prole

She's a genius.

Hey Kojak, could you use the term "ilk" and the waving emoticon guy in the same post? I'd just love that.

Global warming deniers creating their utopia in Florida...poetic justice.

For people who deserve it, hell yes. For a worthless fuck like you, never. And I'm not kidding. Seeing as how the number of Americans that probably fit your criteria is small and rapidly shrinking, maybe you and your buddies should think about secession. I suggest Texas, with Austin operating as a kind of Berlin-style open city.

A link to your personal victory parade over Cubahitler? Fifty years in the making. Will Iraq take so long? Tell you what, if it does I'll buy you a celebratory drink in the bar of the Hooters Casino Fallujah. I'll be in my mid-nineties.

Ha, given the Republican's championing of deregulation, I certainly could've been!

I find it ironic and bitterly amusing that the Bush Administration's "robust" foreign policies and its unilateral extension of American power have only helped to accelerate the US's decline on the world's stage. The news is just full of these kinds of stories these days. Now that Huckabee's out, I'm definitely going McCain.

You mean when we stopped Yugohitler, right?

About what I would expect from you. However, now that you brought them up, what is wrong with 'honor' and 'sacrifice'? You Lefties preach individual sacrifice for the good of the collective. How is a soldier's willingness to sacrifice any different? Further, how is 'honor' now a bad word? The problem with "honor" and "sacrifice" they're basically lofty-sounding abstractions designed for the parents of dead children and inscriptions on tombstones, to give the living some meaning for senseless waste. They have no meaning whatsoever in and of themselves: the same language is used by kamikazis, Prussians, Commies, Doughboys, Mongols, or Marines. The Nazi SS talked loads of this stuff, but through history's lens were they honorable and virtuous? Submission and sacrifice to the State is the essence of fascism but it's always dressed in the very same terms you unquestioningly swallow. Any "leftie" worth his salt would never accept your premise about "preaching individual sacrifice for the good of the collective". The ones I like tend to be a bit more historically literate and less prone to razzle-dazzle marketing campaigns dressed up as patriotism. Finally, "honor" is a bad word when it's used as first to charm impressionable boys and then as ideological cover to mask national chauvinism and belligerence. Denying the existence of honor is a long tradition of those lacking that trait. Honor is real and I have seen it personally. If less people would forget what honor was, this world might not be so bad. Things like Pride, Duty, Self Sacrifice and Honor should not be bad words. They are ideals that we MUST instill in our children; not try to erase. Perhaps the reason you are a nhilist is that you have nothing greater than yourself to believe in than a washed up philosophy that killed more people than the plague. My point is not that these things don't exist, it's that the relationships between the abstract ideas and what they're realistically in service to need to be examined. I think people can be honorable, exhibit virtuous qualities, etc. but that killing people in the service to and for the benefit of the State (much less invading and occupying Iraq) doesn't meet the criteria. Would you say this to a D-Day vet or a beach storming pacific theatre vet?? I think not... No, I'd have to yell it in their antique ear phone holes because they're so damn old! I say this not to disparage the hearing impaired, but to illustrate the fact that the last legitimate military action the US was engaged in was 60+ years ago! Everybody knows this and that's why the pundits and politicians have to fall all over each other evoking Hitler's ghost and Pearl Harbor and Nazis and everything else every time they want to start (or stay in) a goddamned war. Fricking infantile political culture in this country! Gahd.

So what's the mission then?

Well, I guess that's just the price we pay for liberating them. All the most reason to stay and continue liberating them till they can't be liberated anymore.

Moving past denial is an important step in your recovery. This is encouraging progress; keep up the good work.

Really? Which ones specifically?

There is no honor in this enemy. -He uses children to fight for him. -He uses women and children to sheil his attack knowing full well we will not fire back. -He uses fear to persuade civilians to help him. -He uses indescriminate ordinances. -He detonates ordinances MEANT for civilians. -His ultimate aim is genocide. -He fights to ensure that another country remains oppressed. -He fights for the destruction of modernity. Number 4 from the "How to Tell If You're in A Cult" List: "Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions."

