I've made similar statements to my family. I was raised Republican and think that a lot of the core values are great. Unfortunately, you've got the koch brother tea party nutjobs and previously the neocon PNAC SOB's that have co-opted the party. I do think there is a large portion of the Tea Party that have legitimate beefs and that they actually align in many ways with the Occupy movement. I would like to see the U.S. have many more legitimate parties, but it seems like the system is too rigged for this to happen.

Why is it extreme fiction to think that powerful, ambitious men would take advantage of a power vacuum? Free market intervention via the IMF has horror stories far, far worse than this. Real stories, not fiction. Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Bolivia. Powerful people take advantage of the power vacuum in our country too. Deregulation of derivatives caused the current financial crisis. Deregulating the banks caused the mortgage fraud crisis. Deregulating energy caused the Enron crisis. Business has co-opted our relatively powerful government and led us into war and debt. Take away government and the hard fought laws of the last few centuries and the power of wealthy ambitious men would be unbound. Take away government and the hard fought laws of the last few centuries and what you consider to be oppression would be dwarfed.

When states fail, gangs and warlords always immediately rise up to take advantage of the system.

When I say anarchists and conservative libertarians are naive, I'm not trying to be mean. I think they are blind to the historical constant that powerful, ambitious men will always try and game political systems, and that anarchism, by design, would be completely impotent at stopping them. It is no small coincidence that these powerful, ambitious men support many of the institutions and think tanks that inform your politics. The same people that fund Cato and the Reason Institute also fund PNAC and Freedomworks. Does it not disturb you that Neo-Cons fund your institutions? Does it not disturb you that conservative libertarian heroes like Milton Friedman have backed violence and violent dictators in South America to further their cause? To further your cause?

Anyway, this is why I find conservative libertarianism and anarchism so objectionable. I don't think anarchism could ever happen, because of the paradox that in order to achieve and maintain an anti-state, you would need the power of a state. The reason I oppose a movement that could never get off the ground is that its principles (low taxes, deregulation) are being used as justification for the very tyranny it seeks to abolish.

(PS: check out the documentary: GASLAND. My fiction was based on real events.)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=PNAC#Funding
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute#Foundation_support
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reason_Foundation#Funding

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_M._Olin_Foundation
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Scaife_Foundations
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations

>> ^thinker247:
While I am one to never believe anything my government tells me, I find it highly improbable that anybody but the 19 hijackers caused the events of September 11th. But to play devil's advocate, let me for a minute suspend my belief and agree with the "truthers" that my government perpetrated an act of terrorism against itself.
Why?
In order to invade Afghanistan to plunder its oil? We already had bin Laden on the FBI's Most Wanted List for the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. We easily could have invaded under the pretense of finding and extracting bin Laden (and the Taliban and al-Qaeda), because that's exactly what we did after September 11th.
In order to invade Iraq under the banner of anti-terrorism? Hussein had already defied U.N. weapons inspectors for over a decade and Bush was never the type to ask permission, so we didn't need September 11th to justify illegally invading a sovereign nation. We did it anyway.
In order to enact greater restrictions upon the citizens by inducing their fear response? Hell, as a general populace we're lemmings. The Bush administration certainly did not need to kill 3000 people in order to take away our liberties. We gladly give them up whenever anybody in authority asks.
I have yet to hear a rational answer to the question of "Why?" But I'm all ears.


niiiice.
ask a question and then propose possible hypothesis which of course you then dismantle.
let me preface this by stating i am not a "truther" and am not as convinced as my friend rougy is concerning 9/11.
that being said,the US government has never,in my opinion,given this a proper investigation.
let me give you an example:
lewinsky and the impeachment of bill clinton =168 million dollars.
9/11 investigation=6 million dollars
and lets be clear here.the governments version of what happened on 9/11 is itself a conspiracy theory and one that does not hold up well under closer scrutiny.
who is responsible? i do not know and neither do you but i think it prudent to not only ask questions but be allowed to ask those questions.
agree?
now...
as for YOUR question thinker247.
why?
i presume you are asking for motive.
ok.
1.lusitania
2.reichsthag
3.gulf of tonkin
these are all false flag operations and all preceded war.WW!,WW2 and vietnam respectively.i could mention the oil embargo on japan but that is a lengthy conversation.
what ARE the motives for war?
they have always been unequivocally about:
1.land/labor/resources/trade
how does a government,crown or ruling entity get its poorest,least educated and therefore most expendable to go fight and die for something the ruling class wishes?
1.propaganda.
which creates a "fighting spirit".
for thousands of years religion was the impetus to create this spirit but for the last hundred years it has been nationalism but it is ALWAYS the F>E>A>R that is the true driving force.
now that we have established a basis for war let us get to the heart of your question.
since i am not privy to secret documents i must make my answer based on conjecture.i shall do my best.
why would the US government use 9/11 (by action or by proxy) to change 200 years of national defensive posturing to one of "pre-emptive" and declare a war,not on any person or nation but one against an ephemeral opponent?the "war on terror".
1.war is HUGE business and the DOD has been one of the top 10 lobbyists since 1962.
2.saddam hussein,having been bombed for over 10 years straight(fact,look it up) along with sanctions and that ridiculous "oil for food" threatened to change iraq's oil transactions from the american dollar to the euro(fact,look it up)which would have cost the US billions if not trillions.seeing that every oil transaction is done in american dollars.it is the world reserve currency (not for much longer).
3.uzbekisthan has one the last and richest oil and natural gas left in the world.a pipeline which was denied by turkey (that has since changed,but for europes benefit,not america) is being built right now...
where?
ill give ya a guess.
iraq.
and do you know where it will lead into?
want to try another guess?
afghanistan.

