Invalid comparison, perhaps?

Post #293,588

9/25/07 9:43:09 AM

The comparison shouldn't be to other countries, but to how the USA used to be. After all, I think the point Silverlock was making was about trends in the US (over time); not comparisons to other countries.

I could be wrong, though. ;-)

Be that as it may, the [link|http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa_antiterror|trends under Bush] don't look especially promising for liberty and the rule of law in the USA.

Cheers,
Scott.

Post #293,590

by imqwerky

9/25/07 9:46:44 AM

I was going to say

At the rate we're going, we'll be back to public executions - that's a deterrent!
:-O

Smile,
Amy

Post #293,593

by bepatient

9/25/07 10:06:11 AM

Friday Night's Fun Night!

Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}

Post #293,592

by bepatient

9/25/07 10:05:30 AM

From that perspective, yes it is

which is why I tried to qualify it somewhat...there are times when we, collectively, bitch about how bad things are getting...when we really don't know what bad is and haven't in quite some time and most likely won't ever (regardless of what you think of Bush and/or Republicans)

And yes, I agree the trends in the US are not great, but, for example, your link to HRW shows complaints about roughly 3 dozen "terrorists" (I know, quotes are because of the "how do we know if they're kept in secret") captured and detained over several years and Gitmo, folks caught in a theater of operations. The links provided for Iran show that they are targeting kids and taking in those kind of numbers in one night...and in many cases doing so for listening to "non-sanctioned" music, or reading the wrong books, or believing in the wrong deity.

And to add to that, they are politicizing the educational systems so that it will continue indefinitely. What would the left do here if Bush even THOUGHT of replacing the Dean of Harvard with, say, Karl Rove ;-)

Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry._{Adrian Belew}

Post #293,611

by static

9/25/07 11:17:48 PM

There are two arguments here.

The first is how does the US currently compare to how it used to be, and the second is how it compares to other regimes?

The second is perhaps easier to answer. And you don't have to look at Iran: try Burma, or Zimbabwe. Government control over what they approve and disapprove of is considerably greater in those countries than in the US. But the comparison works both ways. The current protests in Burma are because they can see how much comparitively better a society like the US is over their own. If the current Burmese government wants to quell such protests, as they have in the past, they would use far more force against citizens far more afraid of them than in the US. If, has been alleged, Bush et al want a state like that, there is obviously something holding them back from Just Doing It! :-O

The first one becomes a lesson history. Has the US ever been a place where capital punishment was an effective deterrent? I'd say yes, because capital punishment has been around a long long time. The society that founded the US would have believed in that deterrent effect.

Wade.

Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed

Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please

-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne.

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· [link|http://staticsan.livejournal.com/|blog] ·
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Post #293,616

by Another Scott

9/25/07 11:40:14 PM

See #293615. :-)

[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=293615|#293615].

The Supreme Court opinion in Furman v. Georgia addresses some of those issues. I think we have the death penalty because we (always?) had the death penalty - it was part of the American fabric like having firearms [link|http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=199|from the beginning].

Cheers,
Scott.

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