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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (668622)	1/14/2005 3:35:11 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

"You have no idea what he said before or after." Neither do YOU! Prove his comments were 'taken out of context'... don't just speculate/wish/dream/imagine or hope they were --- SHOW THAT THEY WERE... or else, (since he hasn't made any public claim to that effect), admit the quote is both accurate, and accurately expresses one of the ideas he was trying to express.

To: sandintoes who wrote (668622)	1/14/2005 6:19:42 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

You are correct Sandi. The context is important here. I reject Hughes' statement, but I cannot condemn him for making it. He never claimed he would use power to bring about the changes implied by the statement. He was openly, not covertly, comparing what he saw as the harrowing options we as a country need to face and then openly making a case for one of these tough options, allowing everyone to see and debate the issue. I would much rather this sort of discussion than the emptyheaded religion that leftists tend to throw around when they want to hang someone simply because he is not a leftist. Here is the statement in better context: "What I’m about to say is very arrogant — arrogant to a fault...Set aside what the mass of people think. Some things are so bad for them that you cannot allow them to have them. One of them is war in the context of terrorism in the United States...Therefore, we have to abridge individual rights, change the societal conditions, and act in ways that heretofore were not in accordance with our values and traditions, like giving a police officer or security official the right to search you without a judicial finding of probable cause...Things are changing, and this change is happening because things can be brought to us that we cannot afford to absorb. We can’t deal with them, so we’re going to reach out and do something ahead of time to preclude them....Is that going to change your lives? It already has.” cq.com It is not the statement of some rabid fascist who wants to see government take freedom from the individual. The guy is, on one hand looking at the possibility of a terrorist exploiting broad American freedoms in order to nuke the entire country. On the other hand he is looking at abridging those broad American freedoms to try to eliminate the threat. For my part, I say stay as free as possible no matter what it means, even if it means death. But I must admit I do see Hughes' point. It appears he thinks by our voluntarily abridging our liberties we can protect ourselves. It is a debate we need to have, without condemning each other, because if we don't have it what will eventually happen is we will lose our freedoms AND be blown to bits as terrorists continually exploit our divisions.