is new, but if you read sf in the late '60s, the common scenario for 2000 was a world waist-deep in shit. Air in California is cleaner now than it was then. Smog around here is rare. The water is cleaner also. I don’t remember a lot of protests about this, and Richard Nixon actually deserves a lot of the credit, but don’t knock the environmental movement. It did make a difference.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I explicitly made it clear that in a war like WWI, the government wouldn’t be justified in doing these things. That was an action that occurred more than 3,000 miles away and was never a significant risk to the United States at all, a fundamentally different conflict from the ACW, the Vietnam War, or the current war in Iraq.
[/QUOTE]
There’s some sort of typo here, right? Because what you actually wrote is that in one category we have World War I (and presumably the Spanish-American War and Grenada and so forth)–wars in which the United States was not actually fighting for its very existence; and in the other category we have the Civil War, Vietnam, and the Iraq War–Wars in which the very existence of the United States as a nation is in doubt.
The claim that protesters did it out of a chance to get high or drunk is not only wrong, but stupid and bigoted. It does show the ability to completely believe a falacy is you are so inclined. It has no basis in truth.
[QUOTE=Zoe]
No improvements in race relations or gender issues since the Sixties, right, NinjaChick?
[/QUOTE]
Sure, there’ve been great improvements since the 60’s. Are these a product of the “protest movement” in the 60’s, society’s natural evolution, or more a product of things that happened before the hippie-types were so much as walking*? I have no idea. I was born in 86, all I know about the past is from books which are all in some way flawed. Was there some giant, magnificent improvement in race or gender relations at some point following the activism of the 60’s? Not that I’m aware of.
*Brown vs. Board of Ed was 1954. The Montgomery boycott was in 55. The 24th amendment was proposed in 62, easily predating the late 60’s protests.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
The claim that protesters did it out of a chance to get high or drunk is not only wrong, but stupid and bigoted. It does show the ability to completely believe a falacy is you are so inclined. It has no basis in truth.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed. And in my experience there wasn’t much overlap between the political people and the dopers. In fact, the political ones pretty much despised the smoke and screw crowd, quoting the recently-minted, “If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.”
NinjaChick, what you got from your history book was a severely edited timeline. Black people didn’t achieve their present status magically in 1955. Every civil rights improvement was gained because people got out in the streets and demanded change, and often paid for it with their blood. Read up on lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. The Freedom Rides in 1961 that resulted in many beatings and even some deaths. The year 1963 gave us marches in Birmingham in which Dr King was arrested and resulted in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” a church bombing that killed three little Black girls, and 200,000 people marching on Washington, out of which came Dr King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1965 protestors tried to march from Selma, AL, to Montgomery but were stopped by police with tear gas, dogs, and billy clubs. All of these were extensively covered by print and TV and seeing grandmothers beaten by cops changed a lot of attitudes across the country.
No, victory was not nearly so fast nor as neat as your history book told you.
[QUOTE=NinjaChick]
Sure, there’ve been great improvements since the 60’s. Are these a product of the “protest movement” in the 60’s, society’s natural evolution, or more a product of things that happened before the hippie-types were so much as walking*? I have no idea. I was born in 86, all I know about the past is from books which are all in some way flawed. Was there some giant, magnificent improvement in race or gender relations at some point following the activism of the 60’s? Not that I’m aware of.
*Brown vs. Board of Ed was 1954. The Montgomery boycott was in 55. The 24th amendment was proposed in 62, easily predating the late 60’s protests.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not surprised that you can’t fathom the level of discourse on race relations back then, not when Trent Lott’s subtle racism got him in such big trouble. Do some research on the public statements George Wallace, Ross Barnett, Jim Clark, and other public officials made about black people back then, with strong support from their states, and then tell me that race relations haven’t improved. Read the reprint edition of the first Nancy Drew book. For a lot of, in fact most of, America, racism was very standard. Bringing it out in the open, making people see what those in power did to people asking for basic rights, did help a lot.
I understand where you’re coming from. I can’t fathom anti-Semitism, even though my great Aunt had to lie about her religion to get a job in New York City, of all places. This was in the '30s. Even in the early '60s Woody Allen was making jokes about restricted clubs. I’m too young to know about these things except in history books.
BTW, there weren’t a lot of hippies in Alabama in 1964.
