Weighs in on one of my recent posts.

His post seems as good as any to use to spring into discussing several charges against me which are flying about (odd, that people so convinced that I'm crazy spend so much time seemingly stalking me).

First of all, he accuses me of lying, on the Usenet, in 1998. This, from what I recall, is true- if after a fashion. I was simply using family income as my own, largely in the heat of political arguments. The only reason why anyone know about this is that I admitted it at the time, on my own. It was also, if I recall correctly, what led an individual who was convinced that I was a 'conservative Christian businessman' to track me down at my High School. In any case, if anyone is hurt to discover that, nearly six years ago, I once lied (or made a confusing statement) on the internet, I do apologize.

Adam Groves also states that I do not go to Harvard- this is both true and untrue. So far as I recall, I've never really claimed to be a 'Harvard' student, though a few people who have really investigated me have discovered this 'fact' by reading my profiles and discovering that I have a harvard.edu email address. Anyways, I'm not at Harvard, I'm in British Columbia (for those who doubt my existence, here's where I got my ass handed to me in the 2002 Municipal Elections, even if I did get 2500 more votes than were expected at the time). I have my harvard.edu e-mail address because I am presently working on finishing up a Bachelor degree through the Harvard Faculty of Continuing Education. In other words, I am a 'Harvard student' in the sense of the word, but I don't really feel comfortable being thought of or described that way.

As for why I'm in the program I am (as far as I know, I'm the only person from British Columbia so enrolled)- the answer there is quite simple: I couldn't stand Canadian schools, but lack the money to go to the United States (Canadian student loans wouldn't near cover the costs, and I pay my own way and barely make it by as it is). I looked at a number of American programs which provided distance courses, and settled on those offered by Harvard. It is an imperfect solution (I, for one, very much miss actual classrooms)- but it's the best I can do for now.

If you really must have proof, feel free to e-mail me at: ayoshida@fas.harvard.edu

Also, for the record, I really don't care what I said in various online games that some of you are 'threatening' me with. Those were games. Do you get that part? Games.

Now, as to Adam Groves' charge that I'm a 'collectivist'. Frankly, I don't really see why I should run from the title. In my experience, 'collectivst' tends to be a charge my mostly by Randriods. Yes, I value community and the state, I don't run from them. I don't want them involved in things more than necessary, but I don't want them involved in things less than necessary either.

Also, while I'm at it, I'd like to address the, "why don't you join the army?" comments. The answer to that one is simple: I would if I could. To even enlist in the US Armed Forces, you must first become a permanent resident of the United States. I'm not wealthy and, 1998 descriptions aside, neither is my family. I can't simply immigrate via investment. Because I'm Canadian, I'm not eligible for the Diversity Lottery. I don't have any close family in the United States. I am opposed to illegal immigration, and not prepared to immigrate that way myself. In any case, an illegal immigrant isn't a permanent resident.

I too wondered about the fact that 30,000 Canadians served in the Vietnam War, but there's a simple answer to that: those 'Canadians' were almost all US citizens. I also looked to the example of the 'Eagles' who fought in the RAF during World War Two, but no such exceptions seem to be being made this time about.

In fact, I contacted US Army and US Navy recruiters, and both times received the same type of answer explaining why I would be ineligible to enlist. I would post them here, but I notice that the messages contain a disclaimer warning me not to redistribute them.

So, as it stands, I'm going to school, working, and saving in hopes of moving at the earliest possible date. Once there, I would very much like to serve. However, as immigration via employment seems to be my only option, I suppose I will end up serving in the National Guard which I view as fully honorable but which I'm sure, come the time, some of you will attack me for.

Oh, yes, and I have arms which are very messed up (my right arm has two plates and a half-dozen screws in it, my left has about 50% of the mobility it should- the right a similar amount, both as a result of being broken and then having the repair botched by government doctors), so I don't even know of how much use I would be, save as a Clerk or something. So, I guess you'll attack me for that (or claim that I'm lying, which you're free to do).

