Re: the Bush assertion "they hate freedom"

[leftofthedial]

why is this repeated assertion allowed to stand?

I'm no fan of terrorists, but there is no evidence that they hate freedom. In fact, many terrorist acts are committed in the cause of freedom.

This seems like the most naked and self-serving possible propaganda, like saying "<my enemy's name here> is another Hitler." Ultimately it is empty language, devoid of all objective content.

It seems without those words, Bush's collective speeches of the last two-plus years would be only half as long. He says it constantly.

[NJCher]

1. is it allowed to stand?

I think it depends on the area of the country you're in. Yesterday, no matter where I turned, people were discussing this comment on radio, on TV and on the streets. Not one comment was heard in support of it. Instead, people were scoffing at it (NPR, TV) and on the post office line, a person was saying, "That doesn't make any sense."

I mentioned this to my friend in Houston, however, who said she'd heard no discussion of it at all.


Cher

[leftofthedial]

3. I've heard it parroted, not challenged

perhaps though, people are tiring of the empty rhetoric.

[laura888]

9. where do you live? n/t

n/t

[leftofthedial]

25. Colorado

but I travel frequently to the West Coast and to the South

[loudnclear]

19. It's allowed to stand by the media...all the time.

Did anyone of the press corps ask Bush to explain that comment?
Only the thinking public will question such a ridiculous statement.

[PennyLane]

2. But The Funny Thing Is.......

........everyone acts like they don't notice. How can you not?

[KharmaTrain]

4. Terrorist Vs. Freedom Fighters

Howard Feinman alluded to the "dark side" that is what's really happening on the ground in Iraq. This regime's mess-ups have swelled the ranks of those who are resisting the occupation to the point where this isn't just Al Queda (or Al Quada for our friends visiting from FR) or Baathists but virtually any group with a bitch...including a variety of clerics and others who are carving out their turf in this power vacuum.

Even Tweety wouldn't let Luntz off his inane rogaine-induced buzz with this conveluted logic that the more Americans who are shot at and killed somehow this means we're winning. Even Matthews couldn't let this one get by.

The most ominous thing I'm reading is how the targeting of Iraqi police is scaring anyone away from working with this regime...akin to the French resistance...and as more police and colaborators are killed the more the resentment grows at our occupation, the more a war of attrition will continue.

The * regime is playing CYA big time now and the "terror" card still seems to work. Look at how the numbnut's numbers rose when he played it a couple weeks back. The good thing is it doesn't bounce as high now as it did 3 months ago or after 9/11.

As long as Americans die daily and are so exposed (Tweety hammered Luntz on this one) to attack there's going to be a constant "drip, drip, drip".

I find it so inane that we're not getting the "good news" out of Iraq. Check out this week's Newsweek to find out about those wonderful new schools or explain how rocket attacks in a major capital shows things are better (I guess compared to Beirut 1983). Here's a bulliten to the spinmesiters: when kids go to school that's not news...when the school is hit by a rocket...THAT IS! Class dismissed.

[Lexingtonian]

5. It depends, of course

on the definition of the word "freedom".

There are two basic definitions of the word in American politics. One is the more Northern notion, which is more or less identical with 'autonomy'. The ability to govern oneself, and cooperate with others in society based on a notion of equality with only informal conditions (such as maturity). This notion, coupling 'free' and 'equal', derives from village and Protestant church government forms.

The other is the one upheld in the South by their upper classes, which was summarized notoriously (in paraphrase) as "Without slavery there is no freedom." Freedom is a very material thing here, a willful exertion of power in a logic of powers, objects, and desires. This kind of freedom defines it as an exploitation that serves the wishes of the free, i.e. controlling, person. (This notion of 'free' goes back to the free/unfree people system of masters (free) and serfs/servants/maids (unfree) of the Germanic farmstead. It was easy to adapt to black slaves as the Plantation system.)

So Bush is technically correct if he means it in the second, rather than the first, sense. But the Republicans have always lived by confusing people, by never quite admitting the second definition to be the one they really mean. Since the second involves a rigid class system and systematic political inequality, people who can choose between the two tend to favor the first....

[KharmaTrain]

8. So...

Self determination is really a bad thing, right? It's kinda like we have to limit the flow of information so that every voice can be heard? Or up is down and so on.

