(Tom Toles via Gocomics.com)
I’m taking my entertainment where I can find it, and Doghouse Riley remains a reliable respite:
Reader, I’m assuming you’re an adult, which means you’re just as flummoxed as I by the phenomenon of people over 25, with IQs at or above bathwater, openly proclaiming themselves libertarian. I’m assuming you’re aware that every man-made object you’ve touched today involved some degree of regulation by government, and that you probably understand why, and perhaps are even conversant with 19th century fatality rates from railroad and industrial accidents directly attributable to laissez-faire. Or, if you’ve only been paying attention since the dawn of the 21st century, you might recall how large-scale domestic processors of meat, eggs, spinach or peanuts have behaved when they thought no one was watching, let alone how the Chinese believed a soupçon of automotive solvents added that certain something to pet food.
__
What I’m saying is there is no way you can believe this shit and claim to’ve thought anything out. And in a country which has seen armed international conflict over the shooting of a pig, mass panic over a science-fiction radio broadcast, injury to hundreds of its citizens who thought a picture of a lemon on a free sample bottle of dish soap meant it would zest up a glass of iced tea, and the career of Sarah Palin, the Great Light Bulb Rebellion is absolutely the stupidest political movement of all time.
__
However, we’re nothing if not a resourceful race, and there’s nothing so dire, misinformed, or risible that mentioning The Ol’ Perfesser can’t make worse…
What’s everybody praying for in your neighborhood this evening?
stuckinred
My wife’s family construction company that has been in business for 80 years is going belly up. Not happy around here.
Spaghetti Lee
injury to hundreds of its citizens who thought a picture of a lemon on a free sample bottle of dish soap meant it would zest up a glass of iced tea
Wait, did this actually happen at one point?
Linkmeister
And what’s this refer to? armed international conflict over the shooting of a pig
Feeling stupid about American historical trivialities now.
Edited: Oh. Never mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_War
Over the San Juan Islands between the US and the Brits in the 1850s.
Violet
@stuckinred:
So sorry to hear that. That sucks.
I’m praying for rain. We’re in a severe drought. There’s zero chance of rain in the next week and we haven’t had but maybe half an inch since February. We’re now being told we need to water trees, even old ones, because there is just so little water available.
khead
Note to some BJ front pagers:
You see how that post was done? It’s a post without reference to “Young So-and-So” – usually Young Conor – “meaning well” and “knowing better”? It explicitly says “there is no way you can believe this shit and claim to’ve thought anything out”.
Study it. Learn it. Live it.
BGinCHI
This is what Rick Perry has to say about his “national day of prayer” and why it’s a necessity.
Goes nicely with the Toles, no?
Brachiator
Conan the Commencementarian
I am loving me some Conan O’Brien Dartmouth Commencement speech.
A little hope for everyone who feels that life has got them down, especially in these hard times.
It gets better.
gex
@BGinCHI: Those anti-gay conservatives do usually find heaven on their knees.
Mike in NC
Rain. Even a rumor would do.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linkmeister:
The war of Jenkin’s Ear was fun, too! :)
lamh34
I’m a self-diagnosed O-bot but more than that, I’m a Michell-Obot and it’s speeches like this that just makes me love her more!
Remarks by the First Lady at a DNC event
(WHAT FOLLOWS IS ALL FLOTUS TRANSCRIBED FROM WH BLOG)
“let me tell you something about your President … when he returns home after a long day traveling around the country …. he always tells me not about how hard the day was but about the people he’s met along the way.
And I see in those quiet moments late at night, after we’ve put the girls to bed, and he’s hunched over his desk, and he’s reading everything – letters people have sent him. That’s what keeps him motivated. He reads those letters. A letter from the woman dying of cancer whose health insurance wouldn’t cover her care. Those are the letters he’s reading …
And I see the sadness and the worry that’s creasing his face. And I hear the passion and the determination in his voice. He says, “You know, Mich, you won’t believe what these folks are going through.” He says, “It’s not right. Still not right. And we’ve got to fix this. We have to do more.”
…..when it comes to the people he meets and the stories he hears, he has a memory like a steel trap …. if he’s had a few minutes and a decent conversation, he will never forget your story. It becomes imprinted on his heart. And that is what he carries with him every day – that collection of hopes, and dreams, and struggles.
