you people are gay

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:


... people doing very well
economically who put their own benefit ahead of broader society.
Another group are anti-gay and/or anti-choice. They're not stupid or
duped -- they're just haters and immoral.

God damn you are stupid.

Tom Kunich wrote:


Here's the long and the short of it - JT, I consider you to be one of the
more intelligent posters on the group. And yet you allow yourself to be led
around by the nose.

"Stupid is as stupid does." -- Forrest Gump

Tom Kunich wrote:


Here's the long and the short of it - JT, I consider you to be one of the
more intelligent posters on the group. And yet you allow yourself to be led
around by the nose.

"Stupid is as stupid does." -- Forrest Gump

From: h squared
Date: 11/25/2004 1:17 PM Eastern Standard Time

you mean you "would be happy with it if it was remade in the image [you]
want." ?



h

Yep because my goal is to guarantee the rights that the constitution provides.
Not take anyones away, especially not those that disagree with me.
Have a great holiday
Bill C

From: h squared
Date: 11/25/2004 1:17 PM Eastern Standard Time

you mean you "would be happy with it if it was remade in the image [you]
want." ?



h

Yep because my goal is to guarantee the rights that the constitution provides.
Not take anyones away, especially not those that disagree with me.
Have a great holiday
Bill C

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:

On 24 Nov 2004 23:53:00 GMT, (TritonRider) wrote:

"Should such an ignorant people
(Americans) lead the world?" -- Michael Moore

What is your obsession with Michael Moore?

http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publis...tory_12810.php

You are an ignorant stupid voter and are thus condemned in the strongest terms.

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:

On 24 Nov 2004 23:53:00 GMT, (TritonRider) wrote:

"Should such an ignorant people
(Americans) lead the world?" -- Michael Moore

What is your obsession with Michael Moore?

http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publis...tory_12810.php

You are an ignorant stupid voter and are thus condemned in the strongest terms.

Tim Mullin wrote:
(TritonRider) wrote

...and that--along with the Idea of
the United States--is what I love.

I'm not sure what your "idea" is, but the idea of *individual liberty* is the
ideal I cherish about the US.

They would be happy with it if it was remade in the image they want.

And that's a bad thing?

*Absolutely* it can be, if it destroys the prime idea/directive: individual
liberty. For example, this happened in the Weimar Republic:

"We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy,
with its own weapons.... If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets
and salaries for this bear’s work, that is its affair.... We do not come as
friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the
flock, so we come." — Joseph Goebbels

I thought that's what democracy was all about.

Let's not confound ourselves by mistakenly focusing on democracy -- "what it is
about" is liberty. Democracy must be put into its proper place as subordinate
to liberty. "Democracy" can end up simply being mob rule, or a ticket to
totalitarianism, such as that expressed by Goebbels. Bush's comments about some
"mandate," given the 51% of a popular vote (voting being the grossest form of
sentiment expression) is ludicrous. The government's job is to protect our
liberty from within and from without, no more and no less.



"This, I submit, is a travesty... Because when democracy trumps liberty,
democracy can destroy itself."

From http://sun.yumasun.com/cgi-bin/artma...ew.cgi/2/3488:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Liberty versus Democracy
Liberty and democracy not same thing

BY TIBOR MACHAN
Jan 11, 2003

Over the past several decades of American political life the idea of liberty has
taken a back seat to that of democracy. Liberty involves human beings governing
themselves, being sovereign citizens, while democracy is a method by which
decisions are reached within groups.

In a just society it is liberty that is primary. The entire point of law is to
secure liberty for everyone, to make sure the rights of individuals to their
lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness is protected from any human agent bent
on violating them.

Democracy is but a byproduct of liberty. Because we are supposed to be free to
govern ourselves, whenever some issue of public policy faces the citizenry, they
are all entitled to take part. Democratic government rests, in a free society,
on the right of every individual to take whatever actions are needed to
influence public policy.

