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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (59981)	12/5/2002 11:06:50 AM
From: paul_philp	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Oh, please. Is there any chance we could put this loony stuff on the shelf for the duration? This is simply one more idiot attempt to paint critics of the Bush administration as anti-American; to stiffle dissent; to usher in the 1984 syndrom. I don't think that this should be put on the shelf at all. We will need to learn how to listen and respond to the world. With the amount of noise feeding back today, it is impossible to get a coherent understanding of what people are saying. We will need to develop a framework to help us interpret all the information. Personally, I filter out all dissent that takes the form of accusing the US of having core motivations which are bad but does not acknowledge the core motivations which are good. When people see the world as black and white they are not capable of making meaningful observations and arguments in a complex situation. (I filtered out the American is only good crowd a long time ago). I think you are grossly underestimating the scale and volume of the anti-american rhetoric in the world today. It is not simply the work of a few people making whacky comments. John Kerry is running for president promoting the idea that the only reason Bush heated up the anti-Iraq debate is to win the November midterms. In this view, Bush is simply and only malintended with not a thought or a care about any national interest. It is not that America went wrong here or there; it is that it is wrong root and branch. The conviction at the heart of those who engage in it is really quite simple: that America is an unmitigated evil, an irredeemable enormity. Far from a few whacko statements from people who should know better, it is begining to look like this is the emerging consensus of the Democratic party leadership. Paul

To: JohnM who wrote (59981)	12/5/2002 8:21:40 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Oh, please. Is there any chance we could put this loony stuff on the shelf for the duration? Not loony. Look at that Pew poll. I can go out on the sidewalk here and almost instantly find a bunch of people who will tell me the US had it coming on 9/11/02. They had it coming,they say. Well, they didn't did they? And even larger numbers who think the terrorist activities are the result of US economic policies. But mostly the policies don't fit the conclusions drawn to justify the terrorism. And large numbers who will deny that US policy about Iraq is driven by anything other than oil. Which on the face of it is absurd, and on deeper examination is more absurd. People, not just on my sidewalk, but all around the world hold these beliefs which are anti-American. [see Pew poll]. So, the question, John, is how did this very large number of people all around the world get to these error containing beliefs? Harris calls them the "left" (but I don't really care what you call them) and finds the source of the belief in a marxist trope which has been in circulation for 150 years. And which was in error, in marxist terms, a hundred years ago and now. Is he wrong to be looking there? Opposition to status quo in the West has usually been couched in socialist terms, after all. My answer to Bill was flippant, Message 18303276 I sometimes fall in love with bizarre images but, I don't think what I said was fundamentally wrong. If it is, I'd like to see someone grind it up and spit it out.