…. Starting first thing in the morning and going late into the night, hunched over every briefing, he reads every word of every memo so that he is more prepared than the people briefing him, writing notes, asking questions. That is who your President is. That’s who you elected, because all those wins and losses, trust me, are not wins and losses for him. They’re wins and losses for the folks whose stories he carries with him, the folks he worries about and prays about before he goes to bed at night.
….here’s the thing about Barack – and this is something I’d appreciate even if he hadn’t shown the good judgment to marry me. (Laughter and applause.) But even in the toughest moments …. when it seems like all is lost, and we’re all wringing our hands, and I’ve done it to him, too – what’s going to happen, are we going to be okay – (laughter) – Barack Obama never loses sight of the end goal. He is always an end-goal game player. He’s not looking right here. He’s looking way down the road. (Applause.) And he never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. It doesn’t faze him. He just keeps moving forward, step by step. That’s how change happens. (Applause.)
And in those moments when we’re all sweating it, when we’re worried that that bill won’t pass, or the negotiations might fall through, Barack always reminds me that we’re playing a long game here. That’s how he reassures me. It’s not about us.
He reminds me that change is slow. Nothing worth having happens in an instant. He reminds me that change does not happen all at once. It never does. Never has. But he tells me that if we keep showing up, right, if we keep fighting the good fight, and doing what we know is right, then eventually we will get there, because we always have. When you think about it, we always have gotten to the right place in this country.
And that’s what he needs from you. All of you…”
BGinCHI
@Brachiator: Did he add:
“But Dartmouth grads, with your debt, you’ll never be able to take any chances. You’ll have to go work for the financials or for daddy’s company until you clear that nut.”
BGinCHI
@gex: Softball, pitched.
Fred
Oh oh. Are you dissin Libertarians? I though that wasn’t allowed on John Galt Coles blog?
Zifnab
I think that’s the bottom line. You’ve got a conservative talking point machine in the young libertarian circles peddling the idea that regulations cause these problems rather than preventing them.
And you’ve got people that doggedly believe liabilities suites and the free market magically solve everything. After all, why would anyone be stupid enough to buy poisoned spinach?
A company that sells poisoned spinach must immediately go bankrupt and disappear from the marketplace. The only reason it wouldn’t go bankrupt is because some government agency was propping it up.
:-p Honestly, I don’t even know if the assumption is completely wrong. At a certain point, there are so many subsidies and bailouts and business incentives floating around that it’s not unbelievable to think a company could get by entirely on corporate welfare.
Linda Featheringill
@stuckinred:
Business dying: Oh, that’s a shame.
Cris
@Fred: You’re not even a good spoof.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fred: Fuck off, dipshit.
stuckinred
@Linda Featheringill: It’s been a slow agonizing process. A family owned business that weathered the depression is not easy to let go of.
LanceThruster
My standard atheist prayer is, “Jesus, protect me from your followers.”
JPL
IMO..I’m just glad the whackos didn’t scream about the phone cord disappearing.
edit..those things got tangled..
kindness
I think I’m about ready to start praying for the intragalactic aliens to finally land.
I sure hope they are the nice ones.
Linda Featheringill
I sympathize with the fellow in the cartoon. I spent over half of my adult life without health care insurance and thus without health care.
On the topic of insurance:
Medicaid has decided to pay for all of my Medicare premiums, even Part A. This was being subtracted from my SS payments. The end result is like a 95.00/month raise. Not bad.
But of course, Medicaid is only for, what’s the group, young black men hell-bent on buying steaks and eating better than anyone else? Something like that.
trollhattan
Ouch! Injured falling off my chair upon reading $6.6 billyun of Iraqi reconstruction money was stolen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13768882
Bush Library? They should name a penitentiary for the prick, then install him there.
Brachiator
@BGinCHI:
No, but he did note the following:
BGinCHI
@trollhattan: I was apoplectic about this here the other day.
It’s still making me mad as hell.
Awaiting “journalists” to cover it and get to the bottom of it.
Elie
I am praying for work — lost my job end of March and I am not discouraged yet, but getting a little anxious.
