My two sons or the mass grave?

Just weeks after Clinton bombed the daylights out of suspected hideaways for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, he used his January 1999 State of the Union Address to warn America about both bin Laden and Saddam, mentioning the two terror kingpins almost in the same breath.

"We will defend our security wherever we are threatened - as we did this summer when we struck at Osama bin Laden's network of terror," Clinton told Congress and the nation. "The bombing our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania reminds us again of the risks faced every day by those who represent America to the world."

Moments later Clinton segued into the threat posed by Saddam:

"For nearly a decade, Iraq has defied its obligations to destroy its weapons of terror and the missiles to deliver them. America will continue to contain Saddam, and we will work for the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people."
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Did both Clinton and Bush lie? Or did they both tell the truth?
When the WMD are found or when it is learned where they went probably we will find that both men were telling the truth.

 

Doubter,

Good points. I actually heard retired general Wesley Clark say with a straight face that they had destroyed the WMD threat with the monica bombing. No wonder he and Clinton got along, despite the fact he was a military officer.

 

Hehe...it's always hilarious when the Clinton-haters have to whip out Clinton's remarks as a last resort to justify their arguments (since they lack other justifications).

And it's funny as shit about how quiet and dismissive they get whenever someone points out the OBVIOUS problems with Bush's cabinet -- and claim that we don't have SPECIFIC examples. In this thread I've named several, and you guys still cannot retort.

Well, the only thing I ever hear from you guys (and our dipshit president) is "Saddam is bad, OK?" (Mr Mackey from south park voice implied).

You guys can never "explain" away the little problems with W's cabinet, the lack of evidence of WMD's to this very day, or WHY iraq and afghanistan are in total states of chaos and HOW that WON'T create another 50,000 OBL's...you seem to conveniently forget who allowed Saddam to stay in power in '91.

But that's alright, because just like the other clueless voters pulling handles based on EMOTION, you'll continue to ensure our economy and national policy are fucked.

"Saddam is bad, OK?"

God help us all.

 

democrat or republican, who cares. Still no osama, saddam, or weapons.

 

Your accusations of "impropriety" are as flimsy as your previous accusations of dishonesty. As usual, you ascribe criminality or unethical behavior to ideological or policy differences.

Are you really so far gone that you believe "Democrats and liberals" have a monopoly on conscience and "integrity, honesty, and accountability"?

[/b][/quote]

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19628&perpage=6&pagenumber=43

Well, I did use one c&p there, but the excuse you later gave for not dealing with what I had to say was the transparently evasive one that I am or had been too “loquacious.” The time before that, months ago as I recall, you simply disappeared from the discussion after I had replied to another familiar list of phony accusations (entirely in my own voice, I might add, since you now seem to believe that the issue is of importance to you).

And exactly what have you done to deserve a "break" from me or anyone? Your normal policy is to begin or end, or both end and begin, with insults. In between, you offer up manipulative distortions as though they're self-evident, universally accepted facts... and sometimes you throw in some more insults. I don't believe I have seen more than one post of yours (a joke, as I recall) in which you did not adopt an explicitly self-superior pose protected by pre-emptive hostility. When challenged on facts and logic, with or without c&p’s, you run away and hide.

The last part is consistent with your preferred approach to foreign policy, at least recent foreign policy, and I suppose we could be grateful that it also reduces the frequency of your posts, but it does little for your credibility or for the larger debate.

Try showing some of your own “integrity, honesty, and accountability,” and maybe we’ll begin to believe you even know what they are.

 

Yawn.

 

Randy Barnett

LEFT LIVING A LIE?

The contention that George W. Bush lied in his State of the Union speech, now spreading through the media and into the base of the Democratic Party, has caused me (Randy Barnett) to think again about a phenomenon I have been noticing since the election of 2000.

As you probably know, the idea that truth is “socially constructed” has been in vogue in academia for some time. I never took it that seriously and only mention it in passing in The Structure of Liberty. I did not think very many people could possibly believe it, or at least believe that, if true, it had any practical implications. Hey, even if the world is socially constructed, if we cannot willfully reconstruct it as we prefer, then it’s pretty much as irrelevant as the old speculations that we are just a brain in a vat or that the universe exists in a drop on some cosmic chemist’s workbench.

Since the 2000 election, however, I have begun to realize for the first time that the Left really and truly lives in a socially constructed world — a world where “truth” is their own construction. In their world:

Al Gore was elected president. Bush was selected. The Supreme Court “decided the election” (rather than reversed a rogue Southern state Supreme Court and restore the rulings of local, mainly democratic, election officials). Bush is in the pocket of the oil companies. Dick Cheney really runs the country. Bush’s energy plan would destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I could go on and on. These are not disagreements about “values” or ends, but disagreements about facts. Once you notice this phenomenon, you see it everywhere. Now the Left is lying about Bush to make him appear to be a liar because they cannot catch him in any actual lies. The question is whether they believe what they are saying. Some do, some may not, but millions certainly believe what they are hearing.

I know that this is nothing new. Alger Hiss was innocent. Barry Goldwater was a neo-Nazi who was looking to start WWIII. J. Edgar Hoover wore women’s clothing. In the Second Amendment debate, the anti’s make up stories about what happened at the founding to fit enough of the facts just the way defense lawyers explain away the prosecution’s evidence. When the fit gets too hard to maintain, they switch stories to another made-up but more defensible version. Evidence is largely irrelevant, unless they are in a forum in which they are directly confronted.

These “constructions” or fabrications are not just ideological disagreements. When the Left claimed, for example, that the Industrial Revolution immiserated the masses rather than greatly improving the standard of living of ordinary people, it was easy to dismiss this as a dispute about a past we could not directly experience.

