McCain didn't vote.
What about these people listed on a local blog? Read "Roll Call vote on Dodd Amendment. Here's the good guys."
No mention of the bad guys, though. Are they stand up heroes or sell-out cowards?
Thomas Sowell's commentary in the Sunday, July 6, 2008 Eureka Reporter might shed some light on those representatives that believe the "end (always) justifies the means". I've included the whole article on this blog for obvious reasons even though Joe regards most of this kind of thinking right out of the dark ages. What he says is worth reading . . .
Thomas Sowell --
Internationalism has long been a competitor with patriotism, especially among the intelligentsia. H.G. Wells advocated replacing the idea of duty to one’s country with “the idea of cosmopolitan duty.”
Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among intellectuals in the Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of the First World War, fought under various nations’ banners of patriotism.
In France, after the First World War, the teachers’ unions launched a systematic purge of textbooks, in order to promote internationalism and pacifism.
Books that depicted the courage and self-sacrifice of soldiers who had defended France against the German invaders were called “bellicose” books to be banished from the schools.
French textbook publishers caved in to the power of the teachers’ unions, rather than lose a large market for their books. History books were sharply revised to conform to internationalism and pacifism.
The once epic story of the French soldiers’ heroic defense against the German invaders at Verdun, despite the massive casualties suffered by the French, was now transformed into a story of horrible suffering by all soldiers at Verdun — French and German alike.
In short, soldiers once depicted as national heroes were now depicted as victims — and just like victims in other nations’ armies.
Children were bombarded with stories on the horrors of war. In some schools, children whose fathers had been killed during the war were asked to speak to the class and many of these children — as well as some of their classmates and teachers — broke down in tears.
In Britain, Winston Churchill warned that a country “cannot avoid war by dilating upon its horrors.” In France, Marshal Philippe Petain, the victor at Verdun, warned in 1934 that teachers were trying to “raise our sons in ignorance of or in contempt of the fatherland.”
These were voices drowned out by the pacifist and internationalist rhetoric of the 1920s and 1930s.
Did it matter? Does patriotism matter?
France, where pacifism and internationalism were strongest, became a classic example of how much it can matter.
During the First World War, France fought on against the German invaders for four long years, despite having more of its soldiers killed than all the American soldiers killed in all the wars in the history of the United States, put together.
Yet during the Second World War, France collapsed after just six weeks of fighting and surrendered to Nazi Germany. At the bitter moment of defeat the head of the French teachers’ union was told, “You are partially responsible for the defeat.”
Thomas Sowell is a nationally syndicated columnist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
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