Counterpunch ran a rant by John Steppling yesterday, titled The Magic Liberal.

As you can deduct from the title, the author takes aim at liberals, with focus on their public reaction to Comey's defenestration and their sudden love affair with institutions (law enforcement/intelligence agencies) that have proven time and time again to be an enemy of the public.

Check out this (admittedly rather long) snippet:

And so we return to the firing of James Comey. And this story has less to do with the Trump’s motivations and the fact that Comey probably needed to be fired (though not because of anything to do with Russia Gate) than it does with the sudden open embracing of throughly corrupt and compromised institutions.

I’ve had people tell me the integrity of the Judiciary in peril. One wonders how such sentences can be uttered with a straight face. I have read people writing of the attack on Democracy signaled by Comey’s firing. What can that possibly mean to anyone who says it? The anti democratic actions of Obama over 8 years seems to pass unnoticed. What was NDAA? Obama expanded surveillance, prosecuted whistleblowers and expanded military tribunals. And this just scratches the surface. What was TTP for that matter?

And yet, if you can find me a liberal willing to actually debate this, I will clean your house for a year, free.

No, the New Victorian, the american white educated liberal is in crises. He or she is in a panic over Trump not because they fear global conflagration or nuclear annihilation, but because their Yoga class might get cancelled. They are forever aggrieved over the violation of feelings — of selected vulnerable groups. This never includes the poor, Arabs, Communists or Africans. Well, ok, on occasion it does include Africans but only in very broad abstract ways (i.e. when George Clooney argues for saving South Sudan or whateverthefuckever it was he was on about).

The adoration of the White Helmets, a proven group of psychopathic jihadist mercenaries is a perfect example. The White Helmets fit the white paternalist narrative. It is a form of colonial logic. The subaltern needs rescue. And its just so wonderful that some clearly teachable Arabs can help themselves with the rescue. Lets give them an Oscar. The style codes are what matters here.

reminds me of an expanded version of this Flying Lotus song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=higMmAiCxBY lol

As usual, you have it all wrong.
The left wanted Comey fired for making false statements designed both in tenor and timing to harm Clinton's chances.
They are up in arms because it's blatantly obvious that Trump didn't fire him for his statements last June or July, they thought him their hero in November and said so clearly right up until yesterday when he moved to expand the investigation into Trump's campaign. If he was going to be fired for his actions last summer, that would have happened in January, not yesterday.
Trump IS under investigation. First, the only evidence he isn't under investigation is Trump's unsolicited self serving claim that he said that, second, do you think the investigator tells the target they're being investigated? Not unless they are colluding, like the house committee did.

The FBI and house committee both said there is clear, undeniable evidence, but it's classified so far. Trump could fix that today, but he won't, he's too busy having closed door meetings with the very Russian diplomats he's accused of colluding with. (Edit:and they just released in house photos of the meeting, no press was allowed, showing smiling and laughing Trump and the diplomats arm in arm clearly having a great time, a pretty stark contrast to his meetings with allied presidents and diplomats that were often decidedly unfriendly and standoffish) That's not snark, it's fact.

If the investigations were a witch hunt, Trump would want them publicly investigated thoroughly so the evidence would prove it....not stymie them at every opportunity and repeatedly fire the investigators while clearly being caught lying about the investigation and why he fired them all when he did.

i have to agree that when the election was nearing the end,and it was time to vote.the choice was pretty clear.

i never liked the "lesser of two evils" argument,but when faced with a choice of:

soft fascist,narcissistic used car salesman,who spoke in bombastic and racially charged rhetoric,but really said nothing.

or...

a war-mongering corporatist,who never saw a war she didn't want to send your kids to go die in,or a corporation she didn't want to extract donations from for political favors and who basically said nothing as well.except for 'well,at least i am not that THAT guy"--->points to trump.

i am still gonna say...go with the corporatist.

because in the end,at least on domestic policy,hillary would have been adequate.oh she would have signed the TPP,and fucked millions of american workers,and she would have most likely expanded the drone campaign,and continued with the american empires policy of "regime change",but she had/has the knowledge and capabilities to actual lead a government.

hillary knows how to politic,and understands how shit gets done in washinton,and things would have remained relatively unchanged here in america.maybe..maybe.... some incremental change due to the political pressure the sanders campaign brought.