I am also praying that this community and Whatcom County WA can fight off a proposed Gateway Pacific terminal that will bring tons of coal and coal dust to our lungs and to contaminate our already endangered but beautiful part of Puget Sound/Salish Sea. I pray that we can organize ourselves effectively and get the job done to push this back like we did four years ago with a proposed gas pipeline in the same place.
Cherry Point is the last — last deep water port on the West Coast of the United States. It sits on the edge of a marine reserve with a genetically distinct species of herring, essential to our salmon and the marine ecosystem. The water is clear enough to see Dungeness crab scurrying on the bottom. Pacific and Olympia oysters and a variety of clams reside in the rocky substrate at the shoreline. We already have oil tankers slipping in and out — a scary enough situation, but to add coal, pilled on the shoreline and loaded onto numerous trains that will contaminate our water, land and air is too much.
All this for 200 jobs. Sadly, this project is supported by Rick Larsen our Representative and Christine Gregoire, the Democratic governor. Needless to say, they are hearing from me and many others.
Suffern ACE
@BGinCHI: Yep. This might be one time when a countertop inspection might actually yield some insight as to where it was spent. I honestly doubt that all that missing money is in Iraq.
WereBear
@stuckinred: I’m so sorry. Hope something can be salvaged.
rob!
I know a kid who’s about 21, 22, and a fervent Libertarian. He goes on and on about it and I just shake my head and smile–this kid still lives with his parents, has never had to go out and get insurance for himself.
He lives in a upper-middle-class area, so he has wanted for very little in his life. Yet he’s all about people “fending for themselves”, quite comfortably never having to do it himself.
I doubt he and I will still be around one another when he’s, say, 30. I’d love to see what a couple years of being completely on his own–for everything, from shelter to food to insurance–does for his political views.
srv
I’m invited to a neighborhood session covering the shooting of a bank robber on the next block.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I’m praying not to get hit by a car as I ride my bike home from work. But obviously I’m a DFH, what with the bike and all, and everybody knows G-d hates us. I can’t wait for the libertarians to do away with both traffic laws and automobile safety regs so the invisible hand of the free market can have its way with me.
MikeJ
@BGinCHI:
Conan went to Harvard. and didn’t do either of those things.
Jebediah
@Fred:
Jesus fuck, you’re still on about that “John Galt Cole” thing? Where the hell did this priapism come from? Did Cole withhold productivity from you or something?
Mouse Tolliver
Wisconsin’s supreme court just reinstated Scott Walker’s anti-union law.
Origuy
At least the Pig War had no casualties (except for the pig). The War of the Stray Dog cost more than 50 lives in 1925. It started when a Greek guard at the Bulgarian border chased after his dog, and a Bulgarian guard shot him.
Jenkins’s involuntary otoectomy was just the casus belli for a war that had been brewing for a long time. The war started eight years after Jenkins’ run-in with a Spanish coastguardsman.
cathyx
I love that “Single Prayer Health Care”. That’s what too many of us have now.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: what city do you live in? It must be a city, I can’t think of a suburb that has bike lanes.
Citizen_X
@stuckinred: That sucks a lot. Condolences.
Maude
@BGinCHI:
I love the line about the Pentagon saying it could find the money if it had more time. This started in 2003. It’s 2011.
This makes me furious.
gogol's wife
@stuckinred:
I’m very sorry.
El Cid
Look, I may never have actually survived and thrived off of some patch of land in the middle of nowhere and did and made everything myself, from basic technology to medical care, with limited but dignified trade with those who respected my property and who spoke to me in terms of the free exchange of goods rather than what they think they ‘need’ or what I ‘should’ do. And maybe some court somewhere which could order my property protected and our private contracts enforced.
But I’m sure I could do so.
I’m just being held back by the nanny state.
SiubhanDuinne
I know everyone here is as sick of the whole Anthony Weiner saga as I am, but honestly, this makes me even sicker. Some talibangelical is lecturing AW to “try Jesus.” http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/14/top-evangelical-to-anthony-weiner-try-jesus/
And since this is open thread, and hasn’t been going on for 100+ comments like the one the other night (where my thanks got buried), I do want to thank all of you who gave me such good suggestions for my new iPad. I was way ahead of all of you who suggested I buy a Bluetooth keyboard (Brookstone is conveniently right next to the Apple Store at the mall) and I’ve been downloading free apps with wild abandon, but haven’t even begun to figure out where everything is. Knowing me, I expect I’ll be coming back to the B-J experts again and again with questions, and a lot of you are really experts.
lamh34
Methinks this a little birdie told this dude half-ass apologize or else!