About what I would expect from you. However, now that you brought them up, what is wrong with 'honor' and 'sacrifice'? You Lefties preach individual sacrifice for the good of the collective. How is a soldier's willingness to sacrifice any different? Further, how is 'honor' now a bad word? The problem with "honor" and "sacrifice" they're basically lofty-sounding abstractions designed for the parents of dead children and inscriptions on tombstones, to give the living some meaning for senseless waste. They have no meaning whatsoever in and of themselves: the same language is used by kamikazis, Prussians, Commies, Doughboys, Mongols, or Marines. The Nazi SS talked loads of this stuff, but through history's lens were they honorable and virtuous? Submission and sacrifice to the State is the essence of fascism but it's always dressed in the very same terms you unquestioningly swallow. Any "leftie" worth his salt would never accept your premise about "preaching individual sacrifice for the good of the collective". The ones I like tend to be a bit more historically literate and less prone to razzle-dazzle marketing campaigns dressed up as patriotism. Finally, "honor" is a bad word when it's used as first to charm impressionable boys and then as ideological cover to mask national chauvinism and belligerence. Denying the existence of honor is a long tradition of those lacking that trait. Honor is real and I have seen it personally. If less people would forget what honor was, this world might not be so bad. Things like Pride, Duty, Self Sacrifice and Honor should not be bad words. They are ideals that we MUST instill in our children; not try to erase. Perhaps the reason you are a nhilist is that you have nothing greater than yourself to believe in than a washed up philosophy that killed more people than the plague. My point is not that these things don't exist, it's that the relationships between the abstract ideas and what they're realistically in service to need to be examined. I think people can be honorable, exhibit virtuous qualities, etc. but that killing people in the service to and for the benefit of the State (much less invading and occupying Iraq) doesn't meet the criteria.

About what I would expect from you. However, now that you brought them up, what is wrong with 'honor' and 'sacrifice'? You Lefties preach individual sacrifice for the good of the collective. How is a soldier's willingness to sacrifice any different? Further, how is 'honor' now a bad word? The problem with "honor" and "sacrifice" they're basically lofty-sounding abstractions designed for the parents of dead children and inscriptions on tombstones, to give the living some meaning for senseless waste. They have no meaning whatsoever in and of themselves: the same language is used by kamikazis, Prussians, Commies, Doughboys, Mongols, or Marines. The Nazi SS talked loads of this stuff, but through history's lens were they honorable and virtuous? Submission and sacrifice to the State is the essence of fascism but it's always dressed in the very same terms you unquestioningly swallow. Any "leftie" worth his salt would never accept your premise about "preaching individual sacrifice for the good of the collective". The ones I like tend to be a bit more historically literate and less prone to razzle-dazzle marketing campaigns dressed up as patriotism. Finally, "honor" is a bad word when it's used as first to charm impressionable boys and then as ideological cover to mask national chauvinism and belligerence.

no. From a well-known researcher on cults: so what you are saying is that communism is a cult? Ok, point taken, but lets get back on track junior. LOL. A Marxist lecturing on cults. If anything, it'd have been a small "m", marxian. But Spray has pushed me straight to nihilism.

What? These notions have been used to underpin every form of nationalistic militarism from the Roman Empire to Japanese neofascism. You just happen to believe your particular form, the American one, has some claim to exceptionalism and truth.

WW2? Unless you consider Pearl Harbor a Japanese marketing campaign.

More undigested abstractions. Why not throw in some glory, honor, sacrifice, etc? You could make your own recruitment video.

The equation of what is moral with what is legal seems questionable given the turbulent (to say the least) evolution of US law.

That's just silly. Yeah, after reading them again, I think you could make a case that the US military fits all ten. Thanks.

We are in complete agreement.

The US Military would seem to fit most if not all of the criteria cited here for the definition of a cult.