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Lincoln's Surveillance State
An anonymous reader writes "The N.S.A.'s program is indeed alarming — but not, from a historical perspective, unprecedented. And history suggests that we should worry less about the surveillance itself and more about when the war in whose name the surveillance is being conducted will end. In 1862, after President Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton penned a letter to the president requesting sweeping powers, which would include total control of the telegraph lines. By rerouting those lines through his office, Stanton would keep tabs on vast amounts of communication, journalistic, governmental and personal. On the back of Stanton's letter Lincoln scribbled his approval: 'The Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned.'"
It was just as wrong then as this is now. Of course, people back then couldn't even dream of having such advanced surveillance technology.
With an actual conclusion eventually reached. An ambiguous war on terror doesn't really have any sort of end date, unless we can somehow wipe out terror on Earth.
Do I really need to say anything more?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Let us not get ourselves fooled by Lincoln's twisted silver penmanship, let us ask ourselves what would Benjamin Franklin would have written?
"It's happened before" is only one step beyond "But X did it first!" and is still every bit as much of a fallacy as far as excuses go.
The fact that such massive surveillance was performed in the past is disappointing but changes nothing, it's still bullshit and shouldn't be happening.
You can't tell facts about Lincoln or you are a racist. ( even tho he was a mentally unstable power hungry bastard...)
It is pretty quiet out and about with the latest greatest Executive Order about the federal govt being able to take over ALL communications.
enjoy
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/06/executive-order-assignment-national-security-and-emergency-preparedness-
That is exactly a year old. You are as bad as the editors.
He also suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, which was later overturned. Lincoln was a great president, but he wasn't perfect (and anyone who says that anyone is perfect has more issues that I care to deal with). I'm sorry, but why should the attempted "wire-tapping" of the average citizen surprise anyone in this case?
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
HEED THE WORDS OF THE GREAT RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY LEON TROTSKY "Lincoln’s significance lies in his not hesitating before the most severe means once they were found to be necessary in achieving a great historic aim posed by the development of a young nation. The question lies not even in which of the warring camps caused or itself suffered the greatest number of victims. History has different yardsticks for the cruelty of the Northerners and the cruelty of the Southerners in the Civil War. A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!"
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
In other words, the ends justify the means, and historical
precedence makes it ok to do commit whatever crime you like.
I wonder if the author feels the same about the WWII internment
camps for Japanese? We won that war, so it's all ok, we can do that
again, right?
Or the way the Native Indians were treated? We eventually grew a
great nation on the land so that was all ok too, and we are
justified in doing the same in future for other lofty goals?
We define our nation by the society that we create through our
actions. Don't try to feed us this apologist bullshit two days after
the 4th, we have it in our power to be better than this.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
In the case of that war, yes, it was okay.
No, it wasn't.
It was a temporary and partial loss of freedom in order to help win a far more fundamental freedom for others.
Don't harm innocent people (in this case, by taking away their freedoms) in order to defeat the bad guys; cowards do that.
"Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail."
Henry L. Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War during the Pearl Harbor attack and the former U.S. Secretary of State who in 1929 shut down the office in the U.S. State Department responsible for breaking codes to read messages sent between embassies of other countries and their capitals.
Stimson's naivety seems alive and well.
To keep the vampires from attacking America.
So Obama is like his hero, Lincoln, after all
Table-ized A.I.
Don't harm innocent people (in this case, by taking away their freedoms) ...
Reading a telegraph was harm in Lincoln's day? A message that by its very nature was read by miscellaneous strangers in the course of its creation and receipt?
select * from NSA_DB where ethnicity="Jewish" AND occupation="money changer"
would of made things much simpler 50 years ago, good to know that next time it will a lot easier, if you want
look, this is 100% horse shit. the idea that telegraph lines, which were used by a tiny percentage of the population, are somehow equivalent of intercepting every last cell phone, web browse, email, tweet, etc, and creating a massive trillion dollar database of it all, is ridiculous.
second of all, the law was different. there was such a thing called 'peace time' and during that time, things that were OK during war were no longer considered OK. also there was no such thing as an espionage act, there was only treason, and people understood that there was a difference in spirit, between spying and criticizing your own governments actions, which is fundamental to a democracy (lincoln also did not cancel the election).
there has never been this much data
the collection has never been this comprehensive
the amount of taxpayer money spent on it has never been this high
the legal attacks on free speech have never been this broad and this harsh
lincoln understood, at least, that at some point the war would end and things would 'go back to normal'.
obama, bush, the congress, etc, do not, apparently, believe in 'normal'
...which is, in fact, over twice the population of the United States.
