Regardless of what any law says, a person still has an absolute right to equal treatment by the authorities.
Yes, this is embodied in the 14th Amendment.
I can even see this point from a theological standpoint in Galatians 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
Existentially, however, "the authorities" have vastly different scopes. Driven to its logical extreme, a "wand of equal treatment" would conclude in a single world government, so that there is but one authority, and all are indeed guaranteed equal treatment, for certain values of "equal".
However, IMO human nature, while not infrequently doing "good" things, has a certain entropy to it, and tends toward the ++ungood. Keeping the world fragmented, and limiting the scope of authority, while, certainly breeding a raft of problems, makes at least as much sense as trying to merge everything and giving an elite few the authority to define what "right" and "equal" mean, as YMMV.
Given the real fragmentation of the world, conflict arises.
Given conflict, there is a body of work known as the Law of Armed Conflict that attempts to offer a framework for limiting the violence.
Answering your question, then, it's quite easy to argue that "the military commissions act is a crime against humanity". The bigger challenge is to develop a "solution" (if a politician ever claims to 'solve' a problem, the problem had better be a tiny one, or this is an indication that your leg is being pulled) that can be implemented in The World As We Know It.
This is not meant to mock your idealism in the slightest. Keep it alive, as it is a valid input towards overall improvement in the world.
You may think me some great rationalizer. I certainly am, and I thank you for a post that knocks some of the dust off of my own internal ideals.
The only utopian approach I can personally get to, however, is a theological one. The secular humanist approaches, in my worldview, are themselves variations on the theme of "I am God".
The various Socialist approaches seem to place the State on the level of God. This is idolatry to me, for the State is a convenient abstraction shared by a bunch of people. The land on either side of the Rio Grande has as much knowledge of "Mexico" and "The United States" as the river does "Rio Grande".
Thus, my curiosity piqued: under what banner would you propose to unite humanity such that "absolute human rights" are guaranteed absolutely equal enforcement? This is a serious question, and not intended as flamebait in the slightest.
The problem is not the government. It's those who enable it. It's all those sovereign individuals who give up their (and take away your) sovereignty for perceived personal advantage. They may be following orders, but it's still them that put the gun to your head. The ability to say "no" is universal.
I guess I can agree that government, in the abstract, is not, itself, the problem.
However, "those who enable it" are also components of the government.
Look at the current sales pitch that seems to be saying that there is some universal human right to health care.
As if, somehow, without the government nipple thrust between your lips, you yourself are incapable of determining how to choose a reasonable diet/exercise plan that is going to help you live a long and healthy life. Never mind the thousands of years of recorded history that existed prior to this wonderful government decree. Never mind the rather mixed results of these systems in other countries.
Of course, the message is not put as crassly as I just did. It's all subtext. And, as "a matter of perception" you can simply choose to ignore it.
Oh, so when there is a major format change in a piece of hardware, like DVD players, I won't be left out in the cold if I can find a way to make other equipment work?
This kind of thing hardly sounds good for the economy.
The development environment is a form government.
Just offload all of that heavy "thinking" stuff onto the development environment.
You'll be much happier for it; really, you will.
Yeah, but you can write C++ for days, and simply compile the source code under GCC, and off come the velvet handcuffs.
Unless you're "into" that sort of thing...
The UN has to be put in the context of the horror of WWII, and the tension of the nuclear arms race that followed.
There was a need to have a forum to increase communications, and a security council to keep an eye on "them commies",
but no one was keen on it doing anything more powerful than cajoling.
This is by no means a personal attack, but I consider this concept the height of wishful thinking.
Irrespective of whatever high ideals the concept is born under, it will be a full-on cartel within 10 years, and I'm being generous.
No perfect systems exist, and, thus, the smaller the system, the less the imperfections.
Re:Doesn't necessarily have to be big business/ go
on
WikiLeaks Under Fire
·
· Score: 1
certainly see some good things coming from the idea
Oh, absolutely. There will indeed be much good. And you will hear about it. It will be advertised, oh yes.
The concern comes from the concentration of power.
Families and clans are presumably the oldest constructs. Then you get into nations. The more abstracted the governing system, the more layers of bureaucracy, the more the individuals get reduced to little cells in a spreadsheet. The decision makers are too removed from the individual voter.
