Does the end justify the means...You are mad about 2000..read this.

Let's suppose there was an election for President. And the mayor of a city, (not governor) could control ..let's say...10,000 votes.
And that particular mayor liked this one Presidential candidate. And that 10,000 votes might decide the entire election. Now do you think that the mayor should try to fix the election for his candidate??

..Now let's name that candidates...Oh.....Richard Nixon....(you know tricky Dick..Watergate fame)
....................and eh..John F. Kennedy............(he won you know)
......................and Richard Daley...you know the father.......of the current mayor of Chicago..and he,, this father,, was indeed .......................Mayor of Chicago in 1960...
........................and let's name the date........1960
.............................and let's name the state...........Illinois.
..............................and let's name the concept...........The votes for Illinois, in that election were argued to have
.................................been fixed by Daley, for Kennedy...... Daley Mayor of Chicago..held back the vote..till the wee
................................ hours of the night..which did happen, I remember...ok this is for real..and Daley created, from
................................ dead voters lists, and ward lists, and other lists, 10,000 extra votes for Kennedy, and Kennedy
............................... won Illinois by some 8000 votes and those electoral votes gave the election for Kennedy. Oh..of course,
................................ you cannot prove that Daley did this ....of course...........

...................Now..Kennedy's election...in 1960...may have prevented a major war with the Soviets, in 1962..(Cuban Missile crisis..)
...................So,......assuming the above is true......does the end justify the means..???..

I have thought about this one a lot from time to time. That the world's history may have been changed..in this case, for the positive..
......what do you think?...OK to discuss this???......Stuart.

(bomb pearl harbor)

And no the ends don't justify the means, otherwise I'd be getting laid all the time!

And it would be one hell of a Christmas for me, you, and everybody, but its not, is it?

had lost Illinois, he still would've won the election.

He had 303 Electoral votes to Nixon's 219. Illinois had 27 electoral votes.

Without Illinois, Kennedy still wins with 276 votes.

..and, I read that Nixon believed that he had the election stolen from him...as did many others..
. and that when he was later elected President, he selected a U.S. prosecutor of Illinois, who went after the Daley machine in Chicago.. and put Daley's friend Tom Kean, and floor leader of the city council in jail..
..the prosecutor..Jim Thompson..... also went after the Democratic governor....Otto Kerner, and put him in jail too...
..the prosecutor.Jim Thompson, was later elected governor, and served two terms..and lastly, defended governor Jim Ryan, who recently went to jail, for corruption and graft....I still think it is a valid question..does the end justify the means,..if the means is for good,.........Stuart........

the decades-old argument that Kennedy stole the election is just bullshit. As I said, Kennedy would've won without Illinois.

There is no such thing as just a little bit of lawlessness, you either have a democracy
with elected representatives or you have a banana republic with a strongman and his toadies.

There is no such thing as a little bit of lawlessness...

..There is such a thing...
.........It depends on who does it, and how much, and what it is..

It is the shades of gray, and the definition of terms. And further: is the law just to begin with?
..Now in counting votes. are the votes fair? who counts, and how.

I wish it were simple. And often it is, But look at the 2006 Ohio election, those assholes stole that state too.
..perhaps this is not a good example..but Daley..it is said,...
....... did steal Illinois, and did that end justify the means......Stuart.

it's like a poker chip which gives the GOP'ers rationales for everything, just like the Clinton impeachment was supposedly payback
for Nixon's impeachment, 2 wrongs don't make a right. Government is supposed to work for the common good not an old boys club
for the benefit of a select group of insiders.

The Old Boys Club..sucks. .......no matter who is in it......

and I know no one cares........
.......but in l962, yea. 45 years ago..the first research paper I ever wrote was about this crook, Richard Daley, and his control of Chicago government..The corruption, and how he demanded obedience and got those that didn't follow his rule...
.At one point in the early 60s.... there were 48 votes in that City Council behind him, 1 Independent, and 1, Republican......
He had quite a majority..

Your whole argument is so full of holes it doesn't make sense.

You make a reference to 2000, then take us back to 1960.
You make the argument that Kennedy stole the election, but it ended up well because of how he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis.

So, you have asked about the 2000 election in your subject line. Many on DU believe Dubya stole the 2000 election.

Are you saying you think Dubya may have stolen the 2000 election but the ends justified the means because of what he has done for our country since then? Do you think the situations are similar?

Oh, where is a Lloyd Bensen when we need him? Dubya is no Jack Kennedy.

It is an ethical argument..I worked for Humphrey in l968, Mc Govern in l972, have never voted Republican in a General Election, and in 2006 sent money to over 20 different Congressional Candidates to help get our majority elected from upper state New York to Florida, to Oregon to California...(I can show you the checks.)
.....I hate Dubya, as much as you..or.. anybody around. From my stomach and insides I hate em..but.

I pose this argument for itself..Does the end justify the means..
Here at the Wikipedia..it discusses the this election....

