Hypothetical

[townes]

The year is 2012 and an anti-semitic, anti-religion, president who encourages abortion as a method of population control is in the White House. He has invaded Israel at a huge cost of life and intends on occupying the country for years to come. He has just been re-elected by 3% margin and his party controls the house senate and judiciary and he claims to have a mandate.


Do you unite behind him, oppose him adamantly, or leave the country?




One last question. Are you "un-american" if you don't accept his value system and reject his policies and leadership?

[dchester]

It's hard to directly answer this question without knowing the context of what Israel did to cause us to invade it, or for that matter, how such a person got elected.

I'll make the assumption that Israel did nothing to warrent the invasion, and this President is absolutely unfit for office. Under those assumptions, I'd be lobbying the Congress to impeach him. It's cetainly not un-American to dis-agree with a President.

As for "rejecting" his leadership, that can have a lot of different meanings. If you are talking about a coup, I would not be for that. I'd try to do something constructive to get a better person in office the next election.
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[townes]

dchester, I'll add this: The president invaded Isreal because he is anti-semitic and considered their WMD stockpile dangerous, but it turns out they actually didn't have any WMD after all. As it turns out, he had the best ppossible faulty intelligence available.

BTW-I'm impressed with your ability to not take my politics personally.

[townes]

Originally posted by dchester
I'll make the assumption that Israel did nothing to warrent the invasion, and this President is absolutely unfit for office. Under those assumptions, I'd be lobbying the Congress to impeach him. It's cetainly not un-American to dis-agree with a President.

As for "rejecting" his leadership, that can have a lot of different meanings. If you are talking about a coup, I would not be for that. I'd try to do something constructive to get a better person in office the next election.


Remember, the congress and senate back him completely.

By rejecting his leadership i mean refusal to support his policies and leadership, as well as refusal to accept him as your president, not a coup. By this I also mean a refusal to accept responsibility for the actions of his administration and his party, leaving that all to those who backed his presidency.

[dchester]

Originally posted by townes
dchester, I'll add this: The president invaded Isreal because he is anti-semitic and considered their WMD stockpile dangerous, but it turns out they actually didn't have any WMD after all. As it turns out, he had the best ppossible faulty intelligence available. This is a difficult one to answer. The President can't maintain a war (although he can start one) without the support of Congress, as well as a large part of the American public. Understanding why there is acceptance by a large portion of the Congress would be key to determining a course of action. Was the Congress and the American public anti-semetic as well, or is there some other reason that the President is getting enough support to continue?

As far as the WMDs go (since everyone already knows that Israel has them), I'm assuming that somehow they were perceived to be a threat to the US, or it's allies. Did the UN have inspectors in there that were getting stonewalled? Did the CIA director tell the President it was a "slam dunk case"? Would the preponderance of the evidence lead a "reasonable" person (whatever that means), to believe they were a threat?

BTW-I'm impressed with your ability to not take my politics personally. Thanks, I realize that people can have strong feelings, which may cause them to say some inflamatory things. It all comes down to trying to figure out what the intent of the person was. Hopefully, if I go off half-cocked about something, people will cut me a little slack as well.

Actually, some of my best friends (and even my mother) are quite liberal. Occasionally, I'll tease Mum about why she raised me this way, when she lectures me about the evils of Bush (it drives her nuts). True liberals (along with many of the social conservatives) can be some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. They both care deeply about people, and making the world (or at least part of it) a better place.

The problem that they both can have (when taken to an extreme) is that they often are not good at understanding differing points of view, and more importantly why someone might disagree without neccesarily being stupid or evil (although sometimes that may be the reason). Basically, they don't seem to be good at considering that there are many points of view on an issue, and more than one could be legitimate at times.

Remember, the congress and senate back him completely.

By rejecting his leadership i mean refusal to support his policies and leadership, as well as refusal to accept him as your president, not a coup. By this I also mean a refusal to accept responsibility for the actions of his administration and his party, leaving that all to those who backed his presidency. I'd accept that he was my President, and I'd accept that I disagreed with him. I guess the main thing I seriously would do, is try to figure out why this course seemed to be a good thing to so many others. What do they see (or know) that I don't? What do I see (or know) that they don't?

A rule of thumb, reasonably intelligent people when looking at the same set of facts, will usually reach the same conclusions. When you have people reaching such radically different conclusions, it's usually because they are not all seeing the same set of "facts" (as opposed to being stupid or evil). One side has (or believes) some "facts" that the other side doesn't.

What this leads you to is my philosophy about people in general: "People do not make decisions based upon reality, they make decisions based upon their perception of reality." If you really want to understand why someone thinks a certain way, you have to understand their perception of reality.

Well, time to stop for now. I guess I can be sort of a wind bag at times.
:)
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[Mark_Henderson]

Originally posted by dchester
[B]It's hard to directly answer this question without knowing the context of what Israel did to cause us to invade it

For the sake of comparison, why not assume that the reason for our invasion was that a second, completely unrelated Jewish state, that would love to topple the Israeli leadership and take it over themselves, had destroyed some buildings in the U.S.

[townes]

Good point.