Relevant...
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. " Ben Franklin
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." James Madison
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." Thomas Jefferson
The Patriot Act has been renewed. It was supposed to be only temporary while we fought terrorists after 9-11-01. It has been renewed for 10 years.
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." James Madison
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." Thomas Jefferson
The Patriot Act has been renewed. It was supposed to be only temporary while we fought terrorists after 9-11-01. It has been renewed for 10 years.
posted by Oscar at 2:23 AM
12 Comments:
I am so sad.
As much as i dislike the patriot act and dislike the liberties that it removes. I have to say if it was enstated tempoaraly to fight terrorists then it makes sense that it still is in place b/c we are still in fact fighting terrorists.. The problem is that people don't SEE when a particular piece of legislation like this WORKS you only see that well...nothin is happening here so why do we still have it in place?? Again there is no certanty in this argument but do you think that mabe just mabe there is a possibility that we havent been attacked the way that London has in the past days has anything to do with the measures we took to prevent them?? don't you think that having the government know about what you read at the library or read online is worth the spared lives?? I gotta say I'm in middle ground when it comes to things like this, as we all know, but being in a large city like chicago and taking the train downtown gives me a whole different prespective on the whole thing. it's easy to disregard something that affects you when you haven't FELT what it's protecting you from. I love freedom but I also love having the security and piece of mind to be able to enact that freedom. One thing i hate about going out in mexico is that yes you have the fredom to be out as long as you like and drinking and having fun but dosen't the fun stop when you can't go to a bar or anywhere too late because of the drug problems we are having there?? i have freedom but not enough security to enact it as entirly as i would like.
no argument on the terrorism thing but i said terrorist. We have to one way or another make these people understand that killing random civilians is not a tactic we will succumb to. think the kind of widespread mayhem that would ensue if people all of a sudden realized. "if we randomly kill civilian people we can convince governments to do as we wish"
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I don’t know how to feel about this, I am kind of leaning toward not liking the whole permanence of it; but I am semi-ok with it being temporary. What eases my mind is this, I don’t plan nor do I want to do anything that would require the govt. to come after me so what is the problem? If they know what books I checked out. Until the law changes to Guilty until proven Innocent, which if I am correct hasn’t changed. I feel that I have nothing to fear.
To Neto,
Legislators have been passing “things” (Laws, Acts, Provisions etc… and w/e) for many years. The fear that Legislators will continue to pass all sorts of “things” to me means they are doing there jobs. Any who, in your case you are worried so lets expand on that. First I will assume you mean bad “things” or why else would you be worried. Secondly we must then make another leap and assume the definition of bad. Which takes us back to Checo’s point, to him he feels safer with it, and you get worried. So who is to say who is right and who is wrong, the legislators? If so they clearly want the patriot act b/c it was passed (257 to 171) “Man is an intellectual giant but a moral dwarf.” Idjave Edewor This brings me to my point. The world of politics has been confronting dilemmas, conflicts, debates, disagreements for years and will continue to for years to come. In other words this thing we call Democracy has been used for many years. It may not be perfect; but it’s the best we have. If Democracy is not the solution what is?
Well the definition of "bad things" is anything that is againt the constitution, specifically, the bill of rights. The constitution is what this country was founded on. Its what the country is about. Its why I like that I was born in it. The founders were escaping religious and political persecution so they wrote it into their idea for the country that there would be none of that. They weren't drug dealers who built loopholes in the constitution so that they could get away with it. They were building roadblocks to abuse of power. Because they knew "absolute power corrupts absolutely". The Patriot Act goes against the 4th amendment. The part of the bill of rights that says that they can not look into my person without probable cause. The Patriot act allows them to look into me without having probable cause.
CHECO:
You are going to have to be clearer with what you mean by terorist. Since I take it a terorist is anyone who uses terrorism. And like I said terorism is never going to go away. I don't believe extremists are ever going to go away either. So realy we are fighting a war we can't win. Worse than the war on drugs.
so we should say fuck it let them do it. We won't try to find them. hell what for they will always be there.
My definition of terrorist is the same as that in www.dictionary.com defined as "One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism"
i don't believe that extremists will ever dissapear either but that dosen't mean that they should go around killing people.
and if you want to define "bad things" as being actions that go against the constitution how about
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, ESTABLISH JUSTICE, INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
You can see in the preamble to the constitution the very first lines state that the purpose of the constitution is to offer JUSTICE and DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY before it even mentions liberty.
I dunno about you but i have more domestic tranquility knowing "nobody is going to blow me up and there are people that know what things i read" than if "nobody knows what i read but there are people who can blow me up"
It all comes down to what are you willing to give up to have some more of something else, in this case we are giving up a bit of freedom to feel safer. Now I'm not saying i want the thing to be permanent but at least until things cool of a bit.
You can't have it all in this life, it just is not possible, in most cases if your lucky you get a chance to compromise.
What happens if at some point, we face another attack and that the Patriot Act has been in continued use for a while.
What are our options then?
Do we all remember that there was a military report given to the president about a planned attack on our country before September 11th? I thought that would have been enough information, BEFORE THE PATRIOT ACT, to protect our country.
Apparently it wasn't.
I would like to believe that the Patriot Act could perhaps keep us safer. I don't believe it will though. With the huge amount of citizens America has, checking everybodies' library books, emails, blogs, and phone calls, won't stop a terrorist.
As for standing up to terrorists.
You are right Checo, we should not show them that we are afraid of their attacks. How do we do that, though. I , like you, do not know. President Bush appeared on television saying we would not succumb to attacks like these. I'm pretty sure the terrorists don't give a crap about what Bush says. They know the attacks scare the people. They know death works. They know fear works. Because Bush tells them it doesn't won't make them stop.
As a signal to the government, I think we should continue to protest the Patriot Act for 10 YEARS!. Temporarily is over, they never thought of it that way. They know War on Terrorism is bull. They should've never named it that. Who's ever fault that was, its too late, we must show the government that although they are trying to protect, and they've done well since sept. 11th, they will not be able to use a never ending War to take away our freedoms.
I didn't say we should let them do anything. I am simply pointing out the fact that saying that these limits to our freedoms are temporary while we get rid of terrorism is naive. They will never cool. Especially if we start taking attacks on foreign countries into consideration as if they were our own.
As far as security goes, it is amazing how President Bush gave a speech today that said we wouldn't let any attacks make us afraid yet we are afraid enough to give up our freedoms. I don't feel any safer without them. I still think someone out there might blow me up.
As for the constitution, I don't believe they believed that security was more important than liberty.Remember that the reason the country was founded was because England had become tyrannical and not because they believed England was failing to protect them. So therefore, I believe to them they were at least equally important.
And finally I guess what I am willing to settle for is a guarantee that this will end. Remember that once a government gets used to power they are unwilling to give it up. It was renewed for another 10 years and I am pressed to believe that anything will ever "cool off".
werent the "sons of liberty," who were some of the major founding fathers of this country considered terrorists... so that is to say that this country was founded on terrorism...
werent the "sons of liberty," who were some of the major founding fathers of this country considered terrorists... so that is to say that this country was founded on terrorism...:-P
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