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For a bunch of prospective Dartmouth people, a lot of you just don't seem to be smart.
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<p>Oh, so someone's opinion on the Army and military service is a reflection of their intelligence? Such a reasonable, rational, and tolerant view.</p>
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Then again, isn't that the problem with the Ivy League and a large part of society today? People running around thinking that they understand everything and that they're smarter than everyone else, and thus they believe they are entitled to have power to govern other people's lives?
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<p>Wow...do you even begin to see the irony in your own statement? Yes, a bunch of crazy Ivy League hippies talking about wacked out stuff like "peace" and "not forcing people to serve in something they don't want to" and "not attacking countries that haven't attacked us" are getting ready to use their newfound "power" (where exactly are we getting this power from again?) to manipulate, discriminate and supress the honest, god-fearing people of the midwestern and southern US. I seem to recall other people thinking they are smarter than everyone else and that they have a right to use the power obtained from manipulating ignorant fools into governing other people's lives, even when their views differ...people like James Dobson, Rick Santorum, and Ann Coulter...funny, they must be crazy liberal Ivy League hippies, too.</p>
<p>I mean, don't you people get it? In your own statements about how liberals want to manipulate and force everyone to follow their beliefs and about how they are intolerant and unaccepting of other viewpoint, you sound exactly like what you accuse us of...</p>
<p>Ivy league people are a bunch of idealists who think the world would easily accept "peace" well why do u think policemen army soldiers and firemen tend to be republican???? because they know whats going on in the world and see it everyday...they know that just saying "Hey Bin Laid cant we all just be friends?" is not going to work no matter what because those people have that mind set</p>
<p>Did you see me mention Bin Laden once in my rant? The truth of the matter is, not only did we attack a country that had not shown any outward aggression to us, but in diverting our attention away from Afghanistan and investing in troops in Iraq instead of Af. we allowed bin Laden to slip through the cracks and into Pakistan, where he is now happily hiding out, protected by chieftains who are probably more loyal to him than to the Pakistani government.</p>
<p>Thanks for the compliment that I am a "FOX tabloid news viewer," but I read the NY Times thank you. And as for my Michael Moore comment I was agreeing with wisconsinguy that you all seem to be espousing the exact same position and arguments (which the left likes to complain that the right does so much but in fact happens on both sides of the aisle).</p>
<p>I bet a million dollars that the entire world is laughing at us. They find it difficult to distinguish our President from a chimpanzee. And I dont blame them as I feel the same way.</p>
<p>It used to be, if you had liberal views people would say "you sound like Ted Kennedy." Nowadays, if you have liberal views, they say you sound like Michael Moore. </p>
<p>I guess the right wing doesn't want to waste too much time in their critique of liberals. </p>
<p>I guess conservatives would feel the same way if the only critique they heard was "you sound like Joseph McCarthy or Rush Limbaugh"</p>
<p>El Commando, there is no question Edwards worked as a trial lawyer, but I hardly call winning millions for victims as being a factor in the huge rise of medicine. Bush also is strongly against Canada drugs for "safety concerns." My ass, he is protected those who help him.</p>
<p>That said, this particular argument is how politics used to be discussed before Bush. I am taking the humanitarian side, you the corporate side, but its a reasonable debate. In fact, it bothers me that Edwards has those relationships. SEE when my guy is wrong I will admit it. Past republicans were fine, or at least acted fine, Bush isnt even a conservative. </p>
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<p>Can all you people tell me why foreign support is so important???!??!?! we dont need Canada or France or any other p**<em>y ass country on our side that will just tell us what WE should be doing....when a child gets old enough he leaves his mother when a country is strong enough it leaves its *mother</em> country.....if foreign support was so important we wouldnt have had an american revolution you idiots>>>></p>