Then the various patronage systems come along. It's all packaged nicely, of course. Taxes are kind of high, and I suppose it's all right if you have simple tastes, and are from basically healthy stock, so you don't get too sick.
the U.S.'s current international idiocies never would have happened
I suppose if you're confident that some other idiocy would not have come along, you could feel good about it. Stated otherwise: I don't see how this world government guarantees actual peace, though I'm sure the propaganda organs would say otherwise.
Does this government directly tinker with the human spirit, perhaps?
That was the Republic of Texas, and there was also a Republic of California.
Of course, those were fig leaves to paper over the US expansion at the expense of Mexico.
From a larger historical perspective, all of the illegal immigration seems like an evening of the scales.
So why not do it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
Concentrated power, across the DIME is ++ungood.
Hence the fact that all this seductive socialism scares me as much or more as the Team America: World Police foreign policy that we can't seem to escape.
For 300 years the British had a global array of colonies, supported by their navies... then the modern area began, and the ruthless taxation and primitive conditions were no longer enough to keep some of those colonies from revolting, and changing the global sphere of power.
The impression I took away from Fromkin was that, among other things, the French and British were too culturally exhausted after WWI to do much beyond bumble the handoff. A quibble.
instead of water cooled reactors...
My efforts to go to Nuclear Power School in the Navy failed in amusing ways, so I'll take your word for it.
successful split in the civil war
If the South could have jumped forward about three decades for a peek at Mahan's "Influence of Seapower...", but we'll leave that to Harry Turtledove.
i expect the future to be bleak, and revert to a world where the 'rich' live off the backs of the 'poor' in the third world nations. as such, technology that exists today may well be lost, due to the insanely high cost.
Is that a bug or a feature? I've got Amish across the river. Transitioning back to simple farming is one way to escape the MicroSoft monopoly.
Seriously, I just don't share much of the dystopian view. The single-world government is kind of a bother, but eschatology never held my attention long after I realized Hal Lindsay was farce.
So you would be OK with the CIA assassinating you if you just happened to be on a trip to Mexico?
I dunno. Am I beavering away on plots to spread mayhem north of the Rio Grande?
This is certainly a fine extreme case, and it's a good thing that we do consider things like waterboarding. The will of the people seems to be strongly opposed. Excellent. Wouldn't want that carried out on me. Like a minefield in the enemy harbor, though, waterboarding isn't so much about the actual yes/no should it be used on prisoner X at time Y, but rather the threat of doing such. Which is exactly why the executive branch, and the US in international treaties, is very careful about where and when specific language gets set down.
In the highly-charged emotional debates, this fine point seems missed.
No, it's a debate that unreasonable people can and will use to convince easily frightened and uneducated people that it is necessary to give up some of their rights.
Not sure that you've modeled the problem well in this phrasing.
There are citizens, foreigners, and a constitution. The constitution says what it says. Reality is what it is. Government overachieves frequently, e.g. the District of Columbia ban on firearms. Labelling some viewpoints as tools to frighten the uneducated hardly helps debate.
Presidents tend to have a very expansive view of their job. The Congress checks that view, or, often, writes checks to support that view.
Some wandering thoughts, not necessarily on this topic:
The sad nature of the current political tautology is that, even if there was an impeachment proceeding against Bush and Cheney, any verdict less than "guilty" would be interpreted as a sign that the proceedings had been corrupted. In other words, the question is not one of facts and reasonable debate, but has passed into the realm of the religious.
In this kind of discussion, I'm left to wish that history could support experiments, and drop some of the members of the peanut gallery in key positions, just to see them react to the sorts of challenges that have been faced by the post-9/11 leadership. Ah, Teddy.
is a real long time, friend. I used the term "oozing" to indicate that I'm thinking way off in the future.
Of course, given the proper crisis engineering, the viscosity of the ooze could be altered...
A more general strategic review is required.
There may be some tragedy involved, of course, but the conclusion at 3:19 in this clip holds true:
"This town needs an enema!"
See, you're on a crusade for the cause of Linux, and I very much respect that cause.
Actually, I'm not. I'm on a crusade for clear thinking.
