A shame about that narrative
National Journal‘s Ron Fournier (who used to be Washington bureau chief at the AP), is puzzled and perturbed by the disconnect between his preferred vision and the recent news:
I like government. I don’t like what the fallout from these past few weeks might do to the public’s faith in it…
The core argument of President Obama’s rise to power, and a uniting belief of his coalition of young, minority and well-educated voters, is that government can do good things — and do them well.
Damn. Look at what cliches the past few weeks wrought.
Fournier goes on to list these “cliches” and describe how the crises seem to support them. The title of the piece, which Fournier may or may not have chosen (journalists often don’t write the headlines for their own work, but since Fournier is also the the head editor of the National Journal it’s my guess that he did), is “How Obama Scandals Threaten to Kill ‘Good Government’: Emerging narrative supports claims that Washington is intrusive, incompetent, untrustworthy and heartless.”
So the idea is that government is basically good and can do good things and do them well. And that Obama is basically good, and means well too, and is competent. But somehow, for some unknown reason (bad luck? Republican sabotage? An unfortunate and fluky emerging narrative?) things have gone sadly wrong, and the impression the public gets is that government is neither so very good nor so very competent.
In the body of the article, Fournier adds the following adjectives (“cliches”?) to those in the subtitle: “Orwellian,” “corrupt,” “complicated,” “secretive,” and “can’t be trusted.” Wow, you’d almost think that was written by Glenn Beck or Ron Paul, except for that “narrative” and “cliche” part, and the “good government” disclaimer at the outset.
This is how cognitive dissonance works. The sufferer struggles to try to reconcile two opposing beliefs, or one belief with a set of opposing facts. Note that Fournier hasn’t yet said that perhaps he was wrong about the inherently “good” characteristics of government, or that conservatives might have been, you know, correct about that as a basic principle, or at the very least correct about the Obama administration in particular. That would be an easy way to resolve his dilemma—just change the first belief (“government=good”) in the light of evidence to the contrary, because if even the great and noble Obama fell prey to the seduction of power that Big Government represents, then wouldn’t practically anyone?
But that conclusion is simply too threatening. Believe me, I know how difficult it is to change a mind’s basic assumptions. And so we have strange hybrid articles like Fournier’s, with its useful concepts such as “narrative” and “cliche.” After all, is there any inherent truth to a narrative? A cliche is a bit more dangerous, because it often involves truth, but it’s a truth that lacks the nuance and sophistication of the liberal—ahem—narrative.
Fournier has nothing to worry about. As long as the free stuff and checks keep coming, the low information voter will continue to like Obama and big government. Obama’s approval ratings have been stable for months.
I remember officially rejecting the liberal worldview during the Lewinsky scandal. I had always thought Clinton was a sleaze, so the Lewinsky thing wasn’t all that upsetting. However, the scales really fell from my eyes as I watched then NOW president Patricia Ireland shrug off Clinton’s actions as a workplace relationship between adults when not too many years earlier she and other prominent women had been outraged over Clarence Thomas. It was the fact that women’s rights, which I had always supported, were so easily sacrificed by Ireland and the Democrats in order to hold on to power. I rejected their choice, and in so doing, realized I rejected Clinton and the Democrat party as well.
Sorry for the trip down memory lane, but I’m thinking that people like Fournier, who have an inkling that what Obama has done is just not right, may well be pushed over the edge when they see their fellow Democrats abandon all previous principles on privacy and the proper boundaries of the police/DHS/FBI to defend Obama. At some point most of them will realize they’ve been duped, that Obama’s words don’t come close to matching his actions. I hope they wake up soon.
Sorry, but I don’t think Fournier is about to become a “changer” any time soon. Probably never. “Good government” is an article of faith for him; heck, it might even be in his DNA.
I really do think there’s a basic personality difference between those who want control of others by a larger entity than themselves and those who abhor that notion and want to go their own way. We can all remember what it was like in junior high, can’t we? Didn’t we all see this difference quite clearly then?