so i get it,and maher is not exactly wrong per se",but i think he is missing the bigger picture that so many in the beltway have missed,and CONTINUE to miss,because they reside in their own,tiny and insulated bubble.

the american people were desperate for change,and they have been for decades.after obama's campaign of 2008,and his "hope and change" platform,which ignited the american people,only to see,not "hope and change" but rather "more of the same".

and what was hillary offering?
a new message or vision? a new path for america that would include everybody to blaze a new path of invention,creativity and imagination to create an america everyone could be proud of? and feel a part of?

nope..she was offering "more of the same".

well,americans had already had their fill of "more of the same".they had lost faith in a system that appeared to no longer represent them.so they chose the nuclear option for change.terrifying and horrifying change.

so go ahead and blame the "bernie bros".feel free to slap responsibility on those "uneducated and redneck hillbillies".cry and whine and point the finger at those liberals who refused to abandon their principles,and by all means bask in the glory of your own self-righteous moralizing,and condescendingly condemn anyone who voted for trump,or who refused to vote at all.

you can sit in a small room with everybody else who voted for hillary,and self-righteously smell each others farts and call it a rose,because you are obviously a better quality human being than the rest of us.

and by all means,refuse to examine the fact that hillary ran a shit campaign,and had no real message,vision or path to the future.ignore the corruption and blatant,and politically motivated shenanigans of the DNC.god forbid you experienced a moment of honesty.

is trump going to be a disaster of presidency?
well,it sure is shaping up to look that way isn't it?
but we have survived horrible presidents before,and we shall survive trump.

and on a positive note:
trump has brought many people out of their apathetic slumber,and they are scrutinizing everything he does with a fine toothed comb.the amount people who are becoming politically engaged is quite impressive.

there is nothing in our representative democracy quite as powerful as people gathering together to put pressure on our elected representatives.

town hall meetings,that used to be wastelands,are now being packed to over-flowing.with citizens calling out their representatives..to their FACE..on how unhappy they are.

so go ahead and ridicule those who voted for trump,but it is due to trump that so many have gotten off their couches and are taking it to their congressmen and senators.

just a non-controversial,and easily predicted side effect,when you put someone like trump in power.

man,the politics in my country is getting really fucking interesting!i cannot WAIT to see what happens in the next episode!

what do you guys think?
/end rant

*promote

It's not a joke. It's hypocritical, but quite serious. Because they focus on the fact that he appears to be under Putin's control does not mean they ignore his myriad of other faults....proven by the near weekly protests against his policies.

Jesus Christ...they aren't upset the he wants to normalize relations with Russia, they're upset that he seems to be a Russian agent, as do many of his cabinet, and they fear he'll do things to benefit them instead of actually working for America.
People are upset at his people illegally, treasonously 'talking' to the Russians about removing sanctions and other subversions of established federal policy and law before they were in power and bold faced lying about it under oath and publicly uncountable times, not for having normal or legal diplomatic discussions. They won't accept it when the next president takes control on Nov. 8 and reverses their policies before taking office.

The emails themselves had no new information, it was the implication that they did, and that the investigation was still actively under way that hurt her. The media absolutely covered that, what are they talking about?

It's not about escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia, it's about abandoning normal policy and giving Russia what they want, carte Blanche to expand and reform the USSR.

I guess they forgot that Russia is building it's military on it's borders and expanding it's territories into our allies countries, and that's why NATO moved, to protect our allies, not to provoke poor little innocent Russia. Just fucking duh.

They aren't necessarily shills for Russia, they are, however, being shills for Trump, and Chomsky now seems to be moving in that direction based on this video. This is the most idiotic thing I've heard from Chomsky, as it completely ignores reality and reason to lambast people for being worried their president may be (as all evidence indicates he is) an agent for one of our worst enemies.

Sorry Chomsky, big fail.

**EDIT**
I'm finding other sources that say that sterile "terminator seeds" are a patented technique, but that Monsanto has promised not to use it. Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/terminator-seeds.aspx

So it appears that my info below is wrong. I will try to talk with my family and get the full story. That being said, I'll leave my original comment and the followup below unaltered.
*********


My firsthand knowledge of this stuff was from more than 10 years ago, and also when I was pretty young (early 20's). So I did some web searching to try to get updated since your question is a very interesting one:

http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html

According to that, Monsanto is the company behind "Roundup Ready", and their corn (and other crops in the line) do use sterile "terminator seeds". It also mentions that farmers "must purchase the most recent strain of seed from Monsanto" each year.

