As President Obama and First Lady Michelle rode into Asheville on Friday, April 23, several anti-war protesters lined the Charlotte Street bridge over I-240 hoping to get their attention. Here’s some observations and photos from local photographer Jerry Nelson:
The purpose of it was really all over the map. Some of them were out there to tell Obama “we love you but we don’t like the war.” Some of them were out there saying “Obama we don’t like you.” Some of them were saying “Obama, quit telling us lies, we want the truth.”
The only common theme seemed to be that they wanted to raise up the volume and pump up the buzz for the message of “bring peace now, and let’s quit this war. Quit spending money on the military-industrial complex.”
More photos from Jerry Nelson are online here.
End these wars and bring the troops home (and give them proper access to health care and all the benefits they are due, too)
Oh Noes! It’s the dreaded highway Bloggers again.
well TP, at least they are on the correct side of this issue, so i give them credit for that.
endless wars are at enmity with liberty.
further, unConstitutional wars are illegal, yet there has apparently not been a legally Constitutionally declared war since WWII.
Constitutionally Limited and Accountable government is certainly a mandate with which ALL Americans should be on board.
however, both the so called “left” and “right” cannot seem to put aside their pet agendas long enough to comprehend this, and therefore continue to fight among themselves while tyranny increases and government continues to usurp our unalienable rights.
… and so the story goes.
Ain’t it great how the Conservatives are NOW against the Iraq war, but were heartily FOR it for 8 whole years?!?
Ahhh, you can almost [i]smell[/i] the amnesia and revisionism.
Oh, no, that was me, sorry.
some of the so called “conservatives” are against it now, others not so much.
i also find it interesting how the so called “liberals” have been so excited about impeaching/executing Bush for war crimes, yet are not calling for the same for Obama, even though this administration is continuing the war.
IMHO, these political labels which make up the divisive “left” vs. “right” dichotomy merely serve to perpetuate an “us vs. them” mentality, but also keep Americans fighting among themselves while the tyrants in the ruling class continue to usurp our freedoms.
[b]yet are not calling for the same for Obama, even though this administration is continuing the war.[/b]
Yeah! I mean, it’s not like they are problems created before he took office.
[b]IMHO, these political labels which make up the divisive “left” vs. “right” dichotomy merely serve to perpetuate an “us vs. them” mentality, but also keep Americans fighting among themselves while the tyrants in the ruling class continue to usurp our freedoms. [/b]
Umm, yeah. what a great simplification; all political definitions are irrelevant, so us plebes better not discuss politics or point out obvious dichotomies that do indeed exist in reality.
Also, your “Americans” vs ‘ruling class’ is a dichotomy (and one based on even more subjective terms than conservative and liberal.
. Just in case you hadnt noticed.
@InfibitiyBBC and pff ??:
Political labels serve as terms to define what we are talking about. (Well, except maybe to the nihilists). Those who would deny the use of labels might as well be speaking Esperanto for all the effect they have.
@InfinityBBC:
The US Constitution says,
Source: ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8
That right to declare war is not an exclusive one. Congress can declare war independent of the President, if they so desired. They can also, at the request of the President declare war, or approve of his decision to go to war.
That happened with Korea, Vietnam, Desert Shield, Desert Storm (Persian Gulf II, Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom (Persian Gulf III). [Persian Gulf I was the Iran-Iraq War from 1980-88]. Most of the wars this nation has participated in have never been declared by Congress. That does not make them unconstitutional. They lent their approval by approving to fund these wars, and continue to lend their approval by continuing to fund the present ones.
Take some time and read the Federalist Papers. If you don’t own a copy, they are available online in many places. Here is just one http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa00.htm
In order to understand what The Founders intended, it is best to read what they wrote about that than attempting to understand them in a vacuum, or worse yet, attempting to interpret them from the modern meanings of the words and phrases used.
For everyone that waves a US Constitution around, I bet less than 1 in a 100 of them have read the Federalist Papers, let alone own copies. (Opponents of the US Constitution wrote essays which have become known as the Anti-Federalist Papers. These can be found here http://www.wepin.com/articles/afp/intro.html) I own copies of both.
The President, in office at the time decided it was in our best interest to begin these wars, and Congress concurred. They (Congress) can remove the funding anytime they desire. To do so would be political suicide.
Most conservatives support our continuing mission to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. I just hope that Obama doesn’t screw it up like the previous Administrations screwed up in Korea and Vietnam. Time will tell.
“Endless wars are at enmity with liberty”?