Beyond that, anyone who can call Obama’s second inaugural “soaring” is not to be trusted.
Oh, and didn’t Obama last week or the week before give a speech talking about how we should trust government? Fournier seems to me to be just one more water carrier for that particular narrative.
It is said that we prefer mercy to justice, and we’re supposed to want that for others.
So I guess I shouldn’t wish that clowns like Fourier are so bumfuzzled by these conundra that they can’t sleep and, in a moment of microsleep, drive into a sturdy oak at a hundred miles an hour.
Duty is a cold bitch.
Previous principles on privacy!
Damn girl, you good!
Dear Dr. Makemefeelgood,
Recently I have encounterd a sense of vertigo in my relationships to the great and powerful. I need them to be good and true and beautiful. I really, really do.
And the beauty that is Michelle and Barack (Oh my gawd how awesome are they! Those bare arms of Michelle and that smile of Barack. Couldn’t you just eat them up?) has sustained my in my moments of doubt.
But I must confess it is getting more difficult to employ the technique of “forgetting” that you’ve taught me. I know you say it is essential for my happiness, but could we practice it just one more time. I’m in bed and waiting. La la la.
Your little Soviet girl
Vivienskya Vavushka
…this sure puts a slant on how to view the tin-hat conspiracy contingent, eh?
I mean, it seems the not-so-whack-jobs-after-all have merely been being prophetic.
One is put in the embarrassing predicament of wondering whom to begin apologizing to first.
Or as JD put it “…what a revoltin’ development dis is”.
..and as amusing as seeing the Left being hoist by their own petard ought to be, I find to my dismay I’m rather not vastly amused after all.
Apparently, we are going to all hang together AND hang separately, but hanged we certainly have been.
Or we’re …all of us …going to have to do some pro-active, and not, perhaps, merely symbolic, hanging.
A long time ago, a friend of mine had a saying:”If you have a theory, test it, and the results are differant, believe the test, and get a new theory.” Too many people try to get good intentions be the goal, rather than good results.
From Wikipedia:
On March 12, 2013, Senator Wyden asked Director Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” He responded, “No, sir.”
On June 6, 2013 Director Clapper released a statement admitting the NSA collects telephone metadata on millions of Americans telephone calls.
Expose them. Vote them out of office.
The Left’s mass hallucination powers are as great as ever, I see. They have specialized in re-engineering human society and behavior to develop such weaponized thoughts and emotions for a long time now.
The results cannot be taken lightly. They are more powerful than many wish to accept.
So the idea is that government is basically good and can do good things and do them well.
I can understand the appeal of this formulation, because it means that finally, human civilization will be able to set things right. Coming to terms with the inherent corruption of humanity (or at least a critical mass of us), has to be awfully painful and awfully depressing.
Like finding out that you mother hated your guts the whole time or something.
…this sure puts a slant on how to view the tin-hat conspiracy contingent, eh?
It’s important to make a distinction between the tinfoil-hat contingent and what Glenn Beck is doing.
The tinfoil-hat contingent – characterized by the John Birch Society and the 9/11 Truthers and Alex Jones and Coast-to-Coast AM – posits a secret cabal of international bankers (read: Joooos) who are already in control of the world’s affairs and have been for decades or centuries. I read the John Birch book None Dare Call It Conspiracy when I was a kid (scared me silly until my mom talked me down off the crazy ledge), and it exemplifies Hofstadters “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”
These conspiracy theorists reinterpret EVERY black-swan event as something caused by the secret cabal for their own nefarious purposes. Official explanations are always lies, but they, not being gullible, are able to see through the lies.
You can spot this kind of thinking by the assumed omnipotence of the actors (always unnamed) and the assumption that they’re already in power and always have been.
Glenn Beck, on the other hand, posits that people are up to something, and he bases it not on reading the tea leaves of black-swan events but on leaked speeches and documents, public speeches and documents, whistleblowers, research, and by following the money (especially George Soros’s). He started on this path after someone in high finance took him aside in 2006 and warned him that there were serious shennanigans in the financial world (a perfect storm, his source said), so when the housing market crashed in 2008, people started paying attention.
