Check this out!
I'm a bit of a political junkie, especially during election years, and I hang out on political blogs from time to time to see what other people are saying. I appreciate that people don't come on here and try to discuss hot button issues, and I don't want to start any **** but I saw this a while ago and thought it might make a good game. There are no prizes for choosing the correct answer. Guess which one of our prominent politicians made the following statement:
"In a democracy, I realize you don't need to talk to the top leader to know how the country feels. When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that's the dictator, because he speaks for all the people."
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking....... If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
We have a WINNER!!
The only complaint I have with your post is the use of the past tense "was" in place of the present tense "is" in your second sentence. If he'd have just given away the Panama Canal, and then allowed American citizens to remain the hostages of a belligerant foriegn power for over a year, and presided over an economy where the prime rate was approaching 20%, and then simply gone home to his peanut farm and shut the f#$% up for the rest of his life it might have been tolerable.
I don't blame him for being indifferent about democracies though. After all, it was a democracy that turned him out to pasture in '80. That had to have left a mark.
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking....... If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
Foobear,
Your intelligence is well chronicaled on these pages, but somehow you suffered intellectual setbacks during those dark years! Just kidding and just my opinion.
What I can remember during the 70's (my childhood):
gas lines around the corner
fuel purchasable only on odd or even days based on your license plate
food prices going through the roof
18% interest on housing (my parents were suffering)
failed rescue mission involving a crashed helicopter and canadians???
and the worst memory:
getting **** on by a bunch of radical islamics for over a year and not having the balls to do anything but "talk" to them.
Funny how an adult can recount a his experiences as a 10 year old and how it shaped my opinion towards gunship diplomacy.
Again, just my very opinionated opinion.
Play hard or go home.
Admittedly I haven't studied Jimmah's entire body of work, but the things I have looked at seem entirely devoid of sarcasm. Or any other form of humor. I would be willing to bet that he made this statement with a straight face. The thing that appalls me about that statement is the implicit message that the wants, needs and feelings of the citizens of a country are null and void if that country has a totalitarian form of govt. It's not much of a stretch from there to the next idea in line which would be that the wants, needs, and citizens of another country are quite bothersome due to that pesky democracy thing they unfortunately choose to practice. The nerve of the people expressing beliefs that might be in opposition to their leadership.
I'd have a hard time hating any American for their political beliefs or the votes that those beliefs caused. Unless that person was voting for a regime that would use the power of the govt to deny me life, liberty or property. I don't think either of the major parties are to that point yet. So you're cool with me. I might've voted for Carter in '76 had I been of legal age. Or had I lived somewhere where you don't have to be on the list to vote. Like Chicgo. (There's your sarcasm) I was old enough to vote in '80. And I still might have voted for him except for the three fiascos I mentioned earlier. That and his non-response to Soviet imperial expansion in Afghanistan. In my opinion, the state of the middle east right now is in part due to his attempted appeasement of the thugs in Tehran.
PS: Surely you didn't vote for Jimmah in the '80 primary. Massachussets' favorite son and number one drivers ed instructor was in a hot race agin him that year. 
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking....... If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
> Admittedly I haven't studied Jimmah's entire body of work,
> but the things I have looked at seem entirely devoid of
> sarcasm. Or any other form of humor.
That is quite true. Carter is accurately described as too often self-important and humorless. But he wasn't and isn't a moron, and his choice of foreign policy aides (e.g. Brzeziński) showed him to be a hard-line anti-totalitarian in the American tradition, though he was a bit to the left of Nixon. So, to interpret that quote at face value without any context (that's where I believe most of the meaning will lie) seems incongruous with the stated views of ANY American president since WW-II, even those of Carter. Carter may have been a failure in many areas, but he wasn't someone who would trumpet totalitarian regimes above democracies. Plus, say would you will, but he's always been consistent; his entire record since leaving the White House has been one trumpeting human rights and democratic rule, often to the annoyance of subsequent American presidents and their administrations. Given that track record, I don't believe this quote threatens his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. 
(And when is the Nobel Committee ever wrong? Carter, Gore...it's all good!)
> PS: Surely you didn't vote for Jimmah in the '80 primary.
> Massachussets' favorite son and number one drivers ed
> instructor was in a hot race agin him that year.
You forgot "#1 lifeguard", too!
Our Glorious Overlords here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts instructed us to vote for #1-lifeguard in the 1980 primary, but switch to People's Hero of Peanut Farming in the 1980 general election.
/Steve
(And when is the Nobel Committee ever wrong? Carter, Gore...it's all good!)
> PS: Surely you didn't vote for Jimmah in the '80 primary.
> Massachussets' favorite son and number one drivers ed
> instructor was in a hot race agin him that year.
You forgot "#1 lifeguard", too!
Our Glorious Overlords here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts instructed us to vote for #1-lifeguard in the 1980 primary, but switch to People's Hero of Peanut Farming in the 1980 general election.
/Steve Most Active
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