I was never in the decision-making structure of my family farm, but I did remember that we couldn't just buy the Roundup Ready seed *once* and then hold a small amount back as seed for the next year and continue to get the benefits.

I'm not 100% sure exactly how the modification for sterility works -- I don't know if the plant will sprout if you plant the sterile seeds and just fail to produce any ears / fruit, or if it just won't germinate at all. I do remember that we had to be quite careful to fully clean out the corn grown from the GM seeds from our storage bins, and better yet to store our non-GM corn to be used for future seed in entirely different bins. That was done to make sure that we didn't end up planting any of the sterile stuff.

I'm sure that the seed dealers that sell the GM stuff really push farmers to buy and plant it every year, as hinted to in that link. But you certainly don't *have* to. On the other hand, if you go back to non-GM seed for a year or two or more, you can't use a strong herbicide like Roundup if you have an unexpected outbreak of weeds or other pest plants -- the Roundup would kill the non-GM crop along with everything else.

Basically, I don't specifically begrudge companies like Monsanto for their practices concerning these GM crops. The "terminator seeds" are controversial, but don't seem like a big deal to me. If you could buy GM seeds once and then just hold back some of your harvest for next season's seed, they'd only get your money once AND we'd probably lose the original strains. So I see that as kinda win-win, especially if you don't 100% buy into their sales department urging you to use GM seed every single year.

I don't want to sound like a shill for Monsanto -- some of their other practices are pretty shady, particularly political lobbying. But from the perspective of my family farm, the GM corn that we use was/is a real beneficial thing. Significantly less pesticide/herbicide use over time, and it allows for expanded low/no till farming. Before herbicides, tilling was one of the only ways to kill off pest plants. But, it also makes the fields lose some moisture and nutrients. Expanded farming and ubiquitous tilling was largely the cause of the "dust bowl" dirty 30's. Anyway, I'd say that a lot of good has come out of modernized techniques and technology like GM crops.

Oh come on. Grown women, fully-dressed, consensually doing a non-sexually-graphic dance routine.

And can you expand on what "pseudo creepy" is supposed to mean?

People only think they love their children but it's really just a trick of brain chemistry due to natural selection favoring those who care for their young. And still, I told my son to take the bus home from school because I wasn't finished cheddaring.

I have lots of hobbies and probably all of them are because my brain chemistry compels me in some way. Still, I'm experiencing new things and expanding my understanding of the world, instead of watching someone explain to me in great detail how everything I enjoy is meaningless. And I still even find time to tell my kids I love them. Even though, objectively, the love I feel is probably just a compulsion.

Look
If you had
One shot
Or one opportunity
To release all the energy you ever wanted
In one moment
Would you abuse it
Or use it for good?

They've armed the weapon
Countdown clock is set and
J. Robert Oppenheimer is sweatin'
Eyes are red and he's nervous
Cause on the surface this is armageddon
The shock bomb, but we're set upon and threatened
And with no sound the whole Alamogordo ground
Is glowing and cowed under one smouldering cloud
He's choked and wowed, everybody's open-mouthed
And over the ground the shock front blows, kapow!
Snap back to the alchemy
Hope before tragedy
Showed with bold math that we broke the whole atom
We choked; controlled action with poles of cold cadmium coat
To go capture neutrons and slow fracture
We broke, postponed that and we chose to go fashion
A most radioactive plutonium gadget then
Fat Man and Boy and Enola goes laughin'
As Nagasaki is blown and Hiroshima's blasted

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

Neutrons escaping from a source radiating
Merge and start atoms shaking; they begin
To unglue toward a decreased order
Entropic force distorts em
And supercharged with loads of protons they can only go farther
Cold war grows hotter--exothermal--Colorado to Joe Stalin
Coast to coast holes; silos but there's no farmer
Toe-to-toe drama
NATO and Warszawa in co-assured trauma
The globe groans everyone knows there's no calming
So show your foes and implode your core column
Quid pro quo Castle Bravo for Tsar Bomba
And move on and leave atolls exposed to gross doses of old fallout;
Slow-to-go toxins in shoals and so though we explode them no longer
Still the proof lives on in the blue lagoon water, father