Because freedom or liberty is primary, the scope of public policy and, thus,
democracy in a just society is strictly limited. The reason is that free men and
women may not be intruded on even if a majority of their fellows would decide to
do so. If one is free, which means a self-governing person, then even the
majority of one's fellows lack the authority to take over one's governance
without one's consent. This is what the Declaration of Independence means when
it mentions that government derives its just powers from the consent of the
governed.

In a just society no one loses his or her authority for self-government without
giving it up as a matter of choice. No one gets to operate on you, no matter how
wise and competent, without you giving your consent, and the same is true, in a
just system, about imposing duties and obligations on people. They must agree to
this. If they do not, they aren't to be ordered about at all.

The only apparent exception is when it comes to laws that protect everyone's
rights. One may indeed be ordered not to kill, rob, rape, burglarize, assault
another person, even if one fails to consent to this.

It is along these lines that the idea of limited government arises: government
may only act to protect rights, to impose the laws that achieve that goal,
nothing more. Again, as the Declaration of Independence notes, it is to secure
our rights that governments are instituted, not for any other purpose.

Of course, this idea of limited government hardly figures into considerations of
public policy in the United States or elsewhere. We have never actually confined
government to this clearly limited, just purpose. It has always gone beyond
that, and today its scope is nearly totalitarian, the very opposite of being
limited.
But there is no doubt that even though liberty has been nearly forgotten as an
ideal of just government in America as well as elsewhere, democracy does remain
something of an operational ideal. In this way liberty has been curtailed
tremendously, mainly to the minor sphere of everyone having a right to take part
in public decision-making.

Whereas the original idea was that we are free in all realms and democracy
concerns mainly who will administer a system of laws that are required to
protect our liberty, now the idea is that democracy addresses everything in our
lives and the only liberty we have left is to take part in the decision-making
about whatever is taken to be a so-called “public” matter. One way this is
clearly evident is how many of the top universities in this country construe
public administration to be a topic having to do primarily with the way
democracy works. Indeed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, even thoug
For example, the courses at America's premier public administration graduate
school, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, are
mainly focused on problems of democracy. At this institution nearly 40 percent
of the students attending come from 75 foreign countries, many of them from
those that used to be under Soviet rule, and what they focus on in nearly all
their courses is democracy, not liberty. Assignments in these courses tend to
raise problems about implementing democratic governance and leave the issue of
how individual liberty should be secured as practically irrelevant. Or, to put
it more precisely, the liberty -- or human right -- that is of interest in most
of these courses is the liberty to take part in democratic decision-making.
(“Human rights” has come to refer in most of these course and their texts mainly
to the right to vote and to take part in the political process!)

Yes, of course, voting is a bit of genuine liberty that many of the people of
the world have never enjoyed, so for them it is a significant matter, to be
sure. But it is clearly not the liberty that the Declaration of Independence
mentions when it affirms that all of us are equal in having unalienable rights
to our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The Declaration speaks of a very
wide scope of individual liberty, while the premier public administration school
of America teaches, at least by implication, that the only liberty of any
importance is the liberty to take part in public policy determination.

This, I submit, is a travesty. Once democracy is treated as the premier public
value, with individual liberty cast to the side except as far as taking part in
democratic decision-making, the scope of government is no longer limited in
principle or practice. Nearly anything can become a public policy issue, so long
as some measure of democracy is involved in reaching decisions about it.

And that turns out to be a serious threat to democracy itself. Because when
democracy trumps liberty, democracy can destroy itself. The law could permit the
democratically reached destruction of democracy itself! That is just what
happened in the Weimar Republic, where a democratic election put Hitler in power
and destroyed democracy.

If you ever wonder why it is that public forums, including the Sunday TV
magazine programs, the op-ed pages of newspapers, the feature articles of
magazines do not discuss human liberty but fret mostly about democracy, this is
the reason: The major educational institutions tend not to care about liberty
and have substituted a very limited version of it, namely democracy as the
primary concern. Once that is accomplished, individual liberty becomes
defenseless.

