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TSA 'Secured' Metrodome During Recent Football Game
McGruber writes "Travel writer Christopher Elliott touches down with the news that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration was spotted standing around outside a recent American football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers (picture). According to Mr. Elliott, the 'TSA goes to NFL games and political conventions and all kinds of places that have little or nothing to do with ... travel. It even has a special division called VIPR — an unfortunate acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response team — that conducts these searches.' He continues, 'As far as I can tell, TSA is just asking questions at this point. "Data and results collected through the Highway BASE program will inform TSA's policy and program initiatives and allow TSA to provide focused resources and tools to enhance the overall security posture within the surface transportation community," it says in the filing. But they wouldn't be wasting our money asking such questions unless they planned to aggressively expand VIPR at some point in the near future. And that means TSA agents at NFL games, in subways and at the port won't be the exception anymore — they will be the rule.'"
Why not just get it over with and change your flag to the swastika, we all know that's where this is heading.
LOL! American Freedom!
It won't be long before there is a TSA agent posted at every home, to interview its occupants before they are allowed to leave.
Not far off.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's time for the US to get rid of the TSA, which has caught no terrorists, foiled no plots, cost millions, irradiated thousands with backscatter x-ray scanners, has stolen quite a few personal items and is actively trying to expand its sphere of influence.
Replace it with common sense and profile people. That's how airprort security works, not by wasting millions of dollars.
My biggest problem is that the TSA has not caught a single terrorist yet.
Everything they do and all the money they spend has accomplished NOTHING except to harass regular people.
You're looking for spending cuts to balance tax increases? I think I just found one!
You provide little actual security within your primary area of focus. Confinscating water bottles, nail clippers, groping little boys and girls, strip-searching people and putting unsolicited fingers on and in their privates, and using technology that your own people are now developing cancer from being near. You talk about terrorist threats, but how many terrorists have gotten away with irradiating our citizens? How many terrorists have stolen millions in camcorders, cell phones, and other electronics? How many terrorists have smuggled drugs onto commercial airlines? And the real kicker: Compared to those numbers, how many TSA agents have been caught doing the same?
You bring a level of institutional incompetence to the show that makes the current fiscal cliff negotiations look like someone forgetting to give the change back after buying a candy bar... you're overpriced, underwhelming, and frankly... the "cure" you provide is worse than the disease. And the only reason the TSA hasn't been drop-kicked out the door is because the media keeps people in perpetual ignorance of just how incompetent you guys truly are.
So when you come into my town and say "this will be the norm", I can't help but wonder how long until nobody flies, goes to public events, or even leaves their fucking house-- not because of terrorists, but because of the inconvenience of having to deal with your bullshit. Your organization is incompetent and useless. Go away.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Loyalty oaths should be required throughout the day. You should have to sign one to go to the shops or eat at a restaurant.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Just what the US citizenry needs -- a Red White and Blue equivalent of the good ol' Nazi Brown Shirts.
I'm feeling safer already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
I thought the security craze in all its blazing public visibility was limited to the UK and a few other European countries ( especially the Netherlands ). The Control State, AAMOF, looks more and more like a "soft" version of a police state. See the Nanny State in GB and NL. But upon reading this, I begin to think that the USA, too, will succomb to this ligth-chocolate-brown dictatorial regime.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
This kind of reminds me Half-life 2 where the L.E. to civilian population ratio is something like 50%.
If that's the direction we're heading , I wonder who'll be left to grow food, build houses, make furniture... Who'll take care of the monster once the monster has gotten rid of it's "foes".
Nothing is enough for whom enough is too little - Confucius
That's fine because voting is the same as not voting at all too.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
skytrain has the free airport zone that makes gates harder to do (you have to pay to get out of the airport area but in it it's free)
With gates people can just get on and have no paper to show other then a card that will need to be swiped by the cops.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/officials-fear-terrorists-body-bombs-us-bound-planes/story?id=16245827#.UOiuQHduKSo
just wait for a full body cavity searchs be for flying now this can be be bound that. But a bomb / dugs up someones butt can happen.
To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
The question is obvious. During a routine search at a sports event one of the TSA agents finds cannabis on your person? Of course at an airport they would contact law enforcement (happens all the time). Would they turn you over to the local authorities, who would give you back your legal weed. Or would you be turned over to the FBI?
