<p>Sorry UCLAri. Definition, not soundbite. There IS a difference.</p>
<p>Ok, you’re right. I was being flip. But a neo-con is simply someone who used to be a liberal and became a conservative. What you choose to read into the term or attribute to the people is entirely up to you.</p>
<p>
Well.
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664[/url]”>http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664</a></p>
<p>driver,</p>
<p>I never argued that Groseclose found that the papers WEREN’T liberal. Just that the WSJ wasn’t as liberal as he had thought and that the editorial content wasn’t as conservative as he had thought. </p>
<p>You’re reading WAY too far into what I said. I’m just saying what he had told me personally.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yes…and no. The contemporary use of the term has grown somewhat vague and meaningless. Much like the use of “liberal.”</p>
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</p>
<p>An obtuse misreading of what I said. National security measures are not the road to Hell; citing “state security” and expediency in the name of national security so that anything goes <em>is</em>. As Lindsay Graham, the Commie-pinko, so eloquently said the other day in the tussle about torture, etc., something to the effect of observing legal restraints does not compromise our security, not observing them compromises what it means to be an American.</p>
<p>I do object to the mainstream media’s portrayal of this as a fight between a small band of Republicans and the administration. The small band of Republicans wouldn’t matter diddly if it weren’t for the near unanimous opposition of the Democrats in the Senate.</p>
<p>I agree that the true focus of attention belongs on the near total opposition among the Democrats, which will be forthcoming, and the dems won’t even have to spend a cent to spread the word.</p>
<p>
TheDad,</p>
<p>I agree it is bad to endanger national security for political expediency. Therefore, I’m sure you will promptly vilify Bill Clinton who is, by your definition, on the road to Hell:</p>
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</p>
<p>Ah politics. You dirty dirty whore, you.</p>
<p>I love the games Presidents play at the end of their last terms. LOVE THEM.</p>
<p>TheDad,</p>
<p>Before you resort to calling me obtuse again, I understand your position - that the Bush Administration has compromised civil liberties in the name of national security. I hope we can agree that balancing civil liberties and national security is difficult. I am grateful to people like you who proclaim the importance of civil liberties, and I assume our disagreement primarily involves how to strike the proper balance. My point is that, in wartime, the balance should shift more toward national security.</p>
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</p>
<p>I know that judicial and legal precedent are against me, but I can’t disagree more. It DOES shift toward security, but it shouldn’t necessarily do so. War is the “ambitious man’s” favorite tool of power usurpation.</p>
<p>I do not think that Bush is even remotely of that kin, but I do think that we should remain vigilant of wartime security’s easy embrace.</p>
<p>“The constitution is not a suicide pact” as Justice Goldberg once stated</p>
<p>Thanks for the punditry.</p>
<p>Ari,</p>
<p>It seems to me that your point should be addressed as 3 issues: </p>
<p>First, should a democratic nation balance national security issues and civil liberties, or should one always take precedence over the other?</p>
<p>Second, if you determine there should be a balance, is the balance static (e.g., always equal) or does it vary with changing circumstances?</p>
<p>Third, if you decide the balancing act is subject to changing circumstances, how should it vary? (E.G., should it favor national security in wartime or the converse, as you suggest?)</p>
<p>I think there should be a balance that is flexible depending on the circumstances and, at least for me, there is no better time to emphasize national security than when faced with a credible threat from a foreign nation or entity. I suspect others might answer these issues in a different way than I have, especially the first issue.</p>
<p>DRJ4,</p>
<p>I tend to be wary of state power, probably stemming from my area of study and my experiences with more “active” states.</p>
<p>However, inasmuch as I can argue from a purely domestic perspective, I’m all in favor of erring on the side of liberty, even in wartime. That, as far as I can surmise from my readings of the Founders, was to be the core philosophy of the state, through thick and thin. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be willing to beef up security when need be. But we shouldn’t do it lightly. We should always be hesistant to give up even the most minor of liberties, and even more critical of the state when those former liberties become tools of the state.</p>
<p>I am, first and foremost, a believer that the greatest threat to our individual liberties (not our lives, mind you) is the state. Although I do believe that a very credible threat exists out there, I believe that if we give up our liberties as a people, then they’ve won by default anyway, and we have nothing to fight for.</p>
<p>I don’t fight (in my very limited capacity as a scholar) and remain vigilant as an American for the US government. I fight and remain vigilant for my own security as an American. And they are, if we are to believe much American thought, mutually independent in many cases.</p>
<p>Ari, </p>
<p>I think I understand your position and that your answer to issue 1 would be that civil liberties should always (or virtually always) trump national security. I understand and respect that even though we might disagree. In general, I think people who disagree on issue 1 have different views of how credible foreign threats are to a nation like the US. You might believe that the range of potential harms, while possible or even probable, would not destroy our nation. I probably have a lower tolerance for risk of harm and a greater tolerance for permitting civil liberties to be abridged. </p>
<p>In my view, these are the issues our Founding Fathers faced but I don’t think they agreed on the answers any more than you and I do. What they gave us was a system to resolve these disputes, not a system to predetermine them.</p>
<p>DRJ4,</p>
<p>They were by no means in agreement on many things, but all of them seemed to generally fear state power, the encroachment of the state into personal lives, and the standing military.</p>
<p>I’m by no means the type to go live in some commune and train a militia (though I do secretly really want my own M4A1), I can’t help but worry. </p>
<p>This also makes it really hard for me to vote. Dems are too economically involved in our lives, GOP is too socially involved in our lives. :p</p>
<p>Ari,</p>
<p>I think the fears you mention relate to domestic needs and concerns. I’ve always understood that, as to foreign threats, our founders agreed on the need for the “united” states and a strong central government. </p>
<p>I agree that we don’t want to relinquish civil liberties based on the hope it might help us fight a war. We should seriously consider those matters, with a wary eye to any change that alters our rights but also with a willingness to change when change is warranted.</p>
<p>DRJ4,</p>
<p>Yes and no. Madison also feared the role of the ambitious when a nation was wraught with fear from a foreign threat. Though it was good for that nation’s people to unite, it wasn’t necessarily up to the state to do the uniting for us.</p>
<p>I think that uniting in the face of a threat is very important. I don’t know how much I like the idea of the state apparatus telling me when and how to unite.</p>
<p>I’m certainly not the type to run around and wear a tinfoil hat over PATRIOT, but I’m somewhat worried about how easily people are swayed by the big strong arms of the Fed at times like this. The strongest apparatus in a free state is its people, not its bloated and faraway central government. </p>
<p>But then again, these are the same people who are wont to burn down shops owned by Muslims, so I suppose a little bit of Fed presence ain’t so bad.</p>
<p>Ari,</p>
<p>Here’s something that scares me far more than the Patriot Act, and it was bipartisan: [Campaign</a> Reform Act of 2002](<a href=“TIME | Current & Breaking News | National & World Updates”>TIME | Current & Breaking News | National & World Updates).</p>
<p>DRJ4,</p>
<p>Didn’t you know that freedom of speech is allowed to be limited because people don’t know how to turn off ads when they watch TV? Pfft, so elementary.</p>
<p>:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Laws like this are another example of how politicians will try to cut a bagel with a guillotine.</p>