It's about learning to socialize, learning to negotiate conflict, learning to stand up for yourself, learning that life isn't fair, and a hundred other critical 'intangibles' that result in a rounded human being.
Yeah, because locking people up in an artificial prison-like environment with others their own age is the only way to teach someone about the Real World.
I worry that excessive home schooling will result in people who can ace tests, but essentially develop in a bubble.
That's because you know nothing about homeschooling, homeschooling groups, or actual real life socialization.
I lived in my state since the beginning. I'm not telling people to move, but if they do plan on moving to another state or country, that's just another factor that should be considered before picking a place to move to. If you can't move, all you can do is try to supplement your child's education by homeschooling them out of school, and putting pressure on the schools to improve as much as possible (which should be done anyway).
Again, lawmakers are going to want you to show evidence that "all of these courses are just a waste of time", that "schools only teach to the test", and that "schools [...] have students memorize information and patterns". Without such evidence, you'll never get the law changed.
I thought people would be aware of these well-known problems. You need only look at our crappy standardized tests.
In Cuba, El Salvador, Greenland, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, the Republic of Korea, Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, San Marino, Serbia, and Sweden, homeschooling is a crime.
That's quite a shame. Furthermore, some US states have made it extremely difficult to homeschool your children. A select few are extremely permissive to the point of basically requiring nothing and checking up on nothing, but they're a vast minority.
Besides the fact that all of these courses are just a waste of time, since schools only teach to the test and have students memorize information and patterns? Personally, dropping out and self-educating would have been a better use of my time, or homeschooling.
My point is that those subjects, which 99% of people never use again in their adult life, are mandatory.
Perhaps they shouldn't be.
If more people understood basic things like binary, base 2 vs base 10, basic CPU processing, memory, bandwidth, trojans vs viruses, we would have a lot less problems with stupid things like "Western Digital sold me a smaller hard drive than advertised" or "I'm going to upload this 30 megabytes, 12 megapixel photo to use as my avatar picture for that forum" or the ever-popular "I entered my account password so I could watch porn".
That's only if most people are capable of understanding how to be even decent programmers. I doubt they are, as they don't seem to be capable of understanding math (they can memorize equations and patterns, but that's about it). But for the more basic things you mentioned? Probably.
If they're about foreign surveillance, then why are they collecting data about millions of Americans? Seriously, did you just ignore all the documents that were leaked not that long ago, or what? It was fucking obvious they were spying on Americans even before the Snowden leaks, let alone after...
To say we need to shut down the NSA is rather foolish if it still has important duties to perform.
You're a god damn moron. Let me just quote my other post: "No, I think that the NSA does some very evil shit. Guess which matters more in a free country? The fact that this government organization is violating our rights and the *highest law of the land*. Everything good they do is irrelevant when you consider the fact that we're supposed to be the land of the free. Everyone working in that organization must quit until they stop violating our freedoms."
The supposed good it does is overridden by the fact that, in the 'land of the free,' the bad they do is inherently far more important.
So you should be allowed to continue to get a paycheck doing what you do and voting the way you vote.
Not if I work for an evil organization like the NSA. If I did, then I would be morally wrong not to quit.
But I (the theoretical mathematician) should not be able to get a paycheck because a minority of the population disagrees with the NSA's conduct
If you don't disagree with the NSA's activities, then you're an authoritarian scumbag who doesn't care about fundamental liberties or the constitution.
Throwing in some references to Nazi Germany doesn't help it sound any better.
That's because you're a fucking worthless moron.
Besides, if I truly believe in the democratic system and the laws of the country, I know that the information the NSA is gaining from it's surveillance is being used appropriately and that there are checks and balances to keep it that way.
