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[scottobear]

The Complete Newgate Calendar
An 18th-19th century English volume of ghastly true-crime stories. Learn about timeless con games, botched executions, unlawful marriages, and much much more.

Game publicity plan raises grave concerns

A computer games firm has been accused of pushing back the frontiers of bad taste after it announced that it was seeking to advertise its latest title on gravestones.

I really enjoyed this article, "Can there be a decent left?", which examines the future of American liberals and asks good questions. I think the key to the article is when the left seeks a just distribution of resources, they ignore the resource of morality. In other words, they see morality as an internal issue, an American resource, and are far more concerned with the just distribution of morality within our borders than with every country, large and small, around the world. It is a subjective viewpoint that removes morality from any conversation not beginning with, "The problem with America . . ."

I'm not sure where I fall in the ordained political spectrum these days. I support both abortion and capital punishment within certain careful parameters, and prize civil liberties while also understanding the importance of deception in diplomacy and government. I've staked out positions which make sense to me, yet cannot recognize the terrain they are planted in. But that's fine. I'd rather continue to think and struggle than accept anyone's comfortable dictates.

Comments

[ex-darkbloom383.livejournal.com]

Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left's reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack or to acknowledge the human pain it caused, in the schadenfreude of so many of the first responses, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved.

Boy, that's a sweeping statement. And that article is full of a lot more. The fact is most people on the left were horrified by September 11th. How could anyone with a heart or soul not be? The Nation, possibly America's leading leftist magazine, was full of sympathy for the victims of the terror and, for the most part, they blamed the terrorists and only the terrorists for the attacks. Christopher Hitchens, one of the Nation's main writers, especially voiced that view.

That article makes it sound like the left was supportive of Al-Quaeda and the Taliban while the American government was opposed to them. What a bunch of hokum. The left has been criticizing Islamic fundamentalism for years, while the U.S. government was training Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, restoring the oppressive Kuwaiti royal family to power after the gulf war, and propping up the very extreme Islamic fundamentalist government in Saudi Arabia.

The writer of that article calls America the "beacon on the hill." In fact, this government has helped to snuff out the light of democratically-elected governments all over the world, from Iran (the C.I.A. helped overthrow the democratically-elected Mossadegh government in the 1950s) to Chile (the C.I.A. helped overthrow the democratically-elected government of Allende), and has installed and supported militarily some of the most vile and oppressive governments to ever slither across the globe; including, it should be noted, Sadaam Hussein, the current American boogieman. We helped make him the military power he was, and we didn't utter a peep when he used poison gas on the Iranians or his own Kurds. Our outrage was only inflamed many years later after he attacked Kuwait.

And now Bush and Cheney are talking about the strategic use of nuclear weapons. Thank God there are some people who will point these things out, and not just roll over like good puppies when the oilmen say "United We Stand."

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

I agree. Actually, you're preaching to the choir on most of those points.

Surely, Nukes are an imbecelic option considering our others.

[ex-darkbloom383.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Please excuse my vehemence. I tend to get a little passionate about this stuff.

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[scottobear.livejournal.com]

no excuses needed, please do!

:) Passion about one's surroundings and beliefs is a good thing, I think.

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[scottobear.livejournal.com]

I hear ya. welcome to the club! :)

[kitaryufinn.livejournal.com]

So which side is the one that thinks we need to force people to take a test before they can have kids?

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[scottobear.livejournal.com]

both. neither. depends. :) swing a weight far enoough in one direction, it comes around to the other.