Subject:
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Re: The *real* Phantom Menace and the fall of the republic
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 1 Dec 2001 15:48:39 GMT
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> Which American Way are we giving up, exactly?
The one in which the rights of the individual is ideally paramount. The one
that enumerated those rights both in the body of the U.S. Constitution
(basically a summary what the individual could expect the representative
govt. to look and act like) and the original Bill of Rights (obviously).
Subsequent Amendments, and State Constitutions continue in this vein except
for pointedly crazy stuff like prohibition and the 16th Amendment (which
does nothing really).
> To be fair, no one--and I mean no one--has put forth a reasonable or
> realistic alternative to Bush's policy. <snip>
> They're not going out with a big butterfly net to scoop up all olive-skinned
> males.
How about doing nothing beyond our borders and a lot more to increase
security without the sacrifice of rights? Seems both realistic and
reasonable to me.
I don't believe they know who did this. I don't believe they have uncovered
much evidence despite all kinds of new advantages (and let's face it, they
were probably doing illegal things to begin with). They seem to have no
focus in the investigation whatsoever, they are supposedly starting at
square one by questioning some 300 persons all over again. How do any of us
know it was even Bin Laden? BTW, the alteration in immigration policy is
exactly like your butterfly net imagery.
> In what demonstrable way has your freedom been compromised by the US
> Government in the wake of 9/11? I care not a bit about paranoid, kneejerk,
> Big Brother fears, and slippery-slope reasoning is falacious and baseless.
Well, it seems to me that they can now surveillance just about anyone for
any reason as long as they pretend it is because of national security -- and
while they may have been doing this illegally for years, they now have carte
blanche to do it above board. That's just wrong. You just lost the 4th and
9th Amendments rights to privacy. Where's the oversight committee? O
right, national security...Now maybe rights to privacy seems small potatoes
in comparison to almost 5K dead americans in New York, but the thing is --
you never know what those powers to surveillance are going to be put to, and
that is the worry.
Dave!, you have obviously never looked over numerous pages of stuff obtained
under the the Freedom of Information Act, or even simple discovery, that is
just all this jumbo black marker graffitti over what had been meaningful
evidentiary texts -- and I have. Do you think a lot of stuff is marked out
because everything was done to the letter of the law? Please...!
BTW, the slippery-slope is a concept used quite commonly by the Supreme
Court. I don't exactly see what is so apparently fallacious about the human
tendency to take a mile when only an inch has been given. A lot of this
reasoning starts with the founding fathers who were living under tyranny in
the first place. Your attitude is well and good in the 21st century
american game preserve, where the animals are well cared for and reasonably
well entertained, but I think you are failing to see how quickly things CAN
and MAY collapse into something a whole lot less fun and carefree.
Consider only the last year: Bush sqeaks into the presidency, oil prices
head skywards, Enron is feasting on energy prices like a vampire over fresh
kill in what will become a huge scandal (except it gets cut short by a
bankruptcy, profit taking before the corpse is cold ::prediction - evidence
of wrong-doing goes missing, gets shredded::), 9-11 disaster, now Bush can
do no wrong, civil rights get the round file. You connect the dots. The
last time things were this *good* was before I was born -- 1963, during
another intriguing bit of political and economic overhauling from the great
state of Texas. Are you positive there's nothing to any of this?
BTW, read Glockner's responses. Why do Europeans actually care about their
rights? Why do they refuse to become as databased as Americans? What's the
difference? Why does Greenspan say investors would rather put money into
the U.S. -- is that a good thing? Think over your answers VERY carefully...
> I have a hard time distinguishing this sort of wild speculation from the
> standard mantras of mythically-far-right conspiracy theorists. I'd love to
> see some evidence that this will occur, rather than "well, A and B happened,
> so we can be sure that C will happen."
Short answer for hard evidence: the recent histories of China, South
America, Russia (the USSR years), and Germany to name a mere four of
hundreds of possible examples. If A and B tends to lead to C with a
demonstrable accuracy of 80%, then I am willing to take steps to prevent C
if it happens to be an undesirable eventuality.
You come off as all logic and reason and then discard ideas out of hand
simply because they are also the rhetorical ammo of some possibly
marginalized groups? Have you REALLY considered the IDEAS of themselves, and
not their association with perceived fringe groups?
BTW, last time I looked it was a simple fact that the U.S. has one of the
most incarcerated populations on the planet (by percentage, not sheer
numbers) -- it used to be second only to the USSR, but the fall of that
power bumps us up to #1 status. The incarcerated also have a funny way of
looking like non-whites in the main. The north american game preserve
already is the world's leading police state, you just haven't noticed this yet.
Do you think that the drug war is more an economic/political, or more a
moral/health issue? Note that Congress gave the problem over to a law
enforcement agency (the DEA) and not a dependency cessation program (the AMA
perhaps?). Which solution might have worked? Has the DEA solution worked?
Is it your view that the KGB had substantially more ability to harass the
average person then does the DEA, NSA, or the IRS?
Guilty until proven innocent, similar to a presumption commonly made in U.S.
tax court, is not a very fun position from which to defend oneself. My
guess is that you would have no idea how to contest such a claim in a court
of law in the U.S. -- not as a belligerant claimant in propia persona
defending his rights. Pray that you never have to face such a calamity. But
what would you do if you were not afforded the rights of a citizen in the
first place? What if you were perceived as belonging to a fringe terrorist
group and your former rights as a U.S. citizen were summarily denied you? I
am glad Shiri so cleverly mentioned the McCarthy Era, thereby saving me the
hassle -- things can go downhill pretty fast. That's why it's called a
slippery slope, getting back uphill is not easy at all.
Ever seen cops pile things on top of your original artwork, forever damaging
it, so they can continue to trash your house? Ever seen cops walk into court
with a Halliburton briefcase they took from your house and now use as their
own? Ever read the enumeration of things taken from your home only to note
that many things were taken and not accounted for? Ever seen the
subornation of perjury and the concealment of exonerating evidence in
action? Ever lost your car because you were trying to purchase a lid of
marijuana on a street corner. Ever seen a cop driving that same car within
the week? Ever had a cop plant drugs on you to make the collar good when it
wasn't? Ever seen a crime perpetrated by a policeman become a criminal
charge against the victim? Ever work for the Federal program UNICOR? Ever
been handcuffed, held for over 6 hours face down in the middle of the
street, and beaten intermittently -- only to then be released without so
much as a simple apology? [All of the above has happened to people I know
personally in the Los Angeles area.]
Are hackers/crackers terrorists?
Is my speech, these very words, protected -- or does it mark me for possible
surveillance?
Dave!, you just don't know what you have been missing. But that's cool,
stay the path of the civil rights version of Doubting Thomas and you may
just find out!
I stand for the immortal ideals of the United States and the current crisis
be damned. To be frank, I think the onus is on the other side to show that
these 200+ year old ideals are poorly conceived and that they should be
easily abandoned in favor of ultra-weak, band-aid fixes that give the mere
appearance that something is being done to protect us. The whole world has
been living under terrorism for years, we have merely joined their ranks
(actually, we always belonged -- it's just that the 9-11 incident was SO
shocking). Nothing has really changed. Europe laughs at this no doubt --
not because they think the events of 9-11 are funny, but because americans
always seem like idiots awakening from their slumbers esp. as to matters
political.
I say less bombs in anger, and more security measures with resolve. Trashing
civil rights has nothing to do with it -- the assertion that it does is a
kind of shell game.
-- Hop-Frog
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