I've often wondered how people went about their daily lives during the two World Wars and Vietnam. Then I realize how easy it is to do.

Looks like Al's got sick of comment spam.

Al, now you see how easy it is to become interventionist and one of those 'damned neocons pushing their 'American Democracy' down people's throats'?
Not engaging makes one callous. Engaging makes one a warmonger.
That's why I go with BArnett. War where it works in shrinking The Gap. Other actions where war doesn't work in shrinking The Gap(stuff like Task Force Horn of Africa and outsourcing jobs there to raise the standard of living to the point where people have the time to care about gov't instead of worrying about whence the next meal). But hey, I'm just one of those crazy neocons, so what do I know? ;)

But only the middle one is interventionist. Plus most of the interventionists other than in Iraq are largely socialists - as is the US by most measures.

Either you're employing an extremely subtle sense of humor here, a serious assumption, or we're not thinking that interventionism means the same thing.

Socialist? Al, please, one can be interventionist without being socialist. Bill Gates? Frank Roosevelt? Far from socialists. McKinley was an interventionist(you know, the mistreatment of the Cubans and Philippinos by the Spaniards leading to the Spanish-American War, yet his policies cannot be seen as resembling socialism: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/wm25.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McKinley ), and anarchists shot him while socialists cheered them on. Caring about one's fellow man is not solely the province of socialists or progressives, Al. LEt me be more clear(and less mean): you seem to have made an unsupported claim. Care to clear this up a bit?

And I don't see where you see a middle. What middle? In most instances there's a security issue involved(that's why ngo's hire mercenaries for protection). That means force. Force mean warmongery(or haven't you gotten the latest talking points from Indymedia et al yet?). There's three spheres that need to happen/work for a country to not be broken: security, legal/political, economic. Busted security sphere means you can't have either of the other two(DFI dries up killing your economy and by definition the legal sphere is dead when the MNCs start thinking about pulling up stakes). That means Blue Helmets or other soldiers go in for stability operations. That's warmongery by most socialists lights, Al(you're a progressive Al, which isn't just code for socialist.).
Everyone likes to give Reagan crap about Pinochette. BUt what's the country like now compared to the Peace Corps model where ever it's been? Night and bloody day differences. Sometimes you gotta shake hands with the devil to get anywhere. That's real life. High ideals sometimes get robbed by reality.

You and I have to stick to baseball. ;-)

Socialists = NATO countries
Middle = second of three bullet points above.

I have no idea what you are talking about otherwise.

I can live with sticking to baseball. And thanks to the BoSox for beating the A's on days that the Angels lost. Keeps them tied in the AL West. NOw, if you could just pound the snot out of the rest of the AL West, and lose to the Angels I could be somewhat happy. ;)
"Socialists = NATO countries
Middle = second of three bullet points above."
Isn't the first a bit simplistic? They're not strict Socialists in that they are literalists of Das Capital. Closer to collectivist than socialist I'd say. And doesn't that characiture of 'the right' calling the EU countries socialists and demagogaury about 'nation building' get a little stale after a while, Al?

Oh, I thought you were talking about what I wrote. Which was a response to your 3 points(no intervention in Lebanon and Africa=callousness, and going to IRaq=warmongery). I see that binary logic existing in your approach Al. I don't like it as I think it fails to deal with the reality. You're playing meta games IMHO.

I am playing meta games in the sense that I think the background is more interesting than the discussion. But think about this: papart from the US, Afghanistan is being fought by countries that are really western socialists cpmpared to your average red stater's point of view. Similarly the call to NATO to defend a strip in southern Lebanon would be for in large part those same countries. Yet oppostition in the US to such interventions is seen as weak-kneed leftism. That is my meta game.

Sigh.
Al, what does a cease fire patrolled by NATO really buy us? Really?
Does it change the situation that was the injury that caused Isreal to go on the offensive in the first place? Does it? Does it ensure that we won't be right back here 10 years from now dealing with people shelling Isreal from Lebanon?
If, and only if, that same force is allowed to actively search, arrest, and otherwise dismantle the IRA(oops, HEzbollah).

I oppose the idea of a cease fire because it only returns us to where things were six weeks ago where Hezbollah is free to act, as a state within a state, to equip terrorists inside the West Bank or attack Isreal itself while hiding amongst civilians. Hezbollah will more than likely remain in S. Lebanon living large like gangsters to do what they've done. More than likely the ROE will not allow NATO forces to root out Hezbollah militants and Syrian agents. More than likely it will be a short time deployment which really doesn't generate a lasting peace in any way, shape, or form. It's just stopping violence because we don't like large scale violence and not really doing anything to change the problem(like degrading Hezbo to the point that the rather weak Lebanese military and police force can take Hezbo on and cow them).
It won't really do anything to change the conditions that set this off. It's just doing diplomacy because diplomacy is always better than war(even though we've done 50+years of diplomacy wrt Israel and almost none of it has worked(except the Sinai deal with Egypt)). That's sheer stupidity because we've done that before(1980). (AA maxim: stupidity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome.)

