Protecting Rights to Enable Terrorism
A law giving immunity to those that report suspicious activity related to terrorism was shot down by democrats. This is an example of a law that is appropriate in helping deal with terrorism while opening the possibility for abuse. It seems prudent that citizens have no fear of retribution for reporting suspicious behavior.
I suspect the reluctance on the democrats side is that it opens the door to discrimination without consequence. Given that most Al Qaeda operatives fit a couple of profiles, reducing the cost of vigilance towards those that match the profiles is prudent even if it means more hassle to this group. Increased hassle for some citizens seems more desirable than dead citizens.
Tinker with citizen rights to prevent death by terrorism and democrats have a stroke, but completely eliminate one of our constitutional rights to prevent civilian death with handguns and the democrats don’t just support the bill, hell, they sponsor it.
Related to the last point.
Freaking Hypocrites.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Just out of curiosity, how many people in america have been killed by terrorists since 9/11? How many rights are you willing to give up to prevent those deaths?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a thousand times: if we need guns to actually start shooting it out with the military, we’re already fucked. If we care about protecting ourselves against the government, we have to vigilantly guard against the government infringing on our civil liberties, especially those related to prosecution.
The easiest way to remove dissidents is not by shooting them (which just creates more dissidents), it’s by using a corrupt court system to lock them away forever.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:28 am
I’ll make a deal. I don’t claim that George Bush’s policies are the only reason we have not been attacked since 9\11 if you don’t down play the terrorist threat because Americans have not been killed by terrorists since 9/11.
I should note that a large portion of American causalities in Iraq has come from Al Qaeda terrorists.
Your second point is lost on me in terms of how it’s relevant to my post.
July 20th, 2007 at 11:12 am
It’s not hypocritical to think that undermining defendant’s rights in our court system is WAY MORE dangerous than limiting our right to own guns. In point of fact, I think it’s a very sensible position.
July 20th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Arguably that’s correct, but my example was not a defendant’s rights. It was data mining financial records.
On some level the outright removal of a constitutionally guaranteed right is always more dangerous then a slight concession to a right for a transitory period.
Liberals argue for the banning of one constitutional right to protect lives while at the same time they argue against the restriction of another right which intends to protect lives. Whether or not one views one right or the other as more important they are still a hypocrite.
The priest that argues one should refrain from homosexual sex because it not procreative is a hypocrite when he advocates for bestiality. His response that homosexual behavior is way more dangerous really doesn’t change the fact that he’s a hypocrite.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:08 am
?? Isn’t your example a law that would have protected witnesses from lawsuits related to their testimony in cases related to terrorism? That’s defendant’s rights.
I don’t think I agree with your second point just becase of how ammendments to the constitution work. Remember that prohibition was an ammendment to the constitution - the 18th ammendment- that made sale or transport of alchohol illegal. So I don’t think repealing that ammendement was too dangerous. The fact is, the Bill of Rights were just whatever the founders of this country felt was a good idea to get written down- they knew that it was neither complete nor perfect, which is why they left explicit mechanisms to change it. The nice thing about changing the constitution is that it’s huge and explicit: everyone knows what you’re doing, everyone will argue over it forever, it takes a large consensus to make changes, and so there’s very little room for secrecy and corruption. It’s tiny, hushed-up, rarely-invoked laws like this one which I think are a lot more dangerous- few people know about them or know what they imply, less civil outrage is generated because they only apply to a small number of people at any given time, etc. I know we’ll never have a constitutional ammendment that allows the military to abduct US citizens off the street and hold them without trial, but the way things have been going, I’m very nearly expecting an ammendement to a rider to a sub-clause of some homeland security bill which will alow exactly that.
Yeah the priest is a hypocrite if he only gives a single reason for his decisions, but liberals aren’t doing that. Any liberal that I care about will say that any decision we make should weigh the costs and benefits, and they’ll say that the benefits of gun control outweigh the costs, but the costs of removing defendant’s rights are too high in this case.
By your logic, any liberal in favor of gun control would be a hypocrite if they opposed outlawing electricity, because sometimes some people get electrocuted. It’s idiotic.