That is absurd hyperbole. Go spend a month in Sudan, then re-read your post. I’m sure you’ll find it as equally ridiculous as I do. There is no humanitarian crisis in the United States.

The main issue I have with progressives, especially on FDL, is that they continually bring Iraq into the argument. Iraq does not exemplify the preferences of modern humanitarian intervention advocates. In fact, Iraq went against many of the principles. So when you bring up Iraq, you’re ignoring the real debate.

But, honestly, if you’re voting for Ron Paul, then you’re irrational. Trying to convince you that supporting humanitarian intervention falls directly in line with liberal political thought isn’t worth it. I don’t think many progressives now are interested in having a truly thoughtful discussion on this issue.

They’ve latched onto George W. Bush, Iraq, and anti-war dogma, and it’s mutated into a completely illiberal policy position. It’s one of the strangest political developments I’ve seen in years, and I’m really dismayed that it might become a standard Democratic principle.

Okay. I don’t think we should be supplying Israel with money for military use, either. I don’t think that we should abandon them completely, either, but this isn’t about Israel.

Do you think the United States gives that much money to Assad? USAID data is publicly available. No money is slated for Syria. The United States does not generally fund genocidal dictatorships, despite whatever conspiracy theories might be floating around the internet. So, what is cutting off funding going to do? Even specifically, how does cutting off funding for Israel solve the issue in Syria?

Regimes can function without United States monetary support. History is full of examples, if you bother to but a little bit of thought into developing your opinion on this issue.

Let me ask you a related question: do believe, then, that Washington has no ‘legitimate business’ in promoting human rights and democracy? If you do, then at the very least you’re a progressive that doesn’t say human rights are inviolable, prevents massive and systemic violations from being stopped, and then complains when they intensify and the government doesn’t respond.

The progressive wing is free to become a party that doesn’t support human rights. But it is completely naive to support human rights, but deny any responsibility in the deaths of Syrians when you advocate a policy that prevents any and all intervention.

I suggest that we stop constructing false dichotomies and realize that not every intervention is a recreation of George W. Bush’s Iraq.

You are cheering on Russian and Chinese policy on human rights. Yet you call yourself progressive. This issue is one where the progressive bloc of the Democratic Party will never get it right. History is working against this amoral policy stance. Why do some many progressives insist on allowing humanitarian crises continue unabated?

What does the United States have to do with the electoral reform in Canada?

I thought Canada already used STV (single transferable vote)? Maybe that’s just in some local election, or something. I do know several Canadians that discussed how they used last election, and they talked about STV.

It would probably have the same effect as the website going offline. But it’d be pretty difficult to avoid Google on the internet, without actually abstaining from going online. :

Twitter definitely is not participating. I wouldn’t expect Google, Facebook, PayPal or Yahoo! to participate, either.

Shutting down for 24 hours would seriously hurt their profits. While Google for sure does not like SOPA or PIPA, it hosts a lot of services that make a lot of money. Unlike Wikipedia, it is a publicly traded company, and the loss of revenue from shutting down for 24 hours might not go over well on the trading floor. Google is, after all, legally answerable to its stockholders.

Twitter declined shutting down because of it’s global importance, or something like that. The CEO sounded pretty dickish and naive, if you ask me. I guess you can’t really expect a well thought out press release in 140 characters, though.

Yahoo and Facebook likely would face the same issues as Google in participating the blackout.

Reddit a private company, so it doesn’t face those same pressures. I would venture to say that most big name websites participating in the blackout aren’t publicly traded companies.

Let’s analyze the options he had.

1. Veto the bill.
2. Sign the bill.

If he vetoed the bill, we would likely still be in the same situation. Congress most likely would have overridden that veto. But let’s assume they couldn’t have and let’s assume Republicans would make this big fight about the provision. What are the consequences of that? Well, quite clearly, it would mean the entire military would lack funding. Sound good? Maybe to you. But I would rather we have a military and that we’re able to pay our soldiers. The majority of Americans agree with me.

So, he signed the bill, seeing as how neither option would get him to where he wanted to be, but signing the bill would avoid a politically toxic mistake. When signing it into law, he makes sure to say that the provision is unconstitutional and that he won’t use it.

