The US Constitution is a document written to forge a brand new government by some of the most learned men of their generation, based upon their colected centuries of reading and analysis and study of old governmental systems, thinkers, and political writers.
It was never meant to be a declaration of who is good and who is not, who is put in and who is left out. at the time, and this is a horrid thought but it is true, white folks considered anyone not white to be beneath them, not in class or status, but in SPECIES. it was the accepted religiouscentric view.
obviously to us that is a backwards and ridiculous stance to take, but it was what it was. the US constitution allowed for changes to itself which would express the ongoing changes in society. that is genius.
think about how impossible it was for a people to change the laws of their country before that. the magna carta took countless lives to accomplish and it was just a small step.

I just get so turned off by its authors, that I would prefer we threw it out and started fresh.. at the least, I abhor the concept of "lets look at what the founding fathers/authors intended" because we already know they had no intentions of do what was said, that their document while sounding nice, was strictly rhetorical.


very good point.. my bias is that I am so offended by the hypocrisy that I am blinded to the substance of the words themselves, but you have indeed made the best point on this thread ;)

for real, every tyranical government in south and central america was supported and pretty much installed by the USA, plus Saddam Hussein was America's boy for a while in the 80s till he decided to bite the hand that fed him.

I can hardly differentiate left wing and right wing politicians.

I just watched a documentary on Mussolini: he started as a socialist, but didn't succeed as such, so he turned right wing/fascist.
A modern guy, I say.

yes, yes yes.

that is what I meant, but it sounds better if you drop the Garcia

In a way that encapsulates elements of my original question. The twentieth century was marked by a conflict between the extreme Right and the extreme Left. Since the fall of the wall though, and especially since 9/11, the Left seems to have lost any real political profile, with the Right's greatest critics now coming not from the Left (at least not in any kind of visible way) but from a hyper conversative strain of Islam. This doesn't just question the modern-day validity of the Left but also liberalism, and especially the kind of Left-Liberalism which seems so incapable of forming a coherent position with regards the conflict in the Middle East.

I hate the left as much as I hate the right. No matter how you look at it, it will always be about money. That is the only thing politicians are really concerned with.

You should read ian svenonius's essay about the fall of the soviet union (and the left as a visible presence in world politics) coinciding with the rise in consumption of anti-depressents

we wants the moneys Lebowski

Yeah, I think ni'k mentioned that in another thread. It sounds really interesting. Is it in his book, The Psychic Soviet? That's all I can find on Amazon that's been written by him.

yeah its in the psychic soviet

Thanks! I'll order it off amazon.

Would you please explain what's Right and Left?
For example, Nazi means national SOCIALISM (ie left wing), but they're labeled as ultra-right by History.
That's mix up!

Yeah, I'm sure there's a reason why they adopted that name but, considering how many people the Nazi Party exterminated solely on the grounds of their Leftist sympathies, it does seem very odd.

EDIT: I just looked it up and it seems that the Nazi's opposed any non-national brand of politics, regardless of whether it was of the Left or the Right. I'm assuming that they opposed Soviet Communism because of its underlying 'internationalism'. Furthermore, according to this site the word was used "to appeal to German workers for political support during the tentative early years of Hitler's ascent to power. Apart from the occasional use of empty pro-worker political rhetoric, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party had no inclination towards true socialism."

Edit 2: In terms of a difference between the Left and the Right, I've always assumed that the Right places a far great emphasis on the rights of the individual and as such believes in the idea of minimising government controls (except those involving the military and the police) while the Left has tended towards more community based policies with a far greater belief in 'bigger' government. When either of these become dictatorships though, the boundaries seem to blur a lot more. As seems to be the case when either tendency morphs into things like Anarchism or Libertarianism.

