Remind me to send Hollywood a thank-you note for herding internet users over to the encrypted areas of the internet in droves. Because of them, encrypted networks will mainstream and thrive - and develop new services - rather than die from neglect.
In that sense at least, perhaps corporate America is right. Greed is good!
Customers dumping products and companies that do things like this is what traditionally kept them in check. The underlying problem seems to be not that merchants have started using these underhanded tactics - that's been something merchants have always tried for centuries - but rather that the customer base accepts it. Gripes perhaps, but predominantly accepts it.
When is the last time you heard the word "boycott"? Particularly when it comes to digital media, consumption has become so convenient that large swaths of the customer base will put up with it. And thus it continues. Peoples' standards are more lax today than they used to be, and the standards of customers overall have the moral uprightness of a bowl of yogurt. Remember when stores used to thank you for your patronage, rather than just your business? That was in the fifties. They would be glad you stopped by and considered making a purchase, and were eager to build a relationship with their potential customers. Nowadays, it's 30-minute seating limits and Restrooms For Customers Only. How nice.
With the internet facilitating so much free communication (well, for the moment at least) and social co-ordination, there's even less of an excuse for people to be accepting this kind of treatment. Boycotts are even easier to organize than they were in the Seventies, and when people still don't manage it you really have to wonder about the acceptance level of the People. It seems they'll take quite a bit. That also accounts for much of our political situation in the U.S., by the way. If people wouldn't tolerate it, let alone enable it, it couldn't perpetuate.
It's less a matter of, "Et tu, Brute?" and more one of the People collectively forgetting their life skills. And getting consistently shorn for it.
It's an occupied sovereign nation, whose sovereigns never ceded their authority. Protests continue even today.
But you plant an Interstate and a bunch of buildings labelled "STATE OF HAWAII" Dept. of Whatever, and people tend to accept it. That sort of thing's happened frequently throughout the history of our country.
Can they use Interstate Commerce to keep me from going to work?
They can use the Interstate Commerce clause to prevent you from growing wheat in your own backyard for your own consumption, so . . . yes?
And it's obvious why the courts let them get away with this; like any good statist, the courts also want the government to control your life at every level. Judges really have the easiest job in the world of it, though, since all they have to do is say "Whatever the government wants is cool with us".</p></quote>
So the courts have expanded the powers exercised by government far beyond those powers the People vested in that government. And the People have let them.
Conflating "commerce" with private activities which are unregulatable by the federal government has been an effective mechanism, but it doesn't suddenly validate the practice in law - whatever the court rulings have been on it.
So the answer is, "Yes they CAN use Interstate Commerce to keep you from going to work as long as the People tolerate that, but it isn't valid law."
"All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either."
You might now ask why the citizenry tolerate so much usurpation. They apparently have been distracted, and made to forget how the structure of this country works. Solve that one and you have a tremendous untapped market, for a very great need which most of today's citizens aren't even aware they have.
Incidentally, I find it difficult to accept the idea of anyone being in a valid position to regulate on anything when they're blatantly well outside the law themselves:
"FDA hacked into private Gmail accounts of its own whistleblower scientist using covert spy technology" http://www.naturalnews.com/034824_FDA_scientists_hacking_whistleblowers.html
If people realized that this sort of thing was disqualificatory behavior, they wouldn't accept so much of it as standard practice.
But for accountability options, we may need to resort to finding ways to re-educate the public via the internet. Courts are often the last bastion of justice since they know the law, but without the People also knowing and holding them accountable, the courts cannot stand on their own indefinitely.
Because it's a stupid question that's offensive and lacks common sense. She thinks she can learn some magical wizard skill that is not location based, but will allow her to make money without overseas competition, or people that are way more skilled.
Pretty much. The underlying factor of her question is, "What can we do in an international economy in which we're uncompetitive and unskilled, and still have it easy like America did in the 1950's?" Which is just America in denial and trying to hit the Snooze button.
However, there are some options for the clever.
There's nothing that says that she can't do what Americans do best: innovate. The practical upshot of all that cheap freelance labor from India is that now, anyone can afford them - even you. So what's stopping you from using that good, old-fashioned American ingenuity to come up with a thrilling new kind of website or thrilling new app that uses newly-emerging technologies, and hiring people in India to actually write the code? This enables us to continue coming up with new business concepts that actually keep up with technology - and keep it becoming relevant faster than corrupt politicians can legislate against it, by the way - and make plenty of profit as well.