those are just a few off the top of my head.i could take the time to be more concise and specific but this is a comment section.
maybe we have differing political philosophies thinker247.i do not trust government nor power because that power historically has ALWAYS attempted to garner more power for itself at the expense of liberty,freedom and the common good of society.
so while i dont think the US government attacked the twin towers,i believe they ALLOWED it.
what evidence do i have? none.and any evidence we could have gotten has been destroyed.
but i was military for a number of years and unless they have gotten lazy and stupid there is no way that would have happened.
could i be wrong?you betcha.
but unlike you i do not trust government and neither should you because historically,governments will abuse whatever powers they have and take your rights away as fast as they are allowed to.
might i recommend:
1.bryzinski "the grand chessboard"
2.naomi klein "the shock doctrine"
3.chalmers johnson "blowback"
hell...just go the PNAC website they practically lay it out for you and that minority controlled the government for 8 years.
history is the greatest teacher and it is your friend.
i have enjoyed this conversation thinker247.

Interesting. I didn't know the origin of the word.

Whatever it once meant, at present, the term Neo-Con refers to Neo-Libs who have a fetish for aggressive, amoral foreign policy; probably best exemplified by the members of PNAC - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century . These are the folks that said it would take a tragedy the scale of Pearl Harbor in order to shock and awe the public into supporting their legislation.

Agreed that the term should not be applied to social and religious conservatives, but to be clear, Dick Armey's Neo-Con astroturf outfit FreedomWorks© is leading the charge against health care.

Why? To go to war.

To prepare the ground for the PNAC-like ideas that were circulating in the HardRight, various wealthy individuals and corporations helped set up far-right think-tanks, and bought up various media outlets -- newspapers, magazines, TV networks, radio talk shows, cable channels, etc. -- in support of that day when all the political tumblers would click into place and the PNAC cabal and their supporters could assume control.

This happened with the Supreme Court's selection of George W. Bush in 2000. The "outsiders" from PNAC were now powerful "insiders," placed in important positions from which they could exert maximum pressure on U.S. policy: Cheney is Vice President, Rumsfeld is Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz is Deputy Defense Secretary, I. Lewis Libby is Cheney's Chief of Staff, Elliot Abrams is in charge of Middle East policy at the National Security Council, Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department, John Bolton is Undersecretary of State, Richard Perle is chair of the Defense Policy advisory board at the Pentagon, former CIA director James Woolsey is on that panel as well, etc. etc. (PNAC's chairman, Bill Kristol, is the editor of The Weekly Standard.) In short, PNAC had a lock on military policy-creation in the Bush Administration.

But, in order to unleash their foreign/military campaigns without taking all sorts of flak from the traditional wing of the conservative GOP -- which was more isolationist, more opposed to expanding the role of the federal government, more opposed to military adventurism abroad -- they needed a context that would permit them free rein. The events of 9/11 rode to their rescue. (In one of their major reports, written in 2000, they noted that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor.")

Tags for this video have been changed from 'pnac, nwo, wolfowitz, one, world, government' to 'pnac, nwo, wolfowitz, one world government' - edited by EndAll

look up:
"the three mistakes of paul bremer"
then think for a second that blackwater is not under the UCMJ.
they are paid for by tax dollars.
ran by a fundamentalist christian,or so purported.
whose executives read like a who's-who from the PNAC.
who believes he is on a mission from god.
to kill muslims.
the list goes on..but yeah..its pretty sickening.

the white house keeping its distance is the best foreign policy move i have seen from the white house in?..god,feels like forever.Iran has many pro-american constituents,but not from the mullahs.right now islam is so incredibly fractured it is a powder keg.i know i am just stating the obvious,but something has to be done and it wont help if its from an outside source,it has to come from within.

