Did you hear this Clinton speech?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxo @ Sep 28 2006, 10:08 AM) [snapback]325037[/snapback]</div>

I did not hear of it. Maybe because of the Colorado school shooting thing which has overtaken the news.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Oxo @ Sep 28 2006, 11:08 AM) [snapback]325037[/snapback]</div>

Did he tell the same lies he did with Chris Wallace?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TonyPSchaefer @ Sep 28 2006, 10:19 AM) [snapback]325118[/snapback]</div>

Tony provided the links, I'll provide a few excerpts. Warning...It's a hopeful and positive speach. Not the work of the fear mongers, so if that is your bent, surf on. What follows are excerpts from the last third of the speach.

If you will permit me, even though I am a retired politician (laughter), I would like to say just a word about domestic politics. United States and Britain cannot do good around the world unless we are good and getting better at home. You think about it. Much of the power that we can have grows out of the power of our example. We can't tell people to make a more integrated world unless they think we are making more integrated societies. Unless all of our children have a chance to get a decent education; unless we have balanced the demands for freedom and security; unless we have absorbed our immigrants in a way that is consistent with our values, and the elemental obligations we have for equal opportunity. We cannot do good abroad unless we are good at home. (Applause).

Opportunity for all, responsibility for all, a community of all people, good values. A vision where everyone has the chance to live up to his or her dreams, where we are growing together, not growing apart, where we are a force in the world for peace and freedom and security and prosperity. Where we shed ideas that don't work and embrace those that do -- and most of all go beyond the false choices that paralyze and make boring political debate. Going beyond neglect and entitlement to empowerment. Refusing to be told we have to choose between what's good for labor and good for business and say the best thing is if both do well. Refusing to be told that crime policy has to be about prevention or punishment and saying what works is both. That education has to be about excellence or equity; that health care has to be about access or quality; that environmental protection can only come at the expense of economic growth. All these things are factually untrue, but they dominate, control and paralyze the politics of countries all over the world. You have said no to that. The third way has said no to that and you got good results for doing it. (Applause).

If I might say, it worked pretty well in America too (laughter). We had a 30-year low on unemployment, we had a 32-year low in welfare roles, we had a 27-year low in the crime rate, all directly tied to policies we adopted. We had three years of surpluses in the budget for the first time in 70 years and the biggest increase in aid to university students in 50 years. And the thing that means the most to me is the comparison of our economic recovery with the Republican recovery of the 1980s. They had 14 million jobs and only 70,000 families move out of poverty. We had 22 million jobs -- 50 percent more -- but 7 million moved out of poverty, 100 times as many. (Applause).

Let me be serious a minute. Our politics are based on ideas -- a desire to increase opportunity and to strengthen community. And we know we are not always right, even though everybody hates to admit that, we are not. So we have to operate on the basis of evidence, and be open to argument. Their politics is based on ideology and power, and they don't like evidence and argument very much. My wife, the junior senator from New York, says that Washington sometimes seems to have become an evidence-free zone. They operate by attack. But at some point you've (got) to look at the evidence.

In my country evidence shows that their ideology drove them to adopt an enormous tax cut heavily tilted to wealthy Americans. I ought to be happy, I am one of them now! (Laughter) But I am not. Why? Because we adopted a tax cut in America before we had a budget, before we knew what our income was going to be, before we knew what our expenses were going to be, before we knew what our emergencies were going to be -- and Sept. 11 turned out to be quite an emergency. So we went from a decade-long projected $5 trillion-plus surplus to having it go away. We went from having the money when I left office to take care of the Social Security retirement cost of the baby boom generation, and half of the medical costs of them, to having it go away and using those trust funds to pay for tax cuts for people in my income group. Did the evidence support it? No. But the ideology did.

They declared war on all my environmental regulations, they even tried to relax the standard on how much arsenic we could have in the water. The Democrats stopped them, and besides, there was a very small constituency for more arsenic in the water in America! (Laughter and applause). So then they went on to other things. To try to make the deficit look smaller, they tried to refigure the accounting and requirements to raise the cost of student loans at a time when college scholarships were going up. The Democrats stopped them and besides they found that even among conservatives there was hardly anybody who thought that college ought to be more expensive in America. But their ideology drove them to it and I could give you example after example after example.

But all over the world constitutional democracies are now teetering on a 50:50 basis. In every place one party has become the repository of hopes and the other has been the responder to fears.

I would like to close with this simple idea. All of the hopes that I have for my daughter's generation, for the grandchildren I hope to have, for all of you who are younger than me and, unlike me, still have most of your lives ahead of you, rest upon our ability to get the world to embrace a simple set of ideas -- that we must move from interdependence to integration because our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences and makes the expression of those differences possible; because every child deserves a chance, every adult has a role to play and we all do better when we work together.


