Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Color me ‘Whacked in Waco’…again.
Thomas Jefferson…guns in the hands of citizens, and all that rot.
“Shorter” Is that Rich’s membrum virile or his brainload?
The man got his start as a television critic–then graduated to the OpEd page in the NYT. But Lex, I’m glad you read his drivel all the way so I didn’t have to. I did get far enough to discover that one guy was “milling” outside a rally. N.b to Rich–if you’re going to get your vapors up, remember that crowds “mill”–while individuals “lurk”.
Now Mike, you really need to show some compassion for your inferiors. It’s not Rich’s fault that he was so miseducated (malapropism intentional) in that liberal seminary he attended.
here’s a good takedown of Rich
http://reason.com/blog/show/135602.html
Courtesy is the grease that lubricates human interaction.
If no harm is done, and no laws broken, best to say nothing, or at a minimum, nothing rude, much less insulting.
IMHO.
At least the G-man has his finger off the trigger. And a nasty ‘stache that probably took him a couple o’ weeks. He is however, pointing his gun in the direction of the Elian… I wonder if he’d be willing to destroy the boy and his protector?
That armed agent was enforcing a court order against a mob of hotheads who claimed to have weapons and threatened to use them against anyone trying to return the boy to his father.
The agents had to take the hotheads at their word and assume they really were armed. Fortunately, they weren’t. No shots were fired and nobody was hurt.
Bravo, George. I didn’t agree with the decision to remove Elian, but I certainly didn’t expect them to go hat in hand to enforce the court’s order. Doing his job…
Prolly a better example would be Waco or Ruby Ridge…
Janet Reno and Bill Clinton still have a lot of ‘splainin to do…..
Domestic extremist groups hate groups, and terrorist groups have long existed here, at both extremes of the political spectrum domestically. They have waxed and waned for over a century.
But while the ’60′s were noted for the leftist Weather Underground bombings; the ’90s for leftist trade protests, and PETA’s 2000 protests, leftist groups are no longer front and center in violent extremism. Today it is the many extreme hate groups on the Right extreme that seem to have proliferated and pose a greater existential threat of violence.
The Pulitzer Prize winning, and inflammatory Elian Gonzalez photo depicted is not nearly as relevant today as it was nearly a decade ago. And any hint of disarming the Government while arming the general populace is ludicrous. It invites anarchy, revolution, and smells of treason.
Far out extremist groups have recently began to strengthen and proliferate. They can, under our Constitution, as long as they break no laws. But bitterness, angst, fear, and hate are pushing many of us to a tipping point. Furthermore, too many people revel in throwing fuel on the fire.
Our current social and political landscape is a tinderbox. And we have too many people tossing matches here and there indiscriminately.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9236/
Haha, what website did you copy that off of?
Oh Flit,
Take the trouble to offer a wee bit of proof before you wee wee all over the place about domestic right wing hate groups proliferating here in the US. You know: NAME ONE GROUP of those who support the Bill of Rights that has killed anybody or burned down anything.
Who exactly does all that extrajudicial killing (not counting the Reno Justice Department?), or peaceful islamic dudes out to slaughter the unrighteous, apostates and pretty girls? Please don’t say McVey since he pretty much acted alone. Come on Flit, name the killing groups you think are on the right and match the killing spree of the Manson Family, Weatherunderground, SLA, Black Panthers, Communist Party, NAZIs….etc. I know, you’re one of those losers that think the NAZIs were right wing because they were SOCIALISTS. I never did follow that line of reasoning.
You claimed that there were “many extreme hate groups on the Right extreme.” Name them and enumerate them. Do me a favor and don’t say Klan since the only klansman I know is the senior democrat senator from West Virginia. Try to show us something real for a change. When you go full bore and enumerate them why don’t you just list the number of people they have killed over the last 50 years. I’m bound to counter with the wholesale genocides of the Left.
Service to the State!
So who are these right wing violent extremist groups? When was the last time they planted a bomb at the capitol? I don’t recall ever hearing of a right wing extremist group rioting in the streets, destroying businesses and burning cars.
I read the news everyday, nearly all day, I don’t recall any armed assault by a right wing extremist group.
Yea, fruitcakes like McVey are around but,unlike Ayres, did not act as part of a larger group.
The left wing groups are still around, they are simply supported by “the system”. Maybe that’s why there is so much talk about these elusive right wing groups….
George
I’m not sure what you mean. A family lost a law suit they pursued all the way to the end in our judicial system and in return our government sent in a SWAT Team. Gosh, you’d think the fools had been suspected of dealing in marijuana.
Ever ask yourself why and how we send in a deputy to dispossess a family of its home under an eviction notice without requiring machine guns, body armor, goggles, helmets and all the rest of that crap? It’s called the rule of law and almost all who live in America respect it….but I’m beginning to suspect that the Fed has decided to suspend it; for the good of the people you understand.
I mean that the photo shouldn’t be used as an example of excessive govt. force used against unarmed citizens. This is ALL about “the rule of law.” The family and govt. rightly pursued the case through the courts, but when the family lost, they and their supporters repeatedly refused to surrender the boy to be sent back to his Dad.
TV and newspaper stories down here in South Florida were loaded with quotes from people camped out around the family’s house bragging that there would be a bloodbath if the govt. tried to send the boy home. That’s why the agents showed up with big guns and body armor. Would you have been happier if they instead sent in Barney Fife with one bullet at noon and let the lawbreakers attack him while he was trying to enforce the “rule of law?”
