Is the Trans-Texas Corridor Really Dead?
A year ago, political hacks were calling Congressman Ron Paul and others "nuts" for warning about plots for a NAFTA superhighway. They started out denying any such beast was in the works, even as plans for the southern-U.S. leg of the project were underway. Yesterday, less than a year after the hacks called those warning the public "nuts" for believing such a system was in the works, officials from the state of Texas proclaimed that the project was "dead". Widespread opposition to the "Trans-Texas corridor" killed the project- or so they say.So the "nuts" were correct. And they got the warnings out in time to stop the scheme. The plan of the schemers seems to have been to continue to lie about the existence and goals of the project for as long as possible, counting on a barrage of propaganda to intimidate people into shutting up until the project was so far along that it would be too late to stop it. Usually such a plan works. In the words of Chesterton.....
The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.- G.K. Chesterton
But is the project really dead? All we have is the word of some of the same people who lied to us about it the first time. The Texas Department of Transportation still wants to continue the environmental impact studies it was doing for the project, and does not want the state law authorizing it to be repealed.
My guess, they will change the name to throw the public off their trail, and maybe break it down into a series of "local projects" that they will connect together when the time is right. That is only my guess of their intentions, but the imploding economy might stop the thing even if citizen action does not.
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Thursday, January 08, 2009
4 Comments:
Mark,
I know you and most on this site are huge Ron Paul fans so lets discuss his vote yesterday along with liberal Democrats on the U.S. not supporting Isreal and its right to defend itself against terrorist. He has proven once again he is a fruit loop when it comes to foreign policy!
Rick,
I believe that he is wrong on Israel. In his mind, he bears no ill-will against Israel, he just pursues a policy of strict neutrality in foreign conflicts. The Paul doctrine is that the ONLY reason for us to involve ourselves in a conflict is when we are attacked, as the Taliban in Afganistan did on 9/11 (thus he voted for the intervention in Afganistan).
At the end of his clip about the vote he said he did not think we were doing Israel or us any good with the vote.
Again, I disagree with him. This is not merely a conflict between two countries, but an aberrant ideology (militant Islam) and the Free world. Giving up Israel will not buy us lasting peace with these fanatics, and Israel is doing the fighting that we would have to do if they were not there.
In the face of an enemy with global imperial intentions, I think the moral choice is to acknowledge that the victims have a right to defend themselves. Just saying both sides should stop fighting makes aggressor and defender out to be morally equivalent, and is thus an immoral stance.
The thing is, the islamofascists have a case that WE are also an empire with global aspirations.
I don't think Paul is a "fruit loop" on foreign policy. Besides this issue, when has his fruit ever looped?
Mark
I think we both agree that Islam is a dangerous religion, and yes this war we are fighting is against Muslims.
With that said, the Bush doctrine of attacking Muslims in other countries and therefore taking the fight to them instead of letting them play offense and taking the fight to us I believe is the correct strategy. Correct me if I'm wrong but Paul believes we must be attacked first before we can respond. Isn't that thinking insanity? Why should we wait until thousands more of our citizens are killed before we respond? And why shouldn't Isreal be able to respond to 15 months of missles being shot into their country?
To me this fight is simple. Kill them before they kill us.
Israel should be able to respond, and they are. Paul wanted to neither endorse or condemn that action. I disagree with his reasoning because if WE can respond to attacks then we should acknowledge that OTHERS can also respond to terrorist attacks. You and I are on the same page there.
If you think the "Bush Doctrine" of pre-emptive war has been a good strategy then we are going to have to disagree on that. When you launch a pre-emptive war, you better be right that the other side was going to attack you. Bush was wrong about Iraq, and the "freely elected" government that we shed so much of our blood and treasure to install is much more Islamofascist than Saddam. It's been a disaster.
Obviously if we see that an attack on us is imminent we don't have to wait until it comes to respond, but that is very different from starting a war with someone just because we notice they don't like us and they have or are developing means that could hurt us. If I thought that to be "safe" I had to send armed men into every house on my street where they MIGHT have the intent and means to hurt me then I would be ruled insane. That's the Bush policy. We are garrisoning well over 100 nations. Switzerland garrisons none. Who is safer?
Einstein once said that everything should be as simple as possible, but no more so. "Killing us before we kill them", is simpler than possible. You recall that we won over the last ideology with global pretensions without firing a shot at the Soviet Union.
The Islamofascists are brutal, violent men who will perpetrate barbarities on whoever is around them, especially rival islamofascists. The Arabs have a proverb, "me against my brother, I and my brother against my cousin, I, my brother and my cousin against the world". The proverb is a reflection of the original prophesy concerning Ismael "His hand shall be against every man's and every man's hand shall be against him".
If we were not in the middle trying to play referee, they would go back to killing each other off (as they have done for hundreds if not thousands of years) and save us the trouble.
Our other "options" include killing one billion people created in the image of God or sorting through them to find the 15% that are radical and taking lots of losses in the process. Those options are not really options anyway. Even if we steeled ourselves into that kind of sociopathic society, we lack the means. The ChiComs barely loaned us enough money to screw up in Iraq, I don't think they are going to loan us the trillions required for a global war against Islam.
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