It’s not that difficult. The U.S. has promised never to torture prisoners. From the comments on this thread, you would think that the promises of the U.S. seem to be empty. Contrarily, most Americans do take their national commitments seriously. 
 
Ymarsakar: You don’t know much about violence and how it works in the actual world, 

Pproportionality means you don’t shoot up the neighborhood because someone stole your wallet. 
 
Danny Lemieux: I think that, at this point, we need to let Zach’s words stand as testimony to themselves. Or, self-parody.

Ymarsakar: Proportionality is a Leftist meme and doctrine concerning the escalating ramp up of violence.

Juxtaposition. Proportionality is not a “Leftist meme”. It’s a foundation of conservative thought.
 
Zachriel: Vietnam was a civil war.

Ymarsakar: Last time I checked, civil wars don’t usually have one side being backed by a hyperpower, the Soviet Union, plus their Chinese allies. 
 
The Soviets and Chinese were no longer allies, and great powers often manipulate civil wars for their own ends. 
 

I don’t know what the clinical term is for the mindset at work here, but it is radically disengaged from the notion of give and take that involves an actual exchange of ideas versus the endless plating and replating of Wiki-derived memes. I’ve reached the point where I feel sorry for him.

It’s like someone calling on me to repay my debts but refusing to tell me who I borrowed money from.

In some ways, that’s like mafia extortion, rather than legitimate banking and loaning. Try again and next time state who has a debt with whom.

Martel, you sound like you are bored. That may be decidedly a bad state to be in. Oh wait, you’re in California already. Too late.

Proportionality is another conservative value.

You don’t know much about violence and how it works in the actual world, do you Z. Especially concerning SD laws and realities that people have to face in their daily lives. Proportionality is a Leftist meme and doctrine concerning the escalating ramp up of violence. Meaning, if someone comes at you with a knife, you can’t blow them up with a bomb or a gun. That’s what Leftist doctrine decrees. What conservatives abide by is called reasonable use of force. Which is a lot more reasonable than waiting for someone to bring a knife or a gun to a fight and then trying to counter them by matching equal force with equal force. Reasonable force simply means that there is a reasonable chance that the level of force will protect the individual from GBI or death. If there is a threat of death, then any level of force, up to and including lethal force, can be employed. If a person reasonably judges that his life is in danger, he can use lethal force, even though no weapon had been shown to him. If it’s a bar stool argument over whose basketball team should have won, then lethal force is not reasonable nor necessary for that problem to be resolved. Reasonable force also means that if a person thinks they will be attacked, they can initiate a first strike using greater force than the force used on them. Reasonable force continuums also take into account incidents where equal force is not enough to safeguard the individuals involved. Disproportionate force, such as the use of a gun against a dog’s bite or the use of a gun against a knife wielder, may become necessary.

You, Z, may think your way is better, but then again, nobody here has said your way was reasonable. That’s yet to be proven, demonstrated, or acquitted.

I have no idea where you get the idea that proportionality of force is a conservative value. Certainly the Jacksonian wing of America would find that remarkable.
Which part of public sector unions “distribute decision making” at various levels? The members can’t even stop paying their dues, they get to be “forced” to be in cause the “union” is a so called quorum that can make decisions for them whether they like it or not through “collective bargaining”. What kind of “distributed decision making” is that again?
Vietnam was a civil war

Last time I checked, civil wars don’t usually have one side being backed by a hyperpower, the Soviet Union, plus their Chinese allies. There Z goes again with his nebulous claims. They don’t stand up to reality. When the light of dawn comes, the will o wisp disappears.

And they have the right to self-defense, but not to cause hundreds-of-thousands of casualties, and millions of refugees, when the Iraqis had not shot down a single allied plane. Proportionality is another conservative value. 
 
Ymarsakar: It just so happened that the country doing the fake science, was in charge of the investigation as well. Coincidentally.

There were at least five investigating agencies, including a U.S. Inspector General.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/02/noaa-climate-sicentists-us-report/1
 
Ymarsakar: As mentioned before, until AQ signs the Geneva Conventions, there’s no agreement between the US and AQ on anything.

That’s right. However, the U.S. has agreed to abide by certain standards with regards to any prisoners. 
 
Ymarsakar: If other countries want to start lecturing us on how to treat AQ, first of all, they aren’t even in the fight, so they don’thave  standing to say anything.

Of course they do. Everyone has a responsibility to stand up for human rights. 
 
Ymarsakar: Much of the Indian treaties were with the federal US government. The local state level government did, not in fact, like those treaties so they ignored them. And the federal government had not the power to enforce such treaties, so those treaties naturally contracted and were abrogated.

And sometimes the Federal government would abrogate them by statute. Most people consider these to be broken promises and a blot on American history. 
  
Zachriel: Modern democracies are successful largely because they distribute decision making at various levels, including strong institutions that act as checks on one another.

Ymarsakar: And then in actuality, he supports something called public sector unions and calls them democracy.

Unions are one of the many institutions that make up modern democratic societies. Each entity exerts pressure at various levels, and their interactions form a dynamic system. 
 

War has terrible consequences, often unintended consequences, so peaceful means to resolve conflicts are preferred, when possible. Prudence is a conservative value. The incursion into Cambodia wasn’t so much criminal, as it was unwise.
 
Danny Lemieux: 2) when dictatorships like Vietnam attack others…well, it’s regrettable but c’est la vie; 
 
All nations have the right to self-defense, however, Vietnam was a civil war, the country was divided as a result of WWII, was supposed to reunified, and there is little doubt that Ho would have won in free elections. Instead, despite what Roosevelt had planned, the Americans supported French re-colonization. 
 
Danny Lemieux: 3) we need to have faith in international institutions like the UN, because they are reliable, reasonable and logical intermediaries to the world.

Certainly not. International institutions are still weak and ill-formed. 
 
Danny Lemieux: I can imagine what your rhetoric would have been like in 1936.

That was the year the Spanish Civil War began. The fascists used the opportunity to try out their modern weapons, while leftists tried to raise the alarm. History isn’t always so simple. 
 

Skeet’s done this on other websites, garnering much the same disdain that he has earned here. Eventually, when we get tired of toying with him, he’ll head elsewhere.

But for now, he is a delicious snack, and ever since whatshername the liberal white racist poet lady abandoned us, we’ve needed a reminder why conservatism is clearly the left’s intellectual superior.