perfidy

I was referring to the anti war protestors. You explicitly deny that you protest. Therefore my attack on filthy hippies does not apply to you. I think that if we got back to the ideals of 1776 and 1787 and 1865, we'd be a lot better off. For one thing, it would mean that we'd jettisoned all the bonehead Marxist economics that are provably unworkable. And postmodernism would be gone. But, it would mean that we could keep the cool computers and rockets and stuff. 

I never said that our course of action was historically inevitable. Justifiable in terms of a pursuit of liberty or justice, but not inevitable. One important thing to remember, that many don't, is that liberty applies to individuals, not nations. Saddam denies liberty to his subjects. The Iraqi government does not have any right of liberty, that we can never interfere. I don't think that this war is outside the "American Way of Doing Things" - we used similar justifications for the Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. 

And yes, your fashion sense is empeccable. You're right, "To Hitler" should be a verb. 

On Trees: thank you very much. I should hope to be in that company. But, speaking of that tree, and of the value of sacrifice, I was moved to think this: (Mike can correct me on the details) The Marxist formulation of value is that only things that labor is the only source of value. Or something close to that. If you work, that produces value, no matter what it was. It seems to ignore a lot of things that truly have value, like liberty, that we should be ready to sacrifice for. Lives are worth that. Both ours, and the enemy's. 

Mike avoided calling a Bush a Hitler, but only by doing it to Cheney and Rumsfeld. Sheesh. Saddam hitlered the Baath party, then hitlered the Iraqi people, then hitlered Kuwait. He may have Goeringed, in both senses, but I'm not sure. But I would argue that he is getting Churchilled right now, just like Hitler did. (More properly Roosevelted, I guess, but I like the sound of Churchilled better.) 

Mike, Federalism nowadays is not exactly like the party platform of our first two presidents. It is a euphemism for states rights (sullied by the unfortunate association with slavery, Jim Crow, etc.) with a bit of limited governmentism. You can be a hardcore modern Federalist without accepting any of those ideas - in fact, some of them are rather incompatible with modern federalism. However, #3 is a bit overstated, #4 is backwards, and Hamilton never aimed at Burr, so we never got to find out how dangerous dueling with a Federalist is. 

Johno, the rest of federalism is rendered silly? I should beat you over the head with my annotated Federalist papers. 

Hundreds Slaughtered: The only people around this sad little planet ending things like that over the last fifty years has been the United States. Too bad we couldn't help everyone. The UN is a useless sack of shit. 

The Rave act falls under the same category as Patriot II. Biden is also a useless sack of shit. 

We got 82% of Den Beste's average monthly output? Not bad at all, considering we all have jobs. 

Taliban and Afghanistan - it's a problem, but I think that they are a leetle too backward to easily make the jump to a sane government. Afghanistan has always been more of a geographical abstraction than a nation. Hopefully, though, we can get some more assistance to them. 

To Buckethead, on space exploration - perhaps I could have saved everyone some time and said that it's expensive, and the only way that will change is if it becomes less expensive. 

To Mike on cultural differences: this may all be true, but when a Marine hears someone say, "Allah bless George Bush," it probably means he's happy to see the Marine. 

To Johno on Jeffersonbait: The reason was that, despite posting some rather lengthy pieces, I haven't actually read the page for over a week.