Reader and commenter JC emailed two stories in, both of which are rather disturbing. Story #1:
Federal authorities this year mounted one of the most extensive investigations of domestic terrorism since the Oklahoma City bombing, CBS 11 has learned.
Three people linked to white supremacist and anti-government groups are in custody. At least one weapon of mass destruction – a sodium cyanide bomb capable of delivering a deadly gas cloud – has been seized in the Tyler area.
Investigators have seized at least 100 other bombs, bomb components, machine guns, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and chemical agents. But the government also found some chilling personal documents indicating that unknown co-conspirators may still be free to carry out what appeared to be an advanced plot. And, authorities familiar with the case say more potentially deadly cyanide bombs may be in circulation.
Since arresting the three people in May, federal agents have served hundreds of subpoenas across the country in a domestic terror investigation that made it onto President Bush
DANEgerus
Except that item #2 is the frustrated rant of a ‘regular guy’ serving his country and so isn’t really comparable to someone like Tim Robbins who has media access…
The Sailor vents… Tim Robbins poisons.
I find you influential as well… but likewise the scale is not proportional to someone like Tim Robbins. Your blog is read by thousands… and should be read by more.
But…
Tim Robbins could produce a Michael-Moorian POS movie version of this play and it would influence millions.
Then again I’ve gone that over-the-top before in frustration so I empathize a bit…
Katherine
Ugh. What I want to know is: what is the newspaper position on publishing calls for violence, either as ads or letters to the editor? This isn’t something with specific names or means, so it seems like it’s clearly not a clear and present danger & is protected by the first amendment. At the same time, if I edited a newspaper I would want no part of this, even without my paper’s endorsement. Are there any journalists out there with thoughts on this?
Emperor Misha I
‘Cept number 2 is absolutely right. Keep up this pandering to every treasonous twit that chooses to aid and comfort our enemies, and we’re going to have a LOT of dead Americans before people wake up and realize that we’re at war.
You may think that people encouraging our enemies to continue fighting by showing them that they have an effect is “harmless”, John, but you’d be wrong. Dead wrong.
Put it this way: What do you think would’ve happened if people had turned out in the streets in, say, 1942, demanding that we surrender to Nazi Germany and the Nips? You think that we’d have just coddled them and chastised anybody calling them traitors for “stifling their freedom of speech”?
We’re at war. Keep denying it if you must, but it’ll only make the awakening to reality all that much more painful, because there IS no “opting out” of this one.
The first set of morons, on the other hand, should be hanged repeatedly. Slowly, so’s not to break their necks, and only until they’re *just* about to choke. Then let them catch their breath for a few, after which it is wash, rinse, repeat until we grow bored with torturing them to death.
Katherine
Oh right, that’s why I read the posts but never comment here. Cheerio.
JKC
Misha, sometimes you are proof that you can take the boy out of the totalitarian state, but you can’t take the totalitarian out of the boy.
John, Misha looks up to you. Would you care to explain to him that a society that shoots dissenters isn’t exactly free?
Eric Sivula
JKC, a country where the GOVERNMENT shoots dissenters is not free. A country where citizens shoot other citizens for having opposing ideological views is home to a ‘vigorous, and agressive body politic’. It is also home to a civil war. Personally, I have no desire to see the protesters killed, as long as all they do is protest. Now the wankers in Italy giving money to the Ba’athists, I think they are legitimate target for government.
However, Benjamin Franklin might have believed that this sailor had the right to kill, or at least beat these protestors.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs16.html
Ben Franklin believed that if there were no limits on a person’s ability to attack another’s reputation, then the victim of the slander should be allowed to use violence to force the offender to stop.
Emperor Misha I
In that case, JKC, most countries, including this one, is totalitarian.
Last I checked, you could still execute traitors.
Not that there’s any need to execute these traitors, in my opinion, they just need to be kept from providing aid and comfort to our enemies in times of war. However we choose to do that is fine by me, as long as it works.
I repeat: These are NOT “normal” times, this is war. Different rules apply.
Unless you don’t mind losing, as long as you feel good about yourself before you die.
I, on the other hand, DO mind.
John Cole
Peace Protestors, however misguided their intentions and whatever their motives, are not traitors. In many case, they are wrong and misguided. IN some cases, maybe they are right- we only get one shot at history, so who knows. They are not, however, traitors, and I would recommend that that while this sailor is undertaking an admirable endeavor in his fight for the country, I would like to point that the whole notion of a nation-state is a pointless legal fiction without the people who live there. And some of those people may see things just a touch differently than Mr. Jobe.