GEORGE P./
They didn’t need a swat team, they should have done it Texas Rangers style, (the law enforcement types, not the baseball “Rangers”) you know the story/legend about a single Ranger showing up at the request of the City Fathers for the assistance of the Rangers to quell a civil disturbance and when only a single Ranger showed up and they asked why, “where are the rest of you?” the Ranger answered simply: “One riot, one Ranger.”
On a more serious note, however, what that case I think represented, George, is a fundamental loss of respect for the legitimacy of the actions of the Federal government which we are also seeing playing out today over the Health-Care debate as represented by the Townhall meetings. Just as the Obama administration and a Congress totally controlled by the Democrats are trying to shove a bill down the throats of the American people and seize control of a large part of the pvt economy before anyone has time to read the bill–and slime, intimidate and threaten anyone who objects–Janet Reno’s Justice Dept and the Clinton Admin. played fast and loose with both the Constitution, Federal statutes and Judicial findings to contort the legal system all out of recognition for strictly ideological reasons–and large parts of the public saw thru the charade. Hence the outrage and strong feelings then and now.
This whole question of the ultimate legitimacy of the Federal government in terms of it’s never-ending expansion of the ambit of the federal reach into our private lives has been growing for a very long time–simmering before now, but rapidly coming to a boil. First principles are involved here in terms of the very relationship of the citizen to his government and the limits the 10th amendment places upon ability of the Federal government to expand it’s powers. There are very real questions, for example, as to whether or not ALL the Health-Care proposals now under consideration are ultimately constitutional. The reaction to the Elian decision by Reno’s JD may be viewed as the reaction by people frustrated with what they viewed (correctly imho) as the gaming of the system for political/ideological means by an out-of-control Justice Dept and the perversion of the Federal Govt and the court system in a heavy-handed attempt to remove an obstacle to the ideologically-driven desire by the Clinton Administration to curry favor with Castro.
The bottom line? The Elian affair should be viewed in context with the Waco and Ruby Ridge debacles as the beginnings of a growing realization by the general public that our Government is out of control, and that the slightest side-walk zoning dispute in the smallest hamlet in America is no longer beyond the purview of the central government; that State and local governments often count for nothing.
THAT is what is at stake here–questions and concern over the very bedrock foundations of our Constitutional system concerning the relative relationships of the Federal, State, and local actors. The very concept of both Federalism, the central precepts of the Constitution and the theory of man’s relationship to his government have been opened up for fierce debate as played out in the consideration of the Health-care legislation.
George,
You present a false dichotomy. Had they sent in Barney (with Andy for backup, of course), the outcome would have been exactly the same since no resistance was offered. I’ve made many warrant arrests myself dressed in LAPD blue (that’s the color, not the department I worked for) with nothing more than a 9mm on my hip. The objection that I and many others have is the presumption of violence on the part of the government. Going in with shock troops, flashbangs, Kevlar helmets and MP-5s sets a tone, and that tone is NOT the sound of a free republic.
The “tone” in this case was set by hotheads in and around the family home promising violence if agents tried to enforce a court order. The agents didn’t “presume violence,” the folks around that home openly threatened it on TV! Wouldn’t the agents be negligent if they didn’t take those folks at their word and prepare for the worst?
Don’t most big police agencies have SWAT teams, rather than street cops, make arrests or serve warrants when violence is expected or feared? Folks who might take a shot at a street cop are less likely to resist an intimidating SWAT team and thus no cops, or criminals, end up hurt. Isn’t that what happened here?
George is right! You see it all the time on TV!! Just look at CSI, CSI New York, CSI Miami, CSI Duluth, CSI St. Louis, CSI Bugtussel, MO, and The Closer, and Criminal Minds, and The Mentalist, and whatever that show is with the psychic (whose visions are seemingly admissible in court), and–well, you get the drift. Bad people are always really, really bad–and good people are really, really good and never make mistakes.
But when it comes to presumption of violence, all too often we see (or perceive) violence, or the threat of violence, being perpetrated upon private citizens by our own government.
While I may question the wisdom of bringing guns to a political event, especially one attended by the president, the law allows for it. Even the Secret Service knew these people were there, who they were and where they were at all times. I read something somewhere last week that said that anyplace the president appears is considered federal property and subject to federal law – meaning these people – these “far right fanatics” – wouldn’t be allowed to carry the gun in at all.
In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, he was part of a House contingent that helped delay and soften an antiterrorism bill.
I find it interesting that Rich focuses on the actions of Coburn with the perfect 20/20 vision that hindsight always provides us. He may be better served turning his attention to something a little more current:
Obama’s initial response after 9/11/01:
I must also hope that we as a nation draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy. Certain immediate lessons are clear, and we must act upon those lessons decisively. … We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers…
Or how about the words of Obama’s pastor of 20 years about the events of 9/11/01
We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
Or this gem:
In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.
Mr. Rich may want to examine the speeches of the current occupant of the White House – they could be easily obtained from the Queen of England. He could also take a look at Obama’s voting record…if there was one.
George is really screwball here, sorry to say. INS had no business acting the way they did. It was simply the idiotic way FedGov “law enforcement” was acting during the Clinton misrule. Most of them became a bunch SEAL wannabes that shouldn’t have been anywhere near and automatic weapon (ATF comes immediately to mind, and has set the example for many years). That picture probably cost Gore Florida (and don’t even start Flit. Even your own lamestream media has admitted Gore lost fair and square. The left steals elections and has admitted it in so many words for years).
Frankly, had I been serious about Elian not going back to Fidel’s beach club, he would have been anywhere except south Florida. I always wondered about that.