You're an idiot. Here's why: 1) Millions upon millions of people have been abused by corrupt governments throughout history. That includes our lovely democratic government, which used slavery, discrimination (against women and blacks), Japanese internment camps, the TSA, free speech zones, etc. There is no reason to think that our government's checks and balances are flawless. You think the people in the government are perfect beings? I laugh at your stupidity and ignorance of history. 2) If our checks and balances were flawless, the NSA would have been told to stop long ago. The *mere collection* of this information is in itself an egregious violating of the constitution and our individual liberties. 3) We're supposed to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave." We are not supposed to assume that our government is doing the right thing; we were meant to do the opposite, and especially when their activities are secret and their powers are nearly unlimited. Our *entire system* is set up in such a way that makes it clear that we're not meant to just trust our government. That's why we even have some notion of checks and balances (flawed though they may be), and a constitution which is a whitelist of things the government can do. Because they can't be trusted, and they can't be trusted even with these checks in place. After all, they violated, and continue to violate, people's individual liberties and the constitution; they're doing it in broad daylight, in fact. Why do you ignore this?
This is no conspiracy theory; it's just me not ignoring history. Given all this information, the government will be able to abuse anyone it likes and pick out targets to harass. This is very simple and not startling at all. The FBI even wiretapped MLK. Why does the mere notion that the government shouldn't be given a ridiculous amount of power cause you to call others conspiracy theorists?
If we went about looking at everything that any country or company does that could be construed as an "act of evil", no one should be employed.
I can think of none that are as directly responsible for the egregious violation of our fundamental liberties and the highest law of the land as the NSA. Your move, cretin.
Sure, people say their programs are unconstitutional. However, by our system, the people don't get to make those decisions, its the judges.
Actually, it is the people, as the judges are no more right than anyone else. Let me quote Thomas Jefferson for you:
"You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.
The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them ; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him.
The Constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs."
You see, that's the adult thing. You must support the law, even the ones you don't like.
Nonsense. It's called "civil disobedience." Unjust laws are unjust and needn't be followed, and they are broken when it is convenient. You losers have lost this fight already.
If all your neighbors in the suburbs threw up privacy fences, you'd have a much more immediate and felt loss of freedom than if the NSA indexes your mail at some point after your provider has already done it and exchanged your message with unknown third parties en route to its destination.
Fuck you, you authoritarian piece of trash. Millions upon millions of people were abused and/or outright killed by corrupt governments throughout history, and now you're trying to tell me that it's perfectly okay if a government made up of imperfect humans is given access to tons of communications data? What do you think they are, perfect beings who can do no wrong and make no mistakes? You're a god damn fool who's completely ignorant of history.
You people are worthless, and you'll never convince me that the government violating the constitution and people's liberties is not something to be alarmed about.
Between helping the NSA violate almost everyone's fundamental liberties and the highest law of the god damn land, it's quite selfish and immoral to choose to help them, job or no job.
Fascinating concepts... tell me, how do you rationalize your stance with the fact the U.S. was founded by stealing the land from the previous occupants?
I don't. How does the other fool who actually *is* justifying the violation of people's rights rationalize it? Why not ask him? Stealing land was the wrong way to go about it, but then, few countries could say that no one other than them owned the land at some point in the past.
Are you willing to declare the experiment over and return all lands that were seized by force (i.e. all of them) back to the Native Americans?
No, because those people are long since dead. I've never been fond of the "You oppose X, but X was used to do good things, so you must give up the good things that X brought about."-type logic, because it's completely irrational. If a cure for cancer was made by kidnapping a bunch of babies and sacrificing them, and making use of the cure did not require any future sacrifices, I would find it irrational to just toss it away simply because of that. Likewise, giving away the land would be irrational, both because the people affected are pretty much gone (though not all descendents are gone, new people were born on this land, and giving it back would be the same as stealing from them), and doing that would not accomplish a damn thing. If a future event takes place that is similar in nature to what happened to the Native Americans, then people must oppose it.
And what does any of this have to do with the NSA's mass surveillance? I still don't know why people are trying to use past violations of people's rights to justify present violations of people's rights; it makes no fucking sense.
You don't have a right to confidential communications with the enemy in wartime.
Even if I were to agree with that, the government does not have the power to spy on everything just to see if someone is doing something illegal. Etc.
And yet you don't seem to object to Americans being killed, totally depriving them of their rights.
I expect the government to be better than criminals or terrorists. When the government is infringing upon people's rights, for whatever reason, it becomes the bad guy; that shouldn't happen in any country. It's a much worse scenario than terrorists or criminals killing people, as the government that's supposed to care about our rights no longer recognizes them.
