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Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

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Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#281

Post by VikingCoder »

talmand wrote: post #269
chez17 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing more intellectually childish than saying "x isn't working in this case, therefore x never works and should be totally abandoned." I agree 100% that 99% of people don't care about politics enough and vote blindly. Look at the turn out rate for primaries and years where people aren't voting for president. Libertarians like you are all talk. There plenty of places in this world with no government but yo…

He didn't say nor have I ever heard a libertarian claim they wanted no government. I believe that's a different ideology.

He said, "Ultra limited government."

Does ultra-limited government include government-provided roads, infrastructure, safe food, safe cars, electricity, water, internet?

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#282

Post by d23 »

robomartin wrote: post #278
chez17 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing more intellectually childish than saying "x isn't working in this case, therefore x never works and should be totally abandoned." I agree 100% that 99% of people don't care about politics enough and vote blindly. Look at the turn out rate for primaries and years where people aren't voting for president. Libertarians like you are all talk. There plenty of places in this world with no government but yo…

No government? Who said that? Where? We need a simple and limited government that remains out of our lives in nearly every imaginable way. Every human being on this planet is born free. We created these monstrous governmental systems that, effectively, enslave us in one way or another. I can't go for a swim in my local lake. My government will not allow it. I can easily swim 1500 meters or more. Swim every day. Yet,…

> No government? Who said that? Where? We need a simple and limited government.

No, no, no. Stop backpedaling. You said this before:

> Ultra limited government.

That's pretty close to "no" government, so his points still stand. The problem isn't government in general, any more than it is people in general. It's things that are broken or aren't working well.

It can just as easily be said about the private sector. Yesterday my UPS person claimed he tried to deliver a package but I didn't answer the door. Bullshit. I was home the entire time and he never came.

Did I go on a rant about the evils of the private sector and how everything needs to be socialized? No. I recognized that for every annoying experience I have with a private corporation I have 3 other good ones that make my life better.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#283

Post by pnathan »

nkurz wrote: post #156
alan_cx wrote: post #141

As a Brit, can I ask: Why don't I see Fox "News" presenters, and the like, crying daily on screen about the death of the USA over things like this? Unlike the birth certificate of Obama or attempts to being free health care to people, this really is destroying US citizen's basic rights. But no Fox tears and hysterics. Why is that? I mean, surely this is a fantastic way to attack the "hated" Obama, surely. Aren't they…

I'm American, and don't know if I have any more insight than you do. I think the issue is that both major parties in the US (at least publicly) prioritize security over privacy. Fox doesn't cry out about this because Fox viewers are rarely in uproar about such trade offs. If anything, I'd guess this policy has greater support among mainstream Republicans than Democrats. Privacy issues are viewed in an entirely differ…

> the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives.

Seriously? I've never seen it catch flak for being liberal. I've always tagged it as libertarian and off the spectrum.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#285

Post by d23 »

robomartin wrote: post #275
bilbo0s wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery?..." I think this is the issue in a nutshell. Partisanship. Even people who do not like the Demopublicans... are 'partisan'. I know it was probably not intended, but your post provides illustration of the issue by way of example. I'd wager you, like the average Democr…

Wrong. I voted for Obama the first time. Then, when I learned he had no clue, lied about everything, did not do as promised, plunged us into more debt, is a total union whore, etc, I voted for Romney. I am a true independent in the full sense of the word. To be fair, our system is based on political parties. If these were abolished and politicians had to run without party affiliation then one could vote outside clans…

> Wrong. I voted for Obama the first time. Then, when I learned he had no clue, lied about everything, did not do as promised, plunged us into more debt, is a total union whore, etc, I voted for Romney.

> I want an intellectually honest limited government that is fiscally conservative and socially, well, gets the fuck out of our lives.

So you voted for a guy who ran on a platform that was the opposite? That government has a positive role to play in peoples lives and believed in progressive social causes?

> I am a true independent in the full sense of the word.

Oh, in the sense that you're not informed? I believe the term is "low-information voter". You might want to try that instead of "independent".

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#286

Post by dclowd9901 »

Trufa wrote: post #87
robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

I am not American, so I am not an as immersed in your politics as many of you so take it with a grain of salt but this is my opinion. Obama is about the most dangerous thing that could have happened to your government. Why? In most of the world outside from the US, after Bush's second term, you simply couldn't defend him. My family tends to be very pro USA (blindly), but with Bush, it got to the point that it was not…

I'm not sure it's quite that simple. Democrats have traditionally been about large government and nanny-state policies. Something weird happened in the Bush leadership where we got the traditional conservative laissez-faire policy toward military and the private sector, but also large government/nanny-state policies indicative of Democrats.

The result was actually something coming very close to an outright fascism. I know that's one of those words people throw around a lot, but we were coming close to that definition with the level of power the federal government was wielding domestically, and how much power they also gave back to private sectors, doing things like prosecuting citizens criminally for tort offenses.

So, no, Bush !== Obama. Obama is actually playing right out of the traditional democrat handbook, but the world has changed, and the New Democrat (TM) is an individual that wants the social freedoms traditional progressives offered without the nanny-state. Obama's losing the NDs in droves.

Libertarians keep trying to Co-opt this group, but it's not going to happen. We have a two-party state, and it's statistically infeasible to have anything but. I'd rather morph the group that didn't seat Bush into what I want than try to bootstrap a whole new party. Party politics is far too entrenched in this country for anything else to happen.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#288

Post by wolfpackk »

robomartin wrote: post #278
chez17 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing more intellectually childish than saying "x isn't working in this case, therefore x never works and should be totally abandoned." I agree 100% that 99% of people don't care about politics enough and vote blindly. Look at the turn out rate for primaries and years where people aren't voting for president. Libertarians like you are all talk. There plenty of places in this world with no government but yo…

No government? Who said that? Where? We need a simple and limited government that remains out of our lives in nearly every imaginable way. Every human being on this planet is born free. We created these monstrous governmental systems that, effectively, enslave us in one way or another. I can't go for a swim in my local lake. My government will not allow it. I can easily swim 1500 meters or more. Swim every day. Yet,…

hop on the government paved roads to drive to a lake that you couldn't get arrested for trespassing on because the government has preserved it this long, then hop on the darpa/dod funded internet to complain that you can't go fucking swimming is the epitome of irony. Go fuck yourself.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#289

Post by loup-vaillant »

crusso wrote: post #208
loup-vaillant wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't reboot the system, rewrite it. Instead of a representative government most western countries suffer, switch to democracy. I mean, democracy . Where the people decide for their rules directly. Where real democratic processes such as random trials are used, instead elections which by nature are heavily influenced by a tiny elite. Where the constitution itself is not written by those who will later rule the countr…

The Democracy vs the representative Republicanism are irrelevant. What matters is that we have a massive unelected bureaucracy that is its own ulta-powerful branch of the government that sucks money and makes its own laws.

Well, actual democracy does start by writing a constitution¹ by mostly randomly selected people who will forbid themselves to exert any meaningful further influence on the system. That should address the bureaucracy problem.

[1]: I mean a constitution, not a set of super-laws such as the Bill of Rights. Something that state how political institutions should operate (Executive, legislative, judiciary, monetary, and the media).

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#290

Post by rdouble »

vijayr wrote: post #287

Ok, so is there any place/any country in the world that is balanced? not free for all/wild wild west where anyone can do anything (like parts of Africa) and not where the govt counts every breath it's citizens take? something in-between, a place more balanced?

Canada, according to Privacy International.
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