Politics: Max Blumenthal - Generation Chickenhawk

Max Blumenthal is a writer who's articles regularly appear in The Nation and on The Huffington Post. He also does videos now and then and he recently posted this video as a blog entry on the Huffington Post. It makes a very important point about who fights wars and who sits at home advocating them. The Republicans are building a culture, and a whole new generation for that matter, around supporting military actions that they don't want to fight themselves. This is a very dangerous standard to set. Having a voluntary army for defending against attacks is one thing but a country cannot maintain it's liberty in the long term if they allow a situation where one class of people is advocating an aggressive war and another class is fighting and dying in it.

What gets me about these kinds of occasions, that the Blumenthal video represents, where someone is walking around asking people to justify their philosophy, is that suddenly the alarm goes out: "Hey! There's a LIBERAL walking around with a camera asking questions!" and the thought police show up to escort them out. It's standard procedure in this day of people who feel they have a God given right to live in political bubbles. You can't go off the script at these events. Their philosophy cannot be challenged by anyone trying to put them on the record. Never you mind that these people are the future politicians and activists that will be shaping the destiny of our country. . . this is all a private event on private property and no uncomfortable challenges can persist because the owners can eject anyone at anytime. Wouldn't a real free country with real free speech force anyone hosting political events to allow this sort of thing in the room? Aren't political events, by definition, part of the public trust and, therefore, public property? I guess not in this free country.

I think I would be doing a rebellious interpretive dance myself when faced with that mentality (see the video). Notice how that moment is then parlayed into a "disturbance" by the teamwork of the woman who was offended by Blumenthal's hand getting too close while he danced and shouting "excuuuuse me" which is then just what security needed as a physical "disturbance" that justified physical restraint and ejection. . . .


There is a very good Flash Video called The Philosophy of Liberty that everybody simply MUST SEE after watching the Blumenthal video above. It addresses this same issue of people who want surrogates to defend their liberty for them:

The Link Is Here

WATCH IT. It is based on part of a very influential book by Ken Schooland named The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible. It examines what liberty really is and how society must protect it. They also have a website based the book.