MtnGoat

I think it depends on which scale you use. Most I've seen label anarchy as extreme right and totalitarianism as extreme left. The farther you go left, the more control over all aspects of society is assumed to belong to the state. IMO this places all of us to the right of Omar and bin Ladin, since they desire total subservience of personal life, state law, and buisness to Islamic rules. Wether or not they desire religious rule, to agnostic or humanistic reasons for totalitarianism, they share the goal of total control and the idea that all spheres of life must be regulated by the state with say, the fascists of Europe in the 30s and early 40's, not to mention Marxist ideologies.

That's exactly what I am saying. Believing in socialism does not make it not socialism, no matter how many people do it, and believing in capitalism does not make it not capitalism, no matter how many people do it. Left and right (to me anyway) are defined by the characteristics of the systems themselves, related to a set of ideas and morals which do not change, while the number of people adhering to them may. What your position is as a "moderate" may change as people go one way or another, but on the scale between the actual fixed differences in philosophies, your position is not relative to numbers. Gowans list includes many if not most tenets of a left to far left ideology. Why someone would be upset at recognizing this, I don't understand. If your beliefs are what they are, why not admit it and stand up for them?

What, debating back and forth with them isn't engaging those people? What fulfills "engagement" if discussing points back and forth doesn't count? Seems to me what your asking for is agreement, not engagement. It strikes me as similar to the cries that no one is listening to war dissenters, when one couldn't help but listen, but listening does not necessarily manifest itself as agreement. Seems to me the ideas tossed out in opposition are at least as old as anything else offered up here. Do ideas lose validity because they're old? Nope. Only the content matters and if the content can be beaten, then that's what invalidates the idea, not it's age. I don't remember anyone saying we shouldn't cooperate with nations that won't hop to, but I did say we shouldn't consider "cooperation" to be one sided, where we pay and pay and the nation getting the cash does not aid us in supporting our position. Cooperation means both sides do something for each other, not one side pays and the other just does what it wants anyway. This "mild set of ideas" has more in common with the far left than it doesn't. How many agree with it hardly save it from having properties and ideas espoused by the far left. If half of Americans actually agree with this list, all it shows is how many are closer to being far left than not, not that the ideas don't have a lot in common with the far left.

Can you show US law for the requirements for Iraq to pay tribute, for Iraq to permanently have a US governor of it's territory, and other such attributes of imperial control? The UN needed more time after 12 years, refuses to act on a resolution passed only months before, and you're asking me why I say they're ineffective?

ineffective relevant to their functionality, that's what. From Rwanda to Srebrenica, Sierra Leone, and anyplace else they go, the UN is either backed by the US to provide some semblance of functionality or it gets it's ass wiped. When your deployed "peacekeepers" stand by as civilians are slaughtered instead of getting in there and fighting back, when they're nearly overrun and captured by ragtag rebels (Sierra Leone), when they're indicted in sex trafficking (Balkans), that's not real great evidence of effectiveness. UN forces have one of the worst records of any supposedly coherent fighting forces. You mean Iraq will be a colony? Nothing happens overnight. It will probably take years to get the situation stable.

Gee, what percentage is being made by people crying big fat tears about who posts? Seems pretty high. Even my opponents j_b and J Gowans more or less stick to content instead of whining about who posts.

If they insist a body as ineffective in peacekeeping as the UN take these roles, yup, a mob.

"What do you call thousands of people getting turned away from the polls or restricted from voting because of felonies they supposedly committed in the state of Texas (!), despite the fact that they did no such thing?" I call it BS on the first instance (if you're talking about Florida) , and a resolvable problem in the second. Whatever irregularities occur, be they intentional (and illegal) or unintentional, the fact is no law resident on the books says an legal citizen who is not a felon may not vote. You mean like Al Gore trying to get the state of florida to change the rules for an election after the fact, and getting slapped down by the supreme court? Or demanding "all votes" be counted, "all the votes" meaning the only certain counties and only certain constituencies, and oh yes, lets count overvotes (and use ESP too?) That kind of manipulation?

I'm merely stating a reality. The "minority" running things is only because many of those eligible to vote choose not to do so. If all legally eligible choose to vote, or not to, that's their buisness, but the outcome will not be 100% voting in any case and those who can vote but don't are excercising their right to choose to allow someone else to have a say for them. By the time you take slice of the entire population eligible to vote, then take a slice of that who decide to vote, then take a slice of that who are on the winning side, of course it's not that many people. But it's not due to coercion to not vote. I'd bet that if you look at the percentage of people in any western democracy who actually support the winning candidates, out of the population as a whole, it's a non majority. Having an actual majority run things doesn't seem real likely anywhere. All you can do is make sure the voting is open to all eligible.

Since your definition of "democratic" often seems to basically be nothing more than mob rule without any basis in principle, I'd have to agree. If you however agree on holding some values higher than what a mob wants, then we probably share more in common than you expect. What a bunch of people want must be tested against what it is right to let them do in the first place. For an example of this, no matter how many people vote yes, it's not OK to hold slaves. Is this anti democratic, or merely holding certain values above those of what lots of people might vote is OK? Now what in any of what I've posted here indicates I care wether or not you think I'm callous? Why should anyone want innocents killed by old mines or ordnance?

You misconstrue my past arguments in light of what you mistakenly believe is my position. The mines may not directly effect me, but they indirectly effect me and they directly effect those they kill and maim, which is a very bad thing. If the folks living near the mines played a role in laying them, they should definitely play a part in paying for their removal. And I, since I do care wether they are removed or not wether or not the US placed them, am also willing to help pay for it. What you seem to be mistaking here is the idea that people need to be forced to care about other people, for approval of doing so, when we're perfectly capable of deciding to do so on our own.

that's about as many as usually control it. We do not live in a pure democracy, thank god. Get used to it. With the UN's sterling record in all the nations still in turmoil, what any 2/3 want is not necessarily actually a good idea. The "we" would be the people of this nation who live under a system based on the idea that it is not the govt that grants rights as goodies to be provided by someone else, but are due to our existence alone by birthright, not govt fiat. That the state exists to protect these rights, not create them. The difference between systems based on negative rights (US) and ones based on positive rights (most of the world) is deep and fundamental.

it's not at all. lots of people, myself included, think mines and old ordnance need to be dealt with immediately and properly. Wether it's "collectivism" depends on the way you go about it.

I agree that the corruption you describe is not collectivism, but the political viewpoints which treat people as not owning themselves, their labor, and their moral choices, are pretty much collectivist by definition. Sure there are varying levels of implementation, but the core principle is that they are less valuable as individuals than as units to be used in service of someone elses ideals.

I agree. The US is not a nation of objectivists. It should be, but it isn't. But since you bring it up, the US constitution and psyche does have elements of objectivism that place it inevitably in conflict with more socialist/collectivist worldviews.