You're listening, but you ain't hearing Jimmy(will anyone get that movie reference?).

There's nothing about 'weak-kneed leftism' inherent in that. There's alot about not having learned a damn thing about the last twenty years though, and how talks have failed repeatedly(see that AA addage?) in the region, particularly when dealing with the issue of Isreal(how many times has Isreal been told 'just do this and you will have peace' only to do it and still have nothing? I can think of at least six(leaving lebanon, freeing prisoners, leaving gaza, leaving the west bank, leaving sinai, stop targeting Hamas leaders) and each time the diplomatic deals have not gotten Isreal any peace. How many times are we going to say 'do diplomacy' when we've seen it not work in the slightest?
a ceasefire is a BAD idea because it won't change a damn thing and we'll have the same situation a decade down the road. Get rid of Hezbollah and the Syrian intel operatives in Lebanon(as large organizations that is) and this changes the need for Isreal to ever do this again. Not that I think that this is easy. A cease fire won't purchase that. That's why it's stupid.

Al, I think one of your meta games is your torqued that your country is lead by 'Rural Overlords' and you want to strike out at any type of conservativism(modern conservatism, not the old stuff typified by Hobbes' LEviathan.) to vent your spleen(it is your blog after all), and this line of reasoning just makes an easy vehicle to do so.
How many 'avg redstaters' do you even know to make the determinatin of what an avg redstater is, Al? I live in Indiana, that makes me a restater, and I've SHOWN you an argument that doesn't rely on 'well, we don't want to be like those pinko Europeans now, do we(ptui)? So we have to be against whatever they want to do.' I've shown you an argument that's based on Just War Theory's element of requiring peace better than the status quo and not just retribution. If that doesn't make you have second thoughts about how you denigrate redstaters maybe you need more Pabst Blue Ribbon(I still think of you as a friend, Al. Even if I don't understand the bile).

I really don't get how you can call Canada, much less Poland and all the others, Socialist with a straight face. They're all liberal democracies with major social welfare programs and market economies(according to some odd def'ns doesn't that really make them fascist?). That's far from turning out the 'overclass' and taking charge of the means of production and 'to each man according to his need and to his ability'. Given how much free enterprise is also there in each country using your low barrier logic to your taxonomy we could call them all laizze faire robber baron ruled nations. This is the same type of lame logic that leads people to claim that Catholicism and Christianity is socialist because Jesus said we should care about poor people because you ignore the other half of what the man said.

I think your other meta game really is that you have a problem with organized, large scale violence; but you don't want to have that argument, not really. YOu trend toward true pacifism(on the state level, but not the personal level. Soccer is definitely not a pacifistic sport.). On a bad day you can get good and mad, but most days you think any real hot conflict is nothing more than a lack of imagination to problem solving. I can respect that. Hell, that's one of the reasons I trully want you as a neighbor(like, literally next door)). But, it isn't realistic. So you blame the existance of hot conflict on those who 'speak ill of socialism because we don't want to be weak kneed leftists'. (and keep in mind it's almost 2am EST while I'm writing this, okay? It's probably more offensive than it was ever meant to be, and pretty badly thought out.)

So ry, how 'bout those Cubs? I know, not such a good year. Indiana types are sometimes White Sox fans, do you think they can repeat? Tough division this year, what with the Tigers.

I don't disagree with much if what you write, ry. Except:<ul><li>I see a non-cease fire being as bad or worse. Hezbollah is not about to be defeated and will, again, like when the US left Lebanon and when the Israeli's left southern Lebanon be able to call it a victory. This is a bad thing but it seems we only have a selection of bad unless there is something drastic done like 10,000 Norwegians with orders to shoot placed on the borders. I am not so much a pacifist as being against the pointless ultimately use of violence. Often, like in Iraq, that means not enough. I was sith Powell from day one.</li><li>I am just tired of yap about socialism so I do go on. I think anyplace that has urban planning, state involvement in medical delivery and practical social assistance is socialist to anyone from a 1950s Indiana perspective.</li><li>What the hell are you doing up at 2 am. You will only feel a gnawing in the pit of your stomach for treating me more roughly than you would have liked to. But you are alright as you still are a lucid writer.</li></ul>

GR,
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I hate Dusty Baker. I hate that the Cubs dealt Mr. Goatee to the BoSox knowing full well that Kerry Wood was fragile.
The WhiSox will be interesting. I don't think the Tigers have staying power being a youngish team without a lot of playoff run experience. But I don't think a repeat is in the cards either. The Cardinals are the Oakland A's of the late 80's and early 90's. Eventually they'll win one. I think it's this year. Everybody is a lot less dominate than they were 3 years ago with the Cards having a less steep dropoff.
I'm still rooting for the Angels though. Maybe we'll beat the BoSox in the playoffs and get even for 1986. ;)

"What the hell are you doing up at 2 am." I've got shitty neighbors below me and behind me. They're so loud I can't sleep at all. So I stay up until the police tell them to shut up.