thats why i was cheering the protesters when they bogus election blew up in the mullahs faces.they may have restored some order after many deaths (nede being the most prominent)and many imprisonments but the word is out.now its just a matter of time.my hope is that the west stays out of it.there is a time to offer the hand of assistance,now is NOT that time.it would be too easy for iranian leaders to pounce on that and propagandize it to their own machinations.

if i had to point to a group to blame it would be the neo-liberals,now known as neo-conservatives.mrFisk posted an amazing doc today concerning just that topic so its fresh in my mind.i started paying attention to these guys around 2002,did some research and found an almost hidden group of empirialists who were pretty upfront about their goals.PNAC is a document i have posted about ever since.these guys mean business.
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-New-American-Century

one more point.
while much is addressed in this documentary.it's prudent to know why Iran has a problem with the US.it was not just ONE thing,it was many.
but the two biggest,i feel anyways.
was the CIA/SAS backed coup of democratically elected(yes,iran used to be a democracy,until we showed up)mossadeq so that a much more "west-friendly" dictator in the form of the shah could be installed.(mossadeq kicked BP out of iran to nationalize the oil fields).
the second of course was the espionage game played with both iran and iraq to keep the region unstable and therefore unlikely to consolidate and take over oil production,THEIR oil production.that war lasted NINE years and the US played both sides.
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a book called the grand chessboard.its an eye-opener on foreign policy,and explains many of the reasons why the US what they did.they were not exactly altruistic reasons.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/brzezinskigrandchessboard
the consequences of such actions?
chalmers johnson has the amswer:blowback
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011015/johnson
interviews here:
http://www.videosift.com/search?q=chalmers+johnson
brzinzski here:
http://www.videosift.com/search?q=Zbigniew+Brzezinski

I don't particularly understand the lashing out at 9/11 truthers. I don't think at this time they have evidence to back up their claims, but unlike the UFO believers, there's nothing particularly outlandish that they're suggesting.

They lied about WMD and links to Al Qaeda to get us into Iraq, why not lie about the specifics of 9/11 itself?

Given the way the Bushies lapped up the aftermath, it wouldn't surprise me if 9/11 turned out to be done with American help -- possibly even with the President or Vice President's knowledge, or on their order, or on their boss's order (call 'em whatever secret society name ya like).

Nothing in any of that seems impossible to me, and now, 7 years past that event, I find myself much more inclined to believe those outlandish claims than I did 9/12/01.

That said, nothing in this video seems particularly damning to me. The "second Pearl Harbor" comment being said by "some Senators" is no surprise, the entire Republican party gets talking points fed to them on every topic, and PNAC had people embedded in the press (William Kristol), and the White House (Donald Rumsfeld) that were eager to frame the attack in that way: a surprise attack that leads to a long, globally scoped military conflict.

Music to the Military-Industrial complex's ears.

^ No...

What I'm focused on is that the journalist at 4:30 quoted something that several Senators stated that is word for word from the PNAC. I didn't make the video.. I didn't control those people that stated what they thought they saw.

You can look into this however you like but please don't put words in my mouth.

Oh and to say that this is 5 minutes of absolute nothing is blatantly disingenuous on your part. This is recorded history. It means something. Whether you like it or not.

WTF? I know people as in groups of people are stupid, but to actually brainwash people to be so opposed to their own self interests, that's work you've got to admire.

PNAC, I doff my hat at you.

agreed rougy.
the man is editor of PNAC,and an op-ed columnist for the NYT,he has been wrong on..well..EVERYTHING.
why do they give this man airtime at all?
he is on FOX every sunday,and STILL insists that the neo-conservative (i.e;PNAC)
is the correct foreign policy agenda to adhere to,even though it has become,not only an embarrassment,but also an epic FAIL.
i would not too much credence in what this espouses.

I disagree that bin Laden and Al Qaeda had nothing to gain via 9/11. Assuming they wanted to damage or weaken the U.S. ability to project its influence around the world.

If they knew how Bush & PNAC would react, they knew that we'd start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, inflaming the middle east, and driving their recruitment numbers through the roof. If they knew we'd stretch our economy past its limits, and burn our bridges with our allies, and shred our own Constitution, they'd have known that would massively hamper our ability to project power throughout the world.

In fact, I think there's a case to be made that the two groups could've found common cause, and seen this as a win-win situation. PNAC gets boatloads of money, and Al Qaeda gets a weakened U.S.

The question really is, why does PNAC hate America as much as Al Qaeda?

>> ^Constitutional_Patriot:
Ron Paul is one that doesn't support the Neocon/PNAC philosophy.


I was actually more curious about Senators but should've been more specific.