Your logic just leads to us having no rights, as long as the government can justify any infringement in the name of 'safety.' Why have the 4th amendment at all? We could probably catch more criminals if we just allowed police to bust into any house they want for whatever reason. Putting aside the fact that that would make the government the criminal, it seems like it would be a good idea to you.
Whereas I'm not willing to sacrifice our freedoms for 'safety', you seem all too willing to have the government stop recognizing them.
A preferable alternative might be to ask registered voters to take a knowledge test that apportions a greater/lesser weight to their vote in proportion to their score.
I'm not sure what test we could give that wouldn't be biased out the ass, or would later be manipulated by elites.
A somewhat better solution would be to have a constitution exactly like we do now, and not just mindlessly accept everything the majority wants. The majority should not have absolute power, but their power should be constrained by a constitution that protects individual liberties. The people certainly could have more say than they do now, though.
No, I think that the NSA does some very evil shit. Guess which matters more in a free country? The fact that this government organization is violating our rights and the *highest law of the land*. Everything good they do is irrelevant when you consider the fact that we're supposed to be the land of the free. Everyone working in that organization must quit until they stop violating our freedoms.
That those possessed of a moral conscience would fail to act on it unless someone on the Internet says they should?
I didn't say that anywhere. I'm simply stating the truth; nothing more.
The TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, free speech zones, stop-and-frisk, DUI checkpoints, mass public surveillance, unfettered border searches, constitution-free zones, gun control laws, copyright, patents, anti-free speech laws, protest permits, the general erosion of the 4th amendment, etc. all show that the US government is pretty evil right now. Now, you mention Nazi Germany and such, which was in the past. Shall we bring up some past events, too? Japanese internment camps, women's rights, slavery, and the poor treatment of blacks that followed. The US is not and never has been a beacon of freedom.
But your bullshit logic seems to be this: "X helped defeat Bad Thing Y, so X must not be bad." That just isn't going to cut it. Guess what? Just because the US defeated some 'bad guys', that doesn't mean the US government isn't itself a bad guy; it is.
Actually, I don't like Franklin's version. I like yours better. Franklin's version seems to say that it would be okay to sacrifice freedom if the safety gained is not temporary (among other things), which is something I reject.
It is a simple fact that Benjamin Franklin opened other people's mail for intelligence and propaganda purposes during the Revolutionary War. General Washington ran a spy ring that engaged in spying on other colonists.
"Telling me of other acts of spying will not convince me that freedom is worthless"
Or, to put it another way, "X did it too, so it's okay!" is not going to convince me of *shit*.
You can't change history unless you invent a time machine.
Nor do I need to. You seem to be putting forth this illogical argument that, "Person X in the past did Y, and because they did Y, you have freedoms today. Therefore, we should continue to do Y." I don't buy it. If such a situation occurred in the future, principled people would object to it.
I do not look at the founding fathers as perfect beings. They had some good ideas, but many bad ones. From day one, people's freedoms were being violated, and I object to any instance of that happening. So can it.
The problem is entirely yours. There is nothing inconsistent with wanting a limited government that accomplishes its functions competently and efficiently.
A truly limited government does not infringe upon people's fundamental liberties in the name of security.
National defense is a constitutional responsibility of the Federal government.
And our other rights cannot be infringed upon in the name of that security; that is intolerable.
You might have noticed that there are major portions of the Constitution devoted to specifying that.
The bill of rights after that, and they must respect people's rights while trying to secure the nation.
Your claim is ridiculous on the face of it. It is just another form of personal attack you have engaged in along with all the name calling.
Your words reveal your true nature, and your true nature is that of an authoritarian.
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Agree with them or not, the NRA knows what is needed to protect their favorite amendment.
Obviously not, since they've accepted some amount of gun control.
And btw, the examples you present can certainly be learned by the vast majority of people.
Most people can't even understand anything more than the most basic of basic math, so I highly doubt that.
It's about learning to socialize, learning to negotiate conflict, learning to stand up for yourself, learning that life isn't fair, and a hundred other critical 'intangibles' that result in a rounded human being.
