That damn-fool yankee politician, Daniel Webster said it worst, "My country, right or wrong...".

But I did not read Hatteras as that jingoistic. Notice he said he'd believe our guys over some furriner. What's wrong with that? We elected our hack. Why would I want to believe somebody else's hack?

...uh, because they might be right?

More likely that being right is that his opinion is in closer agreement with yours.

But the point is that the assumption is that all politicians use facts to persuade you to their version of 'truth'. I find the intentions and 'colorations' of my politicans more transparent than I do the various motivations of some foreign leader who's perspective is colored by his need to placate his voters.

I hate having to depend on telepathy and decoder rings.

Case and point, the Frog's decision to oppose ending the inspections regime in Iraq, and invading that formerly sovereign nation. As you've pointed out, they may have had some ulterior motives underlying their opposition to the policy, yet in hindsight, they were "right" to stake out that position, as the policy of containment has been clearly proven to have worked--even if only too well for some French contractors. Cynical, yet correct nonetheless.

I opposed that policy on moral and common sense grounds, and the Frogs may have too...or maybe it really was just a cynical ploy to protect a lucrative racket...but still, it was the "right" decision.

Whatever "position" they want to take, I promise to agree with it, and support them 100%. :sperm:

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
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1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

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Time-out:

The Kool-Aid thing is wearing a bit thin, fellas. OK, we all get the joke....It was very funny....8 months ago.

I don't insult your intelligence by saying stupid things like "liberals are anti-American" and other such rubbish that you often hear, so please return the respect, and lay off the annoying Kool-Aid bit.
__________________________________

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

It's not about "black and white" being the only possibilities.

It's about the hypocrisy I see and hear from so many of those people. There's a few million people out there who are SO quick to cry "no war for oil!", yet they know nothing of where our oil really comes from, how many aspects of our lives really depend on it, how many products are made from it, how many services depend on it, and they also do NOTHING to reduce their own consumption, nothing to reduce our economic dependency on it....

There's a lot of self-righteousness concerning this issue, but not a lot of self-analysis. Not a lot of action.

And many of them are also the same people who are against producing more of our OWN oil, and they are against developing viable alternatives like nuclear and biodiesel....

Thus, my "put your money where your mouth is" rant.

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

A classless society has never existed on this planet, so who knows.

We become more regimented as each day goes by. We have a political elite, which a person cannot join unless he can gain the blessings of the Corporations, and we have a highly propagandized military elite, which has a 10 to 1 registration advantage to The Party. Even the Wehrmacht did not reach that level. We also have the rich who continously acquire more and more assets for themselves and the corporations they control as they form the basic financial power structure of The Party, along with a shrinking yet supportive of The Party middle class, and then an enormous gulf between the middle class and the slave class, the class growing by leaps and bounds as The Party schemes to bring more and more of them into the United States.


Free enterprise is going away in this country. The backbone of the American democratic society, the small businessman, is being eliminated in this country by the Corporations. The laws are being rigged so it becomes more and more difficult every day to start and operate a small business.

A subsidy corporation is one that acts as an indepentdent unit but is actually owned and controlled by another corporation.

Mass communication that never existed in their days has revolutionized the practice.

Funny, thats the kind of stuff the Germans said. Here are some quotes from actual people, collected after the war:

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret, to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand because of nationality security, so dangerous that even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him may have incidentally have reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. Their trust in him made it easier to reassure others who might have worried about it. ‘’This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real crises and reforms too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of the Government growing remoter and remoter .” (TheyThought they Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945; by Milton Mayer; copyright 1955 [SC]; University of Chicago Press; ISBN 0-226-51190-1; pp. 166-167.)

“ ‘The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was, above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?” (Ibid.; pp. 167-168.)

“ ‘To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.’” (Ibid.; p. 168.)

“ ‘How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated extraordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn’t, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.’” (Idem.)


“ ‘Your Little Men, your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke too modestly of himself) and said that when the Nazis attacked the communists he was a little uneasy but, after all he was not a communist, and so he did nothing and then the schools, the press, the Jews , and so on, and he was always uneasier but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something, but then it was too late. “Yes I said” (Ibid.; pp.168-169.)

“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me this is true. Each act, each shocking occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for that one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?--Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.” (Ibid.; p. 169.)

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy one hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences. In Germany, outside the great cities perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in you own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or you’re an alarmist.” (Idem.)

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end and how do you know or even surmise the end? On the one hand your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally people who have always thought as you have.” (Ibid.; p. 169-170.)


“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them all rush in upon you the burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jew swine’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people –is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed, because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility, even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.” (Ibid.; p.171.)

“Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing).” (Ibid.; pp. 171-172) This

Thanks for the wonderful quotes. If I only knew the Bible, I'd give you some of those and we could argue by quote-hurling.

Concerning classelessness as unregimented, wow. There is nothing less diverse than unbroken sameness. We can all wear our cute litle Mao outfits. I now understand that you believe egalitarianism is more important than freedom.

My perception is that there are more, not less small companies than major corporations. But I guess that depends awfully on how one defines 'small' and how one censuses. Where is the largest aggregate profit? I don't know. I'd be interested in seeing a histogram of profit distribution in which company size would be the bins and dollars would be the abscissa. I haven't ever seen anything like that, but I'm sure its out there. I don't pay a lot of atention to business stats. Botanist.

