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Why Richard Stallman Was Right All Along
jrepin sends this excerpt from an opinion piece at OSNews:
"Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia — but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality."
Next thing you know there is a huge uproar and demands for the government to make sure nothing like it happens again.
Where? I don't remember anyone demanding that outside the government and media.
Because I can choose what corporations (or individuals, or used item venues, or barter events, etc.) I do business with (or not), and how much business to do if I decide to do business at all. I can't choose to do business with the government; they take my money by threat and coercion, they use it for things I would never stand behind, they make laws that force people to do things I would never have them forced to do, and in the end, they set the rules the corporations have to abide by -- and they have done so very poorly. So corporations are definitely quite a ways down the list of my concerns from a government operating well out of its authorized sphere. Getting government into constitutional compliance is far more important. Once there, it would be reasonable to revisit what the constitution allows, and perhaps make a few legitimate changes. Until then, I am not worried about Apple; I am really, really concerned about the federal and state governments.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The problem is there are lots of crazy people in the world, and we don't have enough time on this planet to refute every bit of nonsense they spew. Fallacies like the argument from authority or the ad hominem make for bad logical proofs, but they're necessary in day to day life.
I can't prove a square has five corners by insulting your mother, but if the wino on the street corner tells me the end is nigh, I'm not going to bother listening to his arguments. You shouldn't believe me if I say 2+2=5 just because I wave around a diploma, but every time you cross a bridge, you're trusting in the authority of those who built and checked it without bothering to check their work.
If Stallman comes across as a nutjob, no one will listen to him. And why should they? There are tons of nutjobs in the media, and you'd die of old age before you could listen to and analyze everything they had to say.
Some of what Ron Paul says seems to ignore the idea that the Constitution is not a Suicide Pact. For example, Paul may be right about the constitutionality of the Dept. of Energy, but he hasn't proposed a solution that can be rationally accepted. Just shutting the DOE down means there would be no federal oversight of nuclear weapons when they enter the repair and maintenance process, or of spent nuclear fuel. I too once took that oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and I'm damned pretty sure I meant it, than and now, but until Ron Paul can say at least say whether the DOE plants at Yucca Flats, Oak Ridge, and others should be under control of the Fed through some agency (DOE, DOE, or other), or of various state governments, or what his shut down plan is, he hasn't really said anything. I remember classes on how Posse Comitatus itself is a Constitution derived principle which limits the military itself controlling the nuclear arsenal when it's on US soil, off military posts, and I can only wish Dr. Paul would address whether, and just how, he intends to abide by that interpretation as well, because that seems to imply the possibility the guy really plans to abandon control of operational multi-megaton devices. Now, as a loyal Tennessean, if Ron Paul wants the governor to have full control over the disposition of all nuclear weapons currently in state (including any Russian ones Oak Ridge is probably dismantling right now), I guess that's all right, but I'd think come football season Alabama and Georgia might be a trifle nervous about just what the "Vol Defense" now encompasses.
Please understand, Hellbombs get dirtier and dirtier inside just sitting on the shelf. There is not unlimited time to take "Shut down the DOE" from an idea to an actual plan, unless you don't mind putting human workers lives at a vastly increased and essentially unnecessary risk.Even the likely delay from a mere couple of years spent actually debating a plan in congress poses a very real health risk to hundreds of DOE contractor employees. And if your interpretation of the Constitution is that it puts some form of nuclear release authority in the hands of Bill Haslam, well, I'm not sure he even wants it. In fact, I kinda hope he doesn't. By the way, for those of you in states with Democratic governors, Bill's a staunch Republican, and no, most of your states don't have nukes in them. Lest you think I'm exaggerating, well, yes I am, a bit, but I'd point out that ambiguities in the control of the Ex-Soviet nuclear arsenal did occur on just this basis, and the result, according to the CIA for one source, was supposedly that some devices came close to falling into the hands, not just of oddly behaving leaders of some break-away republics, but of actual known terrorist organizations. One of the reasons the US has spent over a decade cleaning up really hot, nastily contaminated Soviet era devices is a period of less than a single year's delay in the ongoing process of maintenance in the collapsing USSR. Do you think we'd do better, with the sort of congress we have now?
Who is John Cabal?