But what I am now coming to appreciate is that increasing numbers of persons on the Left create in their minds a false world in which to live — a world that better suits their preconceptions. They are not content to disagree with the goals of their opposition or about predictions of future policy results. They must make up facts about the world that fit their theories — like the “homeless” crisis that immediately vanished when Clinton took office. Their world is really and truly socially constructed. In their world Cuba really is a better place, as was the USSR up until the moment it collapsed, at which point those on the Left retroactively became anti-communists who had long struggled to bring down what they formerly claimed was a better and more just society.

On legal historian e-mail lists to which I subscribe, the Left took forever to abandon Michael Bellesiles (of Arming America disrepute), perhaps because his story fit their world. Or perhaps it was because the worst possible thing is to admit the evil right-wingers are right about anything. I raise the Bellesiles affair not because I think he is typical of the Left, but because of the dogged refusal to admit his story was a fabrication when the evidence of fraud was visible for all to see.

This socially constructed reality changes all the time to fit current ideological needs. One day, Bush is a moron; the next he is Machiavelli reborn; the next he is a moron again. Flip-flops don’t seem to faze them in the slightest. They just “move on.”

I could go on and on with more examples, but you get the point. I disagree with conservative Republicans about a lot, but I just have not noticed them making up stories wholesale to bolster their world view. The closest I have seen is some of what they say about judges “making up rights,” but this sort of rhetoric has a genuinely factual basis.

Still, this “social construction” phenomenon, if it indeed does exist, leaves me both disturbed and genuinely perplexed:

(1) Has it always been this blatant or extreme? I do not think so but, if not, what has changed? The perception on the Left that they have lost their grip on power? The access of so many to open microphones? Anger over Ronald Reagan’s victory and popularity? Republicans’ taking control of the House and their impeaching Clinton? George W. Bush winning the legal challenge to the decisions of local election officials brought by Al Gore?

Sometimes I think it is because the format of most news-talk shows now mandates that people take adversarial positions. Producers must therefore find someone to take the other side of every issue, and cognitive dissonance leads these advocates eventually to believe what they say. Viewers then see seemingly authoritative speakers repeatedly insisting on the same “facts,” which they simply prefer to believe because they reinforce their preconceptions. On the other hand the establishment media is not even that balanced and its consumers only get information that fits their world view.

(2) How can intelligent people sustain these false beliefs seemingly indefinitely? This must take some toll on them inside. But what exactly is the price they pay internally or emotionally for living in an artificially constructed reality? Perhaps it is actually easier, rather than more difficult, to live in a world of facts that reinforce one’s predilections.

(3) If this phenomenon is indeed as pervasive as I now think it is, how do I know that I am not doing exactly the same thing in reverse — thus confirming the claim that reality is indeed socially constructed? I know that is what I will hear from readers.

Perhaps everyone does do this to a certain degree. I do believe that, to some degree, “facts” and even sensory perception are “theory”-laden. The brain is such that you rarely see the theory working in the background, but sometimes it can be glimpsed. Everyone has had the experience of seeing an object on the horizon, in one’s peripheral vision, or across the room that looks like just shapes and colors, or looks like an object you know it cannot possibly be. Then you get closer or view it from a slightly different angle and what it ”really” is suddenly snaps into place. This is your brain “recognizing” the shapes and colors and then defining or redefining it.

Assuming we all do it to some degree — that no one is totally and completely objectively realistic about the facts — is what I am now perceiving on the Left simply a more extreme version of the phenomena, both as measured against how I think the world really is and perhaps also against how even the Left was even a few years ago?

I am interested in hearing your thoughts. Have you noticed it too? Have you noticed it getting worse? How can you know that you are not yourself equally guilty of doing exactly the same thing? And how can we settle our political disagreements if a large number of the players are living in a world of their own making? I really want to know.
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Let me clarify something here for the Right : there is no Left wing conspiracy against the Bush administration. All you have is a collection of many people from all walks of life who value their freedom, their jobs, and their lives, and will fight this regime's attempts to take it all away.

The republican partly in the USA is clearly the epitome of paranoid, scary derelicts who do little more than fantasize about being rich...

Lumping everyone against the Bush outlaw regime (which did in fact defy the UN and did in fact start an unprovoked WAR with another country, which is ILLEGAL any way you cut it -- sorry guys, I'd love to see Saddam dragged behind a horse just as much as the next guy, but this was NOT the way to do it) in a group called the left wing, self-loathing liberals, is just another McCarthy-style tactic by the Bush regime to polarize the feeble-minded into voting for them again.


Let's think about more bullshit that they pull:

Running ads on TV and radio against "fellow" republican house members who do not support the Bush agenda. (Yeah, those repubs sure look out for their own, don't they?! LOL)

Leaking a story about an attack on a Taliban convoy the night before the House election in Nov 2002.

Hiring a public relations firm on how to best sell the war to the american people.

Making a complete joke out of America in front of the rest of the world, and destroying any credibility or integrity that this great nation once had.

Defying UN resolutions in order to punish somebody who defied UN resolutions.

Making a joke out of congress by renaming french fries freedom fries.

Making a joke out of congress with the clinton impeachment.


I will be much happier once the Bush camp is in front of a war tribunal in Belgium or the Netherlands.

Like I said, party at my house in Nov 2004. You're all invited, and then we can start criticizing the new president even before W's stuff is moved out of the White House (that includes his coke mirror and all of Laura's empty flasks).

 

An execllent example of the lying and delusion. Sad.

 

WTF are you referring to???

Or are you just going to bitch? Because I'm getting sick of it. If you have proof that one thing I mentioned is not true, please present it, otherwise shut the fuck up.