If Texas, and Illinois went the other way..Nixon would have won...here is a reference.. it is to show that there is often other ways to look at this awful issue...........Stuart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_1960#Controversies

But you've framed your argument to make it seem like the stolen election of 2000 really wasn't that bad cause the Democrats might have done it in 1960. Sorry, no, it's still wrong, it's still fucked up and Gore still won in 2000 (after counting all the ballots in Florida, it turns out Gore did win, by about 1000 votes).

Exit polls predicted his win..Bush fixed the votes..without Nader. not within 75,000..

still, I have often thought of this one, when I here this discussion...and the stories of cheating and corruption..
.. Who knows. No one..
..Perhaps .. I should not have brought this up... ethical discussions are of interest to me..

Gore won the election in 2000. No qualifications... not "without Nader, no war". This is ALL Bush's doing.

Nadar didn't cost Gore the election. Gore WON the election.

If you are just looking for an ethical discussion, you might try wording it differently. I come down on the side of "It's NEVER alright to cheat, whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Never."

But comparing 1960 to 2000 doesn't end up making an ethical discussion. It makes it look like you are saying it's not so bad, since it happened before and the results then were good. What has happened to our country as a result of Bush stealing the election in 2000 has been abominable, horrific to any person who cares about the lives of their fellow human beings. The number of people who have died in the wars, who have died of freezing to death, who starved to death, who have died alone and without a person in the world who cares that they've died, not to even mention the ones who have died of our lack of a health care system is staggering. THAT is Bush's fault. Not Nadar's, not Gore's.

It has never been proven, though Republicans take it as an article of faith, and have used it as justification for their own election tampering, which has been widely documented. Nixon declined to make an issue of it:

A) because he was such a good sport
B) because he thought Jack Kennedy would make a terrific president
C) because he had no proof

As to the Cuban missle crisis, I followed it pretty closely. Since I was doing advanced infantry training at Ft.Dix at the time, and was headed for Germany, my interest was more than theoretical. I suspect Nixon's reaction would have looked a lot like Kennedy's. Despite his propensity for red-baiting, Nixon was a skilled and lighly pragmatic politician. He was also a good poker player. He would have called Kruschev's bluff. In fact, you can argue that if Nixon had been president, none of it would have happened. Kennedy met with Kruschev in Vienna some time before the Cuban crisis. Reports of that meeting say that Kennedy seemed weak and uncertain, intimidated by the Russian leader; so much so that Kruschev was emboldened to undertake the Cuban adventure.

We can speculate that "everything" would have been different if the Republicans had not stolen the 2000 election (of which there can be no doubt). But we can't really know that. A wise man once said, "events are in the saddle, and ride mankind".

I recall talking to someone who was serving in the Navy at the time of the crisis...He said he was on a ship that was on the way for an invasion of Cuba..He was never so happy in his life that the ship turned around at the last minute. We discussed this in a teacher's lounge at a school that I worked in. You are right.

..all we can do is make sure that events are not repeated, and the cheating doesn't happen again. But humans aren't exactly honest.
I have read that every lock can be tampered with..sorry, my view of mankind is not so enlightened. I wish we id not cheat, yet as a high school teacher, I caught so many that it became ridiculous. ..And this asshole. Bush...has laid the foundation,
.......so that kids everywhere will say,.."Why should I tell the truth..the President doesn't have to..."

.......Think about that...as a legacy...
..........That is why I think they should impeach the asshole..but that is another thread.........Stuart. G

whenever they think no one is watching. To deny that reality is to deny who and what we are. We're godammed monkeys. The problem Republicans have is that, while they can perfectly understand that the poor, ethnic minorities and aetheists are utterly venal and unscrupulous, they are unable to detect those same traits in themselves. They construct an alternate reality for themselves, where they perpetually occupy the moral high ground, and are thus always entitled to the benefit of the doubt.One of FDR's biographers said that part of Roosevelt's genius was that he understood perfectly that the rich couldn't be trusted with other peoples money.

If Clinton legitimized oral sex for a generation of teen-agers, it's frightening to think about the example the current bunch moral degenerates are establishing. For all our failings, I believe that we all have an innate sense of fair-play, that springs from a most reliable source, our own self-regard. Nobody likes to be on the wrong end of a screwing, and these assholes have screwed the country royally. It's time for some payback. It pisses me off that the Democrats don't see that. It lends to the general sense` that they are complicit members of the screwing class.

In response to this post, I cannot describe how much I hate these assholes. We need to somehow take this moral ground and earthquake them to death.
..So many of us wish to play by the rules, but these goons know they can take our rules and shove them from here to Saturn..They take the Constitution and use it as manure. I would waterboard them tell they screamed. And the Democratic Leadership doesn't understand that millions do not want the children of this country to point to its elected (sic) leader. and say..I can do that..
..To legitimize this behavior of torture in our country's name, is undefinable horror. This country founded on principles above this, has been led by the likes of Cheney and Bush.. to what ends?..let us use the techniques they used against us. For they would use them against us to pursue a "permanent majority"........with no hope, no light, no laws but theirs...
.........think about that when we need to fight back.................