It's cool that we disagree Al. I get where you're comming from(unlike someone we know at Argghhh!). We just start and end at different places. Such is life(i'd say it in French, but I don't remember how to spell it).

"is socialist to anyone from a 1950s Indiana perspective." Why do you let those 5 people and Pat Buchanon get your goat so bad, Al? ;)

I love the Angels in a hope they don't win sorta way because they have Vlad. I like any team with ex-Expos. That is why I even like the Giants despite Barry.

I am a humanitarian ry. Give everybody a little slice of the pie. The Angels had a nice series a couple years ago, so did the BoSox and ChiSox. Ideally, this series will feature St Louis vs the Tigers and the Yankees will watch it all from home. (The Cubs won the series a couple of years ago in a parallel universe, and therefore probably won't ever win because of bad luck)(did I mention spending most of my 20s in Chicago?)
I am not, however, a humanitarian about football or hockey. But I will hold those thoughts for a couple months.

C'est la vie, ry. (I can at least be pedantic, since I can't comment on either sports or politics.)

"That is why I even like the Giants despite Barry."
Well, they do have the Alous. I've liked both. I wished the Cubs kept Moises though. Fillipe is the type of manager I love. No homer ball for Fillipe 'learn to move the runners you jerks!' Alou. Much better than Dusty "Swing for the Fences Because the Pretty Girl in Left Says There's Not Enough Breeze Today" Baker---hack.

Bonds though? I was saying he was on 'roids back in '99. I got documentation around here somewhere to the effect too. Cheater. He's as bad as Rose as far as I'm concerned(as is Giambi, Sheffield, Bagwell, etc....). Ban 'em all. You don't cheat your profession. Ever.

Oh sure. Kick the Ugly American because he studied German and Japanese instead of French. Thanks a lot cm. ;)

I am sure we have uglier Americans around here than you, ry. There gotta be. Watching the Angels beat up on the Red Sox rookie pitchers right now. That is a good team.

I dunno about that. It does look like Schilling had a really bad night. 6 runs? Never would've expected that if they played 100 times.
Lackey has been the Angels 'Ace' this year. He's really comming into his own.
And can you believe that this is rather a patchwork team? The new owner really screwed up and let some guys go---like Eckstein, the flying Molina brothers(catchers), Glaus(with an Angels team that really lacks power since he left). They've got a bunch of good yeoman who play hard. But the offense is sputter-sputter-vroom(since Eckstein left. Figgins is faster, but he's not as good a leadoff hitter as Eck is. Eck's got much better OBP than Figgins. *Sob*). And their defense has gone from being amoung the best in the majors a few years ago to 'oh-my-gawd-how-did-he-boot-that!'(*Triple sob*)(You saw the first inning tonight(sunday) right?)
But I'll take the wins. Must beat the damned A's for the pennant. So any help the BoSox can give in that regard would be much appreciated. And we'll gang up on the Yankees in return. Deal?
Oh, and based on events playing out as they are you're proving to be very right about what's going on wrt Israel. Shit. I hate being wrong. Fuck. Now how am I gonna explain this one at the Pearly Gates, huh? Double Fuck.

Plead that you backed the Angels in life.<p>Shilling was just bad last night but their long relief was much worse. Tavarez has to be given a role in the stands with candy floss. Willi Mo popped a timely double, though. There is hope. I expect some trades today.

Ain't you being a little hard on Taveras? Who was the kid walked the bases loaded before Taveras came in?
And what was up with that ump at second last night? Goob.
Just a bad day pitching wise for you guys. At least you didn't deplete the bullpen last night. Only Taveras threw a bunch of pitches. Everyone else should be good for a second day of work.

I agree, trading Lowell is a bad move. He's a good egg. He played against the Cubs in the NLCS a few years back with a busted bone. Smacked a homer. A real gammer. A guy you want around for a playoff run. I'd love to have him for the Angels, but it would be a bad move for BoSox to do. Zito is all but unhaveable. Maddux is a maybe---depends on how many draft picks/prospects a year or so away from The Show you're willing to part with.

And what's with the fraggin' Yankees getting Abreu? Baseball needs a rule like 'your total team salary cannot exceed the sum of the #3 and #4 teams in salary'. Jeebus. Well, that means there'll be a slugger on the FAM next winter.