jivatmanx

I really don't think asking too much of our presidents to try an instill in the public the value of Liberty and Democracy; nor is this some Herculean task. It costs nothing, nor does it require a PHD from Harvard to explain, but it's an investment that will continue to pay off for generations without end.

As for Nuclear Weapons, Al Qaeda obviously does not have the technology to make them, so their safety is almost entirely a factor of international cooperation in regarding their security in countries that do. Such cooperation regarding their most sensitive and strategically valuable weapons requires trust, something that will be in shorter supply if we continue unhindered economic and political espionage.

The USSR had dozens of nuclear ICBM's pointed at every major European city, and, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. city. They also had massive armies.

If war had occurred, The U.S. could have been completely annihilated, utterly destroyed, ceased to exist. That's simply not the situation we face with today with Islamic terrorists.

It's reasonable to ask the question if we might be willing to accept a handful of causalities in exchange to remaining a free country. Than, take the money we're spending on the MIC and use it for safer pools and bathtubs, saving an order of magnitude more lives.

A useful anecdote is that Sensebrenner, the substantial author of the Patriot act, seemed shocked and almost entirely unaware how it's provisions have been interpreted and used.

If the intelligence community can't even have a reasonable relationship with the tiny minority of the most elite members of congress heading committees and authoring their bills, there is little hope for much else.

The Telecoms have long given total cooperation in exchange for monopoly privileges in cable and internet.

Carrot before stick.

This, the Parallel Construction story, and the Patriot act having been principally used for the War on Drugs than terror... has made me consider that the War on Drugs may actually be more dangerous to Liberty than the war on terror.

No doubt it's basic premise, that putting a substance into one's own body is a "crime", is a pernicious lie.

The War on Terror's pernicious lie is twofold: Terrorism isn't a crime, and thus isn't subject to any laws, that this war is eternal, and the whole world is a battlefield.

Certainly in practical effects the Drug war is worse: Minorities whose communities are regularly raided by soldiers, depopulated, and placed into our glorious, humane prison system with the highest incarceration rate in the world, than stripped of voting rights and essentially blackballed from employment afterwards, would think surely so...

My natural tendency has so far been to see the war on Terror as worse, this may be me I, like many HNers with dissident political opinions, am more likely to see myself as an actual target in the War on Terror. That, and being an Orwell fan...

Vietnam is a communist tyranny that simply applying existing laws and policies to a new medium, so this isn't really a change.

Economists prefer percentages to absolutes, and trends to isolated incidents. 9/11 has not only halted the long trend towards increasing freedom, but began a new and troubling trend of growing tyranny.

Perhaps the U.S. isn't overtly attacking press freedom, but the U.K. is, informs the U.S. before every incident, and the U.S. couldn't be happier.

Indeed, the current threat from terrorism has no significant differences from that of 19th century violent anarchism. Those who argue that "9/11 changed everything" play upon an ignorance of history to achieve their own purposes.

The police are the executors of the state's monopoly on the use of force, and where a state exists by the consent of the governed, it is uniquely important that the police are, without exception, held responsible to the people.

Any philosophy allowing unlimited or arbitrary state power over individuals turns the state, is one where the state, rather than the people, has full liberty, and is the master. That's the historical status quo (sans Greece, Rome) prior to liberalism, Locke.

>Wiretaps were tolerated when we could trust in processes that would guarantee that they would not be abused.

They were abused for a long time and we did nothing. The difference was you had to physically tap the line while the call was taking place, and then physically listen to the entire call.This placed enormous limitations. Now you can automatically store everyone's calls (translated to text), and search the entire database with a keyword search.

But this is one of those things that, sadly, few people outside of places like HN have the slightest understanding of.

"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."

-Benjamin Franklin

You should have also put terrorists in quotes. We already know that the NSA is going after drug crimes.

I wonder what logic Karp has used to convince Peter Thiel that he's still a libertarian? I mean, talk about cognitive dissonance.

“If we as a democratic society believe that license plates in public trigger Fourth Amendment protections, our product can make sure you can’t cross that line”

The majoritarian argument - That's a popular one amongst libertarians /s.

On the other hand, Jimmy Wales considers himself an Objectivist... I guess, forget the mumbo-jumbo and judge people by their works?