Damn. How'd you know about my malevolent intentions? First I'll get the government to stop spying on innocent people. Next, something unknown will happen. Finally, I'll be the world's dictator.

Since you probably won't understand unless I say it (again)... what I'm saying is very simple: We should make every effort to not spy on innocent foreigners. Period. The end. It's as easy as not spying on people, which only necessitates that we do nothing in most cases unless there's evidence that they are, in fact, enemies. It's amazing how many people find this so difficult to comprehend. Maybe their xenophobia is getting the better of them.

False dichotomy.

And you?

Yes, because blatant violations of the constitution and people's individual liberties are "petty." You've revealed yourself as the freedom hater that you are.

And again, your bullshit logic of "The past was worse, so stop complaining about the present!" is just that: bullshit. If a problem exists (which it does), it needs to be dealt with.

The mass violation of the constitution and our individual liberties prove you wrong, you worthless scumbag.

TSA: A violation of the fourth amendment.
Patriot Act: Again, mostly the fourth amendment.
Free speech zones: Blatant violation of the first.
NSA: Again, the fourth.

If you honestly believe that the TSA is merely an "inconvenience," then, again, you are a freedom-hating scumbag. It's a blatant violation of the fourth amendment and people's privacy. There's nothing you can do or link to that will justify having the government in airports searching everyone and forcing them through scanners. Not a single thing. Give up, you worthless authoritarian fuck.

Saying "They did similar things in the past!" doesn't change what these things are: Blatant violations of people's constitutional liberties; violations of the spirit of the constitution. No violation of the highest law of the land is petty; it should always be a huge concern to anyone who wants to live in a free country.

And the fact of the matter is, the type of spying (mass spying on people's communications without valid warrants or anything) the NSA is doing would have been explicitly prohibited had it been used against the founding fathers, like many other things were. So, it's a blatant of the constitution because it so obviously violates its spirit. But even if it didn't (Which it certainly does.), it wouldn't be anything that a truly free country would let happen, as it's an egregious violation of people's fundamental liberties.

Anyway, you've made it abundantly clear that you don't want to live in a free country, and you'll tolerate the government having massive, exploitable powers even though governments throughout history have murdered hundreds of millions of people - including some at the hands of the US government. To call any of these issues petty or to say they're not rights violations is to misunderstand freedom and ignorantly admit that you believe the government is full of perfect little angels who could never abuse anyone or make mistakes, which is something history has disproved many millions of times over. Or maybe you just want a police state to make yourself free safe. Either way, have you thought of moving to North Korea?

You're a freedom-hating scumbag; you've made that clear. Move to North Korea, scum, as you clearly don't want to live in "the land of the free."

I don't, and nor am I historically ignorant. This guy is an idiot; I never said I liked him.

When you only let in select people based on arbitrary standards, then you're going to end up with career politicians without principles; that's the status quo.

The economy and power matter far less to me than freedom. I have to commend them on their excellent ability to start pointless wars, though.

You have no idea who I vote for, fool. I don't vote for either Republicans or Democrats, because they're worthless scumbags. I vote on principle. I vote for third party candidates who don't want to violate the constitution or our fundamental liberties.

No, you get some perspective. I can name of dozens of serious constitutional and rights violations occurring at this very minute. If what you care about is the economy and bullying other countries with military might, then you are shallow.

"The land of the free and the home of the brave" values freedom above all else. The fact that we're supposedly 'freer' than before is irrelevant, because the logic of "X is better than Y, so X is good!" is nonsensical; better != good, and our situation is still far from good.

The government is very effective at infringing upon our individual liberties. Instead of oppressing select groups, they're now mainly trying to oppress everyone. Freedom, to me, means that the government isn't violating our fundamental liberties and the constitution. The political elite are doing just that right now. I think displacing them would be helpful, but not with people like this guy.

The reason we have things like the TSA, the Patriot Act, free speech zones, the NSA's spying, etc. is because we don't have enough people who stick to their principles. If having such people means gridlock, then I'm willing to make that 'sacrifice', and since freedom is what is important, you'd be a fool not to do the same.

