Seaver

I'm sorry, but I have a MUCH harder time accepting the forced gun registration than internet or library logging. Yet you support the government knowing every single person who owns a gun (only legally, a very small % of guns used in crime), but looking up how to build bombs out of Walmart supplies is protected?

Rekna

Actually Seaver, I don't have a problem with people owning guns. I do have a problem with people who aren't properly trained owning guns and people bringing guns to places they shouldn't be (say a bar....). I don't have a problem with people having a gun in their house or car. As for conceled carrying I'm still undecided on the issue.

Seaver

Thats fair enough Rekna, but take a cross section on the people crying the sky is falling and I'd bet the VAST majority are the same ones who argue about the outlawing of guns or severe restrictions thereupon. Just amazes me.

Mojo_PeiPei

Not to be rude, but lets deal with the corporeal, tangible.

Crinkle, Crinkle; Where's the Reynolds?

__________________
To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

Ustwo

If one walked blindly into death without fear for themselves or others then yes it would effect how it works.

Anyone who has a family knows how ones instincts are to protect it, and as such it means nothing.

Call it terror, fear, or just concern, this is not something you ignore until it goes away.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

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Marvelous Marv

I know I don't have to inform you of the events I'm referencing, but nothing in the Patriot Act frightens me nearly as much as the lack of punishment for those involved in the Ruby Ridge fiasco.

For those who don't wish to Google "Randy Weaver" or "Ruby Ridge," a citizen was entrapped by agents of the US government, and his refusal to infiltrate a group the government wanted to investigate resulted in federal agents shooting his wife and son to death. This is a very abridged version. The US government was found to have lied in the subsequent court case, and Randy received a $3 million settlement. However, his family members were still dead, and to my knowledge, none of the perpetrators have been punished in any way.

That scares me a hell of a lot more than the Patriot Act, and very few people seem to have gotten excited about it, or remember it.

Two family members were the cost of Weaver's freedom. It annoys the hell out of me that so few people are aware of the "incident," but (semi-threadjack) so many were referencing "manslaughter" in regard to Cheney's problem.

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tecoyah

Agreed....but there is a level of fear that is counter productive, such as we see in the "War on Terror", the threat does not seem to justify the reaction. Mind you, I in no way mean to minimize the pain inflicted on our country by 9/11, as this was a truly terrorizing event, but in my opinion we have become focused on increasing the fear in our population to improve the taste of security measures. The creation of this enormous government entity we call the Dept. of Homeland Security is a prime example, as it seems (from what I have seen) to be disfunctional for the most part, and has completely failed to address massive security issues ie: Borders/Ports/chemical and nuclear plants/disaster preperation.
If we, as a people intend to face this threat to our way of life...we will need to get over the collective fear instilled in us by the enemy, otherwise the enemy is ourselves, and we willl continue to fight the symptoms of this, rather than the cause. Just My Opinion.

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Poppinjay

I remember it very well. The feds acted like common thugs, trying to apprehend a former green beret. Weaver’s kid then killed a deputy which started the whole tragic ball rolling. When confronted with this horrible episode, President Bush Sr. managed to sit on it until he was out of office.

Most of the people behind Ruby Ridge not only got away without punishment, they are now back in the decision making process under Bush jr

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Ustwo

Really? So they were fired by Clinton (who had even worse with Wako) and then rehired by the bush admin to do make the decisions?

Oh Bush is there anything you don't do wrong?

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Poppinjay

Not much. Waco, by the way, was an operation started by Bush sr's administration. They told the incoming admin that David Koresh was stockpiling illegal weapons and cornholing 12 year olds.

What was it with Bush sr. and his crazy BATF stuff anyways? Still jonesing to be back in the CIA?