It should end there. You erroneously assume that “any asshole who follows him can freely use it against the citizenry.” That’s simply wrong. The NDAA expires and must be rewritten this time next year. You’re assuming that Republicans will win all three branches of government, with both a filibuster-proof and veto-proof majority. That’s wrong, but it’s not as wrong as your other assumption.

You cannot seriously believe that any President would go around arresting civilian citizens left and right, denying them trial, and assassinating them. That’s is obviously hyperbolic. You need to address reality and stop living in a world where something that theoretically can happen will always happen to the worst extent imaginable. The fact is that this provision will likely be inconsequential from here until next year.

Do I like that it exists? No. Am I going to abandon my party and President because of it? No. Why on earth would I voluntarily hand a victory over to Republicans, who like the provision and would most likely insert it into NDAA 2013?

Yes, this is why President Obama wrote a very lengthy signing statement saying that he believes the provision is unconstitutional and that his administration will essentially ignore it. That definitely shows that Democrats want to indefinitely arrest everybody and assassinate the more annoying ones.

I can appreciate the theoretical arguments about how that NDAA provision is contrary to all of our commonly-held democratic principles. But I can be practical enough to know that the United States isn’t going to become a totalitarian police state by this time next year, when the next NDAA will have to be written.

I’m fairly certain that should I ever be arrested and put on trial, I’ll have habeas corpus and I won’t be assassinated. I don’t see people being denied trials and dying all over the place. Do you?

Besides, not voting for the Democrats and helping a Republican into the Presidency isn’t exactly going to change things, considering Republicans were the one who put that provision in the NDAA. This is simply logic, but I know that the more of an extreme partisan you are, the less you accept logic.

Since I understand the dynamics and limitations of a two-party system, I support the Democratic candidate, whomever they are.

American isolationism, Austrian economics, abortion, gay rights, states’ rights, ending the EPA, repealing the Civil Rights Acts, abolishing minimum wage, ending federal social welfare, regressive taxation… These are all position he has taken and can be found very easily online. If you need more, there’s no shortage of insane policy ideas that Ron Paul supports.

To quote Dan Drezner:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have some Muslim children inadvertently die by covert drones and cluster bombs, and a disproportionate percentage of America’s minorities imprisoned for no good reason, and the CIA taking action with minimal checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers and lots of rhetoric & covert action against Iran that makes Glenn Greenwald hyperventilate in exchange for avoiding a complete and total meltdown of the global economy due to the massive deflation that would naturally follow from a re-constituted gold standard.

I don’t like this choice, but it’s an easy one to make.

Repeat the pattern for every single insane policy Ron Paul has.

I don’t understand why so many people don’t get this. Younger voters are so often single-issue voters. (Anecdotal evidence alert!) My generation has spent most of their lives under wartime, so it’s natural that we’d want to cut military spending and bring our troops home. My generation has liberal social views, so it’s understandable that we want to legalize marijuana. I’m not so sure why my generation doesn’t like the notion of government spying on us, but when you use that language it certainly sinister.

So when you have a candidate that up-plays those positions while downplaying or not fully explaining his utterly insane economic and foreign policy positions, it is understandable that my generation will like him. Unfortunately, my generation lacks sophistication, like so many generations before us. We are enamored by somebody who “speaks the truth” and is outside the mainstream, so much so that we don’t think it’s necessary to look beneath the surface.

The fact is, if you ask a young voter if the United States should fall behind China, India, and Europe in economic performance and diplomatic influence, not rise up to defend people against genocide, and introduce a monetary policy that will cause massive instability of the dollar to the detriment of the majority of them, they will not support a candidate who advocates for that. But my generation is so susceptible to confirmation bias. So once they found Ron Paul, it’s difficult to get them to believe that he is not the candidate that will serve their best interests.

I really wish the left would stop imitating the right in the austerity-stimulus debate. Austerity isn’t always right. Neither is stimulus. We need to avoid blanket statements like, “austerity simply doesn’t work in the midst of a recession.” Stimulus is needed when demand is the problem. But not all financial crises and recessions are caused by demand problems.

How does an Iranian oil embargo hurt US oil prices? The United States doesn’t get any oil from Iran. Speculators are probably prognosticating about the Strait of Hormuz, not the effects of losing nonexistent Iranian oil imports.