I still fail to see the big deal with this. Hagee is popular among those that share his religious views. Thousands of people listen to him every week, and despite certain people trying to paint him as a bigot there is no evidence of this. He has even apologized to the catholics for some of the things he said about them. I don't see Jeremiah Wright trying to apologize for being a racist proving Hagee is the better man.
Brett,
You are correct, there is no big deal. I don't need Rev. Wright or lack of label pin on Obama to cause me NOT to vote for him, his positions alone are more than sufficent to take care of that. Same for McCain with Hagee. I'd no more vote for McCain than I would Obama because in the case of either and you can lump in Hillary too, gov't would only grow in the end and that alone is enough to steer me away from all 3.
In that vein, I think Lew Rockwell said it best yesterday in his piece entitled, "The Enemy is Always the State!"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/enemy-always-thestate.html
I know typically you could care less but read down about 4 or 5 paragraphs and just for a moment consider the point just on immigration alone! Ah heck, I'll make it easy so as to not waste your valuable time with having to read.
Another example of a more complicated topic concerns immigration. Throughout modern history, the state has used immigrants as a tool to ratchet up power for itself. This takes the form of requiring tax-funded services like public schools and medical services, or in browbeating the citizens to embrace all newcomers while enforcing anti-discrimination law. Nor are citizens under these conditions permitted to notice the rise in crime that accompanies some immigration or the demographic upheavals that people resent. The result of immigration waves is to diminish liberty for American citizens.
At the same time, anti-immigrationist sentiment can also be used by the state to expand its power. In the name of a crackdown, the state invades the rights of business and demands documentation of every employee. It sends its bureaucrats all over the country and works toward a national ID card. It makes it virtually impossible for corporations to hire people, even temporary workers, from other countries, all in the name of national security or stopping immigration. The state is happy to whip up nativist frenzy in the name of loving the homeland in order to enhance its power. This harms productivity and makes us all less free.
So you see the problem here. The state uses both pro- and anti-immigration sentiment in its favor.
Even on this issue, no matter which of the 3 make the cut, their solutions will fall somewhere inside the framework mentioned above and 2 things will result in the end. The problem will not be fixed and the State will grow in size and power. On every issue of note down through the years, the problems are never solved and the State grows in size and power and it matters not which party controls the reigns.
Even in the midst of terorist threats, the reality is the problem has not been solved but yet gov't power has grown and the taxpayer is saddled with an ever increasing debt. I know you and others will say this or that and in some case they are valid points but here's a fact. The ultimate force behind the attacks on 9/11 are still out free as a bird and at any point could rear their ugly head and the reality is little can be done to prevent it. Having captured or killed those 2 several years ago IMO would have even moreso gave insurance that threat level was truly reduced but then without that threat level, what mass justification is there for gov't to go further in it's new mideast policy abroad and it's own agenda at home?
Now I see Bush maybe upping the ante in the years ahead by giving enriched uranium to the very nation that supplied us the vast majority of those who hit us on 9/11 and also the very brain and backbone of the Al Qaeda network. Sounds so familar in what Ron Paul describes as blowback from other past choices of gov't but one has to ask was this blowback intentional? I've got to be kidding right? Nope, not at all because time and time again they do this and no one is that stupid!
Where's the appeal of the strong soldier type in John McCain without an external threat that we believe the other 2 are incapable of handling? Take that away and McCain has "0" credentials as a true conservative to even get elected dogcatcher under that political ideal. Why solve a problem when it's use proves even more rewarding? The democrats do it to with social security and other programs that in every budget get an increase in funding but all we hear are the republicans are gonna end this and that. Maybe the funding increases were not to the level the democrats want it, but the program grows none the less. Bothsides create boogey men via lies and destortions.
Hell, even bothsides agree American education is a disaster but then we rubberstamp the ever constant stream of federal programs that they guarantee will fix the problem and take us to Nirvana. Last time I looked the only thing I saw was a huge hemoroid that in our minds had prevented us from catching wind of the real smell.
As for a constantly failing gov't, would you go to a auto mechanic who not only never fixes your care but the problems get worse as your bank account grows smaller and the mechanic's grows larger? How about a doctor, a dentist, a home repairman? Would UPS continue to employ any of us if the packages never got delievered, they continued to pile up and we only demanded more money from them and the customer? Then using that logic, why do you continue to hire a gov't and advertise for a gov't that does just exactly that?
Now make your choice!
Tourist talked about some preachers using hellfire and brimstone sermons and I always laugh at these as being nothing more than someone trying to scare the literal "
HELL out of me!" Just like these preachers use the devil and the threat of hell into scaring people into the pews on Sunday so does the gov't use it's "problems" to scare us into rubberstamping it's will upon society. The question now is who learned the process from whom?