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<p>Hey Idiot, this is the war on TERRORISM. These guys arent hanging out at Burger King, they are plotting in England, France, Germany, Morocco, you name it. International cooperation has never been so critical in our history. We face a ubiquitous and silent threat.</p>
<p>Slipper: "Perhaps its not conscious, but when you come from such a strongly one sided background, it tends to skew your thinking."</p>
<p>I couldn't agree more. But from what I've seen in this thread, I'm not nearly as ideological as most of the people posting on the topic: Xanatos, ElCommando, and even you, slipper--I'm not calling people "idiot[s]." I think I'm staying pretty civil.</p>
<p>What I am saying (which seemed to be lost in the desire to call the other side progressively worse names) is that ideology is bad. People who take Fahrenheit 9/11 at face value are just as bad as those who worship the ground Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter walk on. </p>
<p>I admit Bush has done some things wrong. He created "No Child Left Behind" when he could've abolished the Department of Education. I'm dubious of his plans for immigration, and consider the Federal Marriage Amendment a bad plan. And he shortened his laundry list of reasons for war in Iraq to one that he felt would resonate with the American people, and was overly optimistic as to the results. </p>
<p>But...all people have on the "War for Oil" bandwagon is a few anecdotal stories, which, apart from their individual, sinister-sounding nature, have no concrete proof (that I've yet seen, anyway) as to the validity of such an argument. They don't have tapes or documents or witness testimony linking Bush to the "War for Oil" theory. Until they get some, it remains a conspiracy theory, nothing more. Even for Kennedy, they had puffs of smoke from the grassy knoll.</p>
<p>I said idiots as a response to El Commando's ridiculous statement, " if foreign support was so important we wouldnt have had an american revolution you idiots."</p>
<p>Doesn't it bother you, (as a libertarian conservative I presume), how much Bush has changed the discourse in this country, while alienating so many beliefs of his own party? I guess I just can't understand how anyone, conservative or not, could support the guy with a straight face.</p>
<p>Hey, I've been quite civil in this thread. I'm just sick of listening to conservatives call liberals intolerant and claim they are imposing their views on others and then proceed to do exactly that.</p>
<p>I frankly supported him as the lesser of two evils. I don't think Kerry had any clue what he was getting into, nor did I think he had a realistic plan for what to do when elected. Domestically he was poor, but internationally, he was, in my opinion, downright deluded.</p>
<p>And Xanatos, I still think saying that such people make you "sick" didn't help.</p>
<p>Wow i think we should all be ashamed of ourselves because we strayed from the main topic of this thread which was only asking if such people at ivies are going to be in rotc or join the military....somehow this turns into the "Bash Bush Foundation" ....but i will admit i helped fuel the fire a bit....</p>
<p>and im not so ideological that i 100% support Bush I just think you guys were being a bit too hard on him because people like him and kerry i will admit dont just wake up one morning and say HEY i wanna be prez so i can get special favors for my friends woohoo!!</p>
<p>"If you guys don't like the military, that's fine. People suffered horribly and died to ensure that you had that right. For a bunch of prospective Dartmouth people, a lot of you just don't seem to be smart. Then again, isn't that the problem with the Ivy League and a large part of society today? People running around thinking that they understand everything and that they're smarter than everyone else, and thus they believe they are entitled to have power to govern other people's lives?"</p>
<p>It's been covered already, but that's a very unfair statement. Aren't you assuming the entitlement to govern another person's life by telling him or her to not have a differing opinion? But, like I said, it's been taken care of, and I'm moving on...</p>
<p>I decided that I came off as kind of harsh in the original posts. I don't think it's wrong for people to join the military. In fact, I am more grateful than I appear. But I also think people should call it like it is. In the past, when America was endangered by those it was warring with (and not even just in the past in the ideal sense, like WWII...as recent as the Afghanistan war), the soldiers served to protect America from its enemies. In the broader sense of a war on terrorism, however, where we are fighting against those who oppose us for reasons that are not directly reactionary, it should be said that the soldiers are saving us from our past and present mistakes.</p>
<p>But maybe I just get too caught up in semantics.</p>
<p>Regardless, let's save some debate for next fall, guys and gals. ;)</p>