Tuesday, January 14, 2003

American politics is about style, not substance. Meanwhile Lieberman, like every democratic candidate in the last 30 years except Clinton, pitches substance. His corruption is irrelevant. It a mark of incompetence that those who suffer from it are oblivious.
People who attack the press for being biased against Gore miss the point. It was never about politics. The American people will follow the Devil to the edge of a cliff. They may recoil when you ask them to jump, but sometimes it's too late.

Liberals who get upset over the the possibilities of internment camps and other restrictions do not understand their own history, or the history of their country. It makes no practical sense for an empire in crisis to respect the civil liberties of its citizens as much as this one has. We have a way of life based upon the denial of such liberties for others. Democracy did not make us rich, capitalism did. Or rather what made us rich was an internal system of capitalist and multi-ethnic democracy which resulted, lo and behold, in a skill at domination and the greed that required it. But there is no reason to assume that after years of abuse, those who have suffered under us- or more specifically under our proxies- will follow the same rules we do.

I will defend those civil liberties, however, for the same reason that I oppose first -or second- use of nuclear weapons. I do not believe in pushing the button, ever. I am not a pacifist, but I am willing to accept the increased risk of defending the ideals of democracy even in a society that is objectively not democratic. How many people who are concerned about the rights of immigrants understand the importance of this decision?

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