Comments on Liberty not just here but everywhere. Indeed, liberty for its own sake.

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Trevor, you are free to think, and to say so! Thank you...

posted by kingmi on November 25, 2005 at 2:44 PM | link to this | reply

A couple things.

I don't think anyone in history has been so good at realpolitik as Henry Kissinger (except for maybe Napoleon Bonaparte).  I mean, he really did a number on Salvadore Allende, who was elected as president of Chile in the early seventies.  What with flooding the global market with copper and driving down the prices of Chile's most important export, thereby causing a recession in Chile.  Then the CIA deposed him in favour of Pinochet, who was a tyrant, albeit a free-market tyrant rather than a popularly elected Marxist.  How realpolitik can you get?  I think a lot of America's discourse on liberty is empty rhetoric.  You're free to pay for your own healthcare, you're free to be dirt poor if you are naive and refuse to lie to market your products, you're free to torture prisoners at Guatanamo Bay, you are free to execute the mentally handicapped, you're free to have your privacy invaded by the state in the name of security.  Liberty is a glorious thing ain't it?  Marti would have applauded Allende but Kissinger and Nixon et. all wouldn't have him.   

posted by Trevor_Cunnington on November 25, 2005 at 2:30 PM | link to this | reply