[LibertarianInExile]

Oh, yeah, Eagle Forum and ACU are well known for going crazy early. They're just nuts. C'mon.

Now that almost all the usual suspects are here...

Everything government does in the name of security and safety and anti-terrorism is 'reasonable' to someone. Obviously, Patriot II is too much for these people. Where would it be that you draw the line, exactly? What would be unreasonable in the search for a secure United States? Let me state it again: where exactly would it be that liberty is more important than security? What would be going too far for you in terms of the 1st, 2nd, and 5th amendments? Feel free to add more of the Constitutional areas you'd think delineate a bright line, but don't neglect these.

Feel free to ping anyone you want to this thread, but please, answer the questions first. If you can't state at least where going too far would be, honestly, you just need to consider de-Freeping yourself for being completely unable to honestly discuss a question that could not be more on topic.

[risk]

For me, making privacy-invading clauses permanent would be going too far. Orrin Hatch makes me nervous, and I wonder why he thinks it's too "inconvenient" to renew the clauses at regular intervals. Our rights have been hard-fought and high prices have been paid; it shouldn't be "too hard" to remember to renew a compromise to them.

I haven't seen a list of Patriot Act clauses that are up for being made permanent, so I don't exactly know what to say there.

As far as TIA goes, it scares me. We should be debating this stuff out in the open before it's deployed without our permission, and then misused. Remember that census data was accessed to track down Japanese Americans during WWII. (But was that bad? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.)

[toothless]

holding people w/o trial is going too far. warrentless searches are going too far.

[cinFLA]

If you can't state at least where going too far would be, honestly, you just need to consider de-Freeping yourself for being completely unable to honestly discuss a question that could not be more on topic.

Never said the government is perfect. But YOUR side seems to see it as completely evil. It is time fore YOUR side to YOU are going to far and consider de-Freeping yourself for being completely unable to honestyl discuss a question that could not be more on topic.

[cinFLA]

If you can't state at least where going too far would be

Going too far is siding with the drug-legalizing, gun-grabbing socialists.

[Free the USA]

It is wrong to frame the debate as a trade off between liberty and security. Most libertarians believe that the proper function of government is as a cooperative means of self-defense. In order for the government to provide protection against criminals, terrorists, foreign invaders etc, it is necessary to allow the government certain latitude in the use of coercive force. To analyze the situation appropriately you must look at the risk posed by those who are willing to use aggression to your detriment and add to that the real threat to your liberty posed by the excessive use of government coercion. A proper balance of liberty and security minimizes the combined risk to you. Too much or too little government power are both ways to maximize the threat to your liberty. A police state allows little or no liberty but neither does anarchy. With the right balance you have a government capable of protecting you while having minimal impact on your liberty. The proper balance of liberty and security changes as the threats posed by foreign aggressors and terrorists increase. Right now terrorists are a real threat and it is necessary for government to adjust accordingly.

I would say that our best protection is what it has always been; the ability of the electorate to replace the current lawmakers with a new group who will reverse any excesses.