On another subject- I see pictures floating about of me, leading to various comments about my weight. The answers is as such: yes, I'm overweight. Not horribly so- but perhaps by twenty or thirty pounds at the present time. If you don't like that: tough. I really don't care. Yes, it's a flaw- but a correctable one, if necessary. When I played hockey, I used to easily drop a huge amount of weight in a few months. But then, I see little reason to do so now, least of all to save myself from your personal attacks.

The reason why will not join the Canadian Armed Forces ought to be obvious: I hate modern Canada, and am looking to leave it when I can. I hoped for a while that there might be a conservative revival here, and I'll work hard if I'm here in the next election, as I have in the last few, but I don't see it. And I'd no sooner serve Canada than I'd serve France.

I bring all of this up, despite the fact that I deplore the entire 'Chickenhawk' line of argument as, seemingly, do most people outside of the far-left. It's a method of silencing opposition, more than a coherent argument. If everyone who supported military action was in the military, there'd be no one to argue for it politically. I wish to serve in the US Armed Forces not to please any of you, but out of respect for the fact that virtually every single one of my personal heroes served in them.

I can't censor comments, and I wouldn't be inclined to do so even if I could. But I would like to ask that, if you want to comment, that you at least think of something rational to say first. I don't spend my time investigating your personal lives, and it would be my preference if you would live mine private as well. This is a political blog, I'm not here to talk about myself or, really, to defend myself.

Oh, yes- I also once impersonated Tom Clancy on the Usenet as a joke. I apologized at the time, and still apologize. I thought it would be funny, but it really wasn't.

Also, I might as well admit this right now: in 1972, I did advise the Committee to Re-Elect the President that damaging documents might be obtained via a burglary at the Democratic National Committee. I'm sorry for that too.

Additionally, in the Fourth Grade, I once carried a snowball inside of a classroom and threw it at an enemy, I might as well admit that before someone posts an article entitled 'the real Adam Yoshida' detailing my violent tendencies.

OH- and, when I was three, I went to see the "Transformers" movie and cried when Optimus Prime died. I might as well admit that, I was afraid that there might be pictures.

I ALSO- and this leaves me deeply ashamed, paid money to see the film 'The Glass House' at a movie theatre.

Also, I purchased liquor as a minor (from our state liquor stores, no less, which cannot be privatized, because they never sell to minors).

In a special message to Congress shortly after the start of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln asked a timeless question, “Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?” This is the fundamental paradox of democratic governance: a democracy cannot be defended by democratic means. It is the question that is before us today: do we have the resolve to do what is necessary to win the War on Terrorism, whatever the cost might be?

I sought to discuss this topic the other day. I was only moderately successful. This is, I think, because I was so angry. I was angry because, for the first time, I could clearly and fully see the stakes in this war. Some of the advice I gave was foolish, born of fury. There’s no point in starting random arguments on the street, such a course would be counterproductive. But the core point remains true: it is possible for us to lose this war and, if we lose it, we will not lose because our armies have been defeated in the field, we will lose it because we have been bested by the enemy within, which operates in synch with the enemy without.

I begin to wonder if people fail to realize just how much danger the people, the nation, and the Constitution are in at the present moment. Forget all of those rants you’ve heard about Attorney General John Ashcroft and the PATRIOT Act. Instead, ask yourself this question: if, tomorrow, New York City, Washington, DC and Los Angeles were to be destroyed by nuclear attack, what would happen next? This is not a theoretical question, but a practical one. The only reason why the enemy has yet to launch such attacks is that, for the present time, they lack the weapons with which to match their hate. Does anyone seriously believe that, after such an atrocity, the people would defer to the positions of the ACLU? Frankly, I suspect that if, under the present conditions, such an attack were to ever occur the appeasers, the seditionists, the traitors and all others who have obstructed necessary measures towards the national defense would be extremely lucky to escape with their lives.

The survival of the Republic itself is at stake. This cannot be emphasised or repeated enough. If we fail in our sacred duty, the United States of America will either cease to exist or exist only in an unrecognizable form. After an attack which killed millions, either the appeasers would gain control, and the country would disappear, or the last patriots will be thrust into leadership and, out of necessity, will transform the nation into one giant armed camp: a garrison state.

