Posted on 10/28/2001 11:05:56 AM PST by sargon
Anyone who has read my other posts knows that I am quite in support of this war and generally supportive of the President thus far, so please refrain from the ad hominem attacks and name calling simply because I oppose this specific tyranny. I voted for the President who signed this bill, but he has lost my future vote for now, at least...
Flame away.
Furthermore if the President could lose your support over ONE issue, then your support is not worth anything to begin with.
I find it amazing, 225 years after some very intelligent people wrote the Declaration of Independence, that today Americans are falling all over themselves to give up everything our predecesors fought so hard to keep.
"Those who trade freedom for security gain neither"
Freedom is like being pregnant. Either you are or you aren't.
Flame suit on.
We will not keep our freedom if we find excuses to ignore the constitution "just this once". There is NO ACCEPTABLE reason to ignore any provision of the Bill of Rights and we must fight this outrage at every opportunity.
So do I. One of those intelligent people was my G-G-G-G-G grandfather. Therefore, the insults and flames don't really hurt me personally at all; I have a clear conscience in my opposition to tyranny, in all its forms, majority or otherwise. But it does sadden me that there are always so many who are willing to exchange essential liberty for some kind of imagined temporary safety. This sort of mob hysteria inevitably leads to greater tyranny...
This is the standard argument of statists. Would you support having all your phone calls and emails monitored, and a GPS transmitter in your car? Would you trust Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno with these powers?
That's a very misleading statement. The Constitution expressly forbids exiling American citizens, so anyone who has studied our system knows that this deportation can only happen to foreignors who are here in the U.S., however, very few Americans even know our own system (and that lack of knowledge leads to a lot of baseless fearmongering over these sorts of laws).
Frankly, we haven't lost any freedoms. We might get inconvenienced, but we aren't prohibited from doing anything by this new law.
Of course, and so did you only you probably didn't know it. For over 200 years it's been legal for Postmasters to read postcards. If you wanted privacy, you had to go to the effort of mailing a letter instead of a postcard.
Likewise, if you want private e-mails, then use encryption. No one is forbidding you from using encryption just as no one is forbidding you from mailing a letter instead of a postcard. Encryption is also available for your phone as well as GPS/car (by the way, the only GPS transmitters are in space via our satellites - everything else is a reciever).
We haven't lost any freedoms. We might have to tolerate a few inconveniences, but we can still do everything today that we could legally do prior to 9/11 (in regard to this new law).
Until the government decides to sneak a little transmitter in your keyboard to broadcast the passphrase needed to unlock your encryption/decryption keys.
Also, what's going to happen when anyone who refuses to turn their guns into the government is branded a 'terrorist'?
The Constitution also expressly forbids a lot of other things the government does on a day-to-day basis.
Now is not the time for rampant, unfounded paranoia.
But even that won't catch you handwriting your passphrase on your palm pilot (hey, I can be even more paranoid than you if this is a competition)...
Perhaps they have the 2nd Amendment in their nightstand.
They haven't been asked to quarter soldiers in their house in peacetime or in wartime.
My right to be secure in my home has not been violated. No one has entered my home with unreasonable searches or seizures. And I have yet to see where probable cause has been written out of anything.
Not one of us is being held in jail without indictment. And the ones being held without indictment that are being held due to possible terrorism links; are being held in time of public danger. No private property has been taken by our government (except for the land theft by x42 and Babbitt).
No one has denied my right to vote.
There are no curfews in my neighborhood nor any marshall law enacted.
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