so – I ask again, just because we have defined our terms and set our idealism in perspective, my original question (with a modification) I posed to OKK:
How many soldiers and cops and mercs do you think it would take to subdue a nation of 300 million?

30 million. 1 troop foe every 40 that you are trying to control

Here’s a plan. Take the kids or wife of Mucus-ey and place them on a waterboard and submit them to it (since they claim it’s not actually harmful)…not stopping until the the good judge breaks down and says “okay, it’s torture”. Or alternatively, until the Judge says…”Do it to me instead”.

Or perhaps we could have the reverse situation occur…the Judge himself has to get on the board and undergoes the process until he says “Do it to Julia!” [apologies to 1984].

If Judge Mucus-ey doesn’t have enough information about waterboarding to make a judgement someone should give it to him!

I’m sorry, this may be rude but I just have to bring this up from the last thread. Now I can read this thread.

Smgumby @ 68

Um, do you know that it is still being taught? When they say schools are now “teaching to the test”, they are being pretty serious. Entire subjects are being skipped. It’s much more important to teach the things that bring in the funding. My sister is a teacher and my mother works in the school system. I will see if they can tell me (for my area anyway), but I’m pretty sure I heard civics has been cut in several places.

Any teachers at the lake? Anyone who knows the curriculum?

teacherken at DKos talked about this in a diary I read early this a.m.

“I am angry. I despair. I am outraged. I am exhausted. I teach about a government that perhaps no longer exists, one that had three co-equal branches, that had checks and balances, in which the power of the executive was limited, in which governmental functions were done by governmental employees subject to Congressional oversight, in which those who acted militarily on behalf of the United States were subject to the regulations of the UCMJ.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/20/61245/974

newtonusr @ 86

so – I ask again, just because we have defined our terms and set our idealism in perspective, my original question (with a modification) I posed to OKK:
How many soldiers and cops and mercs do you think it would take to subdue a nation of 300 million?

I think the answer is that they will have enough, along with the ability to get there the firstest with the mostest. A half-million? A million? Remember, they only have to defeat the fighters, not the women, not the children, not the pacifists, not those who are heavily invested in the system as it is.

OK.

so – I ask again, just because we have defined our terms and set our idealism in perspective, my original question (with a modification) I posed to OKK:
How many soldiers and cops and mercs do you think it would take to subdue a nation of 300 million?

I think the answer is that they will have enough, along with the ability to get there the firstest with the mostest. A half-million? A million? Remember, they only have to defeat the fighters, not the women, not the children, not the pacifists, not those who are heavily invested in the system as it is.

toby – When students and freedom activists marched in China, recall how difficult (at first at least) it was for Chinese troops to fire on their own?

I simply refuse to believe that there is the will to do that here, and that would require hundreds of thousands of foreign mercs. This may be a lack of imagination on my part, I will admit.

In a society where we may need to pull our chestnuts out of the fire to save ourselves, this is that point. There is a tradition of freedom here. And we’re not talking about bending over for examinations in airport security – we’re talking about the streets.

Brother, I love you for your idealism, it is an idealism I have shared my entire life. The America I love, the America I have always been proud to be part of, believed in “Don’t tread on me,” and “Give me liberty or give me death,” and the inspiration of the Declaration of Indeependence, which is as applicable today as it was in 1776, since we find ourselves equally governed without any true representation. But the last raucus demonstartion I remember was Kent State, where they did in fact fire on unarmed demonstrators. And, frankly, I don’t see much freedom in China since 1989, God knows what’s being done to keep those people down off-camera. If the past six years of vanishing freedom have not aroused anybody to action, it’s hard for me to be optimistic. In New Orleans, a couple hundred Blackwater guys were enough to prevent any uprising, even with all the justification those people had. With a volunteer army, I am not at all sure that the sympathy of the military would be with the citiznry, and I am quite certain that the sympathy of the police and the mercenaries would not be. I love a good fight, but not a hopeless one.