Losing a war equals losing your freedom.
Fighting and losing while keeping your principles is far better than being a sniveling coward.
In the real world brave men do things in wartime they know to be wrong, things against their principles, so that they and others may live in peace, freedom and once again according to their principles at a future date.
You sound like a naive sheltered fool who has no clue what bravery is, merely a Sansa-like romantic fantasy of bravery.
""The Constitution is not a suicide pact" is a phrase in American political and legal discourse. The phrase expresses the belief that constitutional restrictions on governmental power must be balanced against the need for survival of the state and its people. It is most often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, as a response to charges that he was violating the United States Constitution by suspending habeas corpus during the American Civil War."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suicide_pact
A little off topic, but pertinent all the same. The events as of late have had me wondering: if the majority of the American people are driven to revolt in similar fashion to the Arab spring type revolts (that our government overall praises), would our own military fire on us if ordered?
A couple of years ago, I may have very well modded this question down.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Did you count cockroaches?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Many nations have constitutional provisions to temporarily suspend laws when there is a threat like a war.
Even a philosopher like Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognized the need for such temporary measure, which are legitimate because they in line with the general will of the People, who do not want the nation to be destroyed because of its own laws.
But the key word is temporary: that should be short and to solve an identified problem.Todays US surveillance state is another beast. The war against a given terrorist group may end. The war against terrorism will not.
And the Civil War in the US was about economic parity, not about
slavery like all you sheep were taught in school.
Fuck Lincoln. And fuck Obama and all the rest of the lying self-serving
pieces of shit who have fucked up a once-great country.
I'm leaving the US soon, for good. The rest of you sheep can have the
steaming pile. Fuck you all.
and about 106 times the (human) population of earth.
Is there anyone here beside me getting the feeling that the submissions of late have a certain...smell(?). Perhaps it is honey I smell.
I'm leaving the US soon, for good. The rest of you sheep can have the
steaming pile. Fuck you all.
The rest of the world is messed up too, just in different ways.
All considered Europe is probably a better place to live than the US right now.
We saw the IRS abuse its powers with information. How long until the abuse is done again based on spying information? Nixon got impeached for Watergate, but there's no regulation on leaking information about political candidates. What if a presidential candidate was found doing something innocuous like running adblocker. Then his political enemies turn around claim he is some computer hacker. They could dissect his online life and make sure he doesn't get elected if they wanted. The whole thing reeks of,"Now we have a way to politically sit anyone down who uses the Internet or Telephone."
Most people find this enlightening:
http://www.nps.gov/liho/historyculture/debate1.htm
Lincoln was a lawyer, and a politician. People attribute something profound to him. I have doubts.
GPD/capita is lower, consumer price index is lower. US dominates world finance/economy/art.
As noted in the article, this was during a time of war. When the war ended, so did the spying. Today we live in a perpetual state of "war", even though none of our "enemies" can actually harm us on the national level.
Lincoln's War is far different from Bush-Obama No War.
The Congressional Authorization of Military Use in Sept. 2001 did NOT authorize a State Of War, it did NOT authorize a State Of Martial Law, and it did NOT authorize invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan nor the indiscriminate killing of Muslims worldwide and not the indiscriminate criminalization of legal U.S.A. citizens through electronic communications espionage and blackmail.
Lincoln's War ended with Lincoln's death.
Obama's No War may end with Obama's death.
The American Civil War is full of all sorts of ironies. The South panicked over the fact that the republican party promised to limit their spread into new states (which lacked a climate suitable for their plantation economies anyway) and that they might eventually lose slavery. So they tantrum-ed over things not going their way and started a war that made them lose it. Meanwhile Lincoln, who ensured emancipation was pretty bad with other civil rights in fighting the war.