Decades of liberalism have weakened our institutions and culture to such an extent, that I am left to wonder how long it will be before armed mobs of both political persuasions come to clashing in the streets. I do not believe that this is an unrealistic or wild prediction. Modern left-wing activists believe that the Bush Administration stole the 2000 Presidential election, murdered Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan and Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, staged the 9-11 attacks, and are using electronic voting to rig elections all across the country. What will these people do if President Bush is re-elected next November? What will they do before then?

What will those on the right do in Howard Dean is elected, prepared to betray the cause of freedom in Iraq, turn American foreign policy over to the United Nations, sanction the destruction of marriage, socialize the economy, and place the nation at risk of even worse terrorist atrocities? One wonders.

Sometimes people fight hard because the stakes are so low. Other times, such as now, they fight even harder because the stakes are so terribly high. Sometimes I believe that we will be very lucky if we make it through the 2004 elections with only political wounds, and only political deaths. In the past, bloodshed has accompanied some American elections, perhaps it shall be so again.

This is why the Republic is in danger. It is not so much in danger from enemy attack as it is in danger from the consequences of enemy attack. The nuclear destruction of even twenty or thirty major cities would not, several decades ago, have meant the end of the nation. It would have been awful, and it would have made life very hard, but it would not have been the end. Now I wonder.

The Post-American Generation:
Long ago, more than two decades before he became President, Abraham Lincoln declared, “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

The mystic chords of memory have snapped. This was not so much by accident as it was by design. Ronald Reagan saw it and warned us of it when he left us. Patriotism, he said, “won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.” American children, he said need to know, “why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.” He was right.

Contrary to the perceptions of some, American youth today are not stupid. They can, I am certain, tell you plenty about rap music, cellular phones, and Jennifer Lopez. They know more about computers and technology than any other generation which has ever lived. In all but one respect, they are probably the best educated generation of people in the history of the world. In all but one respect.

What they lack is knowledge of their country, of its fundamental institutions, and of what makes it great. They can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Eminem, but I am quite certain that fewer than one in one hundred of them could tell you anything more than the most basic details of the Battle of Gettysburg.

This is not just a sad thing, something to be lamented: it’s a dangerous thing and it is something that was done deliberately. The children of the baby boom did not value America, many of them in fact hated it, and so they taught their children to feel the same way. The schools, which were once the incubators of patriotic spirit, instead spread anti-American hate with nearly the same vehemence as you would find in a Pakistani Madrassa.

Surprisingly, most of them don’t so much hate America as simply not care much for it. Certainly, this system does produce hard-core anti-Americans (such as John Walker Lindh), but more often it produces individuals who are agonistic about Americanism. This can be seen best in an examination of the campaign of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. In truth, it does not appear that his followers hate America so much as they don’t think about it.

Personal Versus National Interests:
Someday sit down for a few hours and read Free Republic and Democratic Underground. Read the messages and think about what lies behind them for a bit. After a while you are left with the feeling that the people on Free Republic make decisions on what would be best from a national standpoint: how best to defend the country, how best to promote the growth of the economy, and the like. This can well be seen in the fact that support for tax cuts is overwhelming among conservative activists despite the fact that it seems to be quite obvious that, materially, the average person on Free Republic probably doesn’t have that much to gain from them. Democrats such as Howard Dean are bewildered by this: they shake their heads as they talk about how working class Republicans vote against their own economic interests. What they miss is this: working class Republicans aren’t stupid people, they know that they, personally, could probably get more extorted money if they voted for liberal Democrats, but they support Republicans because they know that tax cuts and Republican governance is in the national interest.

The thing that comes across mostly strongly when reading the writings of modern liberal activists is their selfishness. Ask yourself this: why are most liberals pro-choice? When you dig down, it has far less to do with their deep-seeded belief in reproductive freedom than it does with their desire to be sexually promiscuous and avoid the consequences. Why do liberals oppose tax cuts, even when they will boost the economy? Because they want more money stolen from others on their behalf. Modern liberalism is what you get when you strip away from a people their love of country and their fear of God: pure selfishness. Liberalism, not an Ayn Rand-style objectivist paradise is the ultimate result of selfishness because, as a general rule, the selfish are also lazy and would rather steal from others than produce on their own.