Yeah, because locking people up in an artificial prison-like environment with others their own age is the only way to teach someone about the Real World.
I worry that excessive home schooling will result in people who can ace tests, but essentially develop in a bubble.
That's because you know nothing about homeschooling, homeschooling groups, or actual real life socialization.
I thought we were talking about modifying the system so that people are more directly involved.
I lived in my state since the beginning. I'm not telling people to move, but if they do plan on moving to another state or country, that's just another factor that should be considered before picking a place to move to. If you can't move, all you can do is try to supplement your child's education by homeschooling them out of school, and putting pressure on the schools to improve as much as possible (which should be done anyway).
What? Imprisonment? For the homeschooling thing? My state (I live in the US) is one of the most permissive states when it comes to that.
Again, lawmakers are going to want you to show evidence that "all of these courses are just a waste of time", that "schools only teach to the test", and that "schools [...] have students memorize information and patterns". Without such evidence, you'll never get the law changed.
I thought people would be aware of these well-known problems. You need only look at our crappy standardized tests.
In Cuba, El Salvador, Greenland, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, the Republic of Korea, Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, San Marino, Serbia, and Sweden, homeschooling is a crime.
That's quite a shame. Furthermore, some US states have made it extremely difficult to homeschool your children. A select few are extremely permissive to the point of basically requiring nothing and checking up on nothing, but they're a vast minority.
Besides the fact that all of these courses are just a waste of time, since schools only teach to the test and have students memorize information and patterns? Personally, dropping out and self-educating would have been a better use of my time, or homeschooling.
My point is that those subjects, which 99% of people never use again in their adult life, are mandatory.
Perhaps they shouldn't be.
If more people understood basic things like binary, base 2 vs base 10, basic CPU processing, memory, bandwidth, trojans vs viruses, we would have a lot less problems with stupid things like "Western Digital sold me a smaller hard drive than advertised" or "I'm going to upload this 30 megabytes, 12 megapixel photo to use as my avatar picture for that forum" or the ever-popular "I entered my account password so I could watch porn".
That's only if most people are capable of understanding how to be even decent programmers. I doubt they are, as they don't seem to be capable of understanding math (they can memorize equations and patterns, but that's about it). But for the more basic things you mentioned? Probably.
Indeed, those arguments could be applied to those subjects. Your point?
If they're about foreign surveillance, then why are they collecting data about millions of Americans? Seriously, did you just ignore all the documents that were leaked not that long ago, or what? It was fucking obvious they were spying on Americans even before the Snowden leaks, let alone after...
To say we need to shut down the NSA is rather foolish if it still has important duties to perform.
You're a god damn moron. Let me just quote my other post: "No, I think that the NSA does some very evil shit. Guess which matters more in a free country? The fact that this government organization is violating our rights and the *highest law of the land*. Everything good they do is irrelevant when you consider the fact that we're supposed to be the land of the free. Everyone working in that organization must quit until they stop violating our freedoms."
The supposed good it does is overridden by the fact that, in the 'land of the free,' the bad they do is inherently far more important.
So you should be allowed to continue to get a paycheck doing what you do and voting the way you vote.
Not if I work for an evil organization like the NSA. If I did, then I would be morally wrong not to quit.
But I (the theoretical mathematician) should not be able to get a paycheck because a minority of the population disagrees with the NSA's conduct
If you don't disagree with the NSA's activities, then you're an authoritarian scumbag who doesn't care about fundamental liberties or the constitution.
Throwing in some references to Nazi Germany doesn't help it sound any better.
That's because you're a fucking worthless moron.
Besides, if I truly believe in the democratic system and the laws of the country, I know that the information the NSA is gaining from it's surveillance is being used appropriately and that there are checks and balances to keep it that way.
You're an idiot. Here's why:
1) Millions upon millions of people have been abused by corrupt governments throughout history. That includes our lovely democratic government, which used slavery, discrimination (against women and blacks), Japanese internment camps, the TSA, free speech zones, etc. There is no reason to think that our government's checks and balances are flawless. You think the people in the government are perfect beings? I laugh at your stupidity and ignorance of history.