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

roachboy

this is kind of a funny thread:

the op tried to generate a non-partisan discussion on a kind of abstract question concerning civil liberties and what resulted was a long thread that gave the lumpenconservatives the chance to rehearse all their favorite memes: in this case:

the bush administration is a priori incapable of violating civil liberties.
the clinton administration was a priori incapable of not violating civil liberties.

the result of this little syllogism: accusations concerning the violation of civil liberties are a pure partisan issues.
they mean nothing in themselves.

the lumpenconservative set seems to be fine with this, not so much because the position is coherent, but because it dissolves one of the legion of trajectories across which fundamental critiques of the bushsquad could be elaborated. but this interpretation assumes a certain distance, a certain cynicism with reference to questions of civil liberites. but there is no such distance in the posts above from the lc-types.

on the other hand, when it comes to the officially sanctioned rightwing relation to the clinton administration, questions of civil liberites are concrete and violations everywhere.

it seems absurd to hold up the criterion that the violation of civil liberties can be indexed via the personal/emotional sense of being-violated--which is, both above from the far right loyalists and in general in conservativeland, the standard against which this question is evaluated.

for the lumpenconservatives, this line goes directly to tautology:

this administration cannot violate civil liberties because it is headed up by Our Guy, made up of Our Guys.

the relation to Our Guy is properly infantile: in this scenario, george w bush is something of the Spectral Father---and the lumpenconservatives like children who see in the Father powerful, near omniscient--the source of Authority, the Protector-Dad---because rooted in some kind of identification with the Father, the administration's motives are necessarily understood (if at all) as pure---it follows then that the actions of the Father are necessarily rational---He is trying to protect his flock from chaos, destruction death and other Bad Things---He is motivated, like God, by an infinite love for us, his Children---so violations of civil liberties are impossible----particularly if you hold up the sense of being-violated as a legitimate measure.

so for many of the more rabid conservatives above, the matter of civil liberties has been entirely instrumentalized---it is a tactic, an issue to be raised and taken seriously at certain officially sanctioned moments, and to be dissolved at other officially sanctioned moments---the idea of civil liberties means nothing in itself.

that way you get to avoid pesky questions of law.
but then again, law that would be violated by Our Guy is linked to the state as source of Irrationality....civil liberties are legal limits on power, articulated to check the actions of the state---so long as Our Guy is at the helm, these checks are themselves irrational--questions of violation of law are in the case of Our Guy irrelevant--anything goes---particularly if you take seriously the lumpenconservative claim that what really matters is the personal sense of being-violated---because support for the bushpeople is so deeply elaborated as a type of identification, it follows (again) that meaningful violations of civil liberties are impossible.


if an Enemy is in power, however, these same checks are fundamental.

the martyrologies of waco and ruby ridge are both repellent indices of the devolution of the conservative coalition during the clinton period: waco was an index of the assimilation of extreme right religious organizations (centered on assimilating a sense of being-martyr), weaver an index of the assimilation of the militia movement into the main stream of conservative ideology. across the revisions of both into incidents in a far right book of martyrs followed a reinforcement of the image of bill clinton as the Evil Persecuting Dad---the offically sanctioned emotional response to the Evil Dad is a sense of being-violated at every point---threatened by a malevolent Father, the children displace their anxiety onto a symbolic conflict concerning possession of the Phallus--in this case, guns--which serve as a fundamental signifier in the playing out of this tedious extreme right scenario of politics as Family Drama.

the conclusion: the conservative Children play out delusions of autonomy across the matter of Phallic power--this is of a piece with the truly bizarre combination of complete, often abject, support for the actions of Our Guy and its correlate--the impression that many on the right can hold that their abject relation to the Conservative Father is in fact the opposite of the abject, an expression of Free Will, a positive Choice. all this functions to do is to dissolve any problem that folk who identify with the lumpenconservative set could possibly raise about the nature, quality and implications of their particular mode of interacting with the Political.


i would worry about this dissolving of the notion of civil liberites into a pure tactic.
on the other hand, it is not surprising to see so many conservative loyalists above
not worried at all. they support the right to possess guns, the commodity that means Freedom. possessing Guns, the commodities that indicates Freedom, means that they have the problem of civl liberties sussed out.

anything goes.
Dad wouldn't hurt us.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Ustwo

So are you trying to imply that Waco is Bush's fault? If not why bring it up?

Logic path here....

Bush Sr. - We are worried about this group in Texas, they are stockpiling weapons and may be abusing children.

Clinton - Ok we will deal with it.

*pile of bodies later*

Left - Its Bush's fault!