I cannot believe the utter naivety of that statement. The refusal to engage the enemies of mankind is inherently evil. Allowing them to grow strong is to repeat our errors that allowed Germany and Japan to become strong enough to slaughter millions while we ‘minded our own business’ until the threat took a complete re-organization of our society to meet this threat. Those who delayed our entry into WWII have some measure of blood on their hands.
The anti-war movement, if successful, guarantees that wars become ever bigger, costly, and murderous.
and didn’t President Jackson apparently also take it upon himself to ignore a decision of the Supreme Court and went on to becoming largely responsible for the Trail of Tears? (… a terrorist act by some people’s standards.)
aside from un-Constitutional actions like the Louisiana Purchase, is it really ever a good idea for the Executive branch to solely make decisions which jeopardize the lives of so many? no, of course not.
i disagree with your assertion, ThunderPig. Congress was given the power to declare war, not the President. the President would be commander in chief if an when the armed forces are called to war by Congress, also he can in extraordinary situations convene Congress, should there be a national emergency for example, but not decide on his own for America to go to war.
regarding labels, do you really think it is rationale to think that 2 political parties represent over 300 million Americans? so much for these labels.
funny, we were laughing a bit at tonight’s Liberty on the Rocks social about how you — i think it was you — accused the AVL Tea PAC of using a weighted voting system in order to somehow favor one candidate. the irony is that Score/Range Voting only benefits the less popular candidates, in that the voters get to score ALL the candidates.
this is diametrically opposed to Plurality Voting which only allows the voter to score ONE candidate, thus perpetuating the Wasted Vote Syndrome, casting their vote for the “lesser of two evils”. PV always leads to a 2-party duopoly, which you apparently favor. no wonder why you spoke out so loudly — and rashly — about the voting system & ballot which i designed for the candidates forum.
i apologize if i have you confused with someone else.
with regard to this deceptive political dichotomy, perhaps perpetuated more by the Plurality Voting system than any one other thing, the anti-liberty establishment despises any loss of control over their political duopoly which benefits tyranny. divide & conquer: it’s a popular strategy among authoritarian tyrants because it works. seems like it’s been working quite well here in America for arguably over a century.
yes, pff ??, i do tend to over simply things when i perceive they are largely forgotten by people… every election cycle when they continue to vote for the lesser of two evils.
by “ENDLESS WARS”, i mean “wars” designed to have no end — wars which have no victory conditions. for example: war on terror, war on drugs, war on poverty, etc. when will they end? when there is no more terror, hatred, or greed? when people no longer have drug additions? when there are no more poor people?
i submit that if they were alive today to witness what has happened over time in this country, the majority of the American founders who signed the Declaration of Independence and ratified the US Constitution would perceive such “wars” as at enmity with liberty. most of them would surely view those who would perpetuate such un-Constitutional actions as domestic enemies of liberty.
it is for these such reasons why they penned the Accountability Clause of the First Amendment: the right of the People to petition the government for Redress of Grievances, and certainly why the Second Amendment was penned.
i think it’s good to help people who are being oppressed or threatened with genocide, and to also introduce them to principles of liberty. but we cannot do so by setting an example of acting outside of the rule of law. in case “most conservative” have forgotten, hypocrisy is not a Biblical teaching.
i’m not a part of the “anti-war” crowd, really. i’m not against ALL wars, i’m against “wars” which are unjust, not Constitutionally declared, and wars designed to have no end (endless wars).
when there is evidence of specific terrorist organizations — and there surely is — officially declare war on them, so that there is a clear objective for victory conditions.
but before that, perhaps it would be wiser to get our own house in order first. we have enough enemies of liberty within our own gates breeding continued corruption. with such corruption, i don’t trust the general leadership enough to govern over such matters as war.
thank you for reminding me to read the Federalist Papers and also the Anti-Federalist Papers. i’ve only read excerpts from them thus far. i am certainly no expert on history, and merely a student of liberty. i know have much to learn.
the more i learn about the successes and failures of the founding fathers and those who rose to power thereafter, the more i am reminded that centralized power is a breeding ground for corruption and tyranny, and an abomination to individual liberty.
so before we go trying to solve everyone else’s problems, let’s first mandate a Constitutionally Limited and Accountable government. let’s first cut the Federal Government back to its Constitutional limits. let’s put an end to unlimited centralized governmental power.
once we fix our own problems, then we’d surely be able to more effectively help others, and we’d also lead by example… another Biblical teaching. ;-)
Your first mistake was meeting in an area where alcohol could be consumed. Minds were undoubtedly dulled, and your minds robbed of a correct recall of past events. Witness…
Range Voting
I’ll address the Range Voting issue right away because that is just one glaring example of how you guys twist the truth to mean what you want it to mean.