2) If our checks and balances were flawless, the NSA would have been told to stop long ago. The *mere collection* of this information is in itself an egregious violating of the constitution and our individual liberties.
3) We're supposed to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave." We are not supposed to assume that our government is doing the right thing; we were meant to do the opposite, and especially when their activities are secret and their powers are nearly unlimited. Our *entire system* is set up in such a way that makes it clear that we're not meant to just trust our government. That's why we even have some notion of checks and balances (flawed though they may be), and a constitution which is a whitelist of things the government can do. Because they can't be trusted, and they can't be trusted even with these checks in place. After all, they violated, and continue to violate, people's individual liberties and the constitution; they're doing it in broad daylight, in fact. Why do you ignore this?
This is no conspiracy theory; it's just me not ignoring history. Given all this information, the government will be able to abuse anyone it likes and pick out targets to harass. This is very simple and not startling at all. The FBI even wiretapped MLK. Why does the mere notion that the government shouldn't be given a ridiculous amount of power cause you to call others conspiracy theorists?
If we went about looking at everything that any country or company does that could be construed as an "act of evil", no one should be employed.
I can think of none that are as directly responsible for the egregious violation of our fundamental liberties and the highest law of the land as the NSA. Your move, cretin.
Sure, people say their programs are unconstitutional. However, by our system, the people don't get to make those decisions, its the judges.
Actually, it is the people, as the judges are no more right than anyone else. Let me quote Thomas Jefferson for you:
"You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.
The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them ; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him.
The Constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs."
You see, that's the adult thing. You must support the law, even the ones you don't like.
Nonsense. It's called "civil disobedience." Unjust laws are unjust and needn't be followed, and they are broken when it is convenient. You losers have lost this fight already.
If you think the NSA is evil, you have no fucking clue about its adversaries.
False dichotomy.
If all your neighbors in the suburbs threw up privacy fences, you'd have a much more immediate and felt loss of freedom than if the NSA indexes your mail at some point after your provider has already done it and exchanged your message with unknown third parties en route to its destination.
Fuck you, you authoritarian piece of trash. Millions upon millions of people were abused and/or outright killed by corrupt governments throughout history, and now you're trying to tell me that it's perfectly okay if a government made up of imperfect humans is given access to tons of communications data? What do you think they are, perfect beings who can do no wrong and make no mistakes? You're a god damn fool who's completely ignorant of history.
You people are worthless, and you'll never convince me that the government violating the constitution and people's liberties is not something to be alarmed about.
Between helping the NSA violate almost everyone's fundamental liberties and the highest law of the god damn land, it's quite selfish and immoral to choose to help them, job or no job.
Fascinating concepts... tell me, how do you rationalize your stance with the fact the U.S. was founded by stealing the land from the previous occupants?
I don't. How does the other fool who actually *is* justifying the violation of people's rights rationalize it? Why not ask him? Stealing land was the wrong way to go about it, but then, few countries could say that no one other than them owned the land at some point in the past.
Are you willing to declare the experiment over and return all lands that were seized by force (i.e. all of them) back to the Native Americans?
No, because those people are long since dead. I've never been fond of the "You oppose X, but X was used to do good things, so you must give up the good things that X brought about."-type logic, because it's completely irrational. If a cure for cancer was made by kidnapping a bunch of babies and sacrificing them, and making use of the cure did not require any future sacrifices, I would find it irrational to just toss it away simply because of that. Likewise, giving away the land would be irrational, both because the people affected are pretty much gone (though not all descendents are gone, new people were born on this land, and giving it back would be the same as stealing from them), and doing that would not accomplish a damn thing. If a future event takes place that is similar in nature to what happened to the Native Americans, then people must oppose it.
And what does any of this have to do with the NSA's mass surveillance? I still don't know why people are trying to use past violations of people's rights to justify present violations of people's rights; it makes no fucking sense.
You don't have a right to confidential communications with the enemy in wartime.
Even if I were to agree with that, the government does not have the power to spy on everything just to see if someone is doing something illegal. Etc.
And yet you don't seem to object to Americans being killed, totally depriving them of their rights.