JKC- Clearly Misha and I disagree, but saying he ‘looks up to me’ is an unneccessary condescending jab. I would like to think that everyone on this board respects each other, even if we do not accept each other’s opinions.
platosearwax
I would like to think that everyone on this board respects each other, even if we do not accept each other’s opinions.
A sentiment I usually live up to. It is rather strained, however, in the face of the bile spewing from Misha’s keyboard. I would have hoped you would have said something a little stronger in response to Misha than “clearly we disagree”, especially since he agrees completely with what you called “as big an asshole as Tim Robbins” and “absolutely disgusting”.
JKC
John- I apologize if that sounded condescending: it wasn’t meant to.
SDN
John,
If you object to the term traitors, would Lenin’s “Useful idiots” work better? Misha is absolutely correct that the strategy and tactics of the terrorists are based on the notion that our government can be forced to surrender by encouraging enough protests / opposition.
JKC
SDN-
I should think that the public reaction in the US post-9/11 would inform any terrorist with an IQ above room temperature of the futility of that strategy.
Emperor Misha I
…and the massive press coverage of increasingly hateful “protests” would tend to encourage terrorists that our initial reaction was nothing but a temporary thing.
Besides, I agree with SDN. For the vast majority of those “protesters”, the term “useful idiots” is more appropriate. The only actual *traitors* are the hard core of perpetual violent malcontents and their organizers. Unless, of course, you consider A.N.S.W.E.R. to be “nothing more than a different view”, in which case you’re no better than the Germans who stood by quietly while the brownshirts threw bricks through the store fronts of businesses they didn’t like.
ChrisL
the strategy and tactics of the terrorists are based on the notion that our government can be forced to surrender by encouraging enough protests / opposition.
…and…
The only actual *traitors* are the hard core of perpetual violent malcontents and their organizers.
yes, see John’s item #1.
James W
Freedom, we all agree, is not free. The price is paid in large part by the men and women who take up arms and defend our interests with their own lives and our collective resources. We owe them our respect and gratitude.
The costs of freedom are borne in other ways, too. Among those costs is abiding dissent, however distasteful it may be. If allowing protests, speeches, writings, plays and other excercises of First Amendment rights happens to offer some measure of comfort to our enemies, then that’s the cost of doing business in a free and just society.
Emperor Misha I
That’ll look real nice on a headstone.
Me, I prefer to live.
Stentor
I hold our enemies in higher standing. At least they are willing to fight for their beliefs and the country they love.
So I guess Jobe would respect the protestors if they got violent?
Kathy K
Personally, I consider people like the ones in story #1 much more dangerous than those mentioned in #2.
Rhesa
So do I.
“So I guess Jobe would respect the protestors if they got violent?”
Well, heck, would you? I sure wouldn’t.
Emperor Misha I
IF they got violent?
That’s the funniest line I’ve heard all day.
Slartibartfast
“I hold our enemies in higher standing. At least they are willing to fight for their beliefs and the country they love.”
I’m having a little difficulty seeing how Syrian imports loving Iraq is relevant to anything at all, but I’ve never been the sharpest knife in the drawer. Maybe it’s all about the oooooiiiilll for them, too.
Stephen
So, I’m curious…anyone…
At what point would a protester become a traitor?
zj
Hey, I was in the Navy (during the presidency of Saint Reagan) AND I protested before the war started, back in January. Unlike the twidget headphone-jockey who wrote that letter, I actually had a Navy rating that carried some personal risk, so he can bite my shellback ass. I -earned- my right to protest. Misha and those like him should thank me for the freedom to call me a traitor.
Kimmitt
“That’ll look real nice on a headstone.
Me, I prefer to live.”
See, that’s the difference between you and true patriots. Patriots think that freedom is worth fighting and dying for. Fascists like you . . . don’t.
Emperor Misha I
And illiterate clowns like you have such a massive mental block when it comes to the word “fighting” that you don’t even realize it when you use it in your own ramblings.
Care to re-read your own statement, carefully this time, you Idiotarian tool?
Emperor Misha I
And zj: Thank you, sir, sincerely so.
Now, just one question: Does military service render one immune to criticism?
If so, you might want to tone yours of me down a tad, lest you violate your own principles.
