Bush favors torture

loseyourname

You should be smart enough to know that that isn't the way the term is used in contemporary politics. If we went by the definition of classical liberalism, then Jefferson is the most liberal president we've ever had. In the US, the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are used to denote people who are either left-leaning or right-leaning, with respect to what constitutes the center for the country, with "center" simply being the average political stance. It is something that changes with time, and it is also something that is a nation-specific definition.

Smurf

Yes. I am aware. I mean that, on a global scale, the US is among the most right-leaning nations in the world - passed mostly (or maybe exclusively) by dictatorships and developing nations.

I could easily say the reverse about Scandinavia.... (except the "passed by dictatorships" part)

ron damon

Actually, America is the most liberal nation that has ever existed, the only country founded on the principles of individual liberty and the free pursuit of happiness. If you want to explore its intellectual roots, go back and read Locke, Hume, and Smith.

Its modern alternative, the Left, is a situation in which the State supersedes the individual and makes choices pursuant to his/her happiness (whether he/she likes it or not). In the conceptual spectrum, it points to the east/past. A dictatorship of any sort thus is infinitely more closely related to it, where a few make moral and subjective decisions that forcefully bind the rest, than to the US, where the power of the government to coerce private individuals is much lower. A measure of this is the share of the country's resources that the government appropriates.

Government expenditures as a share of GDP:

Canada 40.1%
Germany 49.4%
France 54.4%
Italy 48.5%
Sweden 59%
United States 35.9%

But then no argument would convince a Leftist, since his/her view of freedom is the ability to impose subjective judgements on others through government coercion.

Anttech

And if you did you would be wrong :-)

Dont let the high taxes fool you, Denmark has a Center right coliltion party,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/eur...es/1032760.stm

Norways center left party only just recently took power back from the center right goverment

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/eur...es/1023276.stm

Anyway :-)

Anttech

Not true... Again you seem to think that if you believe in social justice, rather than "corporate Justice" then you are a communist..

loseyourname

No, but if you believe that social justice must be imposed on a people by its government, giving the people themselves no choice in this matter, then you are at odds with the classical liberal position that men should be free to choose their own lives and do what they please with their property.

That isn't to say that your position is wrong (I am assuming that you do believe social justice should be imposed by the government), but unless every single person in a given society is freely willing to give up what they own to create social justice, then you must use coercive tactics, ultimately backed by the threat of force, to implement that justice.

Anttech

Actually I believe that the Legal system should "impose" this, not the "goverment" The two are not the same...

Social Justist, like human rights, fair and free trade.. etc etc, are not "imposed" on people per say, they are typically a legislative framework that Business and Goverment have to abidy by, and thus it "protects" people...

Anttech

This is very narror minded statement, how much reasearch have you done to come to this conclusion? America is no more "free" than any country in the EU... And some people might argue you are less free, I cant think of any other country in the EU that has something like Gutanamo bay, or a clause that allows people to be detained indefinetly without a hearing or trial... It could be interpreted as, you are free as long as you think the correct way!

El Hombre Invisible

I can. The UK. But only if you're forrun-lookin. That's not the law; that's just the practise. You can also execute forrun-lookin people without even any motive or extenuating circumstances to vaguely warrant it. The UK is also not averse to renditioning prisoners to countries where torture is allowed to extract information, or keep them out of the way, just like (though not to the extent of) the US. In fact, one of those countries is... the US!

51st state indeed.

Anttech

Total nonsence...

The Goverment of the UK is Trying to pass legislations to hold people without trail for 3 months (not indefinetly), which I doubt will get through!

It however Cannot currently deport people back to countries that have bad human rights records! This is becuase of EU Human Rights Law that the UK signed....

yes it looks like it, since the Brazilian got shot but legally they cannot do such things

El Hombre Invisible

The 2001 Anti-Terrorist act allowed the UK to, among other things, detain foreign nationals on suspicion of terrorist acts or plans without charge indefinitely, and this act has been called upon a number of times. Yes, this is against the European Convention on Human Rights. So how did Blair get around that? He... uh... opted the UK out of that part (article 5). Did you know any of this? The legislation to which you refer is not what I could possibly have been talking about, since it has not been implemented yet.

