 | Posted by Rothell @ 08/18/2005 01:09 AM PDT | |
| I haven't read all the papers, haven't seen all the headlines, but what I've seen so far regarding the Gaza Strip news is about "Isreal pulling out of the Gaza Strip." It is about the Israelis and how hard it is for those who obviously don't want to leave. This is the drama. The drama lies with the Israelis, according to what we |
| Posted by Logipundit @ 09/15/2005 11:57 PM PDT | |
| I've got my CPA working overtime already. Maybe we should write a paper to raise awareness on the wastefullness of academic pursuits for the sake of academic pursuit. One of these days I'm going to do a full post on why the space program is a dismal failure, and always will be unless our PURPOSE is more than "knowledge" and "exploration". The problem with "awareness" is that the only people that give a flying flip about academic "awareness" campaigns are other academics. | ||
| ||
| Posted by Rothell @ 09/16/2005 12:34 PM PDT | |
| You guys crack me up. "Awareness" had never struck me as a particularly liberal word. But, Broussard, if that's what you think, then consider words that for me have lost their value in contemporary Republican rhetoric. "Freedom." Bush loves to use this word. It is like kryptnonite to the evil "TERRORISTS!" That's what they want to "destroy." Yeah. That always made sense to me. Bad guys rubbing their hands together, hatching plots to blow up the world because the idea of "freedom" just drives them bonkers. Other words: "destroy," "victorious," "resolved." These typically come straight from the horse's mouth, George W. Bush, whose speeches might go well as narration for a Rocky movie but not as real speech pertaining to our own reality. My favorite, though, is "terrorist." Acts of "terrorism" have been a military strategy since the invention of war. That is a fact, not my opinion. Did the United States (and its allies, particularly Britain) drop bombs on hundreds of villages and cities in Germany during Worlds War 2? Yes. Did we do the same in Vietnam? Yes. Fact: we dropped more bombs on a New Jersey-sized country than all the bombs dropped on Europe combined in the second worlds war. What do we call that? Well the U.S. government doesn't want to call that terrorism! But is it? (I hate to write this because these are dark days when you cannot openly discuss acts of criminality under U.S. government direction without fearing some Bush cronie is going to come and arrest you.) The plane-hijackers and suicide-bombers are terrorists. But that word should mean little to people who can think for themselves, because its sad but true that the U.S. has got blood on its hands too. | ||
| ||
| Posted by Logipundit @ 09/16/2005 06:46 PM PDT | |
| Hey Rothell, Real quick, remind me of your address. Just...uh...curious. | ||
| ||
| Posted by Logipundit @ 09/16/2005 07:03 PM PDT | |
| speaking of words...here's a reason to be selective of what Thesaurus you buy...kind of interesting. http://brain-terminal.com/posts/2005/09/07/rogets-arab Oh and by the way, here's some other words that I feel that the left has hijacked: "choice"--basic right applied only to women and only to the right to have an abortion...no choice of schools, or religions, or anything else. "progressive"--making sure that every single aspect of the "great society" is completely unchanged from it's original structure established in the mid 1960's. "nuanced"-- a form of logic and reason carefully crafted to fall in line with every left-leaning thought conceived since the dawn of birth control. "enlightened"--atheist "intellectual"--atheist "priveleged"--those who pay taxes I could go on and on...we should write a dictionary. | ||
| ||
| Posted by Logipundit @ 09/16/2005 07:16 PM PDT | |
| OH and by the way...it's interesting you mention the word "terrorist". I really don't really see the problem with the word as a practical matter. If I was German when we were bombing Dresden, I might indeed have called the US terrorists. And if I were a VietCong soldier, I may have indeed called the US military terrorists...but what's your point? Are you saying it's a matter of perspective? Of course it is. Would you rather we use less generic words? How about Islamic terrorists? Or Muslim extremists? Or ragheads? What do you want? I think terrorist is the most politically correct, practical, and precise term for the people that we are indeed fighting against. Maybe they call us terrorists, too, but what difference does that make? The whole world has been using the word terrorism since at least the 70s, and even the most politically left have to acknowledge that there is a certain type of violence or fighting or whatever you call it that can be easily defined as terrorism. Anyway, I'm having trouble getting your point, but that's OK...I know you really don't need one. It was indeed a great way to remind us all that the US is still evil and imperialistic, and I sure appreciate the reminder. | ||
| ||
| Posted by john broussard @ 09/17/2005 08:54 AM PDT | |
| Rothell, I had thought about "terrorist" and "freedom" too. Those are fair points in that the value of the words is kind of lost for now, but #1 You'll get no sympathy for German villagers from me. WWI was much to a more inconclusive standstill, and twenty years later there was another war. Bombing into submission was a policy is the price the Germans had to pay. #2 It was the rise of communism, not American bombing, that drove massive Vietnamese immigration. As the bad as the former was, you got to question which is worse. If America wins the war the Vietnamese would be about a million times better off...they were truly the losers there. | ||
| ||
| Posted by john broussard @ 09/17/2005 10:12 AM PDT | |
| Hey Rothell, What's your take on the German election? http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1134885 | ||
| ||
| Posted by BP @ 08/11/2005 11:19 PM PDT | |
| I, too, am a big fan of google earth. Just wish they had a mac version. | ||
| ||
| Posted by BP @ 08/02/2005 09:45 PM PDT | |
| It goes to the old "what is 'general welfare'" question. Here's a good quote from James Madison: "With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." Is internet included in the concept of general welfare? | ||
| ||