Hipocrite
Stop arguing with the brownshirt. It’s not worth it.
Emperor Misha I
I know, Hipo, but I can’t help it. It’s an addiction or something.
Kimmitt
Ooh, let me guess — you’re rubber and I’m glue, right?
Please go back to your litterbox and let the grownups talk. We were having significantly more fun before you came by.
Kimmitt
Ooh, let me guess — you’re rubber and I’m glue, right?
Please go back to your litterbox and let the grownups talk. We were having significantly more fun before you came by.
SDN
“At what point would a protester become a traitor?”
I can think of a couple of bright lines not to cross.
1. When an organization you have supported with time / money threatens to try breaking onto a military base so that wartime operations are disrupted, they might be traitors.
2. If you don’t sever all ties with them, that silence implies that you agree with what they do: You might be a traitor.
3. If you’re a sitting member of Congress, and it is clear that your government has decided that Iraq is an enemy, going to Iraq’s capital and saying you have more faith in a mass murdering, poison-gas using dictator than your own government might make you a traitor who shouldn’t have been allowed back into the country at a minimum. McDermott, take a bow.
4. If #3 above is a member of your political party, and the party leadership doesn’t demand you resign, and throw you out if you don’t, then that party might be traitors.
Where's My Patch
if the Dems are “traitors”, why aren’t you guys trying to get them prosecuted in federal court? or, why aren’t you rounding them up and putting them in pens yourself?
put up, or … ?
SDN
“if the Dems are “traitors”, why aren’t you guys trying to get them prosecuted in federal court?”
I’ve asked my Senators and Representatives that exact question. No response. And I haven’t gotten a straight answer on how to swear out a Federal warrant for that yet from the US Attorney.
” why aren’t you rounding them up and putting them in pens yourself?”
And I’m not quite ready to declare the situation hopeless and start Civil War II.
Stentor
“IF they got violent?
That’s the funniest line I’ve heard all day.”
Thanks, but it’s not mine — it’s just the premise of Jobe’s statement.
Kimmitt
God damn, but there are a lot of brownshirts wandering around the web.
David Neiwert
Gee, John, I guess my concerns about increasingly violent rhetoric aimed at liberals, as well as my doubts that conservatives like you would actually take a stand against it, were just paranoid fantasies, right?
Travel Candle
“That’ll look real nice on a headstone.
Me, I prefer to live.”
And here we see
that a dog would rather live than die free.
John Cole
hunh? What are you talking about, Dave?
Kimmitt
My experience is that decent conservatives decry the violent rhetoric. It’s just that they then continue to vote for the folks that are comfortable with the rhetoric.
[email protected]
My experience is also that decent conservatives decry the viloent rhetoric. The problem is that they are not doing it publicly. It’s all well and good that they tell ME, a target of that rhetoric, that they do not approve, but that doesn’t mean too much if they won’t tell the USERS of the rhetoric the same thing.
Travel Candle
I am blind
I do not see
That the dog would rather live
Than die free.
I will not look!
I will not see!
Others would take my freedoms
MY FREEDOMS! from me
But the dog,
you see
Is willing to live
rather than die free
Unleash the dogs of war.
But be prepared to hear the whelp.
When it does not understand.
What it’s fighting for.
Kresh
I agree with #2.
When you put yourself in harm’s way and get to see who you are protecting on the TV as they “protest” your action…well, it tends to cause the blood to boil a bit.
Oh, here’s the part that got me from Zj: “Unlike the twidget headphone-jockey who wrote that letter, I actually had a Navy rating that carried some personal risk, so he can bite my shellback ass.”
From one Shellback to another, shut your mouth. You should know, of all people, that the constituant parts of a military machine make up the whole, rather than the actions of one individual. So you weren’t a Sonar Tech? Good for you. He has a purpose as the ears of the ship and his job is just as important as your was (no matter what you did). You earned your right to protest? Well right now he’s protecting your right to protest, so why not pipe down and let the man say his piece about feeling unappreciated.
Kimmitt
“Well right now he’s protecting your right to protest,”
Well, no. What he’s doing is putting himself in harm’s way while wishing he had the power to take away my right to protest; he is acting a lot more like a member of Chile’s military in 1973 than my vision of America’s military in 2003.
johnx
So, let me get this stait. Extempteror Misha is scared of being killed, and so everyone else who scares him must die!