Hyperbole aside, an expansion of the activities of this unpopular and relatively incompetent agency is unsettling to say the least. Most Americans would like them to disappear,. Not multiply. Feh!
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
In shocked discovery, the subject now concretely understands that there are serious people who really go around building their lives around his activities--stopping him, correcting him, devoted to him. They keep records on the course of his life, even develop theories on how he got that way.
David Matza
Given any significant and expanding budget, government agencies will suffer mission creep, with various agencies overlapping services and getting in each others way, while taxpayers pay three, four or more times for the redundancy.
We will work to continue this battle, God permitting, until victory or until we meet God. I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life.
Osama Bin Laden. 2002.
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/01/31/gen.binladen.interview/index.html
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
an unfortunate acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response team
It's not an 'unfortunate acronym,' they chose it exactly BECAUSE it spells VIPR. Someone in the system likes that name.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Ok, I get that, and I also get that none of this is about security, but merely about control and power. What I don't get is why the security theater / homeland security smoke screen is so effective, but that's probably just me and owed to the fact that I've been taught history. History tells us where all of this will lead. As we now by now: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
I work for a software shop that has people in the US, Canada and Europe. When the subject of travel comes up, in subtle ways there has been a change. There is always an availability or scheduling problem that appears anytime a US meeting is suggested. This began happening about three years ago. Meeting in Canada or Europe never seems to have any problems but...travelling to America, umm, yeah, hang on...Oh no can do.
What I find most interesting about all of this is even soon after 9/11 airline security was never soo bad I stopped flying.
It happened many years later seemingly in step with Jherkove group backscatter manovourings under cover of underwear bomber the chapter of egregous nonsense of groping and irradiation started.
It sort of reminds me of locutus/piccard taking datas arm and saying "sleep data" who had been working dilligently to find a command to stop the borg.
I think one of few such command that stands any chance of working to effect systematic change is coordinated insistance on campaign finance reform.
Trying to correct the results of structures which breed corrupt behavior is like lobbing a photon torpedo at a borg cube and expecting it to have any effect.
Is what I've been being told for years now. When I point out that it's been the plan ALL ALONG to expand them out into a Stasi-style force on the highways, in the subways, at the shopping malls, at sporting events, I was branded a tinfoil-hat nutter.
Now what, bootlickers?
US Intelligence is in such chaos now that it was possible for the FBI to remove the head of the CIA on "moral" grounds and thus assert their dominance. In such a mess a parasite such as the TSA cannot be controlled and will grow whatever way it likes.
There's too much money flowing into too many of the right pockets for the Republicans to dismantle them, and they are such a huge employer that Democrats are not likely to do it either. It's turned into a very inefficient way of getting welfare money to a lot of people that would be far better employed doing something useful.
This blog by a seven year TSA worker describes first hand what it's like to work an airport checkpoint.
Taking Sense Away
Hint: if you year a TSA employee saying "Yellow Alert" or "Code Red", look around for a hottie passenger wearing that color.
remember all the kgb fear mongering that people would have to endure if the communists won? Oh, yea, the US is transforming into that paranoia. How long before they start putting cameras in people's homes?
Had people simply refused to fly as long as the TSA continued to exist, the expansion would have ended. People kept flying, even when they could have taken a train or bus, and so the TSA never felt the heat, and eventually grew larger. People will not boycott sports events either, nor will they refuse to drive when the TSA starts creating highway checkpoints, nor will they refuse to go to malls when the checkpoints come there.
Boil the frog slowly is how the major parties operate; the major parties consist of politicians either too corrupt to stop or too inept to even realize what they are doing.
Palm trees and 8
That's because both there hands are being used to look up someone else's ass.
Have gnu, will travel.
Something very bad and very big is going to happen soon, I can feel it in my bone.
"allow TSA to provide focused resources and tools to enhance the overall security posture within the surface transportation community"
Just wow...we spent a trillion dollars on this shit.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Terrorist win.
I don't know who modded this down. They changed our lives forever between TSA, NDAA and other intrusions into our constitutional rights.
If you want to start a campaign to bring down TSA, go out and make the case how it's the cornerstone of the terrorists winning.