Indeed, democracy is just as capable of being totalitarian as is a dictatorship,
only with democracy it seems less clearly unjust, given that this little bit of
liberty is still intact, namely to take part in the vote.

--
Tibor Machan is a professor of business ethics and Western Civilization at
Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and co-author of "A Primer on Business
Ethics." He advises Freedom Communications, parent company of this newspaper.
E-mail him at

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This and other amusing articles are collected into the following text:

_Neither Left Nor Right_
Tibor R. Machan
Hoover Institution Press Publication
(C) 2004

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...l/-/0817939822

Tim Mullin wrote:
(TritonRider) wrote

...and that--along with the Idea of
the United States--is what I love.

I'm not sure what your "idea" is, but the idea of *individual liberty* is the
ideal I cherish about the US.

They would be happy with it if it was remade in the image they want.

And that's a bad thing?

*Absolutely* it can be, if it destroys the prime idea/directive: individual
liberty. For example, this happened in the Weimar Republic:

"We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy,
with its own weapons.... If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets
and salaries for this bear’s work, that is its affair.... We do not come as
friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the
flock, so we come." — Joseph Goebbels

I thought that's what democracy was all about.

Let's not confound ourselves by mistakenly focusing on democracy -- "what it is
about" is liberty. Democracy must be put into its proper place as subordinate
to liberty. "Democracy" can end up simply being mob rule, or a ticket to
totalitarianism, such as that expressed by Goebbels. Bush's comments about some
"mandate," given the 51% of a popular vote (voting being the grossest form of
sentiment expression) is ludicrous. The government's job is to protect our
liberty from within and from without, no more and no less.



"This, I submit, is a travesty... Because when democracy trumps liberty,
democracy can destroy itself."

From http://sun.yumasun.com/cgi-bin/artma...ew.cgi/2/3488:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Liberty versus Democracy
Liberty and democracy not same thing

BY TIBOR MACHAN
Jan 11, 2003

Over the past several decades of American political life the idea of liberty has
taken a back seat to that of democracy. Liberty involves human beings governing
themselves, being sovereign citizens, while democracy is a method by which
decisions are reached within groups.

In a just society it is liberty that is primary. The entire point of law is to
secure liberty for everyone, to make sure the rights of individuals to their
lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness is protected from any human agent bent
on violating them.

Democracy is but a byproduct of liberty. Because we are supposed to be free to
govern ourselves, whenever some issue of public policy faces the citizenry, they
are all entitled to take part. Democratic government rests, in a free society,
on the right of every individual to take whatever actions are needed to
influence public policy.

Because freedom or liberty is primary, the scope of public policy and, thus,
democracy in a just society is strictly limited. The reason is that free men and
women may not be intruded on even if a majority of their fellows would decide to
do so. If one is free, which means a self-governing person, then even the
majority of one's fellows lack the authority to take over one's governance
without one's consent. This is what the Declaration of Independence means when
it mentions that government derives its just powers from the consent of the
governed.

In a just society no one loses his or her authority for self-government without
giving it up as a matter of choice. No one gets to operate on you, no matter how
wise and competent, without you giving your consent, and the same is true, in a
just system, about imposing duties and obligations on people. They must agree to
this. If they do not, they aren't to be ordered about at all.

The only apparent exception is when it comes to laws that protect everyone's
rights. One may indeed be ordered not to kill, rob, rape, burglarize, assault
another person, even if one fails to consent to this.

It is along these lines that the idea of limited government arises: government
may only act to protect rights, to impose the laws that achieve that goal,
nothing more. Again, as the Declaration of Independence notes, it is to secure
our rights that governments are instituted, not for any other purpose.

