Quote:
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Originally Posted by leefields
nope, ...just me being as honest as most people wish they were....
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety
Ben Franklin did not have airplanes flying into buildings, did not have to worry about dirty bombs, did not have to worry about his family's throats getting cut, ....listen to my phone calls if they interest you, see what i am buying with my credit cards, read my spam email, ...just whatever you do....do whatever needs to be done to protect me, my family, and my country from the monsters that roam the earth.
quotes are always nice, ...the libertarians are repeating stuff like this constantly.
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Lee, honesty is OK with me. I'm not what many ultra-convservatives have painted as a cookie-cutter "liberal". Unfortunately the world is not as simple as most "conservatives" tend to see it either. I am a realist.
<soapbox on>
To paraphrase another saying: It's amazing how folks who hold the strongest opinions tend to have the least amount of knowledge on the subject.
Lee, I respect your right to your opinions as I expect you to respect the rights of all the folks here to theirs. I have to tell you I strongly disagree with them. The rhetoric is good, it sounds strong, and there's lots of flag-waving there, but the ideas themselves are fundamentally flawed, and the solutions you so passionately support are so simplistic that they just don't address the problem.
And you're right, there weren't airplanes flying into buildings in Ben Franklin's day. There WERE foreign troops (British in this case) being quartered (housed by force) in residents' homes. There were no protections against search and seizure by the Crown. Citizens were routinely seized and tortured as the local governor saw fit. There were many, many things going on that were as, if not more dangerous for the average citizen than what we see today. Franklin's quote is as current today as it was in his time.
Unfortunately, we have surrendered much of our individual freedom to protect our safety. When this country was founded, the Government was not responsible for the safety of any particular citizen. Frankly, both by law and by Court decision today, the Government still is not responsible for the safety of any particular citizen; but we are ALL responsible for the safety of the public. As a matter of fact the quote from the U.S. Supreme Court is "the government has no duty to protect any individual from criminals or madmen".
Most citizens today don't recognize that, and have delegated the care for their own safety to someone else; be that from street thugs or international terrorists. That concerns me. Government at all levels have gotten our citizens to believe "To Protect and Serve". Government can't protect ANYONE from ANYTHING! There are many parallels in history to our current situation, most notably the Roman Empire in the last couple of hundred years before their fall where the citizens expected the Legion to "protect" them. Didn't happen. Isn't happening today.
While dirty bombs, airliners AS bombs, and car bombs may be relatively new tactics, the ideas of spreading fear in individuals and groups through terrorism has been used since the dawn of recorded history. Check out the Inquisition. The Dark Ages. Sherman's March to the Sea. WWII. Unfortunately, history has showed time and again that rampant militarism is not a good tool against it, unless it's state-sponsored terrorism that extends to OTHER states. Internal state-sponsored terrorism can only be stopped by a civil war, and it must be started internally, it can't be imposed externally and be effective. Education, preparedness, and a people willing to act in concert on their own behalf for the good of all of them is what stops terrorism. U.S. history is filled with anecdotes of a local community dealing with a terror crisis.
On September 7, 1876 the citizens of Northfield MN responded to a terrorist incident and decimated the Jesse James gang. They could do that because the citizens who participated knew who the bad guys were 'cause they were strangers engaged in robbing the bank, and they were willing to take personal risk to deal with "their" problem.
The problem today with vigilantism is that it's not so clear who the good guys and bad guys are, or what steps should be taken to stop them. It used to be pretty clear when a thief stole a horse, or a bad guy robbed a bank. Not so anymore.
Two years ago I had a resident of Los Angeles in my town in Iowa and several other county seat towns all over the Midwest "buying" (stealing) Sony PlayStations from Wal-Mart in bulk probably using "supernote" counterfeit $100 bills printed in the Bekka Valley in Lebanon on an Itaglia press (same as our U.S. Mint uses, and the one presented to the Shah of Iran by Pres. Reagan years ago).
Investigation showed that the Playstations were being sold in South America at 2-3 times their retail value in the U.S. and apparently that the funds ($400 per machine, counterfeit $100 plus $300 from the sale) generated were going to support Hamas, a terrorist group that has allegedly killed more U.S. citizens abroad than any other group. Is he a terrorist? Should we kill him? Imprison him? What SHOULD the response be? It took us a couple of weeks to figure out what he was doing, and we were only able to connect the dots, we can't PROVE anything. What should we (law enforcement) have done next?
Many of the phishing scams you see and a high percentage of credit card fraud world-wide is now believed to be done by terrorist groups for funding. How do we go after them? Will stationing troops every 10 feet at the border stop them?
So, Lee, you see that the direction we need to take isn't so clear-cut. Organized religion has taken very good notes regarding organized crime's financial dealings. Terrorism is just a new name for religious radicals trying to promote their particular brand of politics/theocracy through violence with the knowledge that individual citizens allow themselves to be powerless.
And we have misguided political leadership who are applying band-aids to symptoms, but who aren't recognizing and dealing with the causal issues. Until we identify and address WHY these folks want to hurt us, all of the invasions, carpet bombing, and intelligence maneuvering in the world won't stop the problem. Remember, terrorism today isn't done for the purpose of one state overthrowing another, it's done with a religious zeal and aimed at an entire population of non-believers; wherever they may be in the world.
I agree that we need to address these issues. There are some of us out here though who recognize that many of the tactics used by T.R. Roosevelt and J.J. Pershing to try to secure our borders just aren't effective in dealing with these bandits any more.
<soapbox off>
Roger
p.s. Lee, I believe that this thread is healthy discourse and that Andy and the mods will allow it to continue as long as there is good discussion on ideas. It's perfectly legitimate to attack ideas; that's how we grow. I can't condone attacks on individuals, however. It's a sure way to get the thread shut down and removed.
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