He left Fox (decided not to renew his contract) when – after doing several shows on all of the political groups that George Soros was funding – Rupert Murdoch asked him to lay off Soros. Glenn learned two important things: (1) Fox didn’t have his back (2) He was right about Soros.
Glenn is not a birther or a truther, nor does he talk about Bilderbergers, nor Coconut Grove nor does he posit a secret, omnipotent cabal that’s already in power but that has no name. What he posits is that the progressive movement ditched violent revolution and opted for incrementalism, and that they’re still doing their long march through the institutions.
Cass Sunstein instructed his minions to call everything a “conspiracy theory,” even if or especially if it were true, thus to discredit the source as a kook.
Dicentra: Thanks.
It can all change in a New York minute.
What the head makes cloudy, the heart makes very clear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7maYpvzUqNc
at 4:40
The great lyrics, the great songs, the great art is and must be for all ages. The geniuses who create it, like the prophets who declared God’s Word, are accomplishing His purpose.
Until that day, I had to believe . . . everything can change.
A rational man would learn that there is no such thing as “Good government”. That is why we have to limit its power and reach. Fournier, however, will never “get” that. He is condemned to be every disappointed.
Fournier’s position is nothing new. It is a rehashing of the old progressive plaint “Socialism does work when it’s implemented correctly. We just haven’t done that yet.”
[feel free to substitute “. . . would have worked if we had funded it with more money than we did.”]
Good government? That’s like expecting a customer friendly IRS; the oxymorons never cease.
People like Mr. Fournier will never discover the truth about government, namely government that governs the least governs best. He’ll never understand why the Bill of Rights contains amendments 9 & 10. He’ll never realize that the drones that inhabit government are inherently against all; which means every man, woman and child must be for themselves.
Message to the NSA: karma doll caterpillar boomerang onion reverse ivan ekun moq. end message.
Good government? Government is made up of ordinary people (often from the less competent side of the bell curve) who have coercion as their only tool. They do not magically change and become wise and benevolent just because they obtain a government position. If you don’t believe me, just think about your interactions with the DMV, post office, or other official bureaucracy, local, state, or federal. Since bureaucrats are most concerned with first maintaining, then expanding the reach of the bureaucracies they work for, the current stories of overreach and abuse of power should not surprise anyone. What we’re seeing now is an object lesson in the wisdom of the Founders, who understood only too well the tyranny that results from unchecked government power. “Government governs best when it governs least” may also be a cliche, but it has truth at its heart.
World government, only good government.
Expecting good government is like expecting love from a hooker.
You’ll be paying and it will always be down and dirty.
Liberal are evil because they allow themselves to be smitten by two self-delusions.
First, they think any government is “good”. There is good government but government is not “good”. There is government, like in the U.S. that is structured such that citizens may be free and prosper, but the only think that is good (or not) is people. The best people are the ones who think they might be the worst people, or could be the worst people on any given day, and therefore had better try extra had to be good and follow the rules set down by better people than them.
Since the liberal gets this first one wrong, the liberal is never good and only does harm in the end.
The second delusion, by far the worse one, under which every liberal suffers is that they are victims. Not that there are victims, but that the liberal is one. The liberal will tell itself that the world is full of victims, that it identifies with them, and that it identifies with them because it understands what it is to be victimized. The liberal tells itself that it “empathizes” with victims. Yes, because it is one too! It “hates” that and will posture and preen and shout and hold placards and form groups to gather the like minded together to right this injustice….and so on.
Here is the horrible thing about the liberal: Since they see themselves as victims (no matter their own wealth or good upbringing, or mere lack of basic work ethic), they give themselves permission to to any harm, to anyone.
The liberal says: “Well, this horrible thing happened to me or others; therefore I do not have to justify my wicked actions and voting patterns and political support to anyone at all. There is nothing I cannot do to right the wrong of my and others victimization.
Anyone who does not share that position is an enemy – for example when the President of the United States of America referred to every person on the other political side as his enemies.
