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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.'"
In the case of that war, yes, it was okay. It makes sense to temporarily allow the government to read your telegrams in order to permanently secure the freedom of four million slaves.
It was a temporary and partial loss of freedom in order to help win a far more fundamental freedom for others. The NSA spying, by contrast, seems to be permanent and of negligible benefit.
That's why I'm a progressive. The America that the conservatives want never existed. But, the America that the progressives want at least is theoretically possible to some degree.
At no time since the Revolutionary War ... had things looked nearly so dire.
I can think of a point when things looked nearly so dire: 1814, the British (Canadian mostly) Army invaded, captured Washington D.C., burned the White House and Congress's meeting buildings to the ground, leaving President James Madison on the run in the face of a vastly superior force desperately trying to round up militia units to repel them.
But yes, anyone who doesn't think the Civil War was a serious threat to the US needs to have their head examined. Yes, the USA was in a superior strategic position to the CSA, but the CSA put about 10 times the troops in the field than the USA had ever faced before.
I am officially gone from
But there are hardly any of them and they have no money and have never directly caused significant damage to any nation.
Are you fucking kidding? They've probably cost the US (and other countries as well) more money than any other single entity. The stock market had to be shut down for three days following 9-11. Air traffic was halted and the nation was at a standstill for a week. After everyone finished shitting their pants we got the "Patriot Act", the Iraq war and the TSA. We've lost more freedoms than I could count, the TSA is a huge money sink. Not to mention that 9-11 was the single biggest loss of civilian lives in an attack on American soil in the history of the US.
That being said, I do agree with you. Way too much money has been spent(wasted) in the name of "stopping terrorists". But I'm sure you're aware it has nothing to do with this any longer. It's just an excuse for a massive ongoing power-grab. Even so, they still dealt the US a more significant blow to the civilian population than Germany or Japan ever did on our own soil. And with considerably less resources. Don't ever trivialize that.