I cringe every time I hear anyone of the crooks in this regime use the words "freedom", "democracy" and even the words "Iraqi people", since they are so disingenuous.

A long time ago I was corrected on a political message board by a Repugnican who made it clear that we don't live in a democracy (always small d), but in a representative republic. I think this is the same thing just in a different package.

[Lexingtonian]

13. yep, that's it

Freedom is what your masters let you have, and what you then in turn take away from other people. That's what they mean. And that's why kleptocracy is where we always end up when they run things.

As for this preachy Republican, you may want to ask him next time around exactly what 'res publica'- matter of the public welfare- his party represents, and whether it really acts in the best interests of the whole society. Or whether it's just oligarchy with a pretense of public service. And yes, it's the same thing- dressed up as government. The Founders created a hybrid form of government with lots of compromises- if the elite failed, the People could still correct things, and vice versa. The lie in his argument is that the 'representative' part does not annul democracy- in aggregates, actual representatives act according to its demands and constraints.

[KharmaTrain]

14. Oligarchy Or Patriarch? Same Thing?

This kinda boils down to that fundamental issue of the government being the protector of the people or the wealth (translation - welfare). It's that mindset that "daddy knows all and don't worry" that I grew up with and manifests itself in "macho cultures" all over the place.

I can't help but feel the founding fathers knew abuses would occur in their model government (I always have to hammer that this was just a blueprint on paper, a popularly elected form of government had never been truly attempted) and had to leave the hedge room...thus the ability to ammend.

You know that attempting to nail a Repug on where "the people" should have a say in their government or not changes as to whom is in power and how it affects their pocketbooks.

[Lexingtonian]

17. you're right

Ideally societies have some great collective purpose that engages them to the point that people vs. wealth doesn't become a dilemma. And the truth is that in times of existential crisis, wealth is very rapidly taken and put to taking care of social needs. Our problem lies in the times where people have no greater purpose than accumulating wealth/power, and in the process come to identify themselves with their wealth/power. But it's one of those curious and somewhat inane things that historically societies ultimately destroy wealth that isn't being used in ways compatible with their collective needs/purposes.

Paternalism and all that...Daddy Knows Best is always a scam. Daddy Is Faking It is more like the reality. How could it be otherwise?

The Founding Fathers were perfectly aware that the government they were setting up was bound to err, bungle, and get filled with incompetents. They knew they were personally going to make up a lot of the people running it and had no illusions about each other. And most of them were in colonial legislatures before the Revolution- so they knew perfectly well what miserable and nasty and petty and corrupt business it really is in practice. So that's why they set out to make the system robust rather than perfect- to fit very imperfect people and bad situations. The Federalist Papers are full of that. In Philadelphia they spent a lot of time deciding the terms of office- too short and nothing can be accomplished, too long and screwy things don't get corrected. The Constitution is not an optimistic design. It assumes stupidity, failure, corruption, and morons fighting; and it assumes the Checks And Balances will be in use often. And it has endured, with a lot of maintenance work.

Henrik Hertzberg compared the Republican Party to the Communist Party of Stalin and Lenin back when he reviewed Blinded By The Right. Constant revisionism, all in the name of clinging to the advantages of power. So start off with your Repug with something where Theory is, well, Changing. Supply Side Economics is always a good one- David Stockman disavowing it in 1984 it is always hopelessly embarrassing to them. Divorce rates in the Bible Belt, crime rising during Republican Presidencies, their Chickenhawks, their China hypocrisy- oldies but goodies. Revisionism always means hypocrisy. But arguing about their pocketbooks is pretty difficult. When things are bad they often don't see it that way- if the people they don't like get a lot worse off than they are, that assures them that they are going to have that much more of an advantage when things improve. In the end they are really moral relativists of the worst kind.

[KharmaTrain]

24. Well Stated

I feel great when I can learn something and gain insight in the process...your post provided both.

Dealing hypocrisies to Repugnicans now is like shooting fish in a barrel and thanks to this regime the old chestnuts of "Tax & Spend" and "Family Values" are so morally compromised and corrupted.