Fox Business host apologizes for using ‘language interpreted’ as racist: ‘We did go a bit too far’
“we did go a bit too far…” no really? and of course he and the program director had NOOOOOOOOOOOO idea of course
BGinCHI
@MikeJ: He in the majority or minority?
SiubhanDuinne
@stuckinred:
I am so sorry. That’s like losing a beloved family member.
Elie
@stuckinred:
You absolutely have my complete sympathy. It is grieving a loss, for sure
Citizen_X
How about the Salt War of 1877 and thereabouts, in Trans-Pecos Texas?
I don’t know about the other little wars, but this one was actually over some serious issues: Anglo-Hispanic conflicts, control of natural resources, the Rangers’ history of oppressing Tejanos in the old days, etc.
El Cid
@SiubhanDuinne: Does Jesus have a twitter account to which pictures can be sent?
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): San Francisco. We haz many bike lanes, and more all the time thanks largely to the tireless activism of the SF Bike Coalition.
@stuckinred: Damn, I’m sorry to hear that. It is like a death in the family.
SiubhanDuinne
@rob!:
For some reason, this (minus the political views angle) reminds me of one of my favourite Cosby episodes, when Theo wants to go live on his own and the Huxtable family make him “buy” his own furniture and take out a bank loan and give the “apartment super” first and last month’s rent plus a deposit and apply for a job without references or credentials. Good stuff.
gnomedad
@BGinCHI:
PERRY SAYS GOP OFFERS NO HOPE
PERRY WILL BRING AMERICA TO ITS KNEES
SiubhanDuinne
@El Cid:
Jesus tweets me, this I know,
‘Cause my FaceBook tells me so.
Little ones to him belong,
As they follow Twitter Dong.
Yes, Jesus tweets me,
Yes, Jesus tweets me,
Yes, Jesus tweets me,
My FaceBook tells me so.
Menzies
So two things from the Prez’s visit to PR today:
– People are actually complaining, I shit you not, about the fact that O’s security measures were secret and that they couldn’t see him because his car was armored. This in a place with a ridiculously soaring murder rate.
– Apparently he took the PDP (pro-Commonwealth) party’s 2012 gubernatorial candidate to a local bakery and had what’s called a “media noche” sandwich with him. I expect that by tonight media noches will be the new evidence that you’re a liberal anti-America elitist.
Anyone heard anything else? I’ve been staying away from coverage of his other activities since unless he punches the Governor in the face he just wasted his time here.
Fred
@Omnes Omnibus: Another Libertarian. I always suspected as much. Your opinions are overly simplistic and not well thought out so that’s a dead giveaway right there.
SiubhanDuinne
For once, an ad on this site that I really enjoyed (notwithstanding the Tunch FEED ad over there on the right).
Something quite wonderful about Keith Olbermann starting a message with “Hello, drinkers of Balloon-Juice!” Funny guy. I’ve missed him.
Fred
@Jebediah: I will stop calling him John Galt Cole when he admits Liberartarians are idiots, says something good about US policy in Afghanistan/Pakistan, or promises to never vote for a GOP for President again like he did with G Dubya….TWICE.
In other words….never.
Villago Delenda Est
@Fred:
I’ve figured it out.
Fred is posting from the “Spock-with-a-beard” universe.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh34:
Thank you for that. I love MO anyhow, but she reminds me in this speech (and in a thousand other ways) why it was important to vote for Barack in 2008 and why it’s important to work for him again in 2012.
/another O-bot/Michelle-bot
Omnes Omnibus
@Fred: Not a libertarian. Never been one, not even back at the age that people read and got excited by Rand. Of course, you aren’t interested in being anything but a dipshit, so have fun.
LanceThruster
@stuckinred:
Am holding a good thought for you, your family, and the workers from the company.
