Letters to the Editor
cabdriver
Published Letters: 594 Editor's Choice: 8
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Fantasy vs. Reality
[Read the article: Suing George W. Bush: A bizarre and troubling tale]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Show me a world where the government is always right, warrantless wiretaps and searches are never misused, the detained are always guilty, and torture is always used only as a last resort to save a city moments from destruction (or "the kidnapped blond daughter of a U.S. diplomat", the example used by Dan Mitrione in Langguth's book Hidden Terrors)- and I'll show you someone's imagination slumming with cheap movie plots. Castles made of words.
Fantasy- and for most ordinary Americans laying that game in their minds, always ending with the Triumph of Truth, Justice, and Public Safety, in undoubted accord with one's self-image as a morally upright person. An honorable person.
Reality: in Argentina in the late 1970s, in apparent agreement with the sentiments of people like "kufir77", the counter-terrorist policies of the government dispensed with rules of evidence, habeus corpus and trials in favor of rule by decree, and detention at the whim of "deputized agents" of the government.
After a few years, the "deputized agents" of the government were pulling teenage girls off the street and bundling them into unmarked cars.
But you know: it took years for it to get that bad.
And hey, even then-
most of the people living in Argentina never were targeted by the authorities, were they? As a percentage of the total population, only a very few were sent to the detention centers, or executed, right? Everyday life didn't stop for most ordinary Soviet citizens, did it?
Same as here- right?
Come on- aren't the problems of living in a police state sort of, you know, understimated? You aren't a terrorist, you'll be fine- as long as you don't belong to the wrong religion, or have the wrong facial features, or wear the wrong clothes, or have the wrong accent. Can't be too safe, after all. And that reward of continued safety justifies, in turn. the rest of the clauses implicit in an efficiently operating security state: as long as you don't live on some property that a local "deputized agent" would like to have a shot at owning. As long as you aren't a business rival against someone with deeper political connections. As long as you aren't interested in the same woman as the local homeland security official. As long as you keep your mouth shut about things- including, perhaps, what happened to your daughter, on her way home from school the other day.
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Another legal question...
[Read the article: Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize warrantless eavesdropping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Does the concept of double jeopardy apply to civil suits, or is it possible for the telecom civil suit immunity provision to be overturned via a later re-visiting of the issue in Congress?
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Derbig Mooser: you and your logical consistency...
[Read the article: Today's coverup of surveillance crimes and Barack Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I'm so confused!
I don't understand how privacy and the Fourth Ammendment came to be the province of "the Left". I thought a socialist, or God Forbid, Communist society is a complete surveillance society? How the hell did privacy come to be a concern of "the Left"?
And don't please don't get me started on "progressive"! Did somebody ask the Republicans what the absolute worst way to characterise ourselves could be, and then adopt it?
It's very confusing. I think you will find that "privacy" is not progressive. Well, it's about as "progressive" as it is "left"." --Derbig Mooser
Exactly.
And then the Beltway Dems somehow feel compelled to echo the ideological framing language of the Republicans:
""that Dem crap about the "left" is getting really old" --Publican
Yep.