Only Americans are deserving of the Bill of Rights

[Martok]

Why is this woman still relevant? :pissed:

Because she gives conservative men boners.

[Peter Brown]

I see that the rampant anti-American twattery which saturated the RDF politics forum has found its way over here...

I’ve was accused of that anti American bullpoo before by a Republican supporter when trying to discuss the principle that looking after your fellow (Americans) health care needs wasn’t ultra left communism, but basic human decency.

Waving the national flag does not make a political point correct. In fact to me it almost always demonstrates the political idea is so drastically bad the flag waving is just a smoke screen to bully opponents away. It is a demonstration of innate stupidity!

Have I been anti American, no. I have been rather critical American policy but only in the regards that it is like every other nations, one of self interest by politicians who are themselves only in it for 'The position' and greatly influenced by pressure groups with their own self interests.

Palin is one of those self interested people, a minor celebrity milking the gravy train by saying what you want to hear in a torrent of sound bite diarrhea. However if you want to be pro American and support her views, go right ahead and join the multitudes waving your flag. Or you might stop and think this woman is talking as much crap as the other side.

[Jay G]

I see that the rampant anti-American twattery which saturated the RDF politics forum has found its way over here...

When the Muslims take over, they'll come crawling to US on their knees, as they ALWAYS do.

[Ian]

I see that the rampant anti-American twattery which saturated the RDF politics forum has found its way over here...

I’ve was accused of that anti American bullpoo before by a Republican supporter when trying to discuss the principle that looking after your fellow (Americans) health care needs wasn’t ultra left communism, but basic human decency.

Waving the national flag does not make a political point correct. In fact to me it almost always demonstrates the political idea is so drastically bad the flag waving is just a smoke screen to bully opponents away. It is a demonstration of innate stupidity!

Have I been anti American, no. I have been rather critical American policy but only in the regards that it is like every other nations, one of self interest by politicians who are themselves only in it for 'The position' and greatly influenced by pressure groups with their own self interests.

Palin is one of those self interested people, a minor celebrity milking the gravy train by saying what you want to hear in a torrent of sound bite diarrhea. However if you want to be pro American and support her views, go right ahead and join the multitudes waving your flag. Or you might stop and think this woman is talking as much crap as the other side.

First of all, kiss my ass. This snide, humorless sort of bullshit is just the sort of thing I was hoping wouldn't migrate over from the RDF politics threads.

Second of all, in my brief comment I was neither waving a flag nor defending Sarah Palin. Apparently you read a whole bunch of stuff that wasn't there. I'm a liberal Democrat who'd like to see her vanish in the Alaskan wilderness - or better yet, end up as the GOP's nominee in 2012 thereby guaranteeing Obama a landslide re-election. I wasn't equating anti-Americanism with a distaste for Sarah Palin. In case you haven't noticed her polling numbers, a large majority of us Merkins don't like her either.

[Peter Brown]

Spoken like a true individual, you have my respect sir.

[Coito ergo sum]

Or so say the dunderheads currently hijacking the Republican Party.

Naturally, the constitutional law on the subject is much more complicated than Sarah Palin would let on.

It's not an either/or proposition.

Some rights do apply to non-Americans and some don't, and it largely depends on where those non-Americans are located.

A non-American still, for example, has the 4th Amendment rights available to everyone else when those people are in the country. They have the right to be free from self-incrimination, etc.

Non-Americans, however, over in France for example don't have American individual rights through the Bill of Rights. And, if someone is a spy or non-uniformed combatant then those rights don't necessarily apply either.

It's not black and white.

[MrJonno]

Most civilized countries will treat their guests closely but not exactly the same as citizen. The important words are civilised and guest.

An American in the UK doesnt have the right to vote, claim benefits or work through he/she can apply for this via a working visa procedure. However you certainly have the right to a fair trial etc.

You can also get some benefits that a citizen wouldnt get like not having to pay sales taxes if you are on a short visit etc

[Ian]

Spoken like a true individual, you have my respect sir.

Well then - welcome to the forum!

[Peter Brown]

Some rights do apply to non-Americans and some don't, and it largely depends on where those non-Americans are located.

The only two real cases that come to my mind which demonstrate a duality of ‘Americanised rights for all’ would be the extradition treaty between the USA and Britain where the ‘deal’ was very one sided towards America regarding rights of the individual. I stress not Americas fault, the insisted their citizens had rights before extradition could take place, but Britain did F all to protect rights of the British in return.

The morel question is should the Americans who drafted the treaty insisted on the same deal for the British that they insisted on for the US?