aka The Best Book of The 21st Century

http://dailynietzsche.blogspot.com/2...socialism.html

473

Socialism with regard to its means.— Socialism is the fanciful younger brother of the almost expired despotism whose heir it wants to be—its endeavors are thus in the profoundest sense reactionary; for it desires and abundance of state power such as only despotism has ever had. Indeed, it outbids all the despotisms of the past inasmuch as it expressly aspires to the annihilation of the individual, who appears to it like an unauthorized luxury of nature destined to be improved into a useful organ of the community. On account of its close relationship to them it always appears in the proximity of all excessive deployments of power, as the typical old socialist Plato did at the court of the Sicilian tyrant—it desires, and sometimes promotes, the Caesarian despotic state of the present century because, as aforesaid, it would like to be its heir.
But even this inheritance would be inadequate to its purposes: it requires a more complete subservience of the citizen to the absolute state than has ever existed before; and since it can no longer even count on the ancient religious piety towards the state, it has [1] involuntarily to work ceaselessly for its abolition—that is, [2] it works for the abolition of all existing states. Socialism itself can hope to exist only for brief periods here and there, and then only through the exercise of the extremest terrorism. For this reason, it is secretly preparing itself for rule through fear and is driving the word "justice" into the heads of the half-educated masses like a nail so as to rob them of their reason—after this said reason has already greatly suffered from exposure to their half-education—and to create in them a good conscience for the evil game they are to play.
Socialism can serve to teach—in a truly brutal and impressive fashion—what danger there lies in all accumulations of state power, and to that extent to implant mistrust of the state itself. When its harsh voice takes up the watchword "as much state as possible," it thereby at first sounds noisier than ever; but soon the opposite cry comes through with all the greater force: "as little state as possible."


480

Envy and indolence in different directions.— The two opposing parties—the socialist and the nationalist (whatever their names may be in the various countries of Europe)—are worthy of one another: envy and laziness are the moving forces in both of them. In the former camp they want to work as little as possible with their hands. In the latter as little as possible with their heads; in the latter they hate and envy the prominent, self-evolved individuals unwilling to let themselves be enlisted in the ranks for the production of mass effect; in the former the better, outwardly more favoured caste of society whose real task—the production of the supreme cultural values—makes their inner life so much harder and more painful. If, to be sure, the nationalists should succeed in imposing the spirit of the mass effect upon the higher classes of society, then the socialist hordes would be quite justified in seeking to level them with themselves also outwardly, since they would already be level with one another in head and heart. Live as higher men and perform perpetually the deeds of higher culture—to this all that lives admits your right, and the order of society whose summit you are will be proof against every evil eye and evil claw!

jeezus i lost track of this fucking mess, not sure i wanna spend the time answering.

ps-



except for this! :cool:

speaking of politricks, i'm waiting for obama to appear...


http://mybarackobama.com/page/content/ofaconversation

i thought it would be video, all i see is chat ... hmfffff....

im waiting for opponents of the iraq war to explain what they think would have happened if the war hadnt happend. But yknow, you can always rely on comfortable people to throw around conspiracy theories before they speak to the reality of provincialism

As for the antidepressants thing, theres a whole literature on that and the antipsychiatry movement that implies nothing with regard to the war in iraq. But hey, people like to masturbate over being rebellious, especially if they dont have to face up to the consequences.

a lot more iraqis would still be alive? the middle east would be more stable?

Saddam would still be torturing Iraqis and owning a country he had no claim to?
When he died or abdicated his two sons would have been involved in a power struggle? I hope i dont need to tell anyone about the kinds of people Uday and Qusay Hussain were.
Irans proxies would have become directly involved in the politics of the selction of a new dictator?
Turkey would have taken action against the Kurds (who by the by, never get listened to on this issue)?
The young people or Iran (50% of the population) would not feel that we support their struggle for a true democracy? This is not a central point, but a vital one nonetheless.

Most importantly, Saddam was not going to comply, we should have got rid of him in 1990 but we didnt. The fact the US was complicit in Saddams coming to power is not an arguement against removing him. Speak to some Iraqis about this, when i did their experiences made me shut the fuck up

Yes! Well put and good arguments.

1. the country would most likely be stable presently because he ruled with an iron fist.
2. the crazier one would've killed the less crazy one.
3.who the fuck cares? besides iraqis of course
4. saddam fucked up the kurds too.
5. hahahahahaha
6. oh? lets just remove every dictator, THAT WON'T TAKE FOREVER...