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

When war games hit the stage of a gluon's rage
There's a military boot on the new doc's page
We were playing in the beginning, but grew up strange
Making radar and missiles, and new bombs blazed
And we kept grinding the lensed sights for the next sniper
Best believe son it'll pay to design fighters
All the gains of science analyzed by the
Man provide plans for sarin and cyanide
And our hands are blighted by crying
Eyes when dying lands are slammed if our grants expand the fire brighter
And there's no jury there's no sublime righter
This is our fight
And these minds are all ours so protect your pia mater
Try to feed and water good, seed trust, flee dishonour
Gotta be clean being Apollo stead of Vietnam and
Lay the armour down and be the one to stand up
And lead us on the trail of Spock
We'll elevate these motley progeny
To a future in a safer spot, an irrigated plot
Homicide a way forgot
Success is a lack of military options
Failure's not
Become a lover of a great and cosmic goal
We cannot condone these terror plots
So here we go it's our shot
Feel frail or not
This is the only world and humanity that we got

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

You gotta make your own mind up, man.

You contradict yourself. You said he is delivering what he said.
If, as it seems, you admit he's failed to deliver on any of these promises, what do you mean by that?
So far, all I see him actually deliver is hypocrisy and ineptitude, no uncontested victories, no ability to unite, and a seriously dangerous plunge in international respect with nation after nation ignoring/violating treaties and expanding their militaries and territories in a blitzkrieg (China, Russia, N Korea, Israel, Iran, etc).

4weeks in and you throw in the towel? He's not emperor yet, but he's on track to get us there by declaring the media an enemy of America, the Judicial branch partisan political activists, international obligations and law negotiable, and nuclear war acceptable. 1 year and 11 months to go before a new congress and likely impeachment if that power hasn't been striped from them by then.

In Trump's mind, he is the BEST reader there is. That is why he can't read. If big Oil and gas wants a pipeline, that's all there is to know! Why read long reports from the EPA or environmental scientists? ("God dammit, they're trying to get me to read and comprehend these things again - lets get rid of em!") Big Oil needs a hand out, and that's what Trump does, he gives/receives handjobs from the nastiest of the nasty, or if he wants it and it is unwilling - he grabs it like a big ol' wild animal/monkey man that he is. TRUMP = ORANGE MONKEY that huffed too much corporate paint.

My dad was a CEO of a huge company - a self-made man (rip), he was dyslexic - but at least he learned about his disadvantage and figured out how to somewhat overcome it and use it to his advantage. What I'm saying is he tried to learn and overcome and succeeded. Trump is just a munchkin who was handed everything; an ego-maniac in great need of my favorite chemical for delivering pure ego-death to humble his ass down for the rest of his life and expand in understanding and awareness. I posted an animation video on here about Trump getting "it" but even then (as in the video the conclusion was): he may just be too stupid.

Please expand, because while I can see that he's picking and choosing some easy targets for criticism (over the top SJW stuff) that may not be representative of the at-large "Progressive" agenda, nothing really jumped out at me as a "straw man" argument.

I'm a somewhat conservative-leaning person (at least on issues that I think should be in the realm of government), but I feel like I have a legitimate beef with some of what the party that is "supposed" to cater to conservatives actually does in government; what the GOP seems to present as its "platform".

This guy is a liberal-leaning person who feels like he has a legitimate beef with some of what his party thinks their platform should be. And I tend to agree with a lot of what he's saying.

And I would hope that even if I didn't agree with anything that he was saying, I'd be all for protecting his right to say his piece. Some people/groups test our patience for that, like the Westboro Baptist Church -- ostensibly a crazy right-wing organization that just wants to get their message (of hate and bigotry) out there. But in reality they are just a bunch of con men who stir up trouble in order to provoke violent or other responses that they can start litigation over. The point is, there are good ways and bad ways to deal with idiots like that.

Threats to free speech from the other side of spectrum are much more subtle, and therefore perhaps more insidious and dangerous. For example, at about 3:00 in the video where he lists "racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, and islamophobia" as "meaningless buzzwords". For many people, those words are NOT meaningless, but real, concrete problems that they actually have to face in their lives. Problems many orders of magnitude more significant and weighty than any of the minutia that can make or ruin our average day. Unfortunately, those words do tend to carry a lot less weight when they are bandied about willy-nilly every time we disagree with someone for any reason.