I feel bad for the yanks. In a pathetic attempt to maintain the individual freedoms their nation was founded on, they continue to sacrifice those same freedoms on the altar of "national security". Perhaps if they took a little time out from creating a police state to ponder the question ":Why do all those folks in the middle east hate us so much?", they could direct their efforts in directions which would make life safer for Americans AND for the rest of us.
You really believe that idiocy? If enough people believe that they truly deserve whatever government they get.
Just too bad for the other voters who actually vote for what they want.
As far as I see it's even stupider to keep playing those stupid games, vote for what you don't want, and then grumble that you are not getting what you want.
Dictatorships have always feared large groups of citizens massing in public. The TS(S)A will continue to discourage people from leaving their homes for any reason other than going to work.
Aren't they stationed there because of things like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Blimp
That's fine because voting is the same as not voting at all too.
How anyone can maintain this perspective, given that Bush -v- Gore hinged on a vote margin of 0.009%, of the state electorate, AND that the results of that election directly resulted in the TSA... it just baffles me. Yes, your vote might technically matter a mere fraction of a percentage. AAAND there is one excellent, obvious example where a 0.01% difference would have resulted in a dramatically different outcome.
Please try this mental exercise: reconsider your position on the importance of voting as you imagine how the country and the world would have been different had President Bush Jr., VP Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito, AG Gonzales, et al never been a reality.
How do you know that Gore would have behaved any differently than Bush? Obama was the gleaming example of Hope and Change, and here he's almost indistinguishable in policy from Bush. It appears that in order to even appear on the ballot, a candidate must swear allegiance to some outside cause, despite the party he chooses to ride to the position.
We interrupt this program with a special bulletin:
America is now under marshal law
All constitutional rights have been suspended.
Stay in your homes.
Do not attempt to contact loved ones, insurance agents or attorneys.
SHUT UP.
Do not attempt to think
or depression may occur.
Stay in your homes.
Curfew is at 7 PM sharp after work.
Anyone caught outside the gates of their subdivision sectors after curfew,
Will Be Shot.
Remain calm,
Do not panic.
Your neighborhood watch officer will be by to collect urine samples In the morning.
Anyone caught interfering with the collection of urine samples Will be shot.
Stay in your homes, remain calm.
The number one enemy of progress is questions.
National security is more important than individual will.
All sports broadcasts will proceed as normal.
No more than two people may gather anywhere without permission.
Use only the drugs prescribed by your boss or supervisor.
SHUT UP.
Be Happy.
Obey all orders without question.
The comfort you requested is now mandatory!
Be happy, at last everything is done for you.
Lyrics from the album Freedom of Speech (Just Watch What You Say) by Ice T, released 1989.
Yeah, for me the warning bells signalled back in tum-te-tum-oh-one when they named it HOMELAND security. I mean, that was totally blatant, but the US public seemed to fail to notice it. I mean. Fatherland (Nazis), Motherland (Commies).... how could they fail to notice the similarity?
One can't know of course, one can only speculate. But it seems reasonable to look to Gore's legislative and executive track records as both Congressman and VP, as well as to what lobbys proved to be most influential with him, for a fair guess.
Had Gore turned out to have the same foreign and domestic policy as Bush, it would have been extremely inconsistent with his past actions.
Just wait until TSA is spotted providing 'security' at a gun show.
The Abrams can't go far without fuel. The fuel trucks are the vulnerable point in the system. Logistics wins wars, not bullets by themselves.
Oh, and improvised paint bombs. Once all the windows and optical sensors a covered in paint, the tank is not as useful.
Proportional representation. Your candidate gets 40 percent of the vote? They get 40% of the voting power. They get 1% of the vote, they get 1% of the voting power. It's the 21st century, we can deal with fractional votes, or simply multiply congressional votes by 100 (43,500 votes in the House of Representatives instead of 435). Set a minimum of 1% to keep number of reps reasonable. The extra representatives can also spread out the work. It's obvious from the continual lateness of the budgets, and representatives who claim lack of time to read bills that there are not enough of them. We need more bodies to spread the workload.
Nothing a good patriotic dose of X-Rays can't detect. Just turn the dial to 11!
Why would it be different with Gore than with Obama? Remember, Obama accused Bush of being irresponsible for wanting to raise the US debt ceiling.