If that happened eventually we'd have to remove ourselves.

You're Gordon Brown? I don't think you should be so hard on yourself, you're not a dictator!

1. Honestly, say something like that to the face of a Kurdish person. See if you have the balls
2. True, then we have the crazier one in charge, at least try and imagine that situation.
3. Evidently not you
4. Some insight on your part, good to know youre trying at least
5. Yeah, fuck the Iranians, ha ha fucking ha.
6. The existence of one fascistic regime isnt an arguement against the removal of another. It has to be dealt with case by case, sometimes its do-able by supporting the democratic elements in that country, and sometimes that infrastructure doesnt exist.

im laughing at you, not with you

there'd be a million Iraqi's still alive, not dead. There would be 4,000 of America's best still alive. We would have many hundred billion dollars that could be spent in the USA on US citizens instead of thrown away into the security-industrial complex and "rebuilding" one foreign country after another. Iraq wouldn't be a toxic waste site coated with Depleted Uranium.

its not too complicated.

ya dont have to wait

just read a book dumbass

or im sure there must be a wilipedia entry on the subject

shortly after the first war, my parents moved to Kuwait.

they bought me a book full of Iraqi torture devices used on Kuwaiti citizens.

gruesome isn't a severe enough word. hell on earth, being three words, might do the trick.

when are a people worth saving, dear blue hearts?



"at least yr alive", says the torturer as he hooks yr nipples up to the car battery. "too bad yr children aren't". he spits and pulls the switch.

you spoke to the ones that are alive.
let's ask the dead ones.

sorry, i was laughing at the prospect of democracy in general. the iranians are cool.

iranian chick are HOT

yes.. all this news in Iran has been making me want to go there and pick up on some of these absolutely gorgeous young women! Persian chicks here in Los Angeles are not that beautiful, they set the wrong image about Iranians.. bring on more sexy protesters! ;)


Saddam would have died an old, weak dictator in a country with moderate sectarian violence, as opposed being hung in outrage while thousands more Iraqis died (and continue to die) in the streets daily to EXTREME sectarian violence and millions of other Iraqis were chased out of Iraq going as far afield as Norway :(


Don't be so naive.. if we expect the Iraqis to fend for themselves and build their own country today, surely they would have been inevitably able to do the same thing SANS the invasion. Couldn't we have supported an indigenous, legitimate insurgency movement against Saddam rather than directly provoking an insurgency against our own American coalition? Iraqis hate America MUCH worse than Saddam, they probably could have chased that duppy away all are their own with out the paternalistic help of that bad Uncle Sam who borrows to much money and gets drunk and makes an ass of himself at all the holiday parties (like Ramadan ;) )


Plain and simple, WE FUCKED UP! Saddam was not a threat to the world, he was NOT a threat to the US, he was not a threat to Israel. He was LESS a threat to the Iraqi population at large than the past years of war have been, I say we picked the worse of two evils with this war..

The biggest threat to Israel is not Iraq or Iran, it is ISRAEL making silly and dangerous political moves in the region like laying medieval siege on Gaza or threatening to bomb Iran all the damned time, let alone the secret operations they are conducting through out the area..

We as a country continue to make the same kinds of arrogant and dangerous mistakes internationally, as we wage war against innocents, as we blow shit up illegally in sovereign nations, as we pretend that everybody likes us regardless of all this clearly bad kharma..

one day it will surely be time to pay the piper and these dudes holding the bill look real fucking serious my brother

this is true

yeah all you americans are going to be slaughtered by katana weilding terrorists as you hide in the abandoned mcdonalds cowering in the corner slurping coke straight from the machine crying your fat asses off "oh why didnt we listen to nik and join al qaeda, the winning team!"

you should be careful with that statement there ni'k... the NSC super computers tend to frown upon such phraseology ;)

remember this guy?

fuck that, those guys are pussys. cia, nsa, fbi, homeland security... pssh, whatevs. those sensitive little elderflowers wont do shit, they'll just mince around in their frocks until their flower arranging class starts. fragile little pussywillows.