The other real case was Guantánamo Bay. What the hell was that all about? Secret prisons abroad to get around US ‘rights’ in the homeland? Now that was as far as I can tell morally and ethically indefensible for any Government to allow to happen when everyone knows about the various political concentration camps which pop up in dictatorships.

I can understand Obama giving amnesty to the soldiers, its not their fault following orders, but the political instigators of such prisons should have been tried for treason as what they allowed was about as un American as I can think of going against the bedrock of their constitution etc.

[Coito ergo sum]

TBH I thought that was the only American foreign policy being practiced for decades. Americans have rights, nobody else matters unless there is capital to gain from it then huu-ya send in the marines.

Only the few ever practiced being what they preached and politically very covertly like Roosevelt during the war.

Mind you I don’t blame America being that way; Roosevelt would have been lynched by the people if he had declared war back in 1939 to support a 'Euro democracy'.

Actually, it was fairly even in '39, and grew stronger as the German and Japanese rampaged around. I've done a lot of study on this topic. There are a few thousand documents here that would be informative.

Be that as it may, I find it hard to think of any foreign action America has partaken in where they didn’t get something out of it. I can’t think of any action Britain has done which hasn’t been the same if that evens the books, unless it was a forced action that is.

On the whole the world of politics is full of Palins.

Countries generally don't get involved in foreign actions that they perceive are none of their business, and it's only their business if they have an interest or stake in the outcome. I.e. if they have something to get out of it.

What countries are out there warring out of a sense of altruism?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=184152

[Coito ergo sum]

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=184152

I think your points there are very good. I don't think that Americans sensing the inevitability of being dragged into the war changes the fact that the US and other countries don't go to war for altruistic reasons. It was the inevitability of the war hitting our shores that caused our involvement. We had to pick a side.

I get irritated by the snarky comments on threads such as the one you just linked to -- Europeans who think it's some sort of jab or chide to point out that the US didn't become militarily involved until Pearl Harbor in 1941. I wonder why they think we should have been involved in 1939? What business was a European war (another one) fought among colonial powers, and directly caused by the European colonial powers not following the American suggestion at the end of the last European colonial bloodbath?

The US had nothing to do with the European colonialist nations putting the German and Austrian balls in a vice. And, they had nothing to do with the rise of Hitler. It was the Brits and the French who stood by and did nothing as the Germans swallowed up Austria and Czechosovakia. Suddenly, when the Brits think it's time to declar war, when the Germans invaded Poland, then -- then it's the appropriate time, and the US should have jumped in and started fighting on the side of the Brits - as if the Brits held some moral high ground at the time that we were obliged to fight and die for. Then we're going to be chided for coming in when we did? meh!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

JREF is a bit frisky at times, so I slide over most the jibs, doing a fair bit of it myself in other threads. I do wish we had gotten into the war voluntarily rather than being bushwhacked.

[Coito ergo sum]

JREF is a bit frisky at times, so I slide over most the jibs, doing a fair bit of it myself in other threads. I do wish we had gotten into the war voluntarily rather than being bushwhacked.

I don't disagree.

One of the things that is hard for people to do is to place the historical event in its own temporal context, and refrain from imposing the present day state of affairs on the past. When I read comments from many people today, it's as if they think the geopolitical situation - or equilibrium - or power balance among nations - was about the same as it is now, with the US dominant, and so for the US to delay getting into a major European war, to us today, would be unthinkable.

But, in 1939, we were a mere 2 decades from the end of the bloodiest war in world history - a colonial war - and one that didn't have any superior moral actors on either side. The Germans weren't Nazis in the first world war, and the Brits were no "better" than the Germans - in fact, the Brits were the most powerful nation on the planet, dominating 1/4 of the globe and subjugated 1/4 of the world's people. We entered World War 1, lost more men in battle than since the US Civil War, and from a US perspective it was a pointless bloodbath.

We demilitarized after World War 1, and we had a very small navy, almost no air force (mainly wooden Snoopy style Red Baron planes), and a paltry army. We looked at the events in Germany with shock and horror, generally, and the rise of fascism as anathema to the American way, but it was, at bottom, a European problem. It was ANOTHER European war in a long line of endless European wars among competing colonial powers that had little to do with us.

And, of course, geopolitically, we weren't necessarily friends with the UK. Hence the war planning that involved defense against and attacks against British positions in the 1930's. It wasn't 100% clear that we wouldn't be fighting the UK.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I do try to provide context. http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/index.html