âoe"he fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies...Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here'. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.â
Plus, there's a litany of other promises Obama made to abolish or radically change Bush/Reagan-era policies and laws that Obama, once in office, reversed course on.
I have no reason to believe that Gore would be any better, and some reason to believe he might have been much worse.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Why would it be different with Gore than with Obama? Remember, Obama accused Bush of being irresponsible for wanting to raise the US debt ceiling.
I will point something out *again*. In the 2000 election, Gore had 8 years of experience in the executive office, as VP under Bill Clinton. During his time in executive office, the US created a budget *surplus*. With a budget surplus, a budget debt ceiling is unnecessary. Before his 8 years as VP, Gore was a US House Representative for 8 years, and a US Senator for 8 years. He has a long, and many would say a distinguished Congressional career.
It is certainly a consistent one. His 24 years of experience in federal office before the 2000 election gave him quite a record at the time of that election.
You seem to feel that it would be more reasonable to compare Al Gore circa 2000 to someone else entirely, with only four years of Congressional experience, than it is to compare 2000 circa Gore to the 1976-1999 Gore, with 8 years as a Rep, 8 years as a Senator, and 8 years as Veep.
But yes, since Obama promised something he actually didn't but you still see as a sort of betrayal, Gore similarly would have stepped directly into what history has labeled "the Bush doctrine", he would have invaded Iraq in response to 9-11 attacks by Saudi nationals based in Afghanistan, he would have pursued financial deregulation (the same regulation he helped put into place while in Congress), he would have JESUS FUCKING CHRIST DO I HAVE TO ACTUALLY CONTINUE WITH THIS IN A REASONABLE MANNER.
VOTE, YOU FUCKING ELIGIBLE-TO-VOTE ASSHOLES. IT MATTERS, IT REALLY DOES. IF YOU HAD VOTED IN 2000, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE A TSA TO BITCH ABOUT NOW. YOU DIDN'T THEN, AND THANKS TO YOU WE HAVE THE TSA. FUCK YOU FOR THAT.
My apologies, BlueStrat. I lost my temper, and declined into a useless form of discussion. I find the thought that Gore would have given us the same world as Bush (or a worse one) so ludicrous that it is difficult for me to treat it as a seriously, sincerely, and considered point of view.
As a result, my frustration got the better of me, and my apologies to you for that. Perhaps you really do believe what you've said. If so, you clearly have an idea of how strongly I disagree with you. I regret that the expression of my disagreement probably came off more as polarizing and judgmental than it did convincing.
With thunderous applause."
--Princess/Senator Amidala
"..and a halftime show!"
--Me
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I can't speak to exactly what the people in the pic are doing, but it's normal to have TSA agents at NFL games. Visiting teams generally leave the stadiums and head directly to the airport for the trip back home after the game. In order to avoid going through the normal TSA checkpoints at the airport, the screening is done at the stadium. Once the screening is done the team then boards the buses and heads straight to the airport where they immediately board the plane for the flight home.
Not who you were asking, but a lot of places in Latin America are in fact more free than the USA.
I'm living in Uruguay. Starting legal residency is very simple and cheap, unless you are one of those types that "needs to hire professional experts" for everything. In which case WTF are you doing on /.?
Overall cost of living is cheaper than the USA, which along with the whole freedom-vs-march-to-facism thing is why my wife and I moved. Electric is expensive but other utilities, including internet, are cheaper by more than enough to offset it. Climate (and latitude) similar to North Carolina but with a lot fewer cyclones (I would have said "we don't get hurricanes" but we got a couple of extratropical cyclones a few months ago). I'm in an old beachside resort town that is also within commuting distance, barely, of the capital, Montevideo. Some of the area is dirt roads, along which Antel the state telecom semi-monopoly is pulling fiber optic to home. Even on copper, the Antel DSL installer told me that my home could get 12Mbps. For now I am on a cheapo combo plan of 996 pesos (about $50USD/mo más-o-menos depending on the exchange rate) that includes 3072 down/512 up ADSL, a landline without any minutes, and 10GB/mo of 3G/quasi-4G (called 3.7G here) HSDPA/HSPA+ on a datastick.