WRT licensing, I am an FSF member, but more from a common-sense standpoint. Whenever RMS goes on the "ethics" tangent, I lose track. The argument is squishy at best.
I use a lot of proprietary software, and am quite adept at *cough*Visual Basic*cough*.
People need to relax and embrace the fact that there is a continuum of motives for using software, and there is plenty of room to share.
That said, report to http://gentoo.org/ and install yourself something useful, sir.;)
It's just convenient for the people in power to convince the public otherwise.
Suspending disbelief momentarily, pending legal review, I have this question:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Are you really sure about the document's scope?
I suppose if you mean the physical territory of these United States, then anyone standing within the borders could be seen as "People of the United States".
Too, WRT Guantanamo Bay, the fact that the detainees are not in CONUS may be seen as keeping them out of legal theory range.
Not here to shill for anybody: it's a debate that reasonable people can chew on for a while.
No, my points were all leading up to the oozing question.
I don't think that it should be considered a bad thing for countries or big business to be held accountable for their actions.
I don't, either, insofar as it doesn't tend towards yet another layer of control above sovereign nations, even further removed from the will of the governed.
Slashdot Mirror
I can even see this point from a theological standpoint in Galatians 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
Existentially, however, "the authorities" have vastly different scopes. Driven to its logical extreme, a "wand of equal treatment" would conclude in a single world government, so that there is but one authority, and all are indeed guaranteed equal treatment, for certain values of "equal".
However, IMO human nature, while not infrequently doing "good" things, has a certain entropy to it, and tends toward the ++ungood. Keeping the world fragmented, and limiting the scope of authority, while, certainly breeding a raft of problems, makes at least as much sense as trying to merge everything and giving an elite few the authority to define what "right" and "equal" mean, as YMMV.
Given the real fragmentation of the world, conflict arises.
Given conflict, there is a body of work known as the Law of Armed Conflict that attempts to offer a framework for limiting the violence.
Answering your question, then, it's quite easy to argue that "the military commissions act is a crime against humanity". The bigger challenge is to develop a "solution" (if a politician ever claims to 'solve' a problem, the problem had better be a tiny one, or this is an indication that your leg is being pulled) that can be implemented in The World As We Know It.
This is not meant to mock your idealism in the slightest. Keep it alive, as it is a valid input towards overall improvement in the world.
You may think me some great rationalizer. I certainly am, and I thank you for a post that knocks some of the dust off of my own internal ideals.
The only utopian approach I can personally get to, however, is a theological one. The secular humanist approaches, in my worldview, are themselves variations on the theme of "I am God".
The various Socialist approaches seem to place the State on the level of God. This is idolatry to me, for the State is a convenient abstraction shared by a bunch of people. The land on either side of the Rio Grande has as much knowledge of "Mexico" and "The United States" as the river does "Rio Grande".
Thus, my curiosity piqued: under what banner would you propose to unite humanity such that "absolute human rights" are guaranteed absolutely equal enforcement? This is a serious question, and not intended as flamebait in the slightest.
However, "those who enable it" are also components of the government.
Look at the current sales pitch that seems to be saying that there is some universal human right to health care.
As if, somehow, without the government nipple thrust between your lips, you yourself are incapable of determining how to choose a reasonable diet/exercise plan that is going to help you live a long and healthy life. Never mind the thousands of years of recorded history that existed prior to this wonderful government decree. Never mind the rather mixed results of these systems in other countries.
Of course, the message is not put as crassly as I just did. It's all subtext. And, as "a matter of perception" you can simply choose to ignore it.
I could boot an AN/UYK-7 without using a reference.
These days, I just play highland bagpipe.
Oh, so when there is a major format change in a piece of hardware, like DVD players, I won't be left out in the cold if I can find a way to make other equipment work?
This kind of thing hardly sounds good for the economy.
The development environment is a form government.
Just offload all of that heavy "thinking" stuff onto the development environment.
You'll be much happier for it; really, you will.
Yeah, but you can write C++ for days, and simply compile the source code under GCC, and off come the velvet handcuffs.
Unless you're "into" that sort of thing...
The UN has to be put in the context of the horror of WWII, and the tension of the nuclear arms race that followed.
There was a need to have a forum to increase communications, and a security council to keep an eye on "them commies",
but no one was keen on it doing anything more powerful than cajoling.
