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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Mon, 3 Dec 2001 15:17:45 GMT
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Viewed:
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409 times
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My my. It is not often we see posts highligted here, you appear to have
struck a chord with readers. I agree with a great deal of what you have
said. However I think the genie is already out of the bottle on a number issues.
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Marchetti writes:
> 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.
Why restrict yourself to your own borders? Why not deploy overseas to do
*good*? There is a lot of wealth in the developed world, I see nothing wrong
with sharing it around a little. Although the operation was far from
perfect, the UK was able to put troops on the ground to help bring peace to
Sierra Leon:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1256000/1256863.stm
What is wrong with these sorts of beyond borders operations? Has that not
made the whole world a better place? Likewise with Oz troops in East Timor,
was that not worthwhile?
Scott A
>
> 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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