There's also nothing stopping you from making money off the resale of freelancer-developed scripts, properly done. Don't know how often I encounter the same listings of people asking for more or less the same kind of script on these freelance sites, and each new person who wants them will typically commission someone oveseas to write the whole project from scratch again. Commission it once, put your script up for sale, and make money off the next person seeking that kind of script. Everybody comes out ahead, and the for-pay, reasonably-priced code base then becomes something that can be gradually built upon.
Bottom line, if you can't come up with great ideas for sites or apps that you can pay others to actually code, you're saying either that everything's been invented already or that you have the imaginative capacity of a yogurt cup. In all likelihood, neither are true.
So we have politicians who are left without the wherewithal to execute their duties, yet have all the accountability. Never mind that the People haven't been holding them accountable.
And we have corporations lobbying, civil service bureaucrats, and the alphabet gestapo agencies with all the wherewithal, but none of the accountability.
This leaves us with all of them able to shift the blame around, nobody's actually reliable or accountable, and my question remains: This makes them a credible authority, how?
I'd also like to know why we'd trust as our authority on extraterrestrial life an organization that has brought us the JFK assassination and Iraq's supposed WMDs.
Nearly a year ago, the FBI and NSA both released classified documents giving more information on the Roswell crash and saucers. It was all over the media.
Now the White House firmly denies it.
Regardless of the actual issue of aliens, whether they exist or not the government's use of the topic appears to be to keep the citizenry fascinated by ooh-and-aah topics and distracted from overhauling their political system into something more functional. "They exist... They exist not... They exist... Wait, who's Britney dating now?"
"Cyber Defense Command"?
They'd better look all like RoboCop, that's all I'm saying.
Honestly... hapless civilians have to settle for just getting a flashy overpriced sports car to compensate for penis-size-envy.
In 2008 Tax Freedom Day in the USA is 15 April, 4 1/2 months into the year. Yeesh. In 2007 it was March 28th.
I had to look up Tax Freedom Day to find it's the determination of how many days into the year the citizens of a country must work to pay their taxes. (I'd been hoping it had something to do with pitching tea out of boats; that always sounded like fun.)
And people didn't like it when President Lincoln had an income tax of up to 5%. They accepted it only because the Civil War had to be paid for. Yup. It was sold as a purely temporary thing.
... The government is in a sad state today, I agree, however you end your post with what is (could be) considered a rebellious/revolutionist statements. "Don't like it? Don't pay taxes." Sure. If you like being arrested, homeless, or worse....
I've researched my rights for over a decade, friend, and I know that so-called "income taxes" are actually excise taxes. A citizen can be perfectly within their rights not to pay them - and because they contribute to corruption and subsidize human torture, I can't in good conscience pay them. Hardly revolutionary, except that it's the same sort of taxation without representation that set off the first one. People work three months out of the year to pay their income taxes. The revolution started because the taxation got to a whopping 3%! You tell me. For the record, I don't like being arrested, homeless, or worse. But I also don't like subsidizing that state of affairs for my fellow man. Sometimes, you have to choose. I refuse to contribute to the problem. If everyone made that choice, there wouldn't be the problem. It's just a matter of having personal standards, regardless of what anyone else does.
In order to do as you please (as you state) you would have to be a homeless man moving from forest to forest because you couldn't own your own land (the IRS would take it for not paying taxes) and you'd be living a pretty sad life IMHO.
It wouldn't be my preference, surely. But I'm not going to spend one-fourth of my life enslaving my fellow man. That's sadder yet, and I don't see how anyone can make that choice. We're all better than that.
BTW, I'm all for getting rid of the IRS.
Are you, really? It takes a lot more than wishing and giving them money, you know. Were you aware that they're not actually a government organization? They're a corporation the federal government does business with. The only permission they actually have to collect from you is what you give them when you sign the papers you file. They're totally voluntary - other than the threats we all learn growing up in this country - and you can learn a lot more about that at famguardian.org and suijuris.net.
"You can't not be involved unless you're uninvolved entirely." This is where I disagree. Given, in today's government, that is true. However, if you look at what you stated and what is given to us in the Constitution, it doesn't NEED to be like that. It was loopholed, bastardized, and abused.
