Treason: Not Just for Lefties Anymore!
Matt Welch | August 4, 2003, 1:46am
Sorry to give Ann Coulter any more attention, but I though this paragraph might be of specific interest:
What are we to make of people who promote the idea that America is in the grip of a civil-liberties emergency based on 100 hazy stories of scowls and bumps and one-week detentions? Manifestly, there is no civil-liberties crisis in this country. Consequently, people who claim there is must have a different goal in mind. What else can you say of such people but that they are traitors?
Link via Michael Totten.
Jean Bart | August 4, 2003, 5:15am | #
Ray,
Let me repeat myself:
"Manifestly, there is no civil-liberties crisis in this country. Consequently, people who claim there is must have a different goal in mind. What else can you say of such people but that they are traitors?"
This is a very good example of a deductive fallacy. One of the best I've seen in the media in quite sometime.
..that's right, PBS, the television network owned, operated and funded by the very same federal government Albasti now claims is oppressing him..."
Well, the government is so large that one side could easily be in conflict with another aside of it. Also, the CPB isn't exactly a direct analog to the Department of Justice either.
"And yet, Ashcroft's modest, carefully tailored policies have prevented another attack for almost two years since Sept. 11, 2001."
Hmm, well, maybe yes, and maybe no. I think Coulter needs a remedial course on the issue of causality.
"AFTER PEARL HARBOR, President Roosevelt rounded up more than 100,000 Japanese residents and citizens and threw them in internment camps. Indeed, both liberal deities of the 20th century, FDR and Earl Warren, supported the internment of Japanese-Americans."
This is known as an Ad Hominem Tu Quoque.
Yes, I've poked a few holes. :)
Rick Barton | August 4, 2003, 8:34am | #
Jean Bart wrote:
"The American record on human rights is no better than any other nation's record."
Even when allowing a wide margin for rhetorical latitude the above statement seems absurd. Our constitutional liberties are indeed currently in danger and require our direct action to preserve them. But, it is just that constitution that is protective of individual liberty that sets our nation apart. Where in the world is there a broader guarantee of free speech then here? Where else are any government attempts to restrain it so checked by appeal to the law? Even in nations that we consider "free" such as Germany, Canada and England have currently embraced restrictions on free speech that could not hold in the US.
"It has only been forty years since the first inklings of equality for blacks came to fruition in this country."
But now, that's more a function of economics then human rights. (although, economic freedom is a crucial human right) The first statistically significant Black and Hispanic upper-middle class (better then "equality") was born of the boom caused by the Reagan tax rate cuts (sadly reversed by Bush 1) and economic deregulation.
"Not to mention the discrimination by government and the private sector against Jews and other ethnic groups (or such things as the Chinese Exclusionary Act)?"
Yet now, fully half of all the billionaires in the country are Jews. And, Chinese Americans are a solidly upper-middle class population.
"Or the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII based largely on lies and hysteria?"
Yes, a hideous crime against them by the government, the kind of horror that governments tend get away with when war is their pretext and it wouldn't have mattered even if it wasn't "based largely on lies and hysteria?" It would still be wrong and unconstitutional. The point is, that it is that same constitution, the enforcement of which, forced reparations for the victims of that travesty and with proper enforcement will undo the current PATRIOT ACT trampling of liberty.(this of course will be dependent on our vigilant action) How many other nations have constitutions that force that justice be done when their governments misbehave on such massive scale. The Palestinians surely enjoy no such protection while the Israeli government steals their land with its "fence" as their excuse.
Yes, our government has committed terrible transgressions, but lets be honest about comparisons with the rest of the world and lets be honest as well about our government limiting constitution that has caused this better record, even if "better" only in comparison to other governments.
Jean Bart | August 4, 2003, 8:57am | #
Rick Barton,
"Where in the world is there a broader guarantee of free speech then here?"
You are side-stepping the issue.
"Yet now, fully half of all the billionaires in the country are Jews. And, Chinese Americans are a solidly upper-middle class population."
So? That still doesn't excuse American history vis a vis discrimination against these groups of people.
"The point is, that it is that same constitution, the enforcement of which, forced reparations for the victims of that travesty and with proper enforcement will undo the current PATRIOT ACT trampling of liberty."
Actually, the Constitution never demanded reparations. In fact, _Korematsu_ has never been overturned and remains good law as to this day. What brought about reparations was a guilty conscience.
"How many other nations have constitutions that force that justice be done when their governments misbehave on such massive scale."
