Stare At The Sun

As of late, I have really been wondering when would the government go to far? What would it take for you personally to think that they have gone to far? Iris scanners everywhere you go? GPS chips installed in you, DNA databank, all guns being outlawed, martial law?

My question, is do you have a point where you're going to think that the government has gone to far? And if you do have that point, what would you do?
Personally, I believe we are taking baby steps towards a bleek future day by day. If they ever tried to "disarm" the populace, to me, that would be the last straw. I believe my rights are very important, and I don't want to see any more stripped away from me.

Hopefully, everyone understands what I'm talking about here. So, discuss!

Locobot

I felt the government went too far with the Patriot act.

cthulu23

tihs topic reminds me of a Point-Counterpoint piece on the future that was published in The Onion:

Point: The future will be a corporate dystopia
Counterpoint: The future will be a totalitarian dystopia

As usual with The Onion, it's funny because it plays on a sneaking suspicion that many of us may already harbor.

JumpinJesus

That's exactly my problem. They're baby steps. There hasn't been a particular freedom removed drastically enough for the majority of the populace to take notice. The Patriot Act was a major step backwards, but not enough people feel that way to make an effective change.

I've always believed that every liberty that is removed is a step too far. I send a lot of emails and I vote. I've never been the kind to walk around with a megaphone or sandwich board, join a march or a militia, so I do what I can in my own way.

Unfortunately, I think you'll find that while everyone agrees that taking any freedom is going too far, some are willing to sacrifice what they personally consider "lesser" freedoms - usually the ones they don't practice themselves, and the bit by bit erosion gets us one step closer to the bleak future you mentioned.

__________________
"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

Willravel

I think the question for the American people to ask themselves is this: is peace of mind and safety worth the loss of freedom? I mean we live in what is quickly shifting to an Empire. We have established a lot of military bases all over the world. The sun never sets on the US military. The PNAC (the Project for the New AMerican Century), who's members include scary political figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, James Bolton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Bennett, Dan Quayle, and Jeb Bush, is making us into a new Roman Empire. This I don't remember voting on.

In 1992, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had a strategy report drafted for the Department of Defense, written by Paul Wolfowitz, then Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy. In it, the U.S. government was urged, as the world's sole remaining Superpower, to move aggressively and militarily around the globe. The report called for pre-emptive attacks and ad hoc coalitions, but said that the U.S. should be ready to act alone when "collective action cannot be orchestrated." The central strategy was to "establish and protect a new order" that accounts "sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership," while at the same time maintaining a military dominance capable of "deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." Wolfowitz outlined plans for military intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from terrorism.*
This is our vice president.

Various HardRight intellectuals outside the government were spelling out the new PNAC policy in books and influential journals. Zalmay M. Khalilzad (formerly associated with big oil companies, currently U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan & Iraq ) wrote an important volume in 1995, "From Containment to Global Leadership: America & the World After the Cold War," the import of which was identifying a way for the U.S. to move aggressively in the world and thus to exercise effective control over the planet's natural resources. A year later, in 1996, neo-conservative leaders Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, in their Foreign Affairs article "Towards a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," came right out and said the goal for the U.S. had to be nothing less than "benevolent global hegemony," a euphemism for total U.S. domination, but "benevolently" exercised, of course.*

January letter from PNAC* urged America to initiate that war even if the U.S. could not muster full support from the Security Council at the United Nations. Sound familiar? (President Clinton replied that he was focusing on dealing with al-Qaida terrorist cells.)*

"Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for the New Century."* The PNAC report was quite frank about why the U.S. would want to move toward imperialist militarism, a Pax Americana, because with the Soviet Union out of the picture, now is the time most "conducive to American interests and ideals... The challenge of this coming century is to preserve and enhance this 'American peace'." And how to preserve and enhance the Pax Americana? The answer is to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major-theater wars."*