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Evil republicans, only Republicans.
Promising development: Hollywood’s Judd Aptow may be escaping the liberal matrix. He tweeted the following:
“@JuddApatow Did everyone forget Nixon! ….Enemy of the State….did you see that movie? “Who is going to monitor the monitors? So if President adopts a new policy for waging aggressive cyber-war & using cyber-attacks domestically, you want to remain ignorant of it? GEORGE W. OBAMA ”
Lefties likening Obama to Bush is not a bad thing provided they are realizing that Obama is as bad as they thought eeeevil Bush was (as opposed to the “Bush did it, too” excuses). Deprogramming takes time.
Fournier is apparently unfamiliar with George Washington:
“But somehow, for some unknown reason (bad luck? Republican sabotage? An unfortunate and fluky emerging narrative?)”
Global warming is ti blame no doubt.
Or Thomas Jefferson, for that matter:
Mike @ 9:03 a.m. said, “First, they think any government is “good”. There is good government but government is not “good”.
This.
Mike also said, “Since they see themselves as victims (no matter their own wealth or good upbringing, or mere lack of basic work ethic), they give themselves permission to to (sic) any harm, to anyone.”
Succinctly put and insightful. It is really important to understand that so many folks these days are not accidentally following a double standard but MUST follow a double standard (consciously or not) in order to live out their most basic beliefs.
Lizzy: “Lefties likening Obama to Bush is not a bad thing provided they are realizing that Obama is as bad as they thought eeeevil Bush was (as opposed to the “Bush did it, too” excuses). Deprogramming takes time.”
I disagree. It’s a half step in the right direction, but it doesn’t do anything to move the narrative needle from Bush Derangement Syndrome. BDS, with its designedly derivative vilification of the GOP, is the bedrock of the Democrats partisan advantage.
BDS is the safe place where shaken Democrats return to restore their faith, like other Americans reaffirm their faith with quotes from the Federalist Papers or aphorisms by other Founding Fathers.
In other words, the 1st whole step with both feet (not half step with 1 foot) to treating the cancer infecting the Democrats that they’ve mestastized throughout America is curing BDS.
Remember, right/wrong in politics is determined by your relative standing to the opposing party. Obama isn’t running for President again. If the PR damage can be contained to Obama while popular belief in BDS and its anti-GOP derivatives are preserved, the Democrats win by staying above the GOP.
The anti-Obama tweet you quoted merely reaffirms BDS. The key to switching the balance for the GOP is rehabilitating Bush’s legacy. (The second key, as I’ve suggested before, is the Tea Party needs to focus on its/their populist movement, and spread beyond comfort-zone in-groups, and especially push aggressively into ‘blue’ urban populations.)
Bottom-line: It’s not enough for Obama to be grouped with BDS-version Bush. The relative positions need to be switched. The GOP needs to affirmatively seize the moral high ground and drop the Dems onto the moral low ground.
It’s necessary to attack the Democrats’ lies and rehabilitate Bush’s legacy in order to show both Bush was right and principled while the Democrats are wrong, and the Democrats were the real villains who’ve lied to the American people.
Make the frame and narrative thus: Not that Obama is playing down to Bush or worse than Bush. But rather, Obama has *failed to live up to* the principled, honorable Bush.
Oddly enough I wrote that comment just after listening to GB’s show on Friday evening and then tuning in to see what neoneocon had to say, dicentra.
Glen was rather on a tear after the week long spectacular spectacle of self-destruction of the current iteration of the progressivist-media complex, eh?
…a show which scared the crap out of my lovely – and generally apolitical – bride.
But me? – I have an actual tin hat lol.
Hmm. I just noticed this in my mailbox, from the inestimable – and entirely lucidly sane Andy McCarthy at NRO – that would perhaps behoove us all to read …for some deeper understanding of the “phone records vacuum” at least.
Andy McCarthy, NRO: Phone Record Gathering Story Blown Out Proportion
After reading though, keep in mind that I believe I read on some of the techie blogs that actual phone records content was also collected.