Kennedy would have won anyway, then it's okey dokey for the bush to get the Supremes to select him as president, ignoring votes and the Constitution in the process. I get it.

Because look at all the wonders the bushies have done as pResident, despite having failed to obtain the majority of electoral votes. He authorized and encouraged torture, he gave himself the power to read our mail and spy on us, he lied the US into a fake war and he still hasn't caught Bin Laden. The wonders just never cease with the thief in chief. So it's just fine that he got the Supremes to elect him cause we would not be in the mess we are today without that wonder boy.

The thief in chief is no JFK and never will be.

This thief reminds me of ...a dumb Joe Stalin...
This guy sucks so bad......but...and ."it is not okey dokey for Bush to det the Supremes to select him as president."'

I posed this as an ethical discussion...I am just as mad as you..
.........so I will stop. I see ..

...yes, after watching the massive damage inflicted on this country and the rest of the world by BushCo and its GOP loyalists, acting on behalf of their employers in corporate America, I think that the ends do in fact justify the means. People who think that ends can never, ever justify means are, imo, the very people who would have written letters to the editor deploring the "terrorist tactics" used at the Boston Tea Party and supporting British colonial monetary and taxation policies.

Do we become them by engaging in GOP-like tactics? No. We become the party that can finally win elections again. I can't think of a gutter too low or a scheme too malicious if it has the end result of removing another republican hand from the levers of power.

Are the machines hackable? Great. Let's get some expert leftist hackers and put them to work undoing the damage done by the GOP's programmers. Caging lists and phony mailings to wipe legitimate voters off the rolls still going on? Great. Let's cage a few million upper-middle white management types. Let's mail their households the same kind of junkmail-looking crap and knock them off the voter rolls when they fail to return it.

What the hell is wrong with adopting a winning strategy? The only problem I can see is democrats are so utterly inept when it comes to underhanded tactics that they'd probably cave at the first hint of stress and start rolling on everybody trying to avoid jail time. But there must be a few democrats out there who are both competent and unafraid. Not that you'd know it from looking at the Congressional leadership.

Are progressives too pure to use Larry Flynt-style measures? Then we're too pure to run this country in this century and we might just as well admit it and save ourselves a ton of frustration and misery.

There's plenty of time to play "what if" morality games once these madmen are safely out of the way. For now, let it rip and I'll gladly deal with any ethical consequences.


wp

Just no.

We need to STOP them from using these tactics, NOT start using them ourselves. Being a crook and disenfranchising people doesn't make you "both competent and unafraid." It makes you a crook.

However, I'm sick to death of losing elections. I'm sick to death of watching the GOP get a free pass to lie, cheat and steal anything that isn't nailed down. I'm really, REALLY sick to death of the BushCos of the world running this country into the ground. I'm way to damned old to split hairs over ends and means. And if it takes a crook to end this reign of terror, fine with me.

And I agree with stopping them if possible, but I'm afraid it just isn't. Not when the machines are owned by right wingers like Wally O'Dell, who said in 2003 that he was "...committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Not when GOP secretaries of state are picked for their ability to game the system. Not when federal courts are stuffed with Federalist Society judges who, if the heat ever gets close to the RNC, will step in to save the day and make sure nobody goes to jail on the GOP side.

Caging, shorting democratic districts on polling machines to create long lines and hopefully suppress the vote, using junk mail as a weapon to keep Dem voters off the voter rolls... The fix is pretty firmly in place and I for one am not ready to live with the consequences of another GOP administration.

I think we need to rethink the whole "high moral ground" issue. It's nice when you have the luxury of a relatively sane society in which to contemplate the finer points of logic and decide how many angels do, in fact, dance on the head of a pin.

On the other hand, we're about one massive hurricane or earthquake or phony terrorist strike from martial law right now. I don't even know that there will BE elections in 2008. And this situation came about because the GOP stole two successive presidential elections.

I refuse to let them do it again and, absent any oversight or uproar from corporate mass media, the courts, even the useless democratic party leadership, then it's up to the "little people" to act as if our lives depended on keeping a republican out of the white house. And I'm not so sure that's a stretch; given their love of totalitarianism, it seems safe to say that any GOPer in the white house will just take up where this pack of criminals left off. And since my right shoe is smarter than the Commander Guy, I suspect a new GOPer president would be a little slicker salesman for fascism, American style.

No thanks. I'll take my chances with offending my conscience before I'll take my chances with another republican administration.


wp

did get him assassinated. Did those ends justify the means? Probably very much so to some.

that yes, Chicago may have been stolen in favor of JFK, but Nixon did not protest it (officially) because he knew that his political machine had not stolen enough votes and he was afraid that might also be investigated. There are two rather interesting subtheoriess in this theory. 1st, JFK may have been the recipient of some stolen votes but he was not the instigator of them. And 2nd, Nixon was a full-fledge participant in those stolen votes that favored him.