You're dangerously close to being an apologist for one of the most atrocious regimes of modern times.

Helsinki is less than one hundred miles away from the Russian border. I suppose it's possible that a modern day Russian would make yesterday's mistake of wasting manpower in the forest meat grinders rather than focusing on the population center in the South, but I wouldn't count on it. The analogy would be the United States invading Canada. Sure, it's a big country, but 90% of the population lives within one hundred miles of the American border. A fat lot of good holding onto the Northwest Territories will do you when the American flag flies over Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver.

In any case, you got way ahead of yourself. Putin isn't going to invade Finland, Poland, or the Baltic States. The former is a member of the EU and the latter are members of NATO.

I tried to pay for my tank of gasoline with the moral high ground but the clerk told me they only accept US Dollars. :(

Here's the big one: Hitler's grand design was to obtain Lebensraum for the German people, at the expense of the subhuman Slavs to the East. Putin's grand design is to reassert Russia's influence in those areas she has traditionally regarded as being within her sphere of influence. He doesn't care if neighboring countries have dictatorships or liberal democracies, so long as they toe Moscow's line, particularly in the realm of foreign policy. He doesn't regard his neighbors as Untermensch to be enslaved or exterminated.

None of this is to suggest that the West should acquiesce to the de-facto annexation of Crimea, but we really do need to dispense with the hyperbolic WW2 analogies.

Was your friend's sibling vaccinated?

LK

You are a fucking moron and a hypocrite.

You don't loathe government intervention, you loathe government intervention against you.

An unfortunate consequence of freedom is that some people will make stupid decisions. In order to make your Stalinist proposal work (it's one thing to pass an oppressive law, it's something entirely different to enforce it), our society would need to agree the several underlying principles of freedom no longer matter. I'll illustrate with rhetorical questions as I go along...

First world be autonomy and freedom of choice.
Do you begin mandating influenza vaccines for adults because you deem the benefit of herd immunity to be more important than the agency of free adults?

What do you do if someone flat out refuses to vaccinate their children for whatever reason?
Send men with guns and run the very real risk of killing the child that you seek to protect with vaccination?
What if that family resists? What if they fight back?

Another issue that would be brought about by mandatory vaccination is that the financial pressure on vaccine makers would reward sloppy QA practices.

I am a father. I vaccinated all of my children because it is my belief that the miniscule chance of a complication is outweighed by the effects of measles, mumps, pertussis, chicken pox and polio but that was my decision to make, not yours.

When you hear one of the paranoids on TV railing about the threat of oppressive government, they're talking about people like you and what you'd do if you had access to the reigns of power.

LK

What part of "Do you think you'll find popular opinion in support of taking on a country with 8,000 nuclear weapons...." did you not understand? Do you honestly believe there is popular support for the course of action that you describe? The Ukraine isn't a member of the EU or NATO, public opinion in both Europe and the United States is opposed to further interventionist adventures, and it's debatable that NATO (never mind the EU) has the military wherewithal to oppose Russia in her backyard if push came to shove without resorting to nuclear weapons.

But hey, let's ignore all of that and deploy some troops anyway. Which rules of engagement do you propose they operate under? Will we secure the entire Russian/Ukrainian border or just stick some boots in Kiev and see what happens? Will we engage Russian aircraft operating in Ukrainian airspace? How will you handle Ukrainian military units that defect? Most important: How do you propose to manage the escalation of tensions to prevent World War 3 if Putin decides to throw more chips into the pot?

Exemptions for religious beliefs are a crock? Those are well supported in the case law. School boards allow them because the case law says they'll lose if they try to fight it in Court and most school districts don't have spare cash laying around to throw at lawyers.

The General Welfare clause is part of the taxing and spending power, it's not a license for the Federal Government to mandate behaviors on the part of the general populace. Even the current administration didn't try and argue the General Welfare Clause authorized their insurance mandate and they take a very broad view (by American standards) of Governmental power.

There were exactly three, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates, not Yemen as I said in the previous post. Saudi Arabia and the UAE withdrew their recognition after 9/11.

Better than the alternative, though one would kind of have to admire the second guy for his forthrightness. ;)

Devil's advocate: What part of the United States Constitution (or even the Constitution of one of the 50 States) authorizes the Government to compel vaccination? It's "compelled" through requirements to vaccinate your children before they can attend public school, which has passed muster, but an outright mandate absent no other interaction with the State? Where does such authority come from?

That wouldn't pass Constitutional muster even if you can find authority to mandate vaccinations.

A far more effective IMHO (and Constitutional) way to encourage vaccines would be to give the opposed parties an all expenses paid vacation to any part of the Third World that doesn't have access to modern vaccinations. People forget just how horrible some of these diseases truly were. Perhaps it's time to remind them.

The EU doesn't have a military and even NATO is a shadow of what it once was. Besides, it's all a moot point, the nations that make up NATO and the EU are democracies. Do you think you'll find popular opinion in support of taking on a country with 8,000 nuclear weapons over the Crimea or even Ukraine proper?

You've missed the point. The USD has value precisely because the United States has a vibrant economy, a large amount of educated human capital, and a strong military. That's the answer to the question of "Why do fiat currencies have value?" I was not suggesting nor trying to imply that the American state could destroy bitcoin or even that it would be desirable to do so.

Bitcoin in its current form is a speculative investment, not a currency. Will Wegmans exchange my bitcoins for groceries? Can I put gasoline in my automobile with bitcoins? Can I buy a plane ticket? Pay for college? Buy stuff from Amazon?

Frankly I think it's a solution looking for a problem. If one wants to buy into the anarchist libertarian philosophy one should be investing in currencies that actually have a store of value (gold), goods that can be traded (non perishable foods, ammunition), or other items (land) that have intrinsic value. Whatever floats your boat I suppose.

Afghanistan had a cellular network in 2001?

It's debatable that the United States invaded Afghanistan. We were invited there by what used to be called the Northern Alliance, a group that was the near-universally recognized government (held the UN seat, was recognized by everyone except Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Pakistan) of the country. Even if you want to call it an invasion it was certainly a justified one, given that the de-facto Government had provided refuge to a group that murdered nearly 3,000 American citizens.

We've made a lot of mistakes there, trying to build a modern Democracy in a country with a literacy rate in the 20-30% range heads the list, but I do wish people would stop conflating Iraq and Afghanistan.