On Fri, 2005-03-18 at 23:40 -0700, Lowell C. Savage wrote: > I'm not going to try to provide links. But Kerry's basic problem was that > on any given issue, you could try to figure out all the possible positions > that one could take (not just all the "libertarian" ones, or the > "reasonable" ones, but ALL the possibilities) and if you watched Kerry > enough, he would not only TAKE all those positions, he would manage to TAKE > one or two more positions that you hadn't thought of. > > That's why the classic Kerry statement of the campaign was Kerry plaintively > saying, "I voted FOR the 87 Billion ... before I voted AGAINST it." (I > capitalized that to represent Kerry's verbal emphasis and the "..." > represents a pause, not words removed from the quote.) > > In other words, he probably was for human rights, AND against them, AND for > them in certain circumstances, AND against them in others, AND .... (OK, > PERHAPS I'm exaggerating.) > > You might also check Reason. They did a cover story right before the > election talking about how bad both Bush and Kerry supposedly were.
Actually that s a good piece. Here, I dug it up: http://www.reason.com/0410/fe.jb.john.shtml I was personally involved in several battles against his position (and him even) around a decade ago regarding privacy and the use of personal property (some of which is mentioned in the above linked article). Most didn't make the media, or at least have not been archived to the web. But if you did some serious research you'd find a goodly portion of it. Lowell is also correct in his tendency, if not inclination, to take any side of a position when it suited him. IMO, you can't argue both sides of th question and be considered "for" one side when it sounds good. You can't argue that people should not have *good* encryption that keeps you out (classify it as a "munition"), and claim to be in favor of personal and corporate privacy. You can't be in favor of increasing restrictions on my speech and how I spend my money and claim to be in a stalwart of the rights to property. When you do this, your "record" is atrocious. I've got more respect for someone who steadfastly holds the position opposite to mine than I do the one who flips and flops as the wind blows. So do most people. Kerry took quite a beating as it is for his inconsistent positions. Had he claimed to be superior on "human rights", he'd have lost by likely at least two more states. Cheers, Bill -- Random Fortune of the moment: Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock. -- Wynn Catlin _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list Libnw@immosys.com List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