Spot on. So how did you think the problem would ever be solved? Someone else would do it? Your government, perhaps. Your neighbors? Your media. It has to start somewhere. It may be a tough choice, but it'll get easier as more people do it. And it's a lot better than this, no?
The problem was created when people didn't make the right choices. The way to correct the situation is to start making the right choices. Things are only going to worsen until people do. It's pretty obvious. What I don't get is how so many people can spend their lives trying to ignore the problem, rather than taking the little bit of effort it would take to fix it and move on, free and clear.
(By the way, lots of people find employers that are willing to listen to them when their employees present them with documented facts about income taxes. SuiJuris.net can give you a lot of information on the subject, and there's a lot on famguardian.org as well. It doesn't mean giving up your whole life. The sad thing is that all of this information was searchable on Google all the time - people just don't look. They settle for less, and give up too easily. And they get... this.)
The State was not created nor designed to be a nanny, keeping people safe and taking care of them. The extent of that is justice, which is what the common law's whole function is. In American common law, a citizen can do anything he likes whatsoever, just as long as it does not encroach upon the rights of another citizen, their liberty, or their property - and just so long as he honors any contract he chooses to make. Simple. Done. Drive as fast as you like, it's fine. But the moment you hit someone, you're liable. The modern misperception of American legislation that most people have instead was brought to the citizenry by corrupt politicians, attorneys, and bolstered in large part by the news media. Now everything must be legislated - everything - and it's all more complicated than it ever needed to be.
Elected representatives weren't given authority over citizens in this country for a very good reason. The federal government was never intended to hold dominion over the States. It was designed to regulate interstate commerce, settle interstate disputes, negotiate international treaties with other nations, keep a money supply, and possibly maintain a standing army in case of invasion. That's it. Finito. Everything else is bloat and feature creep, none of which does it have the lawful authority to effect. That certainly hasn't stopped it, but that's what happens when its citizenry don't keep it accountable, I guess.
I never suggested setting regulations on what we can be interested in. Live your life. But realize that Freedom has a price-tag, and that price-tag is vigilance. If you're not participating in maintaining the Freedom of the society of which you're a part, how much of a participant in that society are you? What's more, the second you fund treason with one red cent you've become a party to it, so consider what choice you're making every time you call it someone else's problem and go ahead and pay your income taxes. It's that kind of reasoning that gives us the system we have today. You can't not be involved unless you're uninvolved entirely - otherwise, you're just perpetuating the problem and pretending you aren't. I'm not fooled by that reasoning, and I hope you aren't either. The collective choice to live by that logic has led to a situation where none of us, even those who devote their lives to making things functional, effectively have no rights because their government is broken. It doesn't work, for any one of us.
I think it's the converse of that, actually.
The government was created with extremely limited duties and delegated authorities, beyond which it could not go. A body politic - or any other kind, for that matter - cannot grant itself authorities it does not already have. All rights not ceded to the government are retained by the people, who created said government.
Is it the tendency of representatives to move toward things which they have no right to do? No more than it is the tendency of the common citizen to steal. That is why treason is still a hangable offense.
And why don't they "just leave us alone"? Why do they continue to encroach? Because we don't demand accountability from them. Like any five year-old, they will continue to do whatever it is they feel like doing at the moment unless someone watches them, and enforces good behavior. That is the price of Freedom. Americans haven't been paying their Freedom bill, and if you haven't been paying attention it's almost done being repossessed. Martial law will make that new High School addition seem a little less important, wouldn't you say? They're already overseas teaching the troops how to conduct urban warfare, gather information, interrogate and detain suspects, and generally enforce a new and strange set of laws. What did you think they were planning to with all of those soldiers, while you were busy ignoring what our representatives were up to? That's right, they were going to turn all those soldiers into bakers, and make us all lovely delicious cakes with strawberry frosting. That's why they've been pulling guns away from their own citizens about as fast as they can get away with doing it, and tapping everyone's phones. You didn't really believe all of it was about terrorism, do you? Or have you forgotten that our own soldiers during the War for Independance were terrorists themselves? Odd, then, isn't it, that our collosal debt is owed to the British bankers, then, and that the only thing preventing them from coming to collect this totally mortgaged country is that too many of its citizens still have guns. Or at least it did prevent them, until they got all the soldiers trained to do just that. Go ahead, watch that storm front over there. Pay absolutely no attention to your country and your very life collapsing out from under your feet.
Keeping our politicians accountable and law-abiding is what keeps our Freedom.
You have an excellent point. What you're describing is a mentality that people pick up in their childhood, from a mentality put out by the media (the same element being perpetuated by the sales strategy in the tabloids you mentioned), and by others in their society - who have learned it from the same sources in their own childhoods. This self-perpetuation continues due to the media, and whether they maintain it in order to profit from leading Americans around by it as a psychological nosering, in order to perpetuate it to serve the status quo for those who prompt them to enforce it, or because they simply don't see it, the media perpetuate it.
The sources we must rely on to report the news of importance in our society should be exposing and correcting these mistaken collective mindsets - and the important ones, not frivolous side-points - rather than perpetuating and reinforcing them. Demonstrating and expressing better approaches that do not have those flaws. To do otherwise is professional negligence, particularly when it is media organizations who foster a social mindset of facile consumption rather than worthwhile living as a large part of their advertising approach. An equivalent concept in law would be an attractive nuisance; land-owners who have dangerous equipment on their property that could incite unknowing children to trespass, play on, and harm themselves on it are liable for any injury and damage that occurs if that happens.
Yes, there's a gem of an idea that's lodged itself firmly in the American mindset. But where did Americans learn such a distorted premise from originally? I'm sure it couldn't have been the media in its sycophantic and passive treatment of politics over the last several decades.
So you're saying there's a lapse in ethics from those who do run the news. The bottom line, then, is a lack of accountability from the public. Government doesn't hold them to accountability, the media don't report on it, and the citizenry isn't requiring it. It's a vicious cycle, resulting in exactly what we have now: news media that is no longer news media, and a society that doesn't work.
Slashdot Mirror
YouTube: Blurring the line between the RIAA and Monsanto.
Remind me to send Hollywood a thank-you note for herding internet users over to the encrypted areas of the internet in droves. Because of them, encrypted networks will mainstream and thrive - and develop new services - rather than die from neglect.
In that sense at least, perhaps corporate America is right. Greed is good!
Customers dumping products and companies that do things like this is what traditionally kept them in check. The underlying problem seems to be not that merchants have started using these underhanded tactics - that's been something merchants have always tried for centuries - but rather that the customer base accepts it. Gripes perhaps, but predominantly accepts it.
When is the last time you heard the word "boycott"? Particularly when it comes to digital media, consumption has become so convenient that large swaths of the customer base will put up with it. And thus it continues. Peoples' standards are more lax today than they used to be, and the standards of customers overall have the moral uprightness of a bowl of yogurt. Remember when stores used to thank you for your patronage, rather than just your business? That was in the fifties. They would be glad you stopped by and considered making a purchase, and were eager to build a relationship with their potential customers. Nowadays, it's 30-minute seating limits and Restrooms For Customers Only. How nice.
With the internet facilitating so much free communication (well, for the moment at least) and social co-ordination, there's even less of an excuse for people to be accepting this kind of treatment. Boycotts are even easier to organize than they were in the Seventies, and when people still don't manage it you really have to wonder about the acceptance level of the People. It seems they'll take quite a bit. That also accounts for much of our political situation in the U.S., by the way. If people wouldn't tolerate it, let alone enable it, it couldn't perpetuate.
It's less a matter of, "Et tu, Brute?" and more one of the People collectively forgetting their life skills. And getting consistently shorn for it.
Equal time. If you play classical, you have to give time to rap, dubstep, Gregorian chants and Tuvan throat-singing too.
Can't be accused of squandering taxpayer money on things whose appeal favors a particular minority group. Specifically the wealthy conservatives.
"This is my land. You can go live on a reservation." They've been doing it for centuries.
Testosterone is a Schedule III. A federally-controlled substance it's illegal to have on or in your person without approval.
Actually, Hawaii is not a state.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/HAWAII/hawaii.php
It's an occupied sovereign nation, whose sovereigns never ceded their authority. Protests continue even today.
But you plant an Interstate and a bunch of buildings labelled "STATE OF HAWAII" Dept. of Whatever, and people tend to accept it. That sort of thing's happened frequently throughout the history of our country.