[heavy sigh]
nastybrutishntall
I live in the rural 4 Corners area, and the young folk are drinking the Ron Paul tea. These are folks who would be anarchists/socialists/anti-government leftists a generation ago – working class but smart, some college, like recreational drugs. They think all government is evil, and are skeptical of anything being either possible or known on a scale larger than what they can accomplish with their own smarts and hands. 9-11 truthing, anti-drug war, gold bugging, anti-climate science, anti-healthcare (at least its mainstream biomedical variety), conspiracy-curious… these are not the angry old guys at the rallies. These folks are LGBT comfortable, not religious, and generally no more bigoted than the average Democrat. And this scares the shit out of me. It’s politicized apathy, a pro-active destruction of everything good about government in the last 50 years, all in the hope that if the good is destroyed, maybe it will take the bad with it (usually identified as the two+ wars, the war on drugs, the lobbyists, the overspending on earmarks, health regulations of all kinds, zoning regulations, firearm restrictions, regulations on use of public lands). In fact, I don’t know anyone my age who is proud to be a Democrat. And no one has anything good to say about Obama, from either a left-wing Firebagger perspective or a Libertarian / Tea Party perspective. I think people are bored, tired of civilization, and want a bloody, meaningful end to all this tiresome comfort we still cling to. I can’t imagine my generation (I’m 37) or those younger fighting for political change, because no one thinks it works. Hand em some guns and give them targets, on the other hand, and I think you’ll find no shortage of volunteers. IMHO.
stuckinred
@Elie: It’s strange. It’s in central Virginia and it’s an economic wasteland. Every time we go up there I just try to keep my mouth shut what with all the Virgil Goode type shit that gets spewed. Even though the business has been in decline for 10 years they are quick to blame it on Obama. I’m sad they are going belly up but the fucking morons they support drove them into the ditch.
Warren Terra
Having grown up in Seattle, I’m reasonably conversant with The Pig War (instigator Lyman Cutler, total casualties: one pig). It’s an unusually good war: extremely low casualty count (and delicious, once barbecued), a war that mainly consisted of the officers of one camp inviting the officers from the other over for dinner and showing them up, and for no apparent reason it was settled (in our favor! Yay us!) by the German Kaiser. The two camps are now well-maintained parks at opposite ends of San Juan Island, a great island for biking around even for a fat slob like me.
Geeno
@Elie: Elie, I just went from Nov 10, 2010 until Monday this week seeking employment. Best of luck to you. NY has decent social programs, at least, where are you?
stuckinred
@LanceThruster: Yea, it has had a marginal impact on us. My wife and her sister went on to other things 30 years ago. Her dad and brother really own it and since her dad passed away it’s gotten progressively worse.
stuckinred
@Warren Terra: I loves me some Doe Bay!
Liberty60
As someone here pointed out the other day, its much more than that.
Government isn’t an antagonist to corrupt and rapacious businesses, it is the partner and silent investor in every other business.
Government creates the social order that the business world depends on- without the order provided by infrastructure, without the order provided by a sense of shared equity in our society, businesses simply couldn’t operate.
Looked at this way, even seemingly silly laws like banning inefficient light bulbs is part of the husbanding of shared resources, and contributes to the national prosperity and purpose.
trollhattan
Steve Benen links to JC’s Republicans Want More Shit in Your Water post and draws some conclusions on how crazy is the new Republican normal.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_06/we_shouldnt_grow_inured_to_mad030267.php
(Cross-posted to the OP thread.)
Citizen_X
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh crap! KO comes here! (Starts straightening up place.)
Are we supposed to be serious now?
Lysana
I’m praying I can make a decent percentage of my back rent while I wait to have a couple of potentially lucrative conversations. This close to possible dual employment for the long-time out-of-work DH and not-as-long out-of-work me and deep in rent debt? Yeah, kinda nervous it’ll break before it’s fixed. And if it turns out I’m violating some rule about only asking for money for kittens, puppies, and politicians, I do apologize and feel free to ignore this.
