Is Obama a War Criminal?

I'd like to post today some (hopefully) educational and philosophical thoughts on a major current event of considerable importance, on which every American should be well informed.

There has been much said of late (by both liberals and conservatives, even on the usually well-informed Daily Show) to the effect that Obama is a war criminal, because his aerial assault on Libya was unconstitutional and had no legal standing. Simply because he didn't get congressional permission first. This keeps getting repeated, by members of congress no less (who of all people ought to know better), even though it's obviously false to anyone actually aware of the law (much less its precedents: Reagan and Clinton both did exactly the same thing, multiple times, despite being icons of an "ideal president" for both the right and the left).

Factual Politics (4)

(This is Part III of III of the conclusion to a crazy debate on political philosophy. For the back-story to what follows, jump back to Factual Politics to start the whole thread. Or click here to jump back to Part II)

Factual Politics (3)

(This is Part II of III of the conclusion to a crazy debate on political philosophy. For the back-story to what follows, jump back to Factual Politics to start the whole thread. Or click here to read Part I)

 

Factual Politics (2)

(This is Part I of III of the conclusion to a crazy debate on political philosophy. For the back-story to what follows, jump back to Factual Politics)

Factual Politics (1)

After posting on my blog a long while ago on the question Does Free Will Matter? a bizarre anarchist going by the local moniker Benjamin replied in elaborate length denouncing the very concept of all government whatever, insisting that if we got rid of it (all of it), everyone would live happily ever after in perfect harmony. Absurd. But nevertheless. He was insistent. Delusionally, he claimed he had evidence on his side, but he never cites any reliable sources or confirmable facts, just conservative propaganda and hyperbolic armchair assertions and fantasies.

That went so far off the original topic my final reply to him follows here (in several ensuing parts). I'm not even responding to half the insane things he said or claimed, and yet it's still intolerably long for most readers. But anyone interested in political philosophy as a whole, or my political philosophy in particular, will find in the following a useful toolkit for constructing a sound political philosophy from the ground up (whether they follow mine or not), by seeing where crazies like Benjamin go wrong, and avoiding what they do by doing (methodologically) exactly the opposite.

Essentials in Politics

I have added a new section to my Richard Carrier Recommends Amazon storefront. For those who might not remember (see earlier blog about this) my Amazon Storefront is a place where you can buy books from Amazon and I get a cut of Amazon's profits. It's a nice way to help support me, and get some great books that have been influential on me, and that I think are essential reading these days. I already had essentials in philosophy, ancient science, and origins of Christianity, plus my favorite fiction and films and TV, and those lists are still there, and updated.

Well, I've just added an Essentials in Politics. It's superb and important stuff, IMO. Check it out. Read them all if you can. They are all entertaining or engaging in one way or another, so they won't make dull reading. And you'll know so much more after having read each one than you ever thought possible. I've also added a new page with just my own books (since there are getting to be quite a lot of them).

Just FYI, I'll be blogging on politics in a few days, but forgot this post has been sitting in the queue for a month now. I wrote it before I even knew I was going to start the next one. So it will soon be accidentally relevant!

ObamaCare

Many have asked me my opinion of the health care bills that have now come to fruition and will probably be negotiated to a complete bill for the President to sign within a week. What better topic for Christmas blogging than the health and well being of our fellow citizens?

Interview for Arabic Freethinkers

A group of UK freethinkers who maintain an Arabic website interviewed me a few months ago. That interview is now online. See tabee3i Interview with Dr. Richard Carrier. In it I discuss (counter-intuitively) why naturalism is a stronger position than mere atheism, how I think closet atheists and doubters under oppressive Islamic regimes should cope with their situation (and how godless parents should raise their kids in comparably oppressive religious societies like America's Bible Belt), and what I would do if I were elected President of the United States (as if we all fell into some bizarre parallel universe where that would be possible). Plus (more briefly) a few other things, including a bit about my life and loves.

Res Gestae Obamae

It's been nearly a year and the common opinion is that President Obama has gotten little done and failed to deliver on any of his promises. Of course it's unrealistic to expect he would in only a year. It took Bush eight years to right and fully screw this country over inside and out. So we should wait for at least Obama's second State of the Union address before assessing him as a president. He has yet even to deliver his first (due this January). So let's not be premature. 

Nevertheless, I was buying into the zeitgeist myself until I read some recent articles that really exposed the lie: most of the mainstream media is outright ignoring dozens of things Obama has accomplished, and downplaying the rest with biased terminology like "dithering" (to sane people, it's called careful deliberation) or with biased depictions of his actions as aloof or accommodating (actions the rest of us rightly call bipartisanship, which all those same people actually claim to want, yet when they get it, they condemn it as "accommodating" or "aloof").

Death to Bond Measures

Okay. Just a parochial political rant today. And it's not even about the Presidency or anything the Network News drones on about 24-7.