Power is as reliable as any other small town where sometimes a substation gets a lightning hit or a tree downs a wire. More reliable than my experience in the Colorado Rockies. AC if you want it, just keep in mind electric is kinda pricy. I paid about $120 last month (no AC) for about 650kWh. In Colorado that would have been about $50, in Tacoma where I was for a year, with nonprofit city-owned power, about $30. But everybody cooks with bottled Supergas, around $20 for a tank that will last you 3-4 months of cooking 3 meals daily.
Health care is a state right if you have no money. If you have "activity", a local job or you are set up as a unipersonal (think a formalized one-person LLC or S-corp) paying in to BPS (social security), you can join any of the many "mutualistas" (HMO-like groups that run their own hospitals and clinics, somewhat like the KaiserPermanante model) for free. Without working (or freelance digital nomad working paid via Elance, Google Wallet, Paypal) it costs about 1650 pesos a month, about $85 US. With a $4 copay to see a doctor. All prescriptions about $8. An MRI is only about 1000 pesos, or 50 dollars, while even with insurance it would be about 1000 of dollars in the States.
Fascinating mix of socialist in some areas and libertarian in others. Nobody wears bicycle helmets because a bike is a mode of going places, not an "activity" that you do that requires special equipment. Moto (scooter and low-end motorcycle) riders rarely wear helmets, but some do. Nobody gives a crap if you put up clotheslines or an antenna or have a dog. No frakking HOAs.
A military used almost exclusively for UN Peacekeeping missions. No "enemies" to speak of. Ok terms with the USA but not an "ally". Legalized gay marriage, legalized abortion (forward thinking for latin america), legalizing marijuana.
Not nearly as much USA-style or Global North consumerism, though it's here if you want to be a spendy jerk and attempt to recreate a Boca Raton, Florida lifestyle. In which case please go to Punta del Este and spend stupid money, leaving the rest of us alone to enjoy a great quality of life. Yes, electronics cost 70-100% more due to our 22% IVA (Value Added Tax) baked into the price, and the high import duty. But we get value for it, overall, and there are deals to be had. Law recently changed to allow residents and citizens to get up to 5 packages per year of up to $200USD each shipment at zero duty. "Content" as defined by the *AAs (books, disks, software, etc.) is duty-free so order from Amazon Global if you want. We have big supermarkets and good local groceries, But you won't get canned prepared food, no Chef-Boy-R-Di or Dinty Moore. But lots of freshly-made in-store stuff.
I h
Does the TSA actually have any real authority to patrol a football game?
The football stadium is privately owned and unlike an airport does not fall under any government security oversight.
Were the owners of the stadium notified that the TSA would have a presence at the game?
Now I know that there are those that will say the TSA can and will do what it wants wherever it wants. That is how they operate, without having to explain their actions, thinking that will keep the bad guys in check. But the TSA/Homeland security is a government organization and are to be held accountable to the public.
But unlike the massive airport presence there is no precedent for them to be at a football game.
Were they reacting to a specific threat?
Someone in the TSA decided for whatever reason they should be present at this game. The question is why.
Write your local representative asking about this disturbing new trend. Voice your concerns over the police like state and abuse of power all in the name of safety.
Or don't do anything but complain amongst ourselves and go along with everything they ask us to do. Which is what they really want.
My apologies, BlueStrat. I lost my temper, and declined into a useless form of discussion. I find the thought that Gore would have given us the same world as Bush (or a worse one) so ludicrous that it is difficult for me to treat it as a seriously, sincerely, and considered point of view.
My views are serious and sincerely-held. I find it equally frustrating, as I see arguments such as yours that, though well-reasoned to a point, don't go far enough in the analysis-chain. You stop short of pursuing a thread to it's origin.
Like this:
I will point something out *again*. In the 2000 election, Gore had 8 years of experience in the executive office, as VP under Bill Clinton. During his time in executive office, the US created a budget *surplus*
That surplus was the result of the winding-down of the Cold War combined with the lagging increases in wealth and job creation from the Reagan economic/tax/regulatory policies (Clinton's economy benefited from Reagan as Obama's suffered from Bush), and from a (R)-controlled Congress both restraining Clinton's spending, and forcing Clinton to stay generally moderate, economically.
The budget surplus really had very little to do with Clinton administration policies or actions. It was much more a matter of right place, right time for Clinton's economy, rather than anything Clinton did or didn't do. Well, he was smart enough not to screw things up when he saw things were working out to his benefit without his taking any risky stands on the Left's pet economic issues.
