It's naive to think that banning feds will keep them away.
I don't believe the point is to keep them away. I think the point is to publically send them a message. It's a political statement more than an effective way to ban anyone.
Polls show that most people think Snowden was a criminal, and that the NSA is keeping us safe.
It's all too easy to manipulate polling results. There are plenty of subtle ways of doing it. I would rather think something like that is going on and apply all the usual "qui bono?" scrutiny to who conducted the polls and who paid for it and what the methodology was. I would rather think that because if so many Americans really are that naive, then the nation is forfeit and it's only a matter of time before it becomes a totalitarian state of some kind.
Or perhaps it will take an asteroid hurdling towards Earth for you to side with "the feds" and work together on a solution?
It is rather difficult to trust a group of people with a long history of lies, abuses, manipulation, and little or no accountability. This is one of those hard facts that doesn't just go away. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to restore broken trust, especially when it has been repeatedly broken with little or no consequence to the perpetrators.
Right now our government doesn't seem interested in regaining the trust and confidence of the citizens. They'd rather watch every move and outright spy on the people, becoming more and more intrusive, in order to justify this paranoia of theirs that more of their misdeeds might become known. It never seems to occur to them to look in the mirror if they want to find the source of the problem. They don't seem to think that maybe, just maybe, actual respect for the lives, privacy, and freedom of the citizens they're supposed to be serving is a better solution.
If some doomsday asteroid were coming our way, these people would likely retreat to some kind of well-stocked underground "continuity of government" bunker than lift a finger to help us.
It is great to say consenting adults should be a allowed to take drugs (somewhere in the beginning of this thread), but the people affected by using hard drugs, alcohol abuse or texting while driving hardly were consenting. In general others will always be affected by it so as a rule of thumb many actions will fail the status of consenting. So "consenting adults" is a very hypothetical concept that is meaningless in daily life. Well. Maybe not totally. There is the law and by law we consent to that. As for "land of the free". The rest of the world did not consent to the consequences of that fiction either.
If you use a "hard drug" and become addicted to it and can afford your habit, that's your problem. If you have to steal to support your habit, you should be tried and convicted for theft, not for possessing the drug. If you use a drug and get behind the wheel of a car and are measurably impaired in your ability to drive that car, you should be tried and convicted for driving while under the influence, not for possessing a drug.
Theft and endangering random strangers are actual crimes with actual victims. Having something in your pocket that other people disapprove of is not a crime and has no victim. That is the meaning. Your claim that it is "meaningless" is demonstrably false.
If you are hostile to this idea and are simply unwilling to consider its merits, that's fine but I would appreciate if you were more honest about it. I would like to think I am perfectly objective all of the time but I know it cannot be so. I probably have topics I'm not completely reasonable about myself. I think it's important to be able to admit that; otherwise there is no hope of objectivity.
Now then, I believe my ideas about this are reasonable and able to stand on their own merits. They make sense: if you can be responsible and handle the consequences of your decisions, you get to do what you like -- if you cannot, society punishes you for victimizing others by failing to be responsible, not for some Puritannical disdain for the particular manner in which you failed. That's in isolation. When you compare this against the current War on Drugs that obviously fails to stop drug use (for this reason alone it should be ended), it's better still. We would have a healthier society by not continuing to conduct expensive Constitution-shredding campaigns (WoD has all but destroyed the 4th amendment because it's unenforcable otherwise) that are obviously not working.
polygamy is detrimental to society. Don't think so? Give all the rich, mostly men, fifteen wives each, lower the amount of available wives for the poor, and see how they respond. I would guess it would be messy. And violent.
That means the gold-diggers (legal prostitutes) who don't have the first clue what love really is are the first to become unavailable. That would be a favor to those who aren't filthy rich.
There may be reasons to envy rich people, but this isn't one of them.
As consenting adult you're simply not free to do whatever you want.
"Consenting adults" means "no one who did not consent prior to the activity was affected by it". Missing that second part fails the status of "consenting". I didn't view the Youtube video. However, if said "zombie" threatened, menaced, harmed, defrauded, or stole from anyone in any way, that also fails the status of "consenting".
If it is not in any way made to be your problem, on what grounds would you stop someone from doing something? Either we're a free people or we're a bunch of hypocrites who would do well to stop celebrating the "land of the free".
Okay, I'm sorry.
What you just did takes a real man or a real woman to do.
No one cares. No one ever cared. It is the `Civil War', not the `War of Northern Aggression', and it will remain so forever. The North won. Get over it.
When writing that, did you ever stop and think it was odd that I never used the term "Northern Aggression?" I'm certianly capable of typing it out had I intended to use it.
This is like people referring to the republic of the USA as a "democracy" when it was specifically designed not to be a democracy. It's inaccurate. It's wrong. It perpetuates ignorance to continue calling it that.
Your emotional reaction about which side you think I'm on has nothing to do with it and indicates you need to relax and perhaps grow up.
That leaders who certainly know the same thing can stand there before the nation and say things like "they hate us for our freedoms" with a straight face is a level of cold-blooded that most people could never imagine.
By the greatest of irony, "they hate us for our freedoms" is exactly correct.
The puzzle is how Americans ever imagined freedoms were theirs and no-one else's.
Most Americans simply aren't informed about any of this. They'd be horrified to know what has been committed in the name of the USA.
The real puzzle is why football and American Idol is so much more important to them.
That's why I'm a progressive. The America that the conservatives want never existed. But, the America that the progressives want at least is theoretically possible to some degree.
Yeah, but we already HAD the Soviet Union, and it was worse. Why would you ever want it?
Because they've been sold this crazy idea that by destroying the middle class, you will somehow elevate the poor. The problem is, the middle class is the backbone of the economy. Without a functioning economy, people get desperate and rule of law is the first thing you lose. Hypothetically speaking, you just might find out that the "1%" you thought you were sticking it to are the ones with supplies, guns, guards, and contingency plans.
If you really want to stick it to the 1%, stop believing the horse-shit lies and understand that no one with power is ever to be trusted, and that anyone who can afford to launch a multi-million dollar media campaign is doing it because they know what you want to hear and they benefit by having you believe it.
I know everyone wants to believe that their favorite guy is the sole exception and it's all the others who are corrupt liars. That's called divide-and-conquer.
And the war was a civil war. The enemy was Us, or related to Us by blood. Not so today.
It wasn't exactly a civil war. A civil war is when two or more factions are fighting to control the same government.
The Confederacy was a separate nation. The American "Civil War" was a fight between two sovereign nations. It wasn't actually a civil war. But it did have all the horror of a civil war, especially family members fighting and killing other family members.
Unfortunately, it isn't quite that simple. We (the U.S.) left Afghanistan alone until they were invaded by the Soviet Union. Then we gave them weapons which would help them to get their country back. We they did, we left them alone to sort out the aftermath for themselves.
Afghanistan is the perfect choice for an indefinite perpetual war. Look at the history. No one, and I mean no one, has ever been able to conquer those people. The Afghans simply will not surrender and it's impossible to annihilate them short of nuclear weapons. The Soviets couldn't do it and the USA couldn't do it. They have lots of experience at wearing down superior opponents.
It's the perfect choice for a controlled war that doesn't touch your own home soil and lasts as long as you need to pass whatever legislation you want. After all, "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia".
1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.