No nation is powerful enough to defeat the United States upon a foreign battlefield. Americans can only be beaten here, at home, by other Americans. When a significant percentage of the population would choose sodomy over the flag, how are we to trust in their loyalty? And, if we cannot trust the loyalty of so many of our own, how are we to ever defend against foreign threats?

The Two Threats:
There are now fundamentally two threats: the enemy within and the enemy without. The enemy without wants to kill tens of millions of Americans and impose Islamic totalitarianism upon the world. The enemy within is uninterested in stopping them, and willing only to fight those who are. The solutions I am about to advocate may sound extreme, as they are, but bear in mind that the medicine must be as strong as the disease.

We are winning on the ground in Iraq and, for the most part, we are winning in the general campaign against al-Qaeda. These, however, are just two battles in a much wider war. The final victory will not be ours until every Islamist organization in the world has been smashed and their members either killed or imprisoned. This war will not be over until the Ayatollahs are gone from Tehran and North Korea’s communist monarchy destroyed. The war will not be over until the second-tier terrorist states: Libya, Sudan, and Syria have all been bested as well. The war will not over until the living heart has been torn from the Islamist beast and his house is burned to the ground. This war will end when the Palestinians terrorists are destroyed, and the just rule of the State of Israel is affirmed. This war will not be over until Pakistan is fully stabilized and the Saudis are either convinced or coerced into ending their support for terror and Islamism. Only then will the war be over. And that, I might add, is only what we know must be done. We must also remain aware of what Donald Rumsfeld called the “unknown unknowns”, those strange developments that no one could ever have anticipated, expected, or prepared for. We must do these things or millions of Americans will die.

The question then becomes: how do we do these things if we are constantly faced by the enemy within? The short answer is this: we can’t. This is the ultimate truth revealed by the War in Iraq, for the left war in America has become a partisan issue. Being for or against American victory in Iraq is simply regarded as another position on the political spectrum. Among the Democrats, Joe Lieberman is for victory, Dennis Kucinich is opposed and Howard Dean is, as his fluffers in the media are so fond of claiming, a ‘centrist’. We cannot wage a war on global scale while constantly arguing over it, it is simply not possible. As things stand now, we could continue this global campaign for years, only to have all the work laid waste in a day in 2004, 2008, 2012, or some other point, where the American people, led by the post-Americans, choose a leader committed to undoing the work of years. No democracy has ever successfully fought a war while allowing the political opposition to work actively to undermine it. We should have learned this lesson in Vietnam.

Comparative ‘Dissent’:
While there were many poor strategic and tactical decisions made by the US Government and military during the Vietnam War, the fundamental truth remains that the war on the ground was still won. Should restrictions against attacks on critical Northern targets been lifted? Should North Vietnamese harbours been mined earlier? Should rules of engagement been loosened? Sure. But, despite all of the problems, the actual war itself was still won; victory was thrown away because the Government failed to take action to stop those working for the victory of the enemy within their own borders. In any previous major war anyone displaying the flag of the enemy (as was quite common during the Vietnam years) would have been arrested. Anyone travelling to a foreign nation to assist the enemy (as Susan Sontag, Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden and many others did) would have been arrested for treason and, quite possibly, executed.

This is what should have happened. The movement against Vietnam, as large as it was, would have dissipated very quickly after the first few dozen anti-war radicals were interned for the duration of the war. Were that to prove insufficient, it would certainly have gone after the first hangings of those who rendered active assistance to the enemy.

We forget now, but there was a great deal of ‘dissent’ during the Civil War as well. This came primarily from two sources: secessionists who wished to leave the Union and join the Confederacy (these, naturally, were found primarily in Border States which remained loyal such as Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky) the second source of this ‘dissent’ came from Northern ‘Peace’ Democrats, known as ‘Copperheads’, who objected to the idea of emancipation and who claimed to favor a ‘negotiated settlement’ with the South which, in practice, would have conceded Southern independence.

If we were fighting the Civil War today, I have little doubt that every single Northern political talk show would feel compelled to bring on a Copperhead for each Union man and, in general, even the staunchest Unionists would concede that they had a perfect right to ‘dissent.’ This wasn’t how President Lincoln and other patriots felt in the 1860’s: they threw many of the Copperheads in jail and felt that they had a perfect right to do so.

