COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
First: Let's take anything said by a guy named "Chalmers" with a grain of salt.
ReplyDeleteNot if his first name is Allis.
DeleteThe first Allis-Chalmers Company was formed in 1901 as an amalgamation of the Edward P. Allis Company (steam engines and mill equipment), Fraser & Chalmers (mining and ore milling equipment), the Gates Iron Works (rock and cement milling equipment),
Delete:) Sorry
Who is this Alice Chalmers, some socialite?
DeleteI wish we did have an empire. It would be nice to suck taxes and goods out of other peoples, instead of trading with them, and competing with them economically, no? We can't even control Cuba, right next door. All the people we conquered - dump their goods here, and run their own nations.
ReplyDeleteSome empire.
I agree with Rufus, take "Chalmers" with a grain of salt.
Yeah, we might have a tendency to be a bit of a bully, but "Empire" just doesn't seem to fit.
ReplyDeleteChalmers kind of glosses over the fact that England "gave up" it's empire (as opposed to having it taken from them,) and he flat out misrepresented the Roman Empire; it was Never a "Democracy."
We have a couple of serious systemic problems developing (a trend toward Plutocracy not being the least of them,) but, although getting rid of a few foreign bases wouldn't be a bad thing, carrying them on the books probably won't sink the Republic.
So. What worked?
ReplyDeleteCAMERAS.
The camera on the roof of Lord and Taylor did'em in.
DeleteDid that camera ever compromise anyone's "liberty?"
DeleteYep.
Two Chechen brothers with unpronounceable names.
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ReplyDeleteProbably should be thinking about another stream, Deuce.
Likely, you won't get much response on this one.
The sheeple aren't going to listen for an hour to a guy offering up ideas that take them out of their comfort zone.
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I listened for an hour.
DeleteAnd, I don't think he has it entirely correct. Quite honestly, I've thought about this quite a bit, and I think he's about three steps behind (w/o the inherent horsepower to ever catch up.)
Jeeze, I mighta started if you hadn't told me it's a freaking hour. That's 2/3 of a movie.
DeleteCold Comfort, indeed.
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DOH! First the guy blows himself up, then his brother runs him over.
After a few minutes, the man was left behind at a gas station, unharmed. It was unclear if he escaped, or was let go.
From there, the brothers drove about three miles, throwing explosives out the window at police. In Watertown, they engaged in a shootout with police, in which at least 200 rounds were fired.
Authorities said that Tamarlan Tsarnaev left the car at one point, and attempted to throw an explosive at officers. The device, however, went off in his hand. Police then tackled the wounded suspect in the street. Then, authorities said, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev--still behind the wheel of a car, swerved at the officers in an effort to hit them.
The officers dodged. Tamerlan did not. He was dragged under the car, and later died at a Boston hospital. In the same confrontation, a Boston Transit police officer was also shot and wounded. {{Officials later identified the officer as Richard H. Donahue, 33, who was treated at Mt. Auburn Hospital and released.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev escaped. Police later conceded that there were not enough officers to establish a perimeter. The teenager is believed to have fled on foot: police found a small blood trail, indicating he was injured.
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DeleteNot enough police?
I heard they had 9000 of them on the streets.
Guy was finally found by a guy who saw some blood, lifted the tarp on his boat, and saw the perp looking up at him.
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Yeah, BEFORE the IR Sniffing Copter came on scene.
DeleteEven tho some cops took the credit.
Well, I'm going to sleep better than that asshole.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad they caught him; and, I'm glad all the other would-be bombers got to see the people of Boston celebrating.
g'nite.
You'll likely wake up, he may not.
ReplyDelete"Beth Israel Hospital said a patient, apparently Tamerlan Tsarnaev, came in under guard and had suffered blast and shrapnel injuries as well as so many gunshot wounds that caregivers were "unable to count" them.
Police officer Richard Donohue Jr., 33, was injured in the firefight and is in critical condition at a hospital."
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ReplyDeleteQuotes from two different dicks. Which do you think best describes the USW today?
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.
Woodrow Wilson
America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.
George Bush
http://www.brainyquote.com/words/em/empire159547.html#5uPGVc5ZpbGxa5x7.99
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DeleteIt evident that we currently have an imperial presidency sitting at the top of a vast plutocracy simmilar to ancient Rome.
The point made by Chalmers Johnson with regard to Concress abdicating their responsibilty is a legitimate one, IMO.
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ReplyDeleteFrom Wiki,
Characterizing some aspects of American foreign policy and international behavior "American Empire" is controversial but not uncommon. Stuart Creighton Miller posits that the public's sense of innocence about Realpolitik (cf. American Exceptionalism) impairs popular recognition of US imperial conduct. Since it governed other countries via surrogates — domestically-weak, right-wing governments that collapse without US support...
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ReplyDeleteTo argue that the U.S. is not an empire is to deny history.
We have Thomas Jefferson talking about it to Madison in 1809,
"...we should then have only to include the North in our confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government."
The nation was originally formed in fighting against an empire. It then grew by picking up the pieces from the Spanish emoire as it fell apart. It grew further by purchasing huge swathes of land from a struggling French empire. It moved west in our version of meeting the 'white man's burden'. It purchased Alaska from the Russians. It stole the southwest and California from the Mexicans. It picked up odd pieces like Hawaii and the Phillipines. It gutted Panama for the canal. We still possess Guam and Puerto Rico. We installed puppet regimes in Cuba and Argentina and throughout the ME and even is SE Asia. As was noted in the video, we have hundreds of military bases around the globe, pockets of the U.S., islands where through force agreements U.S. laws rule independent of the laws of the host country.
We created euphemisms from the beginning. We called it 'Manifest Destiny'. Others called it Empire building.
Some here argue that it can't be empire building if we get no tangible gain from it. Childish prattle. No one said empire building had to be conducted intelligently. Besides, we have seen that someone always gains, in this case, the military industrial complex Ike warned about, as well as, other entities and individuals positioned to dip their beak.
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ReplyDelete•A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.
Alexander Tyler
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ReplyDelete