The ONLY reason Ruby Ridge was not made into as big deal by the press as it deserved was that it was a white supremisist as the victim. Just think what would have happened had they done the same to a hippy commune.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Rekna

oddly i've heard the same argument as to why 9/11 was Clinton's fault.

Mojo_PeiPei

RB, I really don't know what you are saying. Your post is dismissive and hypocritical, as you, like many people here in this thread whole line of reasoning d thought stems from the fact that you don't like conservatives or Bush.

How about rather then thumbing your nose at me because I am a "lumpen conservative" you put forth something concrete as to how Bushco is taking away civil liberties? Your post was redundant and pointless has you rant for several paragraphs about one point; that our whole line of thinking regarding the issue of erosion of civil liberties is completely wrong because we have some psychological infantile model of thinking, whereas we only say there is no erosion because we support "our guy" and the "bushsquad".

Nevermind, that I have approached this legal/constitutional matter in the proper framework, that of as objective, and in my own personal mold of being a strict constructionist. Myself and others hear have not once referred to Bush here in posts countering all these accusations, we have used things such as the law and precedent, reference to the constitution.

Maybe besides ranting and raving, and thus making me do the same, you being so fervent in knowing us conservatives are wrong, why don't you provide an example of how Bushco is evil and eroding American Civil Liberties; I promise you I will be objective/non partisan/ and use the same mold of constructionist reasoning in addressing any grievances. Who knows maybe you will help me learn something.

__________________
To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

Poppinjay

You left out an important factor in your dialogue there.

Bush Sr. - We are worried about this group in Texas, they are stockpiling weapons and may be abusing children. This is the plan our guys have drawn up for it, we'll surround them for a week playing bad music, then go ass crazy shooting everything in sight.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Seaver

Thank you Mojo.

RB, we "bushco" supporters asked a simple question in reply to the OP. We have not recieved an answer. Us "neocons" have posted more examples of decaying rights than anyone else on this thread. When that changes you can freely attack us all you want. Until then dont let your blind hatred speak for you.

Bodyhammer86

Actually, the original plan (which I'm assuming Bush drew up) was to nab David Koresh while he was in town, except the ATF blew it three seperate times and lead to the cult being tortured and burned to death in their compound outside of Waco.

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Ustwo

Yea I hear he had a plan for burning the kids too.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Intellectual honesty is key to having meaningful dialog, sadly what I see is peoples world view being used to color any meaningful doubt in this thread. When you assume a position that Bush and the administration is evil and use any information to connect the dots in any way possible to prove this evil you have eliminated the possibility of discovering they may not be evil. This blind hatred has been the hallmark of the left since 2000, and it has stifled any debate. We hate Republicans has been the lefts rally cry for the last 6 years.

Now before I get accused of the same, (which is the common tactic on this board), you will have to understand that when someone claims that posts 'Bush planned the Iraq war in 2000' or 'They are wiretapping international calls by suspected terrorists illegally' I don't really care because I agree with the philosophy behind both. Both might be true, though I will not accept left wing hearsay as proof, but even if true I don't really care, as I think both are good long term policy. I am upset with the Republicans as a rule for allowing the spending spree to continue, but there is no viable alternative there for me.

If you don't like Bush or his policies that fine and good, but don't play twister with logic to attempted to prove it.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

kangaeru

RB is right about one thing, this is a funny thread.

It was meant to be a bi-partisan conversation, hypothetically based, issues such as, is the benefits of improved govt security vs privacy rights and freedom from scrutiny.

At what point does a necessity for security justify erasing some constitutional privacy rights?

Hypothetical, such as, if the US were like Israel and we had bombs going off all the time, I'd be okay with it.

Or in my case, because our freedoms are what should define us as a country, no matter how dangerous America ever got, I wouldn't want that to change. I would rather find other means.

This was never meant to be examples, right here right now, X Y and Z are being taken away. It's a purely hypothetical question which can be supported by some current events but by no means proven one way or another.

You all brought your bigotted, hardened agendas here, which is why we got mired in this crap. That's why the Politics forum is becoming a waste of time to read or to post in. No one wants to be neutral about anything, it's always someone trying to ram their opinion down your throat like it's going to save your life from darkness.

Well, I tried.

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Dont be afraid to change who you are for what you could become

tecoyah

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha