"The problem with guns that when they are freely available that any one can go nuts and go on a shooting spree at a school or what not."
Gee, I get tired of hearing that myth-- that guns are more "freely available" now than ever before and that's why we have violence in schools that would have been unimaginable 40 years ago.
The truth is that guns are far less available than they were then. When I was a kid in the late 50s and early 60s (yeah, I'm older'n'dirt) you could buy a surplus military rifle from an ad in the back of a comic book, for the huge sum of $15. The postman would deliver it to your house, no questions asked.
And now you can't even buy a gun mail-order unless you have a federal license. There are background checks, and a thicket of laws attempting to reduce gun ownership and restrict access to guns. And yet somehow the violence is worse than it was when guns were really "freely available." How does that scan?
I expect the same sort of reverse results curve when good crypto is outlawed. Law-abiding citizens won't be able to use it for their own protection, but criminals and whackos will use it to prey on the rest of us.
"If they did they would be holding a double standard, that privacy rights are not a concern to the government "
Unfortunately, this double standard is thoroughly entrenched in government. To some extent this is necessary. For example, if someone steals my stereo, and I catch him and chain him up in the basement for a couple of years, that's illegal. If the police catch him and put him in prison for a couple of years, that's good.
But there are some double standards which work against the hope for a just society. For example, if I pay a witness to testify as I direct, then I have suborned perjury. If a prosecutor does it, by bribing a witness with ten years off a prison sentence, it's just standard operating procedure.
The point is, we have to examine any double standard with care-- we have to weigh the profit and loss, in terms of a just society.
"I do fear unrestrained government. But that's not the point. I don't fear less restrained government."
Surely you must recognize that at some point a "less-restrained" government is functionally indistinguishable from an "unrestrained" government.
We could, for example, greatly increase security and the effectiveness of law enforcement if we stationed a cop in everyone's house.
Where do you draw the line? I happen to believe that we have already crossed the line into a police state, even though folks who conform to the majority culture have not yet noticed it. I keep reading stuff like:"I have nothing to hide, so I don't care who reads my mail or listens to my conversations."
"Ok, seriously, I'm not trying to be difficult here, but where is the part in the constitution that says you have the right to be anonymous"
Ok, seriously, you don't know enough about the Constitution to be commenting on it. At least take the time to read the document before you make sweeping pronouncements regarding it. The way it works is: if the Constitution does not explicitly grant the federal government the power to abrogate your privacy and/or anonymity, it does not have that power. Such powers (everything not specifically permitted to the feds) are retained by the states and the people.
Unfortunately, this is a theoretical protection, since the Supreme Court has of late consistently valued political expedience more highly than the Constitution. A good example is the War on Drugs and the manner in which the interstate commerce clause has been pretzelled into a rationalization for giving the feds dominion over drug laws. There is no real Constitutional authority supporting the drug war. I doubt that the approaching escalation of the police state will meet with any resistance in the Supreme Court.
"(unless you can show some reason to believe that we're planning to attack civilian populations), I fail to see the problem."
Until you can cite a single example of a conflict in the last 100 years in which we *refrained* from attacking civilian populations, I won't be able to take your "logic" seriously.
"But if good and evil are relative, then who's to say that murder is wrong? It's all relative right? "
Right. Would it have been "evil" to murder Hitler, back when he was a relatively harmless failed painter? Is it evil to murder someone who is intent on murdering you? Oh, that's not murder, you say, it's self-defense. Exactly. If you'd been able to interview one of the terrorists, he would undoubtedly have said that he was planning to act in defense of his beliefs.
All moral precepts are relative. This is not a philosophy... it's simply observation. Every act has components of good and evil; no one can point to a purely "good" act, or a purely "evil" one. It all depends on your viewpoint. Some folks believe that oral sex is evil, some believe that pork is evil, some believe that dogs are evil. Even the ultra-religious Christian would have to admit that while the crucifiction of Jesus seemed to be an evil act, in actuality, it was that sacrifice which made possible the redemption of believers from eternal damnation. The same ambiguity applies to those who regard themselves as martyrs for Islam.
A more pertinent question regarding the morality of any act is this: how will committing a given act affect the happiness of the world, or at least the happiness of those we hold dear.
In that regard, giving temporal power to religious loons is almost always a very bad idea. And don't kid yourselves. All the furor over cheap effective crypto is being fomented by religious loons (Holy Church of the Status Quo) who want to control what you read, who you have sex with, and what drugs you take. It really has almost nothing to do with preventing terrorism. That's just a convenient excuse.
