From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Apr 16 2003 - 18:59:22 MDT
--- Brian Booth <brian_booth1@yahoo.dk> wrote:
> Saturday 4.27pm Mike Lorrey wrote if you are against
> the views of 78% of Americans you must be anti
> American.As I see it those who go against the majority
> because they believe it is true in fact maybe more
> America supportive than anti American because stimulus
> and criticism creates growth where continuous
> agreement and acceptance results in stagnation and
> apathy.
This is really a meaningless statement. Holding a contrary opinion
simply for the sake of having a contrary opinion is as morally and
ethically bankrupt as it gets. Diversity of opinion grows nothing if
those diverse opinions are absent of any contribution to life, health,
and progress.
While there are many topics in public discourse which one can debate
for quite a long time: economics, education, what the meaning of 'is'
is, etc. there are some topics which have time deadlines on them. At
the go/nogo point, you make the decision and everybody needs to get
behind it once its been made. Topics of national or individual defense
are among such time dependent issues.
If you debate with your wife about buying a gun for the house until
after your house has been invaded and you've both been killed, you
might as well not have had the debate at all, as its been decided for
you.
While I'm no fan at all of majoritarian tyranny, defense of the
republic is an area I am quite willing to give some leeway on, so long
as real and nasty tyrants and terrorists still exist in the world that
threaten an extropian future. Once the go/nogo point is reached,
further protests actively aid and abet the enemy by draining public
safety resources that should be used to maintain homeland security.
While even peaceful protest provides propaganda aid to the enemy,
shoring up, for example, Saddam's domestic support and thus increasing
the threat to US soldiers on the ground, I am willing to submit that
unless an enemy has us under direct attack (still somewhat vague
connecting Saddam to bin Laden at this point, but I predict it will
come out now that Abu Abbas is in custody), that such dissent is
constitutionally protected, and a price of freedom, so long as the
dissenters will admit that their dissent does provide propaganda aid to
the enemy.
Protesters motives may or may not be pure, but the consequences of
their actions are certainly not. I think the degree of resistance of
the Fedeyeen Saddam, as well as the number of foreign arabs in Iraq
willing to fight the coalition is directly attributable to the amount
of anti-war protest in the western world.
What irks me, though, is that such die hard refuseniks never seem to
admit their error when it is shown they are wrong. History repeatedly
demonstrates that the arguments of pacifists turn out to be misguided,
wrong, ill considered, and ultimately harmful to men and women in
uniform as well as civilians caught in the crossfire.
Once tyrannical regimes are deposed, the paper trail ultimately
demonstrates that such regimes are always even more heinous and
dastardly than even its worst detractors claim. Pacifists who protest
against taking action against such evil are the sort of 'good men who
do nothing' that always allow evil to perpetuate.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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