We must better engage with China to secure Chinese adherence to international trade, non-proliferation and human rights standards. We are committed to a "One China" policy, and will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-Straits issues that is consistent with the wishes and best interests of the Taiwanese people.
So the Democratic party is committed to a "One China" policy? Well while we are at it, maybe we can commit to a "Green Sky" policy. Or a "Pay off the National Debt with the pots of gold we find at the end of rainbows" policy. No no, I've got it: "National health care provided by anal probing aliens" policy. Heck, we can adopt all of these positions, since they are all correspond to the same level of reality.
Giblets has been covering the Republican convention:
I like the part about how you need a president you can count on to get things right. Like invadin the right countries an goin after the right terrorists.
Exactly. If we hadn't invaded Iraq and removed its dangerous stockpile of civilians, why Saddam Hussein could be usin huge civilian-loaded catapults to fling Iraqis at the United States right now!
And the Republican Convention seems to have generated 1796 arrests over the week.
Well, It's probably just hippies and anarchists getting arrested. Or communists. Gays maybe. Gay hippie anarcho-communists.
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"It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common."
-J.S. Mill - On Liberty
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"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
-Abraham Lincoln
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The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as the rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men--serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.
-H. D. Thoreau
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I have read carefully the treaty of Paris [between the United States and Spain], and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.... And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
-Mark Twain
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When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I
realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.
- Emo Phillips
Who in the United States is protesting the oppressive and totalitarian 9% duty on imported ratcheting hand tools? Huh? Who's protesting that? What, justice is not to be extended to the struggling distributors of high quality socket wrenches? This 9% duty is a travesty of all that is good and fair and just and right.
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