Yes, when you argue statistics, anyone can find their own stats to counter (ah the marvels of nexxis...right Ms. Coultergeist?) but I've always felt economics is never explained, it's felt and when it bites it creates political change. This is a big hidden storm the "die-hards" haven't ever understood and will be bit in the political bottom by it again and again.

Years ago I used to play with the argument that the polarities of Communism and Capitalism/Republicanism were identical...thus that what was the hard left in the USSR (Breshnev et al) was identical to the far right in this country. When you compare them side-by-side it drives the wingnuts batty. When you do the same comparison with National Socialism, it goes off the scale. But then I calm them down that there's never really been a socialist state...the Commies were just as greedy as we are. LOL.

Again, I appreciate your insight in framing the framers, per se. I forget the experiences of the various colonial governments in the overall evolution of our current political system.

[leftofthedial]

28. nice dialog, you two

thanks.

[leftofthedial]

27. "Daddy is Faking It" indeed

all this "Daddy" provides us is PR backed with no substance.

They believed that the DOD could run their war, including the occupation, for them. The administration (sic) itself is incapable of any functions other than PR and looting the treasury.

[leftofthedial]

26. ambiguity pervades their jargon

they mislead and misdirect at every turn.

I don't know that the "Northern-Southern" dichotomy illuminates the issue much for me, but I see your point.

[Paschall]

6. The subtext, or hidden message is...

"We love freedom. We enjoy freedom."

Keep saying it long enough and you won't notice that Ashcroft and the USA Patriot Act are actually stripping Americans of their freedoms.

And if you still don't get it, get thee to the Free Speech Zone!

[JNelson6563]

7. the Big Lie

That has got to be the biggest piece of propaganda there is. How I loathe that cowardly liar.

Julie--who never had a sworn-enemy-for-life list before this misAdminstration

[R Hickey]

10. Bush lies about everything - Its all in a book by David Corn

David Corn spells out every lie Bush has made since hitting the national scene. If you read his book, you will see that everything Bush has said has been a lie. Big lies, little lies, and even middle sized lies, David Corn is keeping track.

[markus]

11. Why do *they* (Bush, Ashkroft, et al) hate our freedoms?

That is the question to throw back. Why the Patriot Act? Why the charges of disloyalty and treason if we dare to dissent from the junta's world view? Why all the fury about civil unions?

Why *do* they hate our freedoms? Why don't they just go start their own country somewhere if they hate America so? They could afford to buy one somewhere, I'm sure.

[leftofthedial]

29. I think this is close to the point--it is Freudian projection

I'm no Freudian, but the pattern is unmistakeable, from claiming the moral highground and labeling liberals as amoral or immoral, to the Clinton character assassination to labeling Gore a "liar" to rhetoric like this.

"A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."

Their criticisms of their political enemies almost always are descriptions of themselves.

[NJCher]

12. thanks for the explanation, Lexingtonian

I've been a northerner all my life and I had no idea.


Cher

[jonoboy]

15. if they hate freedom so much

why are suicide bombers giving their lives to try and force an invader out ?

[liberalcapitalist]

16. they do hate freedom

They seek to establish a sexist theocracy. Not that different from *

[leftofthedial]

30. not all of them

(unless you believe the Bush lie that they are all fundamentalist Islamic extremists).

Most of the attacks in Iraq have been carried out by those who would support a secular government. Many of the Palestinian attacks in Israel are not carried out by Islamic fundamentalists.

[teryang]

18. When a corporatist talks of freedom

...he doesn't mean the freedom of the bill of rights, he means the freedom of corporations to exploit resources and markets without regulation, limitation or restriction from sovereign people or governments. They mean the type of freedom that existed before FDR, the freedom to strip continents and nations of their property without regard to the human consequences.

[Kamika]

20. Hes trying to stereotype the enemy into a true "evil"

The "enemy" now could might aswell be cobra commando, he hates freedom etc etc.

Ofcourse the sheep are buying it. They LOVE rhetorics like that.


I just wonder why canada, holland etc aren't attacked

[onebigbadwulf]

21. Kamika

...I love you. :loveya:

[Kamika]

22. nice

Feels good to be loved :)

[TreasonousBastard]

23. It's a stupid sound bite...

I hear wingnuts use all the time. I'm not sure they know what it means, but it's something about how they are jealous of us.

Figures Shrub would use it-- he likes stupid sound bites.