Way back in ancient times the Romans were vicious thugs. We should not use what happens in the past to be justification for what happens today. We are supposed to be getter better and smarter. The USA should be leading the charge in this respect but the USA is setting the worst possible example for everyone else to follow. Torture, invasive spying on everyone, indefinite injustice for prisoners ... what has happened to the USA's honor?
OK, So, when does it start? The war that is? The civil War! I'm assuming that there is going to be one? Why else would you need the NSA to have the same sweeping powers granted by Lincoln? Cop out! Total Cop Out!
Dr. King was killed fighting for his principles.
I dare say the principles he fought for are far more valuable than one man
If my life could be as meaningful as his, I'd be very glad indeed. After all, none of us is going to get out of here alive.
The Declaration of Independence closes with the words "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
The founders understand that some things are of greater value than their own life.
They knew that we ALL die. The only question is, what will you die FOR? Cigarettes? To drive a little faster? To avoid exercise?
Martin Luther King died for something WORTH dying for, something bigger than himself.
What will YOU die for? If you want to make it worth it, to trade your life for something more valuable, something bigger than you is called a "principle".
President Lincoln faced an entirely different situation. The nature of the Civil War put the existence of the nation at great risk. Current conflicts pose almost no risk at all of a calamity great enough to destroy our nation. Next the telegraph wires were the only way to quickly command attacks from troops over a distance. It was also the only fast way to send information out of the north to southern agents. The northern forces would probably have been better off if all telegraphs were locked down until the war was over.
In the current world situation the US might be better to pull out all troops and embassies and tell the Arab region to rot. I wonder if the US would suffer at all if the nations in the mid east simply went into total war and chaos. As it stands now the expense of stopping this foolishness is a burden. As far as wars go this war has not taken many of our soldiers' lives. But if we assume that the ultimate totals might come to 20,000 dead American troops why should we be willing to allow this risk to climb? The entire mess very much resembles the problem in Vietnam. We could have won that war with great ease by going to maximum technology on the first day. We would have suffered no loss of troops at all and the financial component would have been trivial. Huge numbers of innocents would have been killed but at least it would all be over in a few minutes. So our kinder gentler mode of war cost the lives of 50,000 US soldiers and billions of dollars. The other part of the issue is that if we had crushed Vietnam with a full technology attack I seriously doubt that the Arab nations would ever have dared to offend us. Many nations perceive a lack of violent aggression to be a signal of weakness. Look at the threats made by N. Korea today. N.Korea threatens simply because they know we will not bomb them into oblivion.
The current total tax rate on the AVERAGE American is over 45%. Income tax, FICA x 2, gas tax, property tax, death tax, business personal property tax, sales tax, car registration tax ...
Increasing it another 25% on productive people, as progressives wish to do, brings the total to around 70%. It just so happens that if you intend to take everything people have worked for, you're going to have to imprison or kill many of them to do it.
The [your choice of country] I believed in never existed.
(Leonardo's performance is interesting, btw.)
If you have retirement money, there are far better places then Europe. There's no European nation that doesn't do what the NSA does. In fact, most of them effectively contract out _to_ the NSA. And why wouldn't they? Considering how many hundreds of billions Americans spend on defense and intelligence programs every year, it only makes good economic sense. Plus it shields them politically, allowing them to skirt their own national laws and norms. Most national intelligence services in Europe are just for theatre; the real work is farmed out to the U.S.
For my money, I'd move to Chile or maybe southern Brazil. Both are very liberal---relatively progressive socially, yet conservative economically--and have a strong sense of law and order. They're like the U.S. and Europe without the money or desire to be Orwellian.
If all you want is to be left alone as long as you don't create waves, regardless of legal technicalities, there are far more countries to consider, especially around the Caribbean and South East Asia. There may even be some good choices in Africa, but it's so large it's hard to keep track of what's going on.
People like MLK and Medgar Evers didn't sacrifice themselves. They weren't in it to die. They had to do a great deal while alive before their deaths would take on the larger national historic significance that they did. MLK isn't great because he died. He's great because he lived a large life *before* he died.
