People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.
– Ben Franklin
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within”
– Will Durant
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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Why didn’t you post stuff like this when the “patriot act” or military commissions act was being passed or when the NSA was spying on internet traffic in an AT&T data center in san francisco?
Maybe because this blog is only three years old?
Pathetic excuse. We all blame you, as a matter of course. After all, it’s not our fault…
“The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”
-Gator
Hey Gator, yes, I agree that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” but that phrase is actually very ambiguous. Because I do not know in which sense you meant it, let me not try to make any assumptions about you, but rather tell a story about a friend of mine.
My friend Terry used to say the same thing, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally realized that what he really meant was just the opposite. Torture? Terry was all in favor of torturing prisoners in the attempt to get actionable information. Of course the Constitution forbids torture, but since, (according to Terry), “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” Terry thought that the President or Congress could legally authorize torture if they thought it desirable. Same with no-warrant wiretaps, no habias corpus, holding without trial, etc. Each of these things is expressly forbidden by the Constitution, but to Terry they were acceptable because “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” What it came down to is that even though Terry was a VERY strong self-proclaimed patriot and defender of the Constitution, when it came down to it, he didn’t REALLY believe in the principles of individual rights, of limited government. He didn’t REALLY believe that the Constitution worked or was worth defending. Any time some danger came up, he thought that the only smart thing to do was to violate what the Constitution said. After all, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” I was always amazed at how he would tell me that he had fought to “defend our freedom” and then turn around in the very next sentence and tell me how we needed to torture or spy on people who had not been convicted of any crime.
Me? I agreed that “the Constitution is NOT a suicide pact”. Heck, it is not a suicide pact because it works. The Bill of Rights works. Habias corpus works. Are we occasionally place in some temporary danger because we recognize individual rights? Of course we are — but the dangers are microscopic compared to the dangers of allowing politicians and bureaucrats the power to torture, to spy and kill, all at their own discretion and without legal oversight. The Constitution works (or would if it were followed) and that is why it is not a suicide pact.
Still, whenever I hear that phase I always wonder whether the speaker means it like I do, or like my friend Terry does.
It’s very simple, rights are for citizens. Period.
See, the problem is that one can always construct a suitable strawman to tear down and thereby defeat any argument. Your example, while noble is still such an example. But you really shouldn’t fret much since the dumb American public lead by evil lawyers has already swung the pendulum strongly back into your favored direction.
As Gator mentioned, were the Constitution limited to USA citizens very few issues would arise. As it is the Constitution has been stretched as thin and fragile as flypaper to cover the entire planet, thus the tears we see.
None of the things you mentioned, “allowing politicians and bureaucrats the power to torture, to spy and kill, all at their own discretion and without legal oversight” were perpetrated on the American people under the excuse of “The Constitution is not a Suicide Pact”. All the spying without legal oversight (in USA) was accomplished through the ballot box by sheeple electing their local slimey politicians because they promised to give them something. All the killing of American citizens has been accomplished by the sheeple tolerating a domestic police force promising to protect them from some fashionable or politically correct evil.
The point of the “The Constitution is not a Suicide Pact” argument is for those extreme scenarios like torturing the ENEMY for realtime intel, in short, people never covered by it in the first place. When that phrase is trotted out to interfere with these limited Constitutional functions it is wrong. Similarly when that phrase is used to excuse the responsibility for the sad state of affairs in the USA it is also wrong because it had nothing to do with it.
One famous hypothetical was in the movie ‘Failsafe’ where Henry Fonda sentenced NYC to death (okay, I’ll admit it would not be a great loss today) in exchange for the accidental nuking of Moscow. There were multiple levels of complexity, like the legality of shooting down American planes to stop the Russian bombing. The Hollywood point was the Communist sympathizing with “the needs of the many outweigh the few” argument, painting Fonda as brave for first helping shoot down his bombers and finally nuking NYC including his visiting wife.
I would take the hardline on this one. If the President nuked an American city he should be impeached, tried and executed. The better solution is apologize for Moscow but draw the line at nuking NYC and warn them not to attack because we will defeat them. This makes the case for why a perfected military with strong intelligence is necessary so that if you find yourself in that scenario you have more options than just surrendering NYC. That thought process never crosses the minds of the surrender-happy leftist scum, hence they are so dangerous as they always get us into such predicaments in the first place.
Also see every episode of “24” for further exploration of this matter!
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within”
– Will Durant
Exactly. Or as John Adams put it, “There are two ways to conquer a nation. One is by war. The other is by debt.”
With the inception of the FED in 1913, our nation was turned over wholesale small coterie of global thieves.