They can use the Interstate Commerce clause to prevent you from growing wheat in your own backyard for your own consumption, so . . . yes?
And it's obvious why the courts let them get away with this; like any good statist, the courts also want the government to control your life at every level. Judges really have the easiest job in the world of it, though, since all they have to do is say "Whatever the government wants is cool with us".</p></quote>
So the courts have expanded the powers exercised by government far beyond those powers the People vested in that government. And the People have let them.
Conflating "commerce" with private activities which are unregulatable by the federal government has been an effective mechanism, but it doesn't suddenly validate the practice in law - whatever the court rulings have been on it.
So the answer is, "Yes they CAN use Interstate Commerce to keep you from going to work as long as the People tolerate that, but it isn't valid law."
Thomas Paine summed it up quite well, I thought.
"All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either."
You might now ask why the citizenry tolerate so much usurpation. They apparently have been distracted, and made to forget how the structure of this country works. Solve that one and you have a tremendous untapped market, for a very great need which most of today's citizens aren't even aware they have.
Incidentally, I find it difficult to accept the idea of anyone being in a valid position to regulate on anything when they're blatantly well outside the law themselves:
"FDA hacked into private Gmail accounts of its own whistleblower scientist using covert spy technology"
http://www.naturalnews.com/034824_FDA_scientists_hacking_whistleblowers.html
If people realized that this sort of thing was disqualificatory behavior, they wouldn't accept so much of it as standard practice.
But for accountability options, we may need to resort to finding ways to re-educate the public via the internet. Courts are often the last bastion of justice since they know the law, but without the People also knowing and holding them accountable, the courts cannot stand on their own indefinitely.
"...it enters the patient's gut through the mouth."
<involuntary visual of it leaving like a chest-burster>
Because it's a stupid question that's offensive and lacks common sense. She thinks she can learn some magical wizard skill that is not location based, but will allow her to make money without overseas competition, or people that are way more skilled.
Pretty much. The underlying factor of her question is, "What can we do in an international economy in which we're uncompetitive and unskilled, and still have it easy like America did in the 1950's?" Which is just America in denial and trying to hit the Snooze button.
However, there are some options for the clever.
There's nothing that says that she can't do what Americans do best: innovate. The practical upshot of all that cheap freelance labor from India is that now, anyone can afford them - even you. So what's stopping you from using that good, old-fashioned American ingenuity to come up with a thrilling new kind of website or thrilling new app that uses newly-emerging technologies, and hiring people in India to actually write the code? This enables us to continue coming up with new business concepts that actually keep up with technology - and keep it becoming relevant faster than corrupt politicians can legislate against it, by the way - and make plenty of profit as well.
There's also nothing stopping you from making money off the resale of freelancer-developed scripts, properly done. Don't know how often I encounter the same listings of people asking for more or less the same kind of script on these freelance sites, and each new person who wants them will typically commission someone oveseas to write the whole project from scratch again. Commission it once, put your script up for sale, and make money off the next person seeking that kind of script. Everybody comes out ahead, and the for-pay, reasonably-priced code base then becomes something that can be gradually built upon.
Bottom line, if you can't come up with great ideas for sites or apps that you can pay others to actually code, you're saying either that everything's been invented already or that you have the imaginative capacity of a yogurt cup. In all likelihood, neither are true.
So we have politicians who are left without the wherewithal to execute their duties, yet have all the accountability. Never mind that the People haven't been holding them accountable.
And we have corporations lobbying, civil service bureaucrats, and the alphabet gestapo agencies with all the wherewithal, but none of the accountability.
This leaves us with all of them able to shift the blame around, nobody's actually reliable or accountable, and my question remains: This makes them a credible authority, how?
I'd also like to know why we'd trust as our authority on extraterrestrial life an organization that has brought us the JFK assassination and Iraq's supposed WMDs.
Now the White House firmly denies it.
Regardless of the actual issue of aliens, whether they exist or not the government's use of the topic appears to be to keep the citizenry fascinated by ooh-and-aah topics and distracted from overhauling their political system into something more functional. "They exist... They exist not... They exist... Wait, who's Britney dating now?"
Repackage hydrogen into different shapes, and suddenly it's "totally unique". Just like primetime television shows.
