An accurate portrayal of what has happened in the WH and Congress, yes; I have no cite for LW criticism of him on that score, but I’m sure I’ve seen some here and there.
That was my point. Works better than our system. I’d endure unrestrained Republican rule, with a House-selected prime minister instead of an independently-elected president (and no Senate at all), in preference to gridlock; it would make it absolutely clear where all the blame for the results falls, and the Pubs always can be and in those circumstances certainly would be turned out next election.
That’s fine. But I do believe there are some things that no President can ignore, and a terrorist state gaining a nuclear capability is one of them. Obama cares about his legacy. He will not let Iran get nukes on his watch. He’s doing everything he can short of war to prevent it(Stuxnet was all kinds of awesome), but if he has nothing left on the table but bombing, he’ll do it in a heartbeat.
Our government is designed so that nothing can move forward without broad approval, across parties, and across regions. I don’t like the concept or parliamentary supremacy at all. It is not a system conducive to preserving our liberties.
The worst that can be said about limited government is that it doesn’t do enough for us. The worst that can be said about unlimited government is that we’re not free anymore.
That’s probably true. An unfortunate side effect is that if a minority party wants to use the machinery of government to break the government, it probably has enough power to do so.
I don’t think he will, because I think he recognizes that bombing would not prevent Iran from getting nukes. An invasion might, but that’s not happening (thankfully).
I think that fear is overstated. I agree that Republicans have been more unreasonable than ever, and it’s pissing me off almost as much as it’s pissing you off. But aside from the default scares, everything is working. Spending bills get passed, truly necessary legislation gets passed. All that’s being held up is stuff that one or the other party would like to have but isn’t actually all that vital. The economy is improving, crime is still going down, Apple’s going to give us a new Iphone and Disney’s making Star Wars films. Looks like there’s nothing wrong with limited government after all.
Nothing but regime change can stop Iran from getting nukes, but bombing, like sanctions and Stuxnet, can set them back. As long as it doesn’t happen on his watch.
There is no way for the U.S. or Israel to bomb Iran that would not spin out of control into a general regional war. Professionals have wargamed that scenario several times and it always ends that way. And at this point, with the MENA already teetering on the brink of a general regional war, it does not bear thinking of at all.
Bombing would not even “set them back” unless nukes were used; the Iranians have learned the lessons of the Osirak reactor (Saddam’s, which the Israelis bombed), and have built their nuclear facilities in bunkers hardened against conventional bombardment.
Except for pregnant women, of course.
It might appear that way in theory if you read and believe the arguments in The Federalist. In real life, however, the civil-liberties records of countries with parliamentary systems are on the whole and on average at least as good as those with separation-of-powers systems, if not better. That, I think, is less a matter of political system than political culture – if the culture does not respect liberty, no government that does will result, no matter how it is designed.
Another canard. Again, look around the world, at all the industrialized democracies where things in general – civil liberties included – go as well as in the U.S. or better. One thing you won’t find in any of them is limited government.
Every time she opens her mouth, I think, “Thank goodness John McCain lost in 2008.”
She makes Dan Quayle look like a genius.
In France, you can go to jail for booing the national anthem or “insulting the President.”
In Britain, you need permission from the government to run an ad on any issue of controversy. They’ve gone way beyond election regulations. Not only that, but the media isn’t even allowed to cover the election on the day of the voting:
So right there, you see what happens when you don’t have a strong first amendment.
In the U.S. Ed Meese could make a filmmaker put a “propaganda” declaration on his documentary.
The French are not imprisoned and do not lack civil rights. To say they have “no freedoms” because there are some things they can’t do is…absurd. There are some laws we have that they don’t; does that make us a slave nation?
On average, by-and-large, with minor exceptions (okay?) the other westernized democracies are just as free as we are.
And the middle class keeps shrinking as inequality worsens, the ecosystem on which we depend keeps getting more and more toxic, women (and men!) are losing access to reproductive health care, labor rights are being eroded to Gilded Era levels, the US government continues to push for neoliberal trade agreements (TPP, TTIP) to drag down the world’s environmental and labor protections, the US government continues to support the death squad regime in Honduras, vile monarchies in the Arab world, the apartheid Zionist regime in Occupied Palestine, and so on and so forth.
A strong state could stand against this, and that would be wonderful, but I don’t trust the state. How about devolving power to workers’ councils, and away from capitalism and the state?
Iran’s government isn’t necessarily building nuclear weapons, but if they are, why is that such a big deal? I would rather they didn’t, but don’t you see the hypocrisy here?
I don’t think that’s true at all, but I guess it depends on what freedoms you hold dearest. For me, the 1st amendment is the most important, and Britain and France clearly lag the US in that regard. Liberals here go apeshit over the idea of a flag burning amendment(and the fact that we need to amend the Constitution to ban it speaks volumes). France just casually passed a law against booing the national anthem in an anti-crime bill. It’s just too easy to infringe basic rights elsewhere without court review.
What documentaries did Meese force such a label?
Regards,
Shodan
It was on some Canadian films. The court ruled that only US citizens have the right to engage in political activity anonymously. Foreigners can be required to be identified. Or something, I’m sure I’m butchering the explanation.
That’s essentially correct: some Canadians had made a documentary about Acid Rain. Ed Meese felt he had the authority to compel them to prefix it with a warning label, saying that the film contained propaganda.
A weird and offensive violation of rights. Did anyone do that to Ben Stein’s anti-evolution propaganda? It really attacks Meese, not the U.S.
Still, the idea that European countries aren’t free, because, gosh, they have some fairly minor censorship laws is kind of absurd. Show me the shackles. Where are the walls and barbed wire at the border crossings? Would you rather live in modern Italy or Germany, or modern Uganda or Iran?
If European countries “aren’t free,” I could pray that all mankind enjoyed that level of enslavement.