What would have become of the United States had not measures been taken to reign in the ‘peace movement’? We cannot be certain, but does it not seem possible that, absent strong action, they might have caused the people against the North to turn against the war? And if that had happened, and slavery had continued in the South and the Union destroyed, would that have been a victory for ‘democracy’?

The problem with ‘dissent’ is that it can be subjectively viewed and portrayed as patriotic but, objectively, is pro-enemy and, therefore, treasonous. Think about it for a second, if you ‘dissent’ from the War on Terrorism, what are you saying? You are saying that you disagree with attacks upon the enemy. The natural end result, if the ‘dissenters’ were to gain power, therefore, would be a cessation of hostilities on terms favourable to the enemy. On whose side, then, are ‘dissenters’?

In this situation we are left with two viewpoints: one view wants to stop the enemy from killing millions of Americans and possibly destroyed the country and the other view dissents from the former. How is the latter not treason? And his is spreading it not sedition? This is a total war, a war in which the options for the nation have been reduced to victory or death. Therefore, to oppose victory is to endorse national suicide.

‘Dissent’ in Small and Big Wars:
Now, I fully realize that at least two previous wars are going to be thrown in my face: the Kosovo War and the Mexican War. There is a difference. While I strongly supported the Kosovo War (and, in fact, was heavily criticized by some at the time for denouncing those, including those on the right, who opposed that war) the war there was, very plainly, not a war for national survival. Opposition to that war may have been ill-conceived and disagreeable, but it could hardly have been classed as treason (in most cases- some elements of the paleo-conservative right certainly crossed the line during that war as well). The Serbs were not about to attack the United States, nor could they have in any way brought about the destruction of the nation: the terrorists can. There is, at least in my opinion, an obvious difference between opposing a little war, not directly related to the national interest, and between opposing a war for the life of the nation. Consider, for a moment, the moral difference between someone opposed to the Revolutionary War and someone opposed to the War of 1812.

Similarly, some will recall that (shamefully) many Whigs, including Abraham Lincoln, opposed the Mexican War. This is certainly true, though the wisdom of that war has been shown over the last century and a half. However, like the Kosovo War, opposition to the Mexican War cannot be classed as treasonable because the Mexicans posed no threat to the survival of the United States, nor did they seriously threaten the lives of a great many Americans.

In many ways, the seriousness of an American war can be gauged by the extent to which ‘dissent’ was suppressed during that war. No new Sedition Act was passed during the Gulf War, nor was one needed. Only in five of America’s wars has action seriously been taken against ‘dissenters’ and, in all of those cases, the survival of the nation has been at stake. ‘Dissent’ was suppressed in the Revolution, the Civil War, the First and Second World Wars and the early years of the Cold War. And, in all of those cases, it was suppressed for good and just reasons. We might cry over it now, but there’s also still a nation to cry over it now in part because of it.

What is to be Done Today:
So, finally, we are left with a single, simple, question: how do we win the war against the enemy within? I do not advocate the establishment of a dictatorship, America has never postponed an election because of war, and it cannot do so now. Rather, we must put in place the same sort of incremental restrictions upon our internal enemies as have been done in previous wars.

The first step should be taken against both the enemy without and the enemy within. It is expressly within the powers of the Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in emergencies. On a limited basis, this should be done immediately.

A law could be passed suspending habeas corpus for all individuals believed to be planning, funding, supporting, or advocating terrorist attacks against the United States. This law could then be used to round up all individuals known to have links with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. It could also be used to round up Islamist propagandists within the United States- including the leadership of groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

There is precedent for this: after the Civil War Congress passed laws allowing the President to suspend habeas corpus on a limited basis in order to deal with the Ku Klux Klan. While it is true that in Ex Parte Milligan the Supreme Court ruled that habeas corpus cannot be suspended where civilian courts are functional, the Congress could find in its law that civilian courts are not functional in terrorism-related cases and hope that the Supreme Court knows the score. Of course, during the Civil War, Chief Justice Roger Taney found that the suspension of habeas corpus was illegal: and President Lincoln simply ignored the ruling.