Sometimes it isn't necessary to die in the process of fighting for freedom, and sometimes it is. This, however, has nothing to do with surrendering the very freedoms you claim to value so that you do not die (and most likely, it's just security theater, as is the case here).
my privacy doesn't matter?
GPD/capita is lower, consumer price index is lower. US dominates world finance/economy/art.
GDP/capita is an average that includes some super rich people. Bill Gates could buy a thousand mansions, that doesn't help you buy a cup of coffee.
The consumer price index is lower in Europe? I'm not so sure the cost of living is. Things are pretty cheap in the US I'll grant you that but I'm talking about safety from crime and quality of life here not how much cheap clothing people can buy.
The US doesn't dominate finance/economy as you so say, it's all one big interconnected system with no center.
And ART? Are you kidding? In fact forget art, it's a silly thing to even mention.
I agree. To retire I'd leave Europe and go to Thailand or somewhere pleasant and cheap.
I prefer to read into the actual father of our country, Thomas Paine. If it weren't for Paine, we'd all still be British subjects (It didn't hurt that the King of England at the time had mental problems, either). Thomas Paine risked his neck far before it was popular or acceptable to be writing pamphlets about human rights (at first). As people started to catch on to the message that would one day become American Founding Principles, and it started to become very popular, the Revolution happened. In other words, Thomas Paine was an Abolitionist before it was fashionable.
In addition to being the philosophical father of the American Revolution, Paine was also an abolitionist, and was against the way Native Americans were treated by the then colonial powers. The first draft of the Declaration of Independence drawn up by Thomas Jefferson listed the crown's participation in the North American slave trade as part of the reason for their Revolution, but other 'founding fathers' forced that part out (It's theorized by some that Thomas Paine was working closely with Jefferson on the DoI rough draft, so it makes sense). In that day, abolitionists were still being persecuted, including-to a certain extent- Thomas Paine for writing his pamphlet concerning the moral abomination of the slave trade. Thomas Paine also never grasped for a position of personal power. The only political office I know of him having after the revolution was as an unofficial 'advisor' during the Jefferson administration: That was mostly because the Jacobin French Revolutionaries wanted to behead him for his belief in the rule of law and due process (rather than pogroms where a violent mobs dragged people out on the street from their beds and knifed them to death or beheaded them) so he headed back to America.
We know of Thomas Paine because of what he did and what he thought, not because of what position of power he acquired or what popular movement he used to do so. Thomas Paine was the real deal, who philosophized about abolition without the power of the Presidency (head of the government and head of the army) behind him. He really did write what he thought and what he thought was that slavery was the biggest injustice of his generation. What Lincoln thought was contrary to his current popular status as an American figure (he was actually extremely racist). Other than the fact that the civil war helped to end slavery, Lincoln was sort of like George W Bush with a beard, only I don't think Bush is as much of a racist as Lincoln was. The primary difference is that Dubya didn't choose his side very wisely, so his personal lust for power will not end in his deification or political sainthood.
Lincoln was a political opportunist who understood what the right side of history was going to be. He chose wisely, despite him being a white supremacist, war monger (for any issue, not just slavery) with a lust for personal power. Even with economic policies that had nothing to do with slavery, Lincoln operated outside of his constitutional boundaries: Jailing his critics, spying on people, and heavy handed use of the military to enforce his policies (not just in the south). He saw the politics of the day as a very good way for him to flex his political muscles and be a real dictator for a while by using an issue people were already passionate about and trying to place himself as that issue's figurehead. I personally believe that if Lincoln had perceived the 'pro-slavery' side of that conflict as the winning side, he would have chosen that side, and our cultural view of him would have been quite different (Lincoln, that racist SOB who tried to fight for slavery).
Lincoln apparently got what he was after (personal power) - He's 'honest abe', remembered for something he had very little to do with other than latching onto a movement that he, personally, didn't believe in. At least he helped to end slavery (though I'm not really a ends justify the means sort of guy). The deification of him as a person has always been ridiculous. He was just at the