I'm sick of bond measures. They're phenomenally stupid and an insult to Americans' intelligence (or an exploitation of their stupidity, take your pick). Oh, right. Some of you might not know what I'm talking about. I don't know how it works in other states. Here in California, invariably every election is choked with bond measures. Bond measures for everything. Boring, stupid bond measures.

And So the Lying Begins

Right wing pundits have begun the game of shamelessly lying about Barack Obama. The story they want you to believe (by repeating it over and over again and assuming you won't check the facts--and be honest, bow your head in shame: you weren't going to) is that Barack Obama is a "flip flopper" who is abandoning his principles to appear centrist. In actual fact Obama has always been centrist and has never espoused the radically liberal views he is supposed to be abandoning. However, unlike John McCain, whose reversals of course are so public and undeniable that we even have them on video (and any further fact checking in news archives would confirm them, and more), Obama actually hasn't done what he is accused of, hence there are no records or video to back up what the right is claiming about him.

Of course, they also attack principled reversals as flip flopping, an equally despicable tactic I already denounced (later in my post on McCain's YouTube Problem). For example, Obama has explained quite well why he has reconsidered the offshore drilling problem and is willing to make some compromises on it, just as he has been willing to do on other issues (an example of the very bipartisan compromising we have always been asking for, so it would be rather lame to complain about it). But today I'm talking about flops that in fact were never even flipped (something I mentioned in comments on my previous post on Obama's New Solution, where I also discussed the very similar compromise Obama worked out on FISA, when he once again explained to the public calmly and reasonably why he did that and how he felt about it).

A good general example of this dishonest tactic in full force is in the Washington Post, where right-wing editorialist Charles Krauthammer claims the following (in "A Man of Seasonal Principles" and "The Ever-Malleable Mr. Obama"), which I've broken down item-by-item:

Obama's New Solution

Last week I blogged about my lost faith in McCain, as well as the fact that I see two indications this may be the year the People began to take back the political process, if not their country (see McCain's YouTube Problem). There I discussed the first of these indications, the rise of a citizen media, especially using YouTube as a national television network not under the control of the wealthy elite and the incompetent networks. This will forever change politics and public discourse. But there are two pillars of power: knowledge and money. YouTube and the Internet have allowed people to take back control of the dissemination of information. Knowledge is now available. All we need are the skills to separate the wheat from the chaff. But what about money?

McCain's YouTube Problem

I was an Obama man even before hardly anyone knew who he was, back when he was a state senator in Illinois and hadn't even run for U.S. Senate (much less President). He was already so inspiring with his knowledge, candor, and level-headedness, I pegged him at the time as someone I wished would someday run for President. Yet I dismissed that as fantasy, because he was black--as one of my friends said (a police officer in California basing his judgment on a lurking racism evident throughout even his department), "this country will never elect a black man for President."

That was years ago. Imagine my surprise when Obama actually did start a run for President! And his win, though by no means guaranteed, actually looks plausible. Except for the fact, of course, that the Republicans are Evil and will sell any lie to win, as they did in 2004 against Kerry (the Swift Boat debacle) and even against McCain, one of their very own (the Black Baby debacle--even more disgusting than the Swift Boat campaign...with friends like that, who needs enemies?). The American people shamed me with their readiness to fall for such obvious crap--are we such a nation of idiots? More recently, the racism discovered by the press even among Democrats in West Virginia this season was shocking beyond even my cynical expectations, and does not bode well for the upcoming election (see the DailyShow clip, and for more disturbing examples see this video from TheRealNews). In Georgia they even sold out T-Shirts depicting Obama as a bananna-eating monkey (I sh*t you not). Sad to say, Hillary Clinton's campaign wasn't entirely innocent of race-baiting either (intentionally or not).

But come what may, this may be the year the People took back the political process, if not their country. There are two indicators converging on that conclusion. The first is in respect to the media. The second is in respect to campaign financing. The two pillars of power: knowledge and money. I'll blog about the first one now. I'll cover the second later this week.

Winning America

...or How the Democrats Could Win America but Probably Won't

So the Democrats have both houses of Congress now. I have mixed feelings about that. The Democratic Party has a lot of potential, and is sadly the lesser of two evils, but just like the Republicans they often so easily screw things up that this could turn into another disaster, only with the car crashing into a different wall. I dread the possibility that the only positive thing we will be able to say in two years is, "Well, at least it was a different wall."

So I'd like to offer the Democrats a suggestion. Party leaders won't ever read this, and even if they did, they would never do what I suggest, so this is 'technically' a waste of my time. But it bugs me so much that they never do this that I simply have to get it off my chest. At least then I said it, instead of keeping it to myself. And maybe someone will read this who will actually change the course of history some day. I doubt that, but a shot in the dark is better than none at all. And this lone bullet really doesn't cost much.