"Cyber Defense Command"? They'd better look all like RoboCop, that's all I'm saying. Honestly... hapless civilians have to settle for just getting a flashy overpriced sports car to compensate for penis-size-envy.
"Youngest grain of sand discovered... yet." Well, there's an excuse to throw a party that we can re-use [literally] ad nauseum.
Great piece of evidence in any Microsoft-unfair-business-practices lawsuit, establishing their basis, motive, and degree of integrity.
I had to look up Tax Freedom Day to find it's the determination of how many days into the year the citizens of a country must work to pay their taxes. (I'd been hoping it had something to do with pitching tea out of boats; that always sounded like fun.)
And people didn't like it when President Lincoln had an income tax of up to 5%. They accepted it only because the Civil War had to be paid for. Yup. It was sold as a purely temporary thing.
I've researched my rights for over a decade, friend, and I know that so-called "income taxes" are actually excise taxes. A citizen can be perfectly within their rights not to pay them - and because they contribute to corruption and subsidize human torture, I can't in good conscience pay them. Hardly revolutionary, except that it's the same sort of taxation without representation that set off the first one. People work three months out of the year to pay their income taxes. The revolution started because the taxation got to a whopping 3%! You tell me. For the record, I don't like being arrested, homeless, or worse. But I also don't like subsidizing that state of affairs for my fellow man. Sometimes, you have to choose. I refuse to contribute to the problem. If everyone made that choice, there wouldn't be the problem. It's just a matter of having personal standards, regardless of what anyone else does.
In order to do as you please (as you state) you would have to be a homeless man moving from forest to forest because you couldn't own your own land (the IRS would take it for not paying taxes) and you'd be living a pretty sad life IMHO.
It wouldn't be my preference, surely. But I'm not going to spend one-fourth of my life enslaving my fellow man. That's sadder yet, and I don't see how anyone can make that choice. We're all better than that.
BTW, I'm all for getting rid of the IRS.
Are you, really? It takes a lot more than wishing and giving them money, you know. Were you aware that they're not actually a government organization? They're a corporation the federal government does business with. The only permission they actually have to collect from you is what you give them when you sign the papers you file. They're totally voluntary - other than the threats we all learn growing up in this country - and you can learn a lot more about that at famguardian.org and suijuris.net.
"You can't not be involved unless you're uninvolved entirely." This is where I disagree. Given, in today's government, that is true. However, if you look at what you stated and what is given to us in the Constitution, it doesn't NEED to be like that. It was loopholed, bastardized, and abused.
Spot on. So how did you think the problem would ever be solved? Someone else would do it? Your government, perhaps. Your neighbors? Your media. It has to start somewhere. It may be a tough choice, but it'll get easier as more people do it. And it's a lot better than this, no?
The problem was created when people didn't make the right choices. The way to correct the situation is to start making the right choices. Things are only going to worsen until people do. It's pretty obvious. What I don't get is how so many people can spend their lives trying to ignore the problem, rather than taking the little bit of effort it would take to fix it and move on, free and clear.
(By the way, lots of people find employers that are willing to listen to them when their employees present them with documented facts about income taxes. SuiJuris.net can give you a lot of information on the subject, and there's a lot on famguardian.org as well. It doesn't mean giving up your whole life. The sad thing is that all of this information was searchable on Google all the time - people just don't look. They settle for less, and give up too easily. And they get... this.)
Oh boy.
The State was not created nor designed to be a nanny, keeping people safe and taking care of them. The extent of that is justice, which is what the common law's whole function is. In American common law, a citizen can do anything he likes whatsoever, just as long as it does not encroach upon the rights of another citizen, their liberty, or their property - and just so long as he honors any contract he chooses to make. Simple. Done. Drive as fast as you like, it's fine. But the moment you hit someone, you're liable. The modern misperception of American legislation that most people have instead was brought to the citizenry by corrupt politicians, attorneys, and bolstered in large part by the news media. Now everything must be legislated - everything - and it's all more complicated than it ever needed to be.
Elected representatives weren't given authority over citizens in this country for a very good reason. The federal government was never intended to hold dominion over the States. It was designed to regulate interstate commerce, settle interstate disputes, negotiate international treaties with other nations, keep a money supply, and possibly maintain a standing army in case of invasion. That's it. Finito. Everything else is bloat and feature creep, none of which does it have the lawful authority to effect. That certainly hasn't stopped it, but that's what happens when its citizenry don't keep it accountable, I guess.