Mike in NC
@stuckinred:
We spent some time exploring what I’d call central Virginia a few years back — Lynchburg, Appomattox, etc. — and economic wasteland pretty much says it all.
stuckinred
@Mike in NC: You hit the nail right on the head.
kmeyerthelurker
Liberarianism = the philosophy of not thinking things through. Scratch the surface even a tiny bit, and its failings stand out firmly. Capitalism, unregulated, trends toward monopoly. Ruthlessness and amorality will trump innovation and excellence every time.
The only reason people accept this nonsense is the few things the philosophy gets right: legal pot, fewer (if any) wars, etc. I think the pot thing alone fools many a thoughtless chump.
Back to lurking.
Phyllis
@SiubhanDuinne: Among the top five greatest half-hours of television ever.
WyldPirate
@Brachiator:
Oh for fucks sakes, Brachiator. Conan O’brein was born on 3rd base and thinks he hit a goddamned triple.
He knows jack fucking shit about adversity…
Omnes Omnibus
@WyldPirate: That is true; all adversity must be the exact adversity that you have experienced or it doesn’t count. FDR’s polio didn’t give him insights what people were going through. He was still just a rich guy.
Bruce S
Where was this guy…uh…when he was the top economic advisor?
http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2011/06/in-which-i-agree-with-guy-who-says-what.html
I’m getting worried that the economy might make one of the Seven Dwarfs – or even Snow White – look plausible…especially if there’s massive voter suppression and something Naderish pulling away a sliver of bitter hyper-libs who didn’t get to go the prom with Obama.
piratedan
I’m praying for the magical whatsis that will restore the appetites to my Mother (stage 4 lung cancer) and her 2nd hubby (Parkinsons Disease) as they now weigh 83 and 125 lbs each. Been here two weeks running errands, cooking, housework, phone calls and health care coordination and two trips to the local ER (one for each) as we try to manage to allow them to stay in the comfort of their home. Phone calls and web searches are all well and good yet the process slouches along at its own pace and has yet been shown to be subject to persistent insistent phone calls from myself.
Thankfully neither are in much pain, but their ability to look after each other is diminishing quickly and I’m busy trying to get the insurance into play while also trying to get them qualified care out here in the boonies….so you’ll have to excuse my stridency when I continue to read postings about how freaking oblivious people like Brooks are regarding who is trying to solve problems on one side and the other side, which appears to believe that the only problem we have is that they’re not in charge.
My biggest fear is that I won’t be able to get enough done in order to make a difference and at a minimum, regardless of their politics, I want them to have a game plan in place for their continued care as long as they are around.
Thanks for letting me decompress here a bit and apologies to any whose toes I may have stepped on inadvertently.
El Cid
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s truly wonderfully awful.
I look forward to the Vacation Bible School play version.
PS
@BGinCHI: The $6bn cash stolen in Iraq falls into the category of “if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” This is from the BBC link cited above:
“Pentagon officials have said for the past six years that they could account for the money if provided with enough time to track down the records.”
My point is, it’s not news. The third audit is news, but back in 2003/4 very few people believed it, and that’s when it happened and when it was first reported. I’m still looking for an original link (I’ve found a CounterPunch story from 2006 so far) but trust me, it was known. And of course denied. I mean, c’mon, they heisted $6,000,000,000 in used bills? Yes, they did. Who? Ah, you got me there.
This has been another episode of, “Yes, it was even worse when the Republicans were in charge.”
Yutsano
@piratedan: A) don’t forget to take care of yourself.
B) call a hospice outfit. Even if they’re not quite ready for the final step the hospice may have some good advice and resources for you.
Ki o tsukete kudasai.
Steeplejack
@piratedan:
My prayers are with you.
My father died in March (age 83), and one of the things I have been thankful for is that it was so “clean”: he was at home until a few days in a hospice at the end. My mother (age 81) was a trained nurse back in the day, and that had a big impact, as she was able to do a lot of “home care” stuff the last year or two. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to have two parents needing significant attention at the same time.
DPirate
Bullshit. Current govt regulation is not working. Clean water isnt clean, cancer rates through the roof, reform turns out giveaway. Meanwhile, freedom is being pretty nmuch ended, so why not vote on civil liberties? It’s not like democrats or republicans are going to stop their slide into fascism or enact any real reform.
More to the point, when it is certain that your economic interests are dear to no politician, you should vote on moral issues – like ending our wars of conquest.