I expect the government to be better than criminals or terrorists. When the government is infringing upon people's rights, for whatever reason, it becomes the bad guy; that shouldn't happen in any country. It's a much worse scenario than terrorists or criminals killing people, as the government that's supposed to care about our rights no longer recognizes them.
Your logic just leads to us having no rights, as long as the government can justify any infringement in the name of 'safety.' Why have the 4th amendment at all? We could probably catch more criminals if we just allowed police to bust into any house they want for whatever reason. Putting aside the fact that that would make the government the criminal, it seems like it would be a good idea to you.
Whereas I'm not willing to sacrifice our freedoms for 'safety', you seem all too willing to have the government stop recognizing them.
A preferable alternative might be to ask registered voters to take a knowledge test that apportions a greater/lesser weight to their vote in proportion to their score.
I'm not sure what test we could give that wouldn't be biased out the ass, or would later be manipulated by elites.
A somewhat better solution would be to have a constitution exactly like we do now, and not just mindlessly accept everything the majority wants. The majority should not have absolute power, but their power should be constrained by a constitution that protects individual liberties. The people certainly could have more say than they do now, though.
You think that everything the NSA does is evil?
No, I think that the NSA does some very evil shit. Guess which matters more in a free country? The fact that this government organization is violating our rights and the *highest law of the land*. Everything good they do is irrelevant when you consider the fact that we're supposed to be the land of the free. Everyone working in that organization must quit until they stop violating our freedoms.
That those possessed of a moral conscience would fail to act on it unless someone on the Internet says they should?
I didn't say that anywhere. I'm simply stating the truth; nothing more.
The TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, free speech zones, stop-and-frisk, DUI checkpoints, mass public surveillance, unfettered border searches, constitution-free zones, gun control laws, copyright, patents, anti-free speech laws, protest permits, the general erosion of the 4th amendment, etc. all show that the US government is pretty evil right now. Now, you mention Nazi Germany and such, which was in the past. Shall we bring up some past events, too? Japanese internment camps, women's rights, slavery, and the poor treatment of blacks that followed. The US is not and never has been a beacon of freedom.
But your bullshit logic seems to be this: "X helped defeat Bad Thing Y, so X must not be bad." That just isn't going to cut it. Guess what? Just because the US defeated some 'bad guys', that doesn't mean the US government isn't itself a bad guy; it is.
Actually, I don't like Franklin's version. I like yours better. Franklin's version seems to say that it would be okay to sacrifice freedom if the safety gained is not temporary (among other things), which is something I reject.
It is a simple fact that Benjamin Franklin opened other people's mail for intelligence and propaganda purposes during the Revolutionary War. General Washington ran a spy ring that engaged in spying on other colonists.
"Telling me of other acts of spying will not convince me that freedom is worthless"
Or, to put it another way, "X did it too, so it's okay!" is not going to convince me of *shit*.
You can't change history unless you invent a time machine.
Nor do I need to. You seem to be putting forth this illogical argument that, "Person X in the past did Y, and because they did Y, you have freedoms today. Therefore, we should continue to do Y." I don't buy it. If such a situation occurred in the future, principled people would object to it.
I do not look at the founding fathers as perfect beings. They had some good ideas, but many bad ones. From day one, people's freedoms were being violated, and I object to any instance of that happening. So can it.
The problem is entirely yours. There is nothing inconsistent with wanting a limited government that accomplishes its functions competently and efficiently.
A truly limited government does not infringe upon people's fundamental liberties in the name of security.
National defense is a constitutional responsibility of the Federal government.
And our other rights cannot be infringed upon in the name of that security; that is intolerable.
You might have noticed that there are major portions of the Constitution devoted to specifying that.
The bill of rights after that, and they must respect people's rights while trying to secure the nation.
Your claim is ridiculous on the face of it. It is just another form of personal attack you have engaged in along with all the name calling.
Your words reveal your true nature, and your true nature is that of an authoritarian.
So, you think that anyone attempting to protect citizens of the US and its allies is engaged in "evil"?
I think infringing upon people's rights in an effort to protect them is evil.