... and subsequently forgot about. There's two separate issues here:
1. deporting someone back to their country of origin where they may be persecuted;
2. renditioning suspects to ANY country, not necessarily their country of origin, for the purposes of interrogation in a way not legally feasible in the UK.

Issue one is generally not a terrorism issue, but an illegal immigration issue. The 1971 Immigration Act allows illegal immigrants to be deported back to their country and to be detained up until their deportation. The Human Rights Act does indeed prohibit a country in the EU from knowingly deporting someone to a country where they will be persecuted. These two acts often come into conflict, and only recently the government were found yet again guilty of erring on the side of recklessness: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4303892.stm.

The second issue is a global scandal. Renditioning is much more quickly associated with the US, but there is evidence that the UK have facilitated this evil practise. About a year ago The New Statesman published an interview with a Briton who was held, then released, on suspicion of terrorist affiliation, and then was arrested on the Afghanistan (I think) border by American authorities, reason unknown. From there he was deported to one of the US' favoured places of torture, I think t=his time it was Syria. He was eventually "rescued" by... ahem... the British who were very nice about the whole thing and probably gave him a cup of tea, but not the reason why the Americans would have thought to have arrested him. Now, I can't cite this article since it was in a magazine, but here's some related stuff, just so you know I'm not making this up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme..._4/4246089.stm
http://www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=1309
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4088746.stm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0210-11.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists...270541,00.html

The home office and the met beg to differ. They maintain it IS legal.

Anttech

I stand corrected... I was aware of this, but for some reason I was under the impression that people had to be "tried"

loseyourname

What country has a judiciary that is not part of the government?

"Legislative framework" presumably means laws. Laws are ruled that are imposed on a group of people by the government. They are enforced using the threat of violent action if one does not comply. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but it does run contrary to libertarianism. You're just mincing words here to avoid using words like "coerce" and "impose," but that is what the government is doing. It is the only thing that a government can do. The classical liberal position (take Jefferson, for instance) is that the government should do this as little as is possible. For the most part, it should just get out of the way. The modern-day liberal position is the opposite; it states that government should intervene in just about everything.

Anttech

In a two party system like yours maybe....

Is your congress the goverment?

pattylou

I've only got a minute - and haven't read through the last 2 pages so please forgive me if I am re-stating something.

Back to the OP -

I finally google-news'd this item, and WOW!

McClellan makes it sound like Bush will actually veto this thing. OMG.

http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1257

ron damon

The very concept that government should be pursuing something as ethereal, vague, and ill-defined as "social justice" is anathema to the very principles of personal freedom (and responsibility) that the US stands for.

Of course Europe is nothing but a long history of such projects, from pogroms, to state religions, to socialism, but America was founded by men fleeing from a government that would trample them for the pursuit of a "higher good".

David Hume wrote (I'm paraphrasing) that when thinking about how government should be set up, one must always assume that it will be run by scoundrels, and thus it should be given the less possible authority to interfere with individual liberties.

In Europe you operate basically under the opposite premise, thinking that the government can (and should) remedy every problem (real or imagined), and thus should be given ample authority to play around with citizens' lives as they see fit. A short name for that arrangement is authoritarianism (however democratic it may be).

loseyourname

Okay, under what systems does the party that identifies itself as "liberal" advocate the hands-off governing approach of classical libertarianism?

Congress constitutes the legislative branch. The president, cabinet, and associated bureaucracies constitute the executive branch. The court system constitutes the judiciary branch. Together, they are the government. In their legal functions, the legislative branch makes the laws, the executive branch executes the laws, and the judiciary branch enforces the laws. (It's a little more complicated with the checks and balances, but you get the idea.)

I'm not aware of a system in which any of these legal functions are carried out by agents that are not part of the government.* If there is such a system that you know of, I'd be happy if you'd tell me about it.

*Note: Excepting the ability of PIs and private security firms to enforce laws where the government-run police force is not enough.