The second step will be the passage of a new Sedition Act. Given the changing times, it will not be possible to make it quite as strict as that of the First World War, but the Congress should be able to cobble something together. It need not even target those who simply oppose the war: it could merely criminalize advocating victory by the enemy. There are enough people who make such statements that could then be thrown in jail. It should be recalled that the real point of such an act is to have a chilling effect on opposition, rather than simply to throw massive numbers of people in jail. In many ways, it would probably be more effective to jail a few dozen ‘activists’ than a few thousand.

Another way to crack down on anti-war material would be to make it a crime for internet service providers to allow the dissemination of seditious material via the internet. The punishment would be crippling fines. I suspect that, given the chance, various internet companies will prove to be much more effective at playing the thought police than the government ever would. Think of it as privatized oppression.

The third step will be to purge the government (and whatever other groups possible) of individuals of questionable loyalty to the United States. The key focus should be upon teachers, who have done so much to undermine patriotic spirit in America. In the long-term, no strategy for the defense of the nation will be successful so long as certain individuals are allowed to continue undermining the nation’s faith in itself.

Fourth, there must be a major propaganda effort made. A revived Office of War Information could be given a budget of twenty million dollars annually to be spent on pro-government, pro-American, and pro-war propaganda. This was done in every other war, and it should be done now as well. Studios which produce pro-American material could receive lavish subsidies, while those who create left-wing films, music, and television programming could be left behind. The theatres should be flooded with films like those produced during the Second World War, portraying the conflict and the armed forces in a positive light.

Fifth, press censorship must be put in place. The media was heavily censored in the Second World War (and the First World War), and it should be so again. Media outlets should be forbidden from reporting anything from the front that is not passed through a reporter embedded with a US or Coalition unit.

Finally, American history must be re-mythologized and made central to the education of future generations. The sad truth is, as a general rule, people generally go on believing the things they learn about history in school. The people of previous generations went through life believing that Americans were a good and noble people and the people of recent generations will probably go through life believing that Americans are genocidal, Indian-killing, maniacs whose history is a catalogue of sin. This needs to be changed: the traditional, triumphant, narrative of American history must be restored. Less time needs to be spent dealing the evils of slavery, and more teaching the nobility of Southern Warriors such as Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. This is the right thing to do because, for the majority of the American people, it is ennobling. Americans need to be taught that they are a special people with a special destiny made self-evident by their righteous history. The positives of American history need to be emphasised while the negatives glossed over and forgotten. This might, ultimately, leave the average American with a slightly less ‘accurate’ view of their own history, but it will leave them with a much better view of their country. The truth of history, especially for the average person, is only as important as the lessons that it teaches.

A Republic, if we can keep it:
Some of the measures I advocate may sound harsh. That is because they are. Harsh, extreme, and often undemocratic measures are required to defend democracy.

We wish to return to peace: the patterns of peace, the arguments of peace, and the decorum of peace. But the war is on! Anyone who does not see that is blind. The measures I advocate may sound extreme now: but will they after we come under biological attack?

While we must worry about the enemy abroad, we cannot ignore the enemy within. We could have killed ten times as many Vietnamese communists, and it still would have been ultimately meaningless if the Democrats were again allowed to abandon the cause of freedom. All of the Union victories in the world would have mattered not at all had Copperheads won control of the Northern Government during the Civil War.

You may say, “If we restrict freedoms, the terrorists will have won.” I say, “If we’re all dead, the terrorists will have won as well.” America has traded civil liberties for victory before: it’s a fair trade, and one to be expected. A total war cannot be waged by democratic means.

It is possible, perhaps, they we will even go too far. That is very well possible. But I’d rather everyone be alive and a few people have their rights violated than have millions dead, but the ACLU satisfied. In the worst case scenario, we can always give everyone who’s rights we violate a few thousand dollars and a formal apology four or five decades from now. Let some future generation worry about that.

We have a Republic, if we can keep it. We will not keep it by irresolution and timidity. Either we will strike out, and destroy all enemies: foreign and domestic. Or we shall perish.