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"The problem with guns that when they are freely available that any one can go nuts and go on a shooting spree at a school or what not."
Gee, I get tired of hearing that myth-- that guns are more "freely available" now than ever before and that's why we have violence in schools that would have been unimaginable 40 years ago.
The truth is that guns are far less available than they were then. When I was a kid in the late 50s and early 60s (yeah, I'm older'n'dirt) you could buy a surplus military rifle from an ad in the back of a comic book, for the huge sum of $15. The postman would deliver it to your house, no questions asked.
And now you can't even buy a gun mail-order unless you have a federal license. There are background checks, and a thicket of laws attempting to reduce gun ownership and restrict access to guns. And yet somehow the violence is worse than it was when guns were really "freely available." How does that scan?
I expect the same sort of reverse results curve when good crypto is outlawed. Law-abiding citizens won't be able to use it for their own protection, but criminals and whackos will use it to prey on the rest of us.
"If they did they would be holding a double standard, that privacy rights are not a concern to the government "
Unfortunately, this double standard is thoroughly entrenched in government. To some extent this is necessary. For example, if someone steals my stereo, and I catch him and chain him up in the basement for a couple of years, that's illegal. If the police catch him and put him in prison for a couple of years, that's good.
But there are some double standards which work against the hope for a just society. For example, if I pay a witness to testify as I direct, then I have suborned perjury. If a prosecutor does it, by bribing a witness with ten years off a prison sentence, it's just standard operating procedure.
The point is, we have to examine any double standard with care-- we have to weigh the profit and loss, in terms of a just society.
"I do fear unrestrained government. But that's not the point. I don't fear less restrained government."
Surely you must recognize that at some point a "less-restrained" government is functionally indistinguishable from an "unrestrained" government.
We could, for example, greatly increase security and the effectiveness of law enforcement if we stationed a cop in everyone's house.
Where do you draw the line? I happen to believe that we have already crossed the line into a police state, even though folks who conform to the majority culture have not yet noticed it. I keep reading stuff like:"I have nothing to hide, so I don't care who reads my mail or listens to my conversations."
"Ok, seriously, I'm not trying to be difficult here, but where is the part in the constitution that says you have the right to be anonymous"
Ok, seriously, you don't know enough about the Constitution to be commenting on it. At least take the time to read the document before you make sweeping pronouncements regarding it. The way it works is: if the Constitution does not explicitly grant the federal government the power to abrogate your privacy and/or anonymity, it does not have that power. Such powers (everything not specifically permitted to the feds) are retained by the states and the people.
Unfortunately, this is a theoretical protection, since the Supreme Court has of late consistently valued political expedience more highly than the Constitution. A good example is the War on Drugs and the manner in which the interstate commerce clause has been pretzelled into a rationalization for giving the feds dominion over drug laws. There is no real Constitutional authority supporting the drug war. I doubt that the approaching escalation of the police state will meet with any resistance in the Supreme Court.
"(unless you can show some reason to believe that we're planning to attack civilian populations), I fail to see the problem."
Until you can cite a single example of a conflict in the last 100 years in which we *refrained* from attacking civilian populations, I won't be able to take your "logic" seriously.
"But if good and evil are relative, then who's to say that murder is wrong? It's all relative right? "
Right. Would it have been "evil" to murder Hitler, back when he was a relatively harmless failed painter? Is it evil to murder someone who is intent on murdering you? Oh, that's not murder, you say, it's self-defense. Exactly. If you'd been able to interview one of the terrorists, he would undoubtedly have said that he was planning to act in defense of his beliefs.
All moral precepts are relative. This is not a philosophy... it's simply observation. Every act has components of good and evil; no one can point to a purely "good" act, or a purely "evil" one. It all depends on your viewpoint. Some folks believe that oral sex is evil, some believe that pork is evil, some believe that dogs are evil. Even the ultra-religious Christian would have to admit that while the crucifiction of Jesus seemed to be an evil act, in actuality, it was that sacrifice which made possible the redemption of believers from eternal damnation. The same ambiguity applies to those who regard themselves as martyrs for Islam.
A more pertinent question regarding the morality of any act is this: how will committing a given act affect the happiness of the world, or at least the happiness of those we hold dear.
In that regard, giving temporal power to religious loons is almost always a very bad idea. And don't kid yourselves. All the furor over cheap effective crypto is being fomented by religious loons (Holy Church of the Status Quo) who want to control what you read, who you have sex with, and what drugs you take. It really has almost nothing to do with preventing terrorism. That's just a convenient excuse.