I get frustrated because I feel like I'm trying to argue with somebody about what a Pointillist painting portrays from ten steps back, when that person refuses to take more than two steps back and gets mad and tells me I'm an idiot and I need to shut up, when I argue it's more than just dots.
One has to be willing to look deeper and farther back than most people are willing to in pursuing the real reasons and motives behind things and people, especially in politics. Trouble is, most people stop pursuing the records and history once they get to an answer that satisfies their personal views, even though it doesn't stop there.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Or is it Commrade? Oh they are both the same.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Obama was the gleaming example of Hope and Change, and here he's almost indistinguishable in policy from Bush.
If you take over in the middle of two stupid wars, it's hard to do much about it, simply cutting and running is not really an option.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Which needs to be voted in.
Cheap storage VM.
Keep in mind the Electorial College, whose vote actually matters. That is why you can end up with Presidents who do not win with the "Popular vote", but win with the Electorial vote. The people who represent us in the Electorial college can vote based on popular vote, but that is not a requirement.
I resemble very much being called a half wit, AC. And I have half a mind to tell you where to go. But I confess that when it comes to the American sheeple, you are sadly too right.
TSA gets a pass by most Americans.
Ben Franklin said it so nicely. His exact quote is as follows:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
This was used as a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. (1759); the book was published by Franklin; its author was Richard Jackson, but Franklin did claim responsibility for some small excerpts that were used in it.
An earlier variant by Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanack (1738): "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
Many paraphrased derivatives of this have often become attributed to Franklin: They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither. He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither. People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both. Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither. Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither. Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Reminds me of those omnipresent motorcycle-helmet guys from the Equilibrium.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Thank you for your patience. That is quite a gracious reply to someone who devolved into caps-yelling, and a humbling one.
And I will readily grant you that the Clinton administration's surplus was very much a benefit of context. And after all, those were also the days of the Newt-led House.
Disgreeing about speculations of alternate futures are probably only useful in what they tell us about how we think. There is no way either of us can ever prove what would have happened, had things gone differently. I believe that some of the more disastrous aspects of W's administration would not have been part of a Gore presidency: specifically, disregarding the reports of Hans Blix and invading Iraq, as well as combining a military increase with a tax cut. Those are not particularly complicated issues, and the political benefits are/would have been clear to Gore. At least those points seem to me much more reasonable than the thought that Gore would have led us into Iraq and cut taxes the way W did. I do believe the housing and banking crushes wouldn't have differed much, if at all.
What I suppose might be the most frustrating is how the argument against voting compares to the 2000 Florida results. Basically the idea is either that your vote counts for so little that it will not affect the outcome -- and usually this is true, for any given individual. OR the idea is that elections are so corrupted that your vote will never count at all. What I see is that: there was one time when a presidential election hinged upon nine thousandths of a percent of a single state's voter outcome, and while antidemocratic electoral manipulation is a reality (as we continue to see in Florida, still), it is not in complete control of the outcome, but rather more like a thumb on a scale that can still be overcome.
Thank you for your patience. That is quite a gracious reply to someone who devolved into caps-yelling, and a humbling one.
I look at it this way; We are all Americans (yes, I know, but /. *is* a US-centric blog), and nobody wants to starve children or enslave anyone despite rhetoric on both sides, at least among we citizens. Hatreds and divisions of all stripes are fanned by those in power precisely to prevent rational discourse, be it partisan/political, racial, religious, or economic class.
It's when the emotions and hatreds are so high that "winning" becomes more important than being right.
I can tell that you care deeply and feel strongly about these issues and others. That's fine and as it should be if one believes strongly in something outside of and larger than themselves. However, one should always be wary of letting emotion overrule logic and rationality and blind those who think & act from emotion to propaganda and lies.
That's what dictators and tyrannical regimes of every stripe have always used to divide a people and take their freedom. I strongly suggest that everyone could do with learning some detailed history, both of the world, and the US. That's one of the pillars forming my opinions. I look to history for examples, as there is vanishingly-little in politics that hasn't occurred or been tried before, usually many times in many different regions, and by many different peoples and cultures.
We may disagree about the best methods, but our motivations are basically the same; To make a better US and world for everyone. Even for those with whom we strongly disagree.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.