Subject:
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Re: 'changing countries to be free' (was Re: Who the devil)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 7 May 2005 14:31:28 GMT
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Highlighted:
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(details)
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1018 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Parsons wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Parsons wrote:
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Its a tricky thing.
There’s no doubt that the world is more stable with less nuclear weapons.
And there is a good argument that (Western) countries with much to lose
are less likely to use these weapons. Its only places or people with not
much to lose or the real prospect of losing everything that find these
weapons attractive.
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Richard is right as far as he goes, where he falls down is in his
prescription for how to change countries to be free...
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Mmmmm. A truly American assumption that my ‘prescription’ was designed to
change these countries to be free, but not what I was driving at. I have
read it again, and I can’t see that in what I said.
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That’s too bad, because that’s what you SHOULD have said.
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(chuckle)
I can’t imagine telling anyone what they should have said, much less yelling at
them. A fine example of an underlying problem.
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There are a lot of ways to encourage and help people that want to be free
achieve it, OTHER than charging in, guns blazing (and I’d challenge you to
point out where I’ve been a big proponent of that) but it’s really quite easy
to rail against that rather than addressing the real issue, right?
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I wasn’t personalising the argument to you Larry. The guns blazing is a popular
and wrongheaded answer. That’s what I was talking about. You might want to
chip in with some of the ‘lot of ways to encourage and help people’ you know
about, rather than just close off ideas while the hawks press on regardless.
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That real issue is that there are a lot of evil dictatorships out there that
routinely oppress their people, and giving them foreign aid, or making them
the chair of UN committees isn’t going to do much about it. Neither are any
of your prescriptions
Or did you want to deny that N. Korea is evil, that Syria is evil, that Saudi
Arabia isn’t suppressing people, that Iran honors everyone’s rights to live
as they like (talk about your theocratic dictatorship!), that Egypt isn’t run
by thugs?
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I have talked before at length about why ranting about evil isn’t helpful, and
is part of the problem. I don’t deny that there are bad things happening in
these places. I was talking about what we can and ought to do to make a
positive difference.
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But I guess probably it’s a lot easier to just blame the west for
everything...
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I don’t actually blame the west for everything. But I do try to look beyond
popular rhetoric to understand why things happen and how they came to be this
way.
I do accept responsibility for the consequences of what has been done in my
name, and what consequences I continue to wreak on other people by my lifestyle
choices. Many of these choices are unconscious, and a wholly reasonable result
of my having been immersed since birth in a mindset that turns out to not have
as sure a foundation as I was told. I take it as a responsibility to
understand, to re-evaluate based on my increasing understanding, to modify my
behaviour, and to carry other folks along with me.
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we’re so bad, so evil... yawn.
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Even you’re not bad or evil :-) If nothing else I can cut you the same respect
I recommend you show for everyone else.
But we’re talking about governments and administrations, and the people who
support them by action or inaction.
I admire in you the confidence that lets you yawn about this. I can barely
bring myself to sleep.
Richard
Still baldly going...
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