I see us a less, not more regimented than at any time in our history. With the demise of the 'melting pot' and nearly open borders, the normative influence of the majority population is waning. I think we're on a trajectory of Balkanization, the blue/red map is an early indication.

How can free enterprise exist in either a regimented or classless society?

For that matter, how can freedom exist in either a regimented or classless society?

Kirk,

Living in Germany (Munich) in the late 1950's and through the 1960's you could see the genuine remorse of a very capable, proud, intellectually powerful people for having let "it" happen. They took to cleaning up the war rubble essentially by hand in Munich for the first decade or so after the war while asking themselves how they let "it" happen. They took 4th grade school kids on field trips to Dachau to see the facility and full size photos of the "operation" in full swing at the time. You do not forget that easily, and the Germans we knew were clear they understood it was their duty to themselves to never forget, or let their kids ever forget.

Americans were genuinely welcome there for having ended "it" for them and enabled a return to a free and vital role in the world.

When Krauts tell you to beware, or tell you how they were duped, it is time to listen. Especially the older ones who know of what they speak, and those in the next generation who were confronted with the horror of what can happen if you let "it" happen on a daily basis. When I go back to Germany and visit old friends we talk about how alarmed they are that we, the ones that freed them and saved Europe, are now turning color in front of them and refuse to see it happening. I have told them by being polite and accomodating they will let "it" happen again.

Our reaction, to make them out to be corrupt, self-serving villians when they do question us has set them back a bit. They do depend on us for a great deal still; their national identity remains steeped in their allegiance to America for ending the Nazi era and helping them to their feet after they were crushed and broken. They are behaving much more cautiously with us than many Americans understand. They would not tolerate similar behavior from France, Italy or England anywhere as politely as they have with the USA. But they need to be more explicit about their concerns. And we need to learn not to respond defensively to every word we hear that is not lauding us profusely for our just plain greatness. We have become a bully. The transition from virtual angel to bully has accelerated, and we need to take stock. 9/11 was an evil event. If we lose our identity, it is far worse than the toll in lives that were taken. Jim

__________________
Own:
1986 Euro 190E 2.3-16 (291,000 miles),
1998 E300D TurboDiesel, 231,000 miles -purchased with 45,000,
1988 300E 5-speed 252,000 miles,
1983 240D 4-speed, purchased w/136,000, now with 222,000 miles.
2009 ML320CDI Bluetec, 89,000 miles

Owned:
1971 220D (250,000 miles plus, sold to father-in-law),
1975 240D (245,000 miles - died of body rot),
1991 350SD (176,560 miles, weakest Benz I have owned),
1999 C230 Sport (45,400 miles),
1982 240D (321,000 miles, put to sleep)

This coming from a country (germany) that thought their own self serving interests (circumventing sanctions by selling weapons etc, and taking bribes from Saddam) were more important than controlling a madman tyrant (Saddam).......seems to me like they were embracing him a lot like they embraced Hitler. They knew he was not a great guy but they supported him to further their own self interests.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
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Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

It seems easy for you to judge Germany for dealing with Saddam, but that's what the US did as well. Pot calling the kettle black? Hypocritical? Where were you when Saddam was gassing Iranians and Kurds? I know where Don Rumsfeld was -- shaking Saddam's hand.

__________________
'83 240D with 617.952 and 2.88
'01 VW Beetle TDI
'05 Jeep Liberty CRD
'89 Toyota 4x4, needs 2L-T
'78 280Z with L28ET - 12.86@110
Oil Burner Kartel #35

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...oD/bioclip.jpg

So who was dealing with Saddam outside the allowed sanctions since '92?

Thats when the Oil for food Scam took place.

back during the Iraq/Iran war Sadam was the lesser of two evils.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Talk about moral relativism. Saddam was less evil than Ayotollah Khomeni, so let's supply him with chemical weapons technology.

__________________
'83 240D with 617.952 and 2.88
'01 VW Beetle TDI
'05 Jeep Liberty CRD
'89 Toyota 4x4, needs 2L-T
'78 280Z with L28ET - 12.86@110
Oil Burner Kartel #35

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...oD/bioclip.jpg

hey....its politics right........

Remember that wasn't long after the Persian bastards held a LOT of our hostages for over a year....................they had payback coming.....

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Dude, drive down the street. Take a look around. Who owns the most hard assets that you see? Who owns the big real estate with multi-million dollar stores sitting on them, and the gas stations at every corner? How many small businesses, in the common use of the word, do you think it would take to equal Microsoft's 60 billion dollar profit? do ypu haver any idea how much real estate the major railroads own? Do you have an inkling of how much of Texas that Temple-Inland Timber owns? Or how much of upper North is owned by International Paper? Or how much of Cascadia is owned by Weyerhauser? Get real.

On more, rather then less small companies, perhaps you don't get out much and see the utter destruction of the small shop keeper by Walmart, turning most of downtown small America into ghost towns.

I believe you misconstrue the use of the word "regimented". It's not meant to mean people in Mao jackets lining up in ranks. Get a copy of "1984".