Of course, this idea of limited government hardly figures into considerations of
public policy in the United States or elsewhere. We have never actually confined
government to this clearly limited, just purpose. It has always gone beyond
that, and today its scope is nearly totalitarian, the very opposite of being
limited.
But there is no doubt that even though liberty has been nearly forgotten as an
ideal of just government in America as well as elsewhere, democracy does remain
something of an operational ideal. In this way liberty has been curtailed
tremendously, mainly to the minor sphere of everyone having a right to take part
in public decision-making.

Whereas the original idea was that we are free in all realms and democracy
concerns mainly who will administer a system of laws that are required to
protect our liberty, now the idea is that democracy addresses everything in our
lives and the only liberty we have left is to take part in the decision-making
about whatever is taken to be a so-called “public” matter. One way this is
clearly evident is how many of the top universities in this country construe
public administration to be a topic having to do primarily with the way
democracy works. Indeed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, even thoug
For example, the courses at America's premier public administration graduate
school, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, are
mainly focused on problems of democracy. At this institution nearly 40 percent
of the students attending come from 75 foreign countries, many of them from
those that used to be under Soviet rule, and what they focus on in nearly all
their courses is democracy, not liberty. Assignments in these courses tend to
raise problems about implementing democratic governance and leave the issue of
how individual liberty should be secured as practically irrelevant. Or, to put
it more precisely, the liberty -- or human right -- that is of interest in most
of these courses is the liberty to take part in democratic decision-making.
(“Human rights” has come to refer in most of these course and their texts mainly
to the right to vote and to take part in the political process!)

Yes, of course, voting is a bit of genuine liberty that many of the people of
the world have never enjoyed, so for them it is a significant matter, to be
sure. But it is clearly not the liberty that the Declaration of Independence
mentions when it affirms that all of us are equal in having unalienable rights
to our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The Declaration speaks of a very
wide scope of individual liberty, while the premier public administration school
of America teaches, at least by implication, that the only liberty of any
importance is the liberty to take part in public policy determination.

This, I submit, is a travesty. Once democracy is treated as the premier public
value, with individual liberty cast to the side except as far as taking part in
democratic decision-making, the scope of government is no longer limited in
principle or practice. Nearly anything can become a public policy issue, so long
as some measure of democracy is involved in reaching decisions about it.

And that turns out to be a serious threat to democracy itself. Because when
democracy trumps liberty, democracy can destroy itself. The law could permit the
democratically reached destruction of democracy itself! That is just what
happened in the Weimar Republic, where a democratic election put Hitler in power
and destroyed democracy.

If you ever wonder why it is that public forums, including the Sunday TV
magazine programs, the op-ed pages of newspapers, the feature articles of
magazines do not discuss human liberty but fret mostly about democracy, this is
the reason: The major educational institutions tend not to care about liberty
and have substituted a very limited version of it, namely democracy as the
primary concern. Once that is accomplished, individual liberty becomes
defenseless.

Indeed, democracy is just as capable of being totalitarian as is a dictatorship,
only with democracy it seems less clearly unjust, given that this little bit of
liberty is still intact, namely to take part in the vote.

--
Tibor Machan is a professor of business ethics and Western Civilization at
Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and co-author of "A Primer on Business
Ethics." He advises Freedom Communications, parent company of this newspaper.
E-mail him at

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This and other amusing articles are collected into the following text:

_Neither Left Nor Right_
Tibor R. Machan
Hoover Institution Press Publication
(C) 2004

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...l/-/0817939822

"B. Lafferty" wrote:

"Tim Mullin" wrote in message
k.net...
(TritonRider) wrote in
:
I don't know if you're assertation that Michael Moore and the left hate
America is born of arrogence, ignorence, or maybe both. Dissent, and even
hatered are necessary parts of the democratic process.

Could it be that Michael Moore is doing what he's doing because he loves his
country and is deeply concerned about what is happening in it??

It could be. That fact alone does not diminish his errors.