Zach:
In all seriousness, Tom is full of ****. Reasoning with him doesn't
accomplish much. He believes American forces are terrorists. What more is
there to say?
I can understand, after a fashion, why people hate the US, or why they hate
the authority it represents. In a sense I understand the resentment
expressed by people like Ward Churchill about all those "little Eichmans" in
the World Trade Center. But subtract the resentment, the rage, that modern
therapy says we ought to acknowledge for our own mental health, and it seems
reasonable to ask is he right that those financial planners in the WTC were
"little Eichmans?" The first hurdle would seem to be whether it were true
that their actions impoverished, rather than enriched, people that were
deemed their "victims." The research consensus on this is quite clear:
although there are losers and winners as a result of any policy, the net
effect of trade is a welfare benefit, which is born out by a documented net
transfer of wealth from developed to developing nations for the last fifty
years.
But assuming that was not the case, and there were a net harm... is it the
case that the people in the WTC were knowledgable about this, as one might
expect the bureoucrats in the Third Reich were about the effect of their
actions on the Jews? That's not very likely, since the literature (as I
pointed out) points in the very opposite direction. At most, they were
duped by the literature into believing they were helping... which suggests
they were never appropriate targets for anything.
What have we left? Human injustice (which we've admittedly failed to
eliminate), poverty (likewise), and an understandable resentment about the
human condition. So, should we take Ward Churchill's allegations seriously,
or should we pity him and those who sympathize with his arguments? Should
we join his cause, or should we seek to develop those undeveloped economies,
free people from the grip of authoritarianism and tyranny, and expand
economic opportunity through trade, making his cause a moot point?
There is a great deal wrong in the world. The "haves" are far more self
absorbed than they ought to be. But I see no reason to give the slightest
legitimacy to the Ward Churchills or the Michael Moores of the world. They
could be addressing real and actual wrongs, but have instead taken an old
tried and not-very-true shortcut, followed by the Stalinists before them.
They deserve not the slightest respect, no matter the respect earned or
unearned by George Bush and Company.
--
--Scott
"Zach" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:
[email protected]...
>
> Tom Sherman wrote:
>
>> Metaphorically speaking, if you bring your dog over to my lawn to
>> defecate on it, I will put on rubber gloves and toss the feces back
> over
>> the fence into your yard.
>>
>> --
>> Tom Sherman - Earth
>
> Why not just dig a small hole for them in your yard and bury them in
> your yard? After all the feces have been produced, that is a fact that
> you can't change and whatever odours they produce as they decay will be
> near enough your yard to smell whether you throw them over your
> neighbours fence or not. Plus by just burying them in your yard you
> won't have to get your rubber gloves soiled. All metaphorically
> speaking, of course.
>
> Zach
>