…so, though McCarthy’s piece is still informatively relevant (well, to me), he might have inadvertently missed the rather more important part of the story.
Well, if my memory is serving me well, and actual data is also being mined.
…still, worth the read as “informative”, even if for no other reason (I, at least, didn’t know that phone records didn’t fall under the 4th) .
Part of a link on Drudge today:
“(Reuters) – Britain said eavesdropping by its GCHQ security agency was legal and no threat to privacy but would not confirm or deny reports it received data from a secret U.S. intelligence program.
“British and U.S. newspapers have suggested that the U.S. National Security Agency handed over information on Britons gathered under the PRISM program.
“In his first remarks on the subject, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the two countries did share intelligence but that GCHQ’s work was governed by a very strong legal framework.
“The idea that in GCHQ people are sitting around working out how to circumvent a UK law with another agency in another country is fanciful,” Hague told BBC TV on Sunday.
” ‘It is nonsense’.
“Promising he would give a statement on the subject to the lower house of Britain’s parliament on Monday, Hague said there was no threat to privacy or people’s civil liberties.
“He said he was limited in what he could disclose.”
*****
The key is the last line I just cited.
Basically, government is good, good for you, cannot disclose, and you will just have to trust. Nope, there is no threat. I said so. So there.
Just like we should trust a FISA Court, because it is a Court.
Excellent article as usual by McCarthy.
But I have a different belief on whether or not the metadata (the non-content information of a communication) should be private. The technology of cell phones and internet communication makes long distant communications equivalent to person to person communication. Does the government have a right to know when and where and how long you talked to your neighbor? Of course not.
Our security should be part gov’t and part us. When we cower in front of Islamophobia instead of profiling and scrutinzing obvious shooters, bombers and terrorists, then an unnecessary burden is placed upon the ordinary law abiding citizen in the name of “fairness.” Bullshit on that. We need to make life so difficult for all Muslims in America until they earn our trust, until they turn in their terrorists, until they renounce sharia as state or federal law like Jews and Christians have renounced the Bible as law. Well, renounce isn’t the right word. Perhaps “recognized limits in the public sphere,” is better. If Muslims desire to live sharia in their private sphere, more power to them. But how do they live sharia privately when sharia rules all non-sharia citizens are second class citizens. Time to reform sharia! Christianity reformed.
We’ve done our “privatizing” and we did it voluntarily for liberty and for equity. It’s been used against us, sometimes fairly, but mostly not. We’re at the end of the road with “privatizing” and looking to take back some ground. After all, we’ve learned that multiculturalism was a Trojan’s horse. It did not admit to our midst well-meaning athiests or homosexuals, whom we were willing to grant liberties for their beliefs and actions. It admitted warriors intent on destroying our social mores and our future. They do not want to play by the rules and win by fair and reasoned argument and experience. They want control and with Obama they are getting it.
So color us a little sceptical when we see the biggest multiculturalist of them all in the White House saying “trust me.” But then, that is McCarthy’s point, to bring up the truth that despite the wonderful structure the Founders provided, it’s still not enough. The people are the ultimate guarantees of freedom. We merely need to not give up, educate, vote, and most of all live the example.
Oh. And as far as the “tin-hat consipiracy contingent” goes:
Link to Tor website …courtesy of this mornings Instapundit “How to hide from the NSA”.
There’s a Wikipedia article on the Tor project too, btw (if you’re a little paranoid …now …and after all, that’s not a bad thing anymore, is it …lol) …seems to have originally been a USN project that has morphed in the wild.
…downloading now; installing later (to my relatively supposedly secure – hahaha – box).
…might as well make the bastards work for it a little, lol.
We merely need to perservere, educate, vote, and most of all live the example.
(I had to correct that last sentence. Whew! Pretty bad.)
But how many of you love life? How many are annoyed and perturbed that the real business of working and raising children and enjoying grandchildren is so interrupted?