Regardless of whether private gun ownership is a good idea, every country in the world has a corrupt government in some form. European governments are no exception, and all kinds of rights violations happen there, just like in the US.

Speaking of which, many people who are extremely 'protective' of the 2nd amendment seem to not care all that much about the other amendments. I can't count how many times I've seen 2nd amendment supporters come out in favor of things like the NSA's mass surveillance. Anti-gun nuts do it too, of course, but it's just seemingly more of an eyesore when people pretend they care about liberty but then support policies that take us in the opposite direction.

Most people vote mindlessly for a certain candidate that's part of a certain party. They have no actual strategy, and are incapable of formulating one. I do not see this changing.

Hell, you could almost choose a voting system at random and it would almost certainly be better than ours.

We've already seen that all it produces is a bunch of scumbags who want to violate the constitution and people's fundamental liberties.

Also, wishing for an elite ruling class doesn't seem very principled to me.

Good. As we've seen, all the government wants to do is infringe upon our rights (TSA, NSA, free speech zones, protest permits, constitution-free zones, stop-and-frisk, etc.). That would not be a disaster.

What we have right now is a system that encourages the violation of our individual liberties, or 'compromises' them away; I'd rather have gridlock.

Governments have legal authority, massive resources, and secrecy. They're much more competent at ruining lives.

So you've acknowledged that there is a difference. But the risk also goes up when the people in question have the power and capabilities of government, and it's far from just blackmail you have to worry about.

Not wanting to increase the risk is very rational.

Right, and I'm sure you're a hermit who doesn't use any sort of technology like the Internet. Or are you under the delusion that the government only goes after the Bad Guys, and would never harass people who mistakenly think they have nothing to hide?

Right, so let's just have nothing at all. Let's get rid of laws that prohibit murder, too, as people still murder others even when they exist. And the only purpose of laws is to prevent things before they happen.

There's really no end to the people who will attempt to downplay the egregious violations of the constitution and people's individual liberties, and mock people who are trying to stop it.

As much as is feasible, anyway. Not conducting mass surveillance on innocent people or spying on random people is quite simple.

That's what you've decided the purpose of government is. That's the status quo. But that doesn't make it right, and we should strive for something better.

You're comparing a phone companies with the government; that's ridiculous. The government has much more power to ruin people's lives and oppress its people. This has been demonstrated by the hundreds of millions of times that people were abused and/or murdered throughout history by governments. To say otherwise is to admit you're ignorant. But you've already done that when you compared the phone companies to the government.

Also, just because you hand your information to one company, doesn't mean you want to hand it to every single entity on the fucking planet. If you really believe that these organizations have some chance of blackmailing you, then handing the information out to even more people would increase those chances. I can't imagine that you're really this unintelligent, so I'll assume you're just a troll; it makes me feel better about humanity.

There should be laws against individuals in the phone company prying into information they shouldn't have (i.e. randomly looking at call data), too.

This policy violates the highest law of the land in the US, and people's individual rights. I don't know why you're comparing companies to governments, and I don't know why you're downplaying an issue that so many civil rights organizations are saying is dangerous. At any rate, I think you might want to read a bit of history to clear up your profound ignorance.

Yeah, but it sure is a lot easier for the government to oppress its targets when it can collect tons of their communications data, and potentially use it to destroy reputations, harass people based on misinterpretations of the data, or prosecute them based on unjust laws they may have broken. It can even use the data to *find* targets.

Anyone who trusts the government with this is a god damn fool of the highest caliber.

That does not seem to be the case, as just about everyone is being spied on. They're simply sapping up tons of data.

The real threats to "the land of the free" are the people in the government who are traitors to the principles this country is supposed to aspire to.

That wouldn't work as well for a constitutional republic. You can't be that blatant until the country is almost a full-blown police state.

Oh... you're a partisan hack. I should've known.