This is what I wrote on my blog concerning Range Voting on March 8th,2010:
Source: http://thunderpigblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/11th-congressional-district-primary.html
Duverger’s Law
Our voting system is designed so that only two party parties can survive, else the whole thing will dissolve into chaos and a dictatorship will emerge to restore order.
I am sure that you have heard of Duverger’s Law. Here is a brief definition:
Here is a monograph that goes into some detail regarding the situation: http://www.janda.org/c24/Readings/Duverger/Duverger.htm
This is the whole reason behind the ‘alternative’ voting methods like Range Voting or Instant Runoff Voting. Their creation is intended to benefit fringe political movements that can do little else than spoil elections and cause the party most diametrically opposed to their viewpoints to win. I’m sure you remember Ross Perot. He elected Bill Clinton.
The same principle can be seen in party primary races where three or more run, like in the current NC-11 GOP race.If two or three candidates can reliably call themselves conservative, they’ll split the majority of the conservative vote…and allow a single issue candidate or a moderate candidate win a race they could never win if there were just two candidates. That candidate usually says or does something during the primary that pisses off a sufficient number of voters, then their campaign is dead in the water in the general. [see Mumpower, 2008]
On War
It takes two keys to run a war under our constitution, the Congress has one and the President has the other. If either on says no, there is no war. I’m gratified that you had to go all the way back to Andrew Jackson to find an example.
The President is Commander in Chief 24/7, not just when their is a war on.
ENDLESS WARS
The War on Drugs is endless because we fail to treat the protection of the drug trade by other nations as an Act of War against us. If we began treating it as such, the drug trade would slow to a trickle and re-assume its proper role as relief valve for society.
The War on Terror is more or less analogous to the brush fire wars that were fought as proxy wars between the the USA and the Soviet Chinese Coalition in the 20th Century. Sometimes, we could play one off the other, but not always. It didn’t help matters that we had an element of our society that acted as Communist saboteurs (the anti-war types). Many term these conflicts between 1947 and 1989 as World War Three.
The current era of brushfire wars is termed World War Four and is generally agreed to have been started in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Since then, despite a civil war or three in Islam, there has been an unrelenting attack upon the West by various agents of an Islamic origin. Islamic Terror Groups have their origin in the era of the Second World War, when they were used by the Nazis to stir things up in the Middle East. The Soviets continued that tradition, and saw some success at importing it to Europe to use as tool in their fight against the West. To some degree that continues, with Russian or Chinese sponsorship. Iran and North Korea have been able to rise to the point where they have been able to contribute to the effort against the West.
If we do not engage these forces in battle, eventually our way of life will be destroyed. It may be destroyed irregardless of what we do. I would rather that we die on our feet as Free Men rather than on our knees as slaves to a religion that is the enemy of not only liberty, but mankind itself.
Liberty Movement
It is my opinion that the liberty Movement (as engendered and championed by former libertarians) is but a resurgence of the forces that once engendered and championed the Anti-Federalist writings…the people who opposed and fought the ratification of the US Constitution. They seek to use the Constitution as Luciferian weapon to destroy the very nation it created.
This is, after all (as all wars), a spiritual contest as attested to in Ephesians Chapter 6 Verse 12:
As a Christian (since you brought up Biblical Principles), you should realize that we will ultimately lose this conflict on the earth and the adversary will be allowed to rule for a short time before the end of this age. Then, a monarchy will be established with the Son of God as the Ruler. Then, and only then, will men know liberty.
The comments here about Score Voting just don’t match the evidence. Extensive Bayesian Regret calculations show that Score Voting picks LESS fringe candidates than plurality voting. It picks candidates who are more representative of the will of voters.
http://scorevoting.net/UniqBest.html
Instant Runoff Voting DOES have a tendency to elect extremists however.
http://scorevoting.net/IrvExtreme.html
Check out those graphs, and you can actually see how Score Voting produces a more sane result without the chaos caused by vote splitting.
Anti -War Protesters aim to get President Obama’s attention with…. signs. Maybe next time they will try something that actually involves hard work, and persistence…
Seeing as to how the signs didn’t exactly help the Paulbearers, I’m glad that the anti-war types have copied that losing strategy.
Even the Paulbearers have apparently given up on it.
At least they protested, I’ll give them that. I’ve heard that the Tea Party in Asheville welcomed Obama with open arms. http://ashevilleteaparty.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/president-obama-in-asheville/
[b]Maybe next time they will try something that actually involves hard work, and persistence… [/b]
and your suggestions are…?
and you know for a fact they did nothing else how?…