I never suggested setting regulations on what we can be interested in. Live your life. But realize that Freedom has a price-tag, and that price-tag is vigilance. If you're not participating in maintaining the Freedom of the society of which you're a part, how much of a participant in that society are you? What's more, the second you fund treason with one red cent you've become a party to it, so consider what choice you're making every time you call it someone else's problem and go ahead and pay your income taxes. It's that kind of reasoning that gives us the system we have today. You can't not be involved unless you're uninvolved entirely - otherwise, you're just perpetuating the problem and pretending you aren't. I'm not fooled by that reasoning, and I hope you aren't either. The collective choice to live by that logic has led to a situation where none of us, even those who devote their lives to making things functional, effectively have no rights because their government is broken. It doesn't work, for any one of us.
I think it's the converse of that, actually. The government was created with extremely limited duties and delegated authorities, beyond which it could not go. A body politic - or any other kind, for that matter - cannot grant itself authorities it does not already have. All rights not ceded to the government are retained by the people, who created said government.
Is it the tendency of representatives to move toward things which they have no right to do? No more than it is the tendency of the common citizen to steal. That is why treason is still a hangable offense.
Absolutely correct, about the politicians.
And why don't they "just leave us alone"? Why do they continue to encroach? Because we don't demand accountability from them. Like any five year-old, they will continue to do whatever it is they feel like doing at the moment unless someone watches them, and enforces good behavior. That is the price of Freedom. Americans haven't been paying their Freedom bill, and if you haven't been paying attention it's almost done being repossessed. Martial law will make that new High School addition seem a little less important, wouldn't you say? They're already overseas teaching the troops how to conduct urban warfare, gather information, interrogate and detain suspects, and generally enforce a new and strange set of laws. What did you think they were planning to with all of those soldiers, while you were busy ignoring what our representatives were up to? That's right, they were going to turn all those soldiers into bakers, and make us all lovely delicious cakes with strawberry frosting. That's why they've been pulling guns away from their own citizens about as fast as they can get away with doing it, and tapping everyone's phones. You didn't really believe all of it was about terrorism, do you? Or have you forgotten that our own soldiers during the War for Independance were terrorists themselves? Odd, then, isn't it, that our collosal debt is owed to the British bankers, then, and that the only thing preventing them from coming to collect this totally mortgaged country is that too many of its citizens still have guns. Or at least it did prevent them, until they got all the soldiers trained to do just that. Go ahead, watch that storm front over there. Pay absolutely no attention to your country and your very life collapsing out from under your feet.
Keeping our politicians accountable and law-abiding is what keeps our Freedom.
You have an excellent point. What you're describing is a mentality that people pick up in their childhood, from a mentality put out by the media (the same element being perpetuated by the sales strategy in the tabloids you mentioned), and by others in their society - who have learned it from the same sources in their own childhoods. This self-perpetuation continues due to the media, and whether they maintain it in order to profit from leading Americans around by it as a psychological nosering, in order to perpetuate it to serve the status quo for those who prompt them to enforce it, or because they simply don't see it, the media perpetuate it.
The sources we must rely on to report the news of importance in our society should be exposing and correcting these mistaken collective mindsets - and the important ones, not frivolous side-points - rather than perpetuating and reinforcing them. Demonstrating and expressing better approaches that do not have those flaws. To do otherwise is professional negligence, particularly when it is media organizations who foster a social mindset of facile consumption rather than worthwhile living as a large part of their advertising approach. An equivalent concept in law would be an attractive nuisance; land-owners who have dangerous equipment on their property that could incite unknowing children to trespass, play on, and harm themselves on it are liable for any injury and damage that occurs if that happens.
Yes, there's a gem of an idea that's lodged itself firmly in the American mindset. But where did Americans learn such a distorted premise from originally? I'm sure it couldn't have been the media in its sycophantic and passive treatment of politics over the last several decades.
So you're saying there's a lapse in ethics from those who do run the news. The bottom line, then, is a lack of accountability from the public. Government doesn't hold them to accountability, the media don't report on it, and the citizenry isn't requiring it. It's a vicious cycle, resulting in exactly what we have now: news media that is no longer news media, and a society that doesn't work.