Irrespective of whatever high ideals the concept is born under, it will be a full-on cartel within 10 years, and I'm being generous.
No perfect systems exist, and, thus, the smaller the system, the less the imperfections.
One of those developers responds here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRyk5QyYGU8
Personal brand!
Facebook look: grand.
With wave of the hand,
Appear spontaneously planned:
Burma Shave
The concern comes from the concentration of power.
Families and clans are presumably the oldest constructs. Then you get into nations. The more abstracted the governing system, the more layers of bureaucracy, the more the individuals get reduced to little cells in a spreadsheet. The decision makers are too removed from the individual voter.
Then the various patronage systems come along. It's all packaged nicely, of course. Taxes are kind of high, and I suppose it's all right if you have simple tastes, and are from basically healthy stock, so you don't get too sick. I suppose if you're confident that some other idiocy would not have come along, you could feel good about it. Stated otherwise: I don't see how this world government guarantees actual peace, though I'm sure the propaganda organs would say otherwise.
Does this government directly tinker with the human spirit, perhaps?
Of course, those were fig leaves to paper over the US expansion at the expense of Mexico.
From a larger historical perspective, all of the illegal immigration seems like an evening of the scales.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
Concentrated power, across the DIME is ++ungood.
Hence the fact that all this seductive socialism scares me as much or more as the Team America: World Police foreign policy that we can't seem to escape.
OK, but there exists a Law of War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_war that states otherwise.
This one is not: QWERTY.
Seriously, I just don't share much of the dystopian view. The single-world government is kind of a bother, but eschatology never held my attention long after I realized Hal Lindsay was farce.
This is certainly a fine extreme case, and it's a good thing that we do consider things like waterboarding. The will of the people seems to be strongly opposed. Excellent. Wouldn't want that carried out on me. Like a minefield in the enemy harbor, though, waterboarding isn't so much about the actual yes/no should it be used on prisoner X at time Y, but rather the threat of doing such. Which is exactly why the executive branch, and the US in international treaties, is very careful about where and when specific language gets set down.
In the highly-charged emotional debates, this fine point seems missed. Not sure that you've modeled the problem well in this phrasing.
There are citizens, foreigners, and a constitution. The constitution says what it says. Reality is what it is. Government overachieves frequently, e.g. the District of Columbia ban on firearms. Labelling some viewpoints as tools to frighten the uneducated hardly helps debate.
Presidents tend to have a very expansive view of their job. The Congress checks that view, or, often, writes checks to support that view.
Some wandering thoughts, not necessarily on this topic:
The sad nature of the current political tautology is that, even if there was an impeachment proceeding against Bush and Cheney, any verdict less than "guilty" would be interpreted as a sign that the proceedings had been corrupted. In other words, the question is not one of facts and reasonable debate, but has passed into the realm of the religious.
In this kind of discussion, I'm left to wish that history could support experiments, and drop some of the members of the peanut gallery in key positions, just to see them react to the sorts of challenges that have been faced by the post-9/11 leadership. Ah, Teddy.
is a real long time, friend. I used the term "oozing" to indicate that I'm thinking way off in the future.
Of course, given the proper crisis engineering, the viscosity of the ooze could be altered...
A more general strategic review is required.
There may be some tragedy involved, of course, but the conclusion at 3:19 in this clip holds true:
"This town needs an enema!"
s/bitch/advertise/
"Tangential", spake the grammar fascist.
WRT licensing, I am an FSF member, but more from a common-sense standpoint. Whenever RMS goes on the "ethics" tangent, I lose track. The argument is squishy at best.
I use a lot of proprietary software, and am quite adept at *cough*Visual Basic*cough*.
People need to relax and embrace the fact that there is a continuum of motives for using software, and there is plenty of room to share.
That said, report to http://gentoo.org/ and install yourself something useful, sir.
Are you really sure about the document's scope?
I suppose if you mean the physical territory of these United States, then anyone standing within the borders could be seen as "People of the United States".
Too, WRT Guantanamo Bay, the fact that the detainees are not in CONUS may be seen as keeping them out of legal theory range.
Not here to shill for anybody: it's a debate that reasonable people can chew on for a while.