“Obama is basically good and means well, too, and is incompetent” Sounds like more dissonance. One can hold the cult-like belief that O is the most intelligent, best informed individual, with his finger on the pulse of everything and then magically and conveniently drag out the incompetent and detached rationale.
I think that Mr. Fournier has too much invested in his delusions and won’t be changing soon.
(raises hand from rear row seat next to exit)
…vastly annoyed.
(spits to try and remove remaining bad taste of-remembrance-of-idiot-fall-election-fail from mouth …doesn’t work …again)
sharpie: “Does the government have a right to know when and where and how long you talked to your neighbor? Of course not.”
That depends on context, I think.
Where are you and your neighbor?
Is he in your home or other private space? Then I think in that case, intrusion by the government to record ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘how long’ is restricted.
But are you and your neighbor communicating in a public space? Then I think the government can record the ‘when, ‘where’, and ‘how long’.
Is the virtual/electronic space of the internet and phones public or private space?
Right, good analysis, Eric, of course. I would have hopes that these essential filters would be applied in spying on domestic converstations. Foreign conversations, less so; and foreign conversations to Pakistan and Benghazi (ambassador and navy seals aside), more so.
It’s not hard to prioritize and profile. Let me say it now for all our Sesame Street viewers, profile is a good word, a good word. It’s kind of like what forward watchers do to determine if the aircraft is friendly or enemy.
So what is a ‘private’ space, Eric? Is the lobby of your apartment building public or private? Is a ‘public housing’ apartment public or private? Is a conversation you have with the person seated next to you at a Mets game OK for recording because the stadium is a ‘public’ space?
Virtual space is a misnomer.
Virtual space is a hard drive.
Memory. Therefore, I threaten. (Anybody been threatened?)
There is no difference of the memory in the neighbor’s head and his google glasses.
Technology does not change morality. It merely changes an argument for awhile. Then things settle down as it becomes clear what is happening. Kind of like abortion.
It’s not the gov’t business to monitor memory or communications.
What’s in my head, whether by notes or hard drive or actually in my memory, is mine alone. Thank you. It serves as a firewall against accusation.
When individuals police their own appetites and recognize theft, surveillence is unnecessary. That is a good society where people value good and people want to be good because good people raising children make good people.
But what do you get when you raise children as weapons instead of generations? How ugly is that, how freaking ugly is that?
Individuals who are conflicted and uneducated and who can’t make their own living because they were supplied by gov’t from the beginning have no choice but to become thieves. Thus the need for survellience on a massive scale.
Innocence and property are the foundations of civil society. As we grow older and “discover” there is evil in all of us, we become parents, and we protect innocence in our children even knowing that they will eventually discover the truth. We do it knowing that the future depends on faith and not non-faith in a humanity that is flawed. That the state must raise children in order to circumnavigate evil is a argument for evil, for destruction, and for horrific suffering; the state is benighted and creates a savage. It’s porper task is protecting from external threats and preventing the occassional loss of rationality of the populace. (And some other stuff like money, which outrage of the value of money should be another arguement for the minimization of GOVERNMENT.)
Yes we have created a cadre of goombas ready to be directed for Pavlovian candy. It’s evil versus good in the world, and we must find those who tumble out of the mix and love them. We will be well rewarded. A goomba is a terrible thing to waste.
Don Carlos,
I’d have to break out my CrimPro notes on the boundaries of unreasonable search and reasonable expectation of privacy in areas with a reasonable expectation of public observation (lobby, ball game), but recording ‘who’, ‘where’, and ‘how long’ (ie, transmission data) of phone calls and e-mails is a different question than recording content of face-to-face conversations.
The question of collecting internet and phone transmission data falls in line with pen registers. I don’t know enough about the issue to discuss the nuances, but I do know privacy protection for pen registers is statutory and not Constitutional. Pen registers are not inherently afforded 4th amendment protection.
Add: As others have pointed, the controversy over transmission data collection seems more like a political issue about the public trust, where privacy is relevant in the sense of policy calibration. Privacy laws can be passed above the floor requirements of the Constitution.
