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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chowder who wrote (21666)	10/3/2004 12:35:06 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Dabum, re: Do you mean like how we took land from the Indians? Or, do you mean how we took land from the Mexicans?....Exactly what is the true meaning of America? First, note that I said the true "meaning" of America, not episodes in the "history" of America. You do, however, ask a good question and you may have hit upon a fundamental difference between many of us. When I think of the "true meaning of America," I think of a system of government that was created by men who understood that in order for men to "pursue happiness," it was also necessary to free them from the tyranny of oppressive power, whether that power was the power of the strongest elements of society, the police power of the governemnt or, in some instances where religious or other deeply important rights were involved, even the power of the majority. We have usually held true to those principles. We have historically enjoyed the protections of jealously independent courts, we have had strongly worded, interpreted and applied Bill of Rights protections and we have had a free and open system of government. We have also, with a few notable failures, applied those principles to our foreign policy and refrained from attempting to impose our will on the rest of the world. So now, as a result of easily duplicated acts of terrorism, we seem willing to send our troops to fight and die to impose our will on the peoples of mixed cultures, religions and ethnicities, we seem willing to increase the erosion of the power of the one branch of government that is the true protector of our most basic freedoms; the courts, and we seem willing to erode civil liberties that for 200 years have protected us from the terribly immense police power of the national, state and local governments, and many of seem all too willing to accept that our leaders will lie to us and run a secretive government. Forgetting the question of whether America can protect herself and find more safety from terrorists through our foreign interventions and by entrusting more and more power in the executive branch of our government, what is it that we will have traded for that "extra safety?" I think that terrorism is a fact of modern life. It's just like crime, auto wrecks and occasional lightning strikes, but so far much less statistically likely to harm us. I get tired of all the whining and complaining about how dangerous it is and how we can't live with those threats. The truth is that we will live with those threats and that what we are currently doing will not make much difference and may well make matters worse. Instead of running around in a panic and crying about things we cannot change, we ought to stand up with courage and accept inevitable risks. And we certainly shouldn't vainly trade away any of the protections of our freedoms, the rules of international law and the principles we admired so much in our founding fathers. We will, eventually, learn what the Russians and Iraelis are in the process of learning, and when we do we will stop trying to beat others into submission. That only creates more of those who successfully plot to harm us. I suspect that when we learn that lesson we will attempt to improve our "crime fighting" abilities to stop terrorists and that we will attempt to undercut international support for terrorists by adopting pragmatic foreign policies whose goal is to "do no harm" in other countries. So that's what I think. What do you think the "true meaning of America" is? From reading some of your posts I wonder if it isn't that the ends justify the means, as long as our team "wins?" The problem with that is that you must eventually live in the society you've created after you've won. Our founding fathers understood that the greatest threat to freedom was from those who wielded power in our name; our own government. A two year stint in the army taught me all I needed to know about what happens when power is given and not checked. I haven't forgotten.