Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

I completely agree Bill. Now can I have a signed copy of "Whose Looking out for You"?

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

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Bill, you know what you'd love? China.

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"LOL"

winner

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

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i retract my retractment. * system needed to keep out ridiculous trolls. Peace.

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What is the "* system"? I'm assuming it's used in some other 2+2 sub-forum; maybe I should get out more often.

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

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The liberal press today obviously wants the U.S. to lose this war.

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This is the same fallacy that those that use "society's will" as a justification for oppressive action make. There is no monolithic "liberal press" that makes conscious decisions, any more than there is a "will of the people".

Why is a "liberal press" any less legitimate than an elected government? The press only exists in the form it does (mostly) due to market forces. If 51% of voters make a government beyond questioning, then certainly the "press entity" that has survived the market's judgement must have even more legitimacy.

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

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What is the "* system"? I'm assuming it's used in some other 2+2 sub-forum; maybe I should get out more often.

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Venture, if you dare, over to OOT. Read the newest "sticky." It's Astroglide's system of publishing/announcing a poster's status.

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

This is a great illustration of why we're in Iraq and why we need to leave ASAP. Note all the hallmarks of the fascism that the White House must rely on for its bedrock of support:

1. The equation of disagreement with treason. "I hope the FBI investigates him [Dean] for sedition/treason charges." Of course the FBI will never do this but Bill has no idea why because he believes that anyone who disagrees with him over the war is a traitor and, presumably, should be put to jailed or executed.

2. Paranoid conspiracy theories. "The liberal press today obviously wants the U.S. to lose this war." The "liberal press" helpfully promulgated all the lies that made 2/3's of the public believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and was about to attack the U.S. with its vast WMD arsenal while ridiculing dissenters as hopelessly naive. So while the "liberal press" trumpted all the phony reasons for the war, dowplayed and ridiculed popular opposition, downplayed the killing of civilians by U.S. forces and continues to generally and overtly support the war, Bill thinks he sees a vast liberal conspiracy that "obviously" wants the U.S. to lose.

3. The invention of preposterous facts. Bill pretends that torture will "save[] the lives of U.S. troops on the ground" but can't identify even a single instance where this has happened, likewise ignoring all the cases where the innocent were tortured "by mistake" and later released.

4. Hatred of democratic institutions. The hallmark of fascist ideology is the termination of debate and dissent. Bill's vision of a "free" press that only reports pro-U.S. facts and propaganda is indistinguishable from Hilter's or Stalin's propganda machines.

5. Addiction to propaganda and the inability to cope with unwelcome news. Bill can't describe any connection between reporting about torture U.S. military setbacks because of course there is none. The "sad state of affairs" Bill decries therefore really amounts to public knowledge that the U.S. is a torturing country. It is this contradiction between image and reality that's obviously driving his anger and nothing more.

Just as support from liberal democratic Senators (Clinton, Biden, Kerry) was and remains vital to the launching of this war, so too is the fascist and exterminationist elements of the popular right. Without both of them, this war would not have occurred and the 200,000 or so casualties that have been sustained would never have happened.

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

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i retract my retractment. * system needed to keep out ridiculous trolls. Peace.

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What is the "* system"? I'm assuming it's used in some other 2+2 sub-forum; maybe I should get out more often.

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Like Nut4Dawgs said, it's a system astroglide uses in OOT to keep the number of dumb threads down. He gives out * for stupid threads/posts and when you get to 3 your out. He seems to be doing it fairly so far and I think Cola would be just as good.

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

Great post, Alger. Manipulation and power abuse happens for a reason, it happens since the agenda would not be possible to push forward without it.

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

Life is much happier when the government does your thinking for you.

Re: Freedom of speech during wartime should be curtailed.
 

According to the Constitution, we are not currently at war.

A suspension of some constitutional rights would require that Congress pass down a Declaration of War, something it has not done in 64 years.

While I disagree with Howard Dean's comments, I defend his right to make them. The kind of penalties you seem to support are more like Saddam's Iraq than the USA I want to live in.