KC
August 2, 2003, 07:24 PM
Taken from the NY Times, quoted here (http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003829)
Left Coast Quagmire
California is a desert land roughly the size of Iraq. It is also an object lesson in the dangers of trying to impose democracy in a culture that is not ready for it. California "is degenerating into a banana republic," writes former Enron adviser Paul Krugman in his New York Times column. Leon Panetta, himself a Californian, writes in the Los Angeles Times that California is undergoing a "breakdown in [the] trust that is essential to governing in a democracy." Newsday quotes Bob Mulholland, another California political activist, as warning of "a coup attempt by the Taliban element." Others say a move is under way to "hijack" California's government.
What isn't widely known is that the U.S. has a large military presence in California. And our troops are coming under attack from angry locals. "Two off-duty Marines were stabbed, one critically, when they and two companions were attacked by more than a dozen alleged gang members early Thursday," KSND-TV reports from San Diego, a city in California's south.
How many young American men and women will have to make the ultimate sacrifice before we realize it isn't worth it? Is the Bush administration too proud to ask the U.N. for help in pacifying California? Plainly California has turned into a quagmire, and the sooner we bring our troops back home, the better
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You know, John Fremont (and US Army troops he led) disobeyed orders and helped (a little) to kick out the Mexican government from California, a revolution led by Americans who wanted more than what the feudal landlords were willing to permit. (Course, the gold also helped...) This state went on to become a world-class producer of a range of products and services, ranging from the food you are (possibly) eating, aircraft from WWII to present, the technology that I am writing this note on, and on and on and on.
Now, due to fuzzy thinking, bureacratic ineptitude, and policies that are more libertine than liberal, the economy is depressed with business leaving the state with great incentive to do so. Industry is actively discouraged, and there is ongoing threat from both ecofacists and petty bureaucrats with delusions of godhood. My state has indeed been hijacked, by a rude coalition every bit as fanatical as the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan for the 1990's.
At what point will the United States lend assistance to its citizens in what is becoming (if it has not already) occupied territory hostile to the letter and intent of the Constitution? Or am I being excessively dour and unduly pessimistic?
bah....
Left Coast Quagmire
California is a desert land roughly the size of Iraq. It is also an object lesson in the dangers of trying to impose democracy in a culture that is not ready for it. California "is degenerating into a banana republic," writes former Enron adviser Paul Krugman in his New York Times column. Leon Panetta, himself a Californian, writes in the Los Angeles Times that California is undergoing a "breakdown in [the] trust that is essential to governing in a democracy." Newsday quotes Bob Mulholland, another California political activist, as warning of "a coup attempt by the Taliban element." Others say a move is under way to "hijack" California's government.
What isn't widely known is that the U.S. has a large military presence in California. And our troops are coming under attack from angry locals. "Two off-duty Marines were stabbed, one critically, when they and two companions were attacked by more than a dozen alleged gang members early Thursday," KSND-TV reports from San Diego, a city in California's south.
How many young American men and women will have to make the ultimate sacrifice before we realize it isn't worth it? Is the Bush administration too proud to ask the U.N. for help in pacifying California? Plainly California has turned into a quagmire, and the sooner we bring our troops back home, the better
----
You know, John Fremont (and US Army troops he led) disobeyed orders and helped (a little) to kick out the Mexican government from California, a revolution led by Americans who wanted more than what the feudal landlords were willing to permit. (Course, the gold also helped...) This state went on to become a world-class producer of a range of products and services, ranging from the food you are (possibly) eating, aircraft from WWII to present, the technology that I am writing this note on, and on and on and on.
Now, due to fuzzy thinking, bureacratic ineptitude, and policies that are more libertine than liberal, the economy is depressed with business leaving the state with great incentive to do so. Industry is actively discouraged, and there is ongoing threat from both ecofacists and petty bureaucrats with delusions of godhood. My state has indeed been hijacked, by a rude coalition every bit as fanatical as the Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan for the 1990's.
At what point will the United States lend assistance to its citizens in what is becoming (if it has not already) occupied territory hostile to the letter and intent of the Constitution? Or am I being excessively dour and unduly pessimistic?
bah....