In serving as world "constable," the PNAC report went on, no other countervailing forces will be permitted to get in the way. Such actions "demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations," for example. No country will be permitted to get close to parity with the U.S. when it comes to weaponry or influence; therefore, more U.S. military bases will be established in the various regions of the globe. (A post-Saddam Iraq may well serve as one of those advance military bases.) Currently, it is estimated that the U.S. now has nearly 150 military bases and deployments in different countries around the world, with the most recent major increase being in the Caspian Sea/Afghanistan/Middle East areas.*

"Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,"* that advocated a more aggressive U.S. posture in the world and called for a "reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy," with access to oil repeatedly cited as a "security imperative." (It's possible that inside Cheney's energy-policy papers -- which he refuses to release to Congress or the American people -- are references to foreign-policy plans for how to gain military control of oilfields abroad.)*

"Go massive," (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in520830.shtml)the aides' notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." Rumsfeld leaned heavily on the FBI and CIA to find any shred of evidence linking the Iraq government to 9/11, but they weren't able to. So he set up his own fact-finding group in the Pentagon that would provide him with whatever shaky connections it could find or surmise.*

Feeling confident that all plans were on track for moving aggressively in the world, the Bush Administration in September of 2002 published the "National Security Strategy of the United States of America."** The official policy of the U.S. government, as proudly proclaimed in this major document, is virtually identical to the policy proposals in the various white papers of the Project for the New American Century and others like it over the past decade.*

Chief among them are: 1) the policy of "pre-emptive" war -- i.e., whenever the U.S. thinks a country may be amassing too much power and/or could provide some sort of competition in the "benevolent hegemony" region, it can be attacked, without provocation. (A later corollary would rethink the country's atomic policy: nuclear weapons would no longer be considered defensive, but could be used offensively in support of political/economic ends; so-called "mini-nukes" could be employed in these regional wars.) 2) international treaties and opinion will be ignored whenever they are not seen to serve U.S. imperial goals. 3) The new policies "will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia."*

In short, the Bush Administration seems to see the U.S., admiringly, as a New Rome, an empire with its foreign legions (and threat of "shock&awe" attacks, including with nuclear weapons) keeping the outlying colonies, and potential competitors, in line. Those who aren't fully in accord with these goals better get out of the way; "you're either with us or against us."*

Someday we are going to be telling our children about what we did to aid/stop this.

I still don't know what to do. If anyone has some suggestions, please let me know.

Willravel

What I mean to say is that we've already gone a bit far, but it's not too late to turn back and try to fix the damage.

charms

The debate would be better served if we put aside the sloganeering, electioneering, paranoia, nationalism, and fear mongering (from both sides). If your basic tenet is "the government is bent on diabolical world domination" or "kill those foreigners and let God sort 'em out," we're unlikely to get anywhere constructive.

There are fundamental tradeoffs between freedom and security and we are yet to have a serious debate about them. On one hand, we have "inalienable" rights and should reactively question and resist any infringement. On the other hand, our rights are not absolute despite whatever rhetorical flourishes we've come to believe. We routinely accept reasonable infringements for the sake of common sense and the greater good.

I'm inclined towards the side of greater freedom, but I'm also willing to accept another terrorist attack as plausible and unpreventable, but bearable.

Willravel

Actually, I was not talking about diabolical world domination. I was just putting facts together in what I hope is a fair overview of the current political agenda of the (dare I say it) Bush administration. I don't necessarily see it as paranoia per say, although it seems odd that this is actually happening. The question in and of itself seems to have a hint of paranoia. The question(s) originally posed to us: was have we gone to far? If no then when? If yes, then what do we do? I tried to stick to that. If I didn't, I apologize.
I am looking forward to the response to my post and other peoples answer to the questions.

host

The government has already triggered an "enough is enough" response in me,
once, a long time ago. My reaction to the politicians' policies regarding the Viet Nam war <br>was the decision not to co-operate with the Selective Service/Military Draft in any way.<br> Instead, I lived "underground" for seven years, avoiding jobs where the potential for background<br> checks seemed likely, and situations with increased risk of investigation or arrest. <br>It may not seem like much, but it was the correct decision for me at the time, and, <br>if enough other young men did the same thing back then, maybe the lack of a continuous <br>supply of new draft inductees to fill the empty combat boots formerly occupied by our 58,000 dead <br>and 250,000+ wounded, would have ended that brutal, wasting, and pointless war much sooner.<br>