However, from what I’ve heard so far, there doesn’t appear to be a Constitutional controversy unless content was recorded illegally, as some have said.
Libertarians have a legitimate concern based on the principle of privacy that’s enshrined in the Constitution, but the letter of the law does not, in its current state, signal either a statutory or Constitutional violation has taken place.
One can – as I’ve suggested – hold Obama to the lines set by Bush’s precedents on the same grounds as a matter of policy, and even codify Bush’s precedents into law as a proper balance of security/liberty enforcement in future Presidents. But again, that doesn’t imply a legal violation has taken place.
Rand Paul’s statement that he intends to challenge the collection in SCOTUS on 4th amendment grounds is a political maneuver. From what I can tell, there isn’t new information that would merit a re-opening of the issue by SCOTUS. My guess is Paul is angling for new legislation rather than adjudication.
I do not know what a pen register is. But as to recording the who’s and when’s but not content, I ran across an interesting example as to why actual content doesn’t much matter anymore:
Person X’s phone # is contacted by a gyn’s phone #; next, the gyn # contacts an oncologist’s #; then the oncologist’s # contacts X’s #; then X’s # contacts, serially, X’s relatives’ #s.
One does not have to know content to conclude gyn has informed X of cancer diagnosis, referred her to oncologist, oncologist made appointment, and X informed relatives.
Don Carlos,
FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_register
I don’t believe that improved analytical technology downstream changes the underlying Constitutional issues at the collection point of the data, but I’m willing to consider an argument that makes that case.
However, again, just because it’s Constitutional and currently legal doesn’t bar new laws from the legislature that tighten privacy protections.
As JS Mill said, legal is not the same as just.
What most concerns me is the obvious recognition that only very stupid and low level users are going to reveal their intentions on basic media like cell phones and email. That is why the information of more import is not what someone says but how much traffic and who they say it to. When Fasad al Shawalki increases his receiving traffic by 300 percent and is connected to a mosque, you might want to pay attention to that.
Why is it that our gov’t missed the Boston bombers when given information direct from other sources which stated, “pay attention.” Did the covert program help, there.? Of course use covert information collecting methods but not directed upon the general populace. Isn’t there a more obvious place to start? When the general populace is the target, what does that say about the purpose of the survellience?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
“And there will be nothing at that point which the people can do to oppose it.”
Our great country, because of its value and beliefs, defended the world and became a standard of value. The dollar was trusted. We took that trust and broke it by making other nations and people pay for our transient prosperity and attempted to make ourselves and the world a utopia.
“they can go back in time” … and paint.
With a federal systems of laws so complex that anyone can be charged with crime, the power of the gov’t to control by baseless allegation but supported by massive inference, is boundless. As stated in many articles, it is not the proof but the mere accusation which ruins the life and business and peace of citizens.
As Rush said, a coup is taking place against John Q. Public. It’s a coup not directed against groups but against you, the individual, when you try to defend yourself.
Born and raised by those who praise
Control of population
everybody’s been there
and
I don’t mean on vacation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlUKcNNmywk&feature=endscreen&NR=1
hmmmmm, no wonder they took drugs to a new level.
The important thing is that Al Capone loved the opera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZoZwdesumY
at 5:00 minutes.
He gave us something to live for. He distracted us. He died because he could not sleep.
How sad is that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU5pKS-roVk
A shame about that narrative.
Fournier has certainly come up in the world, from frothy defenses of Edwin Edwards to heart felt spinning for Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the true villain of Katrina ‘
He’s a pig.
America is in its darkest hour since the Civil War.
Only now do I really understand that most of the Bill of Rights are protections against government. The right to free speech is exactly there as a right against a government – like the very one in America today – that seeks to command and control and manufacture a s0-called “narrative”.
Such a nice and harmless word, “narrative”. It is really an attack on the rights of free citizens and and effort to enslave and herd us like sheep.
Americans will very soon decide, after decades of being trained to be sheep and being dumbed-down so that even the traditional philosophy and religion that could save them has been banned and mocked and marginalized, whether it is men and women or citizens of the state and sheep,