I guess, we all really do have more things in common with each other than things that separate us from each other. The frequent and extreme factionalizing and partisanship today seems very counter productive. And there's plenty of blame for that to go around.

Can I ask where you got your info on the rape crisis in Sweden exactly?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/swedens-rape-crisis-isnt-what-it-seems/article30019623/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden

Last week the G&M reported that here in Canada 1 in 5 sexual assault claims are filed as baseless and never investigated. Back in 2005 Sweden started expanding their definition of rape and working on ways to avoid issues like we're having, such as people not reporting it and people who report it being ignored.

So you broaden the definition of rape to protect more people (the infirm was a major one for them), make it far more socially acceptable to report it and stop turning away victims and surprise surprise you get more reported rapes.

There are many times that statistics are used to misinform us or to cast a certain light on topic, "How to Lie with Statistics" is a great book for learning more.

Actually, matter does appear and disappear from and to nothing. There are energy fields that permeate space, and when their potential gets too high, they collapse and eject a particle. Similarly, particles can be destroyed or decay and upon that event they cause a spike in the background energy fields.

One of the essential functions of a collier is to compress a bunch of crap into a tiny spot, so that when enough decays in that specific spot it will cause such a local spike in energy that new particles must subsequently be ejected (particles that are produced at some calculated energy level - different energy levels producing different ejections).

*This is at the subatomic level. Large collections of matter don't just convert to energy.

I know plenty of people roll eyes at that, but the math upon which those machines are built are using the same math that makes things like modern lithography machines work (they manipulate tiny patterns of molecules). You basically prove the math every time you use a cell phone (thing with modern micro chips).

...

But that's beside the point. If there ever was 'nothing', the question isn't "whether or not god exists to have made things" - it's "why do things exist". God could be an answer. As could infinite other possibilities.

...

Personally, eternity is the answer I assume is most likely to be correct. Because you don't have to prove anything. The universe need not be static - but if something was always there (even just energy fields), then there is an eternity in one form or anther.

Background energy and quantum tunneling are a neat concept (referring to metastability). Because you can have a big-bang like event if the background energy level tunnels to a lower state, expanding a new space starting at that point, re-writing the laws of physics in its area of existence. Meaning that our universe as we know it can simply be one of many bubbles of expanding tunneling events - created at the time of the event, and due to be overwritten by another at some point. Essentially a non-permanent local what-we-percieve-as-a-universe, among many. (I'm avoiding the concept that time and space are relative to each bubble, and there is no concept of an overarching time and place outside of any one event).

(All this comes from taking formulas that model measurements of reality, globing them into larger models, and then exploring the limits of those models at extreme values/limits. ... with a much lagging experimental base slowly proving and disproving elements of the model (and forcing model refinement upon a disproval, so that the model encompasses the new test data))

-scheherazade

@bcglorf
i feel i have to ask you a question,and i feel quite foolish for not thinking of asking it before.

i do not ask this snidely,or with any disrespect.

are you a neo-conservative?

because this "If he was on America soil, I'd agree with you. If he was living in a European apartment, I'd agree with you. Heck, if he was living in Russia I'd agree with you."

is almost verbatim the counter argument that was published,ad nauseum,in the weekly standard.which is a neo-conservative publication.edited by bill-the bloody-kristol.

and it would also explain why we sometimes just simply cannot agree on some issues.

ok,let's unpack your comment above that quoted.i won;t address the rest of your comment,not because i find it unworthy,it is simply a reiteration of your original argument,which we have addressed already.

so...
you find that it is the region,the actual soil that a person is on that makes the difference between legal prosecution..and assassination.

ok,i disagree,but the MCA of 2006 and the NDAA of 2012 actually agree with you and give the president cover to deem an american citizen an "enemy combatant".however,the region where this "enemy combatant" is not the deciding factor,though many have tried to make a different case,the simple fact is that the president CAN deem you an "enemy combatant' and CAN order your assassination by drone,or seal team or any military outlet,or spec-ops...regardless of where you are at that moment.