If your opinion is that I should have boldly and loudly proclaimed
my resistance, perhaps you are right. I watched Joan Baez's husband, David,
hustled off to prison for a "crime" similar to mine, and I watched others flee
to Canada. My view was and is that my government was guilty of criminal
behavior, compelling it's young sons to fight and die in defense of a far
away foreign government, in a conflict predicated on a lie (Gulf of Tonkin).
Submitting myself to a corrupt authority to face what it regarded as justice
for my "disobedience", was not an acceptable choice, nor was leaving the
country.

It always comes down to each citizen's choice of whether to go along with
government policy and regulation, or not. Think for yourself,
remain always sceptical of authority, stay informed, work for change
when you disagree, refuse to co-operate when your leaders try to compell
you to participate in immoral and unjust activities. Follow your conscience
and remember that without "good Germans, just following orders", Hitler never
could have wrought the massive destruction that he and just a small number of his <br>lieutenants have been consigned most of the blame for, by history.

jb2000

It is impossible to determine a breaking point really. We can't have absolute freedom and we certainly don't want absolute lack of freedom. So how much freedom, and more importantly what freedoms in particular, do we shoot for? As a civil libertarian, I work on the premise of everyone having the right to do whatever they want short of hurting others (including infringing on others' rights).

As for the government's role, rights exist with or without government. It is a matter of whether or not the government recognizes and respects rights, and whether or not they defend them.

Once the government recognizes a right selectively, they have essentially declared it as merely a privledge, not a right. We do not have the right to travel by air, but most of us, by virtue of being white Americans, are granted the privledge to do so.

To cease to recognize a freedom is only acceptable when the following three conditions are met:

1) It is absolutely necessary to restrict freedom to accomplish the goal.
2) The value of accomplishing the goal outweighs the temporary restriction.
3) The restriction is limited strictly to the minimum time necessary to complete the goal.

Freedom is key to quality of life, perhaps the most important factor beyond simple livelyhood. Security is also an important factor in quality of life. Reductions of freedom or security are harmful to quality of life.

So then when it comes time to discuss limiting freedoms to improve security, I must inquire certain questions:

1) Is limiting freedoms going to have an effective impact on improving security, and is it the only way to have that impact?
2) How much of an improvement to our quality of life is gained by limiting freedom that can not be gained any other way?
3) How much of a reduction to our quality of life is suffered from the limiting of freedom?
4) Is the improvement greater than the reduction to our quality of life?
5) Are the limitations absolutely minimized in time and breadth to only that which is absolutely necessary to achieve the improved security?

Unless 1, 4, & 5 are all unqualified Yes's, I can not condone the action. In short, if you want to sell me on accepting some limits, you had better convince me that the limits are a) necessary, b) effective, and c) temporary.

jb2000

As for the individual case, if a person is suspected of being a criminal, then they should be investigated. When the state is convinced that the person is a criminal, they should begin prosecution. During the investigation, however, the person should not have their rights restricted without having the opportunity to defend themselves in court.

Security officials need to have the ability to stop passengers which they have a reasonable and specific concern about. That concern, however, must be backed up. If they suspect the person is going to commit a crime, then there needs to be some evidence to back it up. Heritage, religion, dress, sexuality, language, gender, etc. are not evidence of a criminal intent. Words said by the person, and items indicative of intent are evidence.

A person should never be blanket-banned from an activity without it being passed as sentence upon that person in a court of law. If the person is suspected of being a criminal, investigate and prosecute. Until such time, blanket-banning is a flagrant violation of individual liberty.

A person should never be held without access to due process of law, including a transparant legal proceeding with council. If the person really is a criminal, there is no reason they can not be prosecuted this way. If the person is not a criminal, they should be released.

pedro padilla

When it finally dawns on you that it´s gone past the limit, it´s gonna be way too late. what did Mr. Orwell say? If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face.....forever.