That is why we must never forget people at home, even as we work for those around the world; why we must want the same things for the children of Britain and America; of the Greeks and the Turks in Cyprus; the children of the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda; the Colombian children so beleaguered by the narco traffickers and the terrorists there; the children of the East Timorese and the Indonesians in the Pacific; the children of the Muslims, the Hindus and the Sikhs in Kashmir and Gujurat; and maybe some day even for the children of the Palestinians and the Israelis in the Middle East. (Applause)

I ask you to think of this work as the true and ultimate third way, going beyond the exclusive claims of old opponents to a future we can all share; going beyond the fears and the grudges, the fights and the failures of yesterday's demons to a truth we can all embrace. The third way in the end must lift our adversaries as well as our friends, the children we must never see because they are too far away, as well as those just under our feet. If we do it, the 21st century will be the brightest time the world has ever known, and if we do it, it will be in no small measure because when you were called to meet the great challenge of the new millennium, you responded. Thank you, and God bless you. (Applause).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MarinJohn @ Sep 28 2006, 02:41 PM) [snapback]325164[/snapback]</div>

Very nicely put - I agree with some and disagree with some.

Democracies are not teetering - 250 years ago there were none - now they occupy over half the worlds governments in one shape or another. The evolution of governance is a continual process - as you noted - it is the marketplace of ideas that places different ideologies in competition through the ballot box. Although you might agree or disagree with certain policies of the current ideology that is dominant is really not that important - it is how many agree or disagree with you.

You cite things like health care, welfare, etc - all of these have gone and will continue to undergo evolutionary changes like the welfare reform act of 1996, etc. As is true with democracies, the majority rules - the idea of the mass value of the majorities opinion is usually correct and if needed can always change given the marketplace we operate in as a representative democracy. That is the true power of this country.

You then add in sometihng about lifting up competing ideologies on a geopolitcal stage. While I agree that my dream like yours is that all mankind will share the freedoms we enjoy it is not about lifting up our adversaries - unless they want to be lifted up. The difficulty is that in the same way our political ideolgies battle each other in the marketplace of a representative democracy - the same canNOT be said of differing geopolitical ideologies. The battleground there tends to me more brutal since there is NO agreement between the ideologies on the peaceful transfer of "power" of the individual ideology - especially when there are two ideologies that are directly in conflict with each other. This has been true as long as recorded history and probably before that too.

In this current conflict the ideologies could not be more different than they are. Ours is well understood by us - while Islamofascism/militancy is an ideology we still do not grasp in any significant way. We do not understand the mindset of a suicide bomber, of sharia laws, of stoning a person to death, of 72 virgins in heaven, of barkas, of women not being educated, etc. These two radically different ideologies (or systems of governance) are locked in battle AGAIN - as they have been over the centuries - NOTHING has changed except the date. We of this ideology canNOT or have NOT grasped this yet. Our strength has been in believing our ideology of governance was worth fighting for was worthy of others living by its "rules and laws" - we now saddly are undergoing an introspective examination of this - we blame ourselves for the misery of others and do not hold those who rule the oppressed or enslaved responsible, etc. Yes we have been responsible for stuff - but unfortunately reality gets in the way of fantasy when it comes to the survival of ideologies.

This is the truest test of our systems of governance. The people will determine the course we take over the next 2 years this coming November. Will we withdraw from Iraq? If we do will that lead to a greater hedgemony by Iran in that region? Will we allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons? What will all this do to the competition of radical Islam against modern Western ideologies. Unfortunately, the people of the competing ideology have no say in determining the path their ideology will take - for I am confident in saying that they would choose peace over attempts at dominance and conflict - but they have no say.

It is ironic in a sense that our own strength of allowing individuals the freedoms we cherish and hold as dearest can also be the source of our destruction. I am of the opinion that we will wake up to this battle of ideologies - it is just a matter of when and how much damage will be inflicted upon us at the point of our "enlightenment" (pun intended).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TonyPSchaefer @ Sep 28 2006, 06:10 PM) [snapback]325263[/snapback]</div>

a true pleasure - by the way i am not a republican - i am a conservative who enjoys having some and sometimes more than i can handle liberal thougths like being pro-choice, pro-stem cell research, etc. i do not fit in any one party. during times where i think that my ideological beliefs are being threatened i put more emphasis on security and defense and become more republican. during times where i feel my ideological beliefs are not being threatened i become more democratic in my voting patterns.

my wishes are for everyone to enjoy the liberties i was lucky enough to born into - that peace may one day rule the planet - and we shall know war no more. i think that is only going to be possible if we rid the earth of those that wish to enslave others, those that worship death, and those opposed to modern thoughts of governance. i am a realist in that i understand that you will never be able to talk these people into converting to modern thought - they only have a downside to democratic principles - that conflict is UNavoidable - that our weakness is conversely our greatest strength - and it is that combination that truly frieghtens those locked in the war of ideologies with us.

thank you for your complement - and i know sometimes i can get a little snippy and short. it is only because i cannot at times believe what i read here - knowing that people really believe what they write. i also cannot hate the way some people do here - no i did not love mr clinton (like him his first term) but i did not hate him. i find hate an emotion used by our common ideological advisary(s) with great success - it robs one of the ability to reason and understand and investigate an opposing point of view with clarity or resolve. it makes us like them - that lack of tolerance - something we all strive for, at least those on this bb suggest they do of others except at times of themselves. kind of ironic

good night.