now you attempt to justify this order of death by "The reality is he was supporting mass killing from within a lawless part of the world were no police or courts would touch him. He was living were the only force capable of serving any manner of arrest warrant was military."

if THIS were a true statement,and the ONLY avenue left was for a drone strike.then how do you explain how this man was able to:foment dissent,organize in such a large capacity to incite others to violence and co-ordinate on such an impressive scale?

anwars al awlaki went to yemen to find refuge..yes,this is true.
but a btter qustion is:was the yemeni government being unreasonable and un-co-operative to a point where legal extradition was no longer a viable option?

well,when we look at what the state department was attempting to do and the yemeni response,which was simply:provide evidence that anwars al awlaki has perpetrated a terrorist attack,and we will release him.it is not like they,and the US government,didn't know where he lived.

this is EXACTLY what happened with afghanistan in regards to osama bin laden.

and BOTH times,the US state department could not provide conclusive evidence that either bin laden,or awlaki had actually perpetrated a terrorist act.

in fact,some people forget that in the days after 9/11 osama actually denied having anything to do with 9/11,though he praised the act.

so here we have the US on one hand.with the largest military on the planet,the largest and most encompassing surveillance system.so vast the stasi would be green with envy.a country whose military and intelligence apparatus is so massive and vast that we pay other countries to house black sites.so when t he president states "america does not torture",he is not lying,we pay OTHER people to torture.

so when i see the counter argument that the US simply cannot adhere to international laws,nevermind their OWN laws,because they cannot "get" their guy.

is bullshit.

it's not that they cannot "find" nor "get" their target.the simple fact is that a sovereign nation has decided to disobey it's master and defy the US.so the US defies international treaties and laws and simply sends in a drone and missiles that fucker down.

mission accomplished.

but lets ask another question.
when do you stop being an american citizen?
at what point do you lose all rights as a citizen?
do we use cell phone coverage as a metric?
the obedience of the country in question?

i am just being a smart ass right now,because the point is moot.
the president can deem me an "enemy combatant" and if he so chose,send a drone to target my house,and he would have the legal protection to have done so.

and considering just how critical i am,and have been,of bush,obama and both the republican and democrats.

it would not be a hard job for the US state department and department of justice to make a case that i was a hardline radical dissident,who was inciting violence and stirring up hatred in people towards the US government,and even though i have never engaged in terrorism,nor engaged in violence against the state.

all they would need to do is link me with ONE person who did happen to perpetrate violence and slap the blame on me.

i wonder if that would be the point where you might..maybe..begin to question the validity of stripping an american citizen of their rights,and outright have them executed.

because that is what is on the line right now.
and i am sorry but "he spoke nasty things about us,and some of those terrorists listened to him,and he praised violence against us".

the argument might as well be:enoch hurt our feelings.

tell ya what.
let's use the same metric that you are using:
that awlaki incited violence and there were deaths directly due to his words.

in 2008 jim david akinsson walked into a unitarian church in tennesee and shot and killed two people,and wounded seven others.

akinsson was ex military and had a rabid hatred of liberals,democrats and homosexuals.

he also happened to own every book by sean hannity,and was an avid watcher of FOX news.akinsson claimed that hannity and his show had convinced him that thsoe dirty liberals were ruining his country,and he targeted the unitarian church because it "was against god".

now,is hannity guilty of incitement?
should he be held accountable for those shot dead?
by YOUR logic,yes..yes he should.

now what if hannity had taken off to find refuge in yemen?
do we send a drone?

because,again using YOUR logic,yes..yes we do.

i am trying my best to get you to reconsider your position,because..in my opinion...on an elementary moral scale..to strip someone of their rights due to words,praise and/or support..and then to have them executed without due process,or have at least the ability to defend themselves.

is wrong.

i realize i am simply making the same argument,but using different examples.which is why i asked,sincerely,if you were a neo-conservative.

because they believe strongly that the power and authority of the american empire is absolute.they are of the mind that "might makes right",and that they have a legal,and moral,obligation to expand americas interest,be it financial or industrial,and to use the worlds largest military in order to achieve those goals.they also are of the belief that the best defense is the best offense,and to protect the empire by any means necessary.(usually military).

which is pretty reflective of our conversations,and indicative of where our disagreements lie.

i dunno,but i suspect that i have not,nor will i,change your position on this matter.

but i tried dude...i really did try.