Subject:
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Re: Break Out the Cristal (trickle-down economics explained with champagne!)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 28 Mar 2003 21:27:59 GMT
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Viewed:
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847 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Marchetti writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > I give up.
>
> What a shock! Larry fails to explain the impossible.
>
> His basic assertion as I see it: an organization predicated on keeping the
> peace is broken when the U.S. cannot dictate to it a U.S. focused agenda
> from on high. In other words, when the U.S. cannot conceivably rationalize
> its invasions as "peace-keeping" anyway, why bother with the U.N.?
>
> "Ha-ha -- charade you are."
>
> The reason to keep ugly customers in the U.N. AND committed to peace is
> based upon a reading of Sun Tzu: "Keep your friends close and your enemies
> even closer."
>
> But yeah, those U.N. guys don't know what's going on -- their just stupid!
> Right Larry?
>
> -- Hop-Frog
I don't think I would have been that harsh. After Larry's last post, I had
decided to drop it as well, because neither of us are going to move, so why
pursue the thread?
As it stands, I respectfully object to Larry's assertion that we can
quantitatively put a value on a country as compared to other countries and
come up with some sort of scale. This very idea provides an 'us and them'
mentality in which 'us', being so much better and superior, can force our
'morally right' view onto 'them'. It's like 'us' telling Brazil, "Well, you
shouldn't do the deforestation you're doing because it's very harmful to the
world!! We're going to sanction you into compliance" when we're sititng
here, 'superior' because we did the exact same thing a few decades/centuries
ago and 'us' superior nations produce more greenhouse gasses then all the
other countries. Our moral superiority comes only by the fact that we
trashed our yards first into getting where we are, and now we're smart enuf
to know that doing it now is wrong--it's taking that knowledge to smug
superiority and telling other countries that they can't do it--thus keeping
them 'down' in the third world--that's the part that pisses me off the most.
/steps off soapbox.
I agree with Larry that the UN, as it stands today, has major problems. In
the 21st century, however, we, as a world, need some sort of international
tribunal to discuss things that concern all of us. I would like to see the
United Nations evolve into that institution, or something like it, where no
single country (or 5 countries) has supremacy over any other country.
However, noticing that Larry's stance seems to be to always throw out the
baby with the bathwater if things aren't perfect, I find much to disagree
with his stance.
I also find, to my, and I'm sure his, relief, that we can stop a topic when
we both know that there will be no movement--not with the feeling that
giving up means the other side won the arguement, but because we're probably
just two stubborn people who adhere to our beliefs when we know we're right. :)
Dave K
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