Most of the Western governments do. France has spent much of the post-war era trying to exorcise the demons of the Vichy regime in all manner of ways - from naming streets after Jewish victims of WWII atrocities to trying collaborators.
I'm sorry, I simply refuse to view the US as some special bastion of liberty, etc. Its got the same problems every other nation has, especially in comparison to other Western nations, and is not very special in this regard.
Plutarck | August 4, 2003, 10:39am | #
While I will agree that America is not "no better than any other countries record...", it is a kind of absurdity to think a record positive merely because it is a bit less horribly negative to everyone else; actions, such as the Phoenix program, are yet more recent examples of modern ignoring or trampling of human rights; if one will permit the addint of a mania to the list, add Satanic Ritual Abuse trials, amongst others.
I can just as well, and will just as well happily, note similarly long and detailed lists of horrors and manias that manifested themselves in other countries. That's perhaps the problem - often people only mention America, and thus get an America-bashing perception. I prefer the humans-aren't-a-pretty-species line of attack, and "we are all in the same damn boat" kind of approach.
The point, at least for me, is that Americans are no less human than any other group of people, yet they (we) have culturally inherited a distinctly Greco-Roman sense of moral and philosophical superiority to everyone else in the world, such that it is merely assumed that we are better - without any evidence to support the idea, other than the luxury of just having a shorter national history and a solid national taste for selective readings of modern American history (just not enough time divorcing us from the origins, and as such you don't get the sort of Chinese distaste for the kinds of Emperors and such that get the exact opposite reaction in America). Not that no one else shares in the self-love - the Japanese, as with perhaps all humans, tend to think modern successes are due to superiority in some way, and I'm aware of no particular instance in ANY culture where a nation looks back on history and sees itself as being on the morally wrong side of a war (...ok, except the one's that were, or sided with, Hitler - and not everyone, even then).
It would seem there is also a rather widely written about "cultural fog", which remarkably presents, promotes, and reinterprets other cultures until they painfully fit modern American culture. Hell, some people (at least the public ones) tend to go into absolute fits when you even so much as mention "culture" and "other cultures", and have a similar tendency to demand that students should study AMERICAN history, not all this foreign history crap! I make it through the day with a positive attitude largely because few people will behave so rediculously when they are not in front of crowds that cheer on their lunacy. That's probably also why I do my best to avoid cheering crowds.
Really, history just repeats itself over, and over, and over again, and not, I believe, because people fail to learn from it but because the game has not, and will never, change (and people's remarkable ongoing lack of learning and appreciating the importance of it...then again, I guess I do think it's because history isn't systematically learned from). Same strive for dominance, same demand for conformity, same struggle for survival and security, dishonesty works over the short-term just as much (and sometimes more) than ever, manias occur and persist over indefinate periods (some might have existed for as long as we can know), people still can't intuitively understand statistics, commiting logical fallacies is just plain natural and often feeds into intentional dishonesty (wishful thinking is a real bitch, especially), cherry picking examples and data that supports a thesis, the nature of orthodoxy, status quo, and maintaining one's own lifestyle, judging members that are not a member of one's own group as less intelligent, honest, kind, moral, attractive...and on, and on, and on.
Same old stuff, new people doing it, and some occassionally new rationalizations are invented for it.
Rick Barton | August 5, 2003, 2:01am | #
Jean Bart wrote:
"Its (the US) got the same problems every other nation has, especially in comparison to other Western nations..."
At least this is more reasonable then his original claim that: "The American record on human rights is no better than any other nation's record." Were making progress.
"... and is not very special in this regard."
On the contrary; As I said, the fact that, no where in the world is there a broader guarantee of free speech then here is quite special and worth all of us fighting ferociously to preserve, threatened, as it is now.
"Actually, the Constitution never demanded reparations.(for the WWII Japenese internment In fact _Korematsu_ has never been overturned and remains good law as to this day. What brought about reparations was a guilty conscience."
The constitution most certainly did demand reperations. Reagan's Attorney General, William French Smith in arguing for their nessesity cited
Amendment V of the Bill of Rights:
"No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
"Most of the Western governments do. (have constitutions that force that justice be done when their governments misbehave on such massive scale) France has spent much of the post-war era trying to exorcise the demons of the Vichy regime in all manner of ways - from naming streets after Jewish victims of WWII atrocities to trying collaborators."
That example is not really analagous since it was an occupation government and was it the French constitution that forced these measures?
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSS
