I would say the quote is most likely not attributed to Abraham Lincoln; it would have to have been said sometime after the 1886 California court ruling in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad that made corporations legally equal to individuals.
I had a dream once, where I owned a massive area of land that was completely walled in, safe and sound, fully self-supporting, with a full repository of all of human knowledge (as much as I could collect, anyway).
Outside the wall there were riots, terror, and the general destruction of all of the world.
Inside, was peace and calm and the willingness to wait until the world had destroyed itself, and the wall would be opened to restart the world.
The last time I was in a chat room was over 4 years ago. One of the reasons for that is I got sick and tired of people coming in saying they were a hot "17wf" when it was obvious from their conversation that they were some stupid 22 year old college frat boy trying to give people a rise (even followed a few of them around chat rooms to see all the different identities they'd give themselves).
I just figured, if I can't interact honestly with people [online], why interact with them at all. I'm something of a draconian at heart in that regard. If someone is going to bullshit me, I won't even bother to call them out on it; I'll just walk away. My time is too precious for someone else to waste it.
>> In all seriousness, is it time for a changing of the guard?
I have asked myself this same question many times in the past couple of years.
There was a time I believed civil discussion was possible; when, if people merely understood what was at stake, the question would become moot and people would act in their own self interest.
But there are two problems here, and I was foolish to believe they were ever not problems:
1. The corrupt have spent the past 100 years telling people what is good for them - and "freedom" isn't included in that list. People now care far more about their video iPod and their sewage line and their electricity and their American Idol, than they do about freedom. Freedom, to most, is only a means to an end.. and they have been given their ends, without the need for freedom.
2. The gradual erosion of our freedoms is a much more effective tool than the sudden enslavement of a people. I will ask this question I asked on another/. story today:
Is a person still a slave, if they do not know they are a slave?
The answer is unhesitatingly YES. However, few are capable of making that distinction anymore, because they no longer are able to draw the line. If told you were a slave in a world that appears free, would you believe it?
Would you want to?
Would you care?
By gradually changing what people expect as a standard of freedom, freedom loses meaning.
Welcome to the 21st century.
I fully intend to overthrow the world, and I am patient enough to wait 50 years to do it. The world is beyond saving; only its destruction can save it now.
Go ahead, FBI, come after me. And I'll make you wish you were never born.
The legal recourse to armed rebellion is the 2nd Amendment of the United States - that is why it is there. 8 of the states refused to sign the Constitution unless the Bill of Rights was added - the 2nd Amendment among them.
That is WHY the 2nd Amendment was added - to protect the ability of the populace to rise up against the government should it ever become unworthy of power - what philosophers of the time called the responsibility of the citizen to overthrow a corrupt government.
The British attempted to outlaw weapon ownership in the Colonies, too. It got them a revolution.
I wonder what it will get us.
Ironically, in legalese, only a country can levy war. So I'm not entirely sure why that clause is in the Constitution; I would have to re-read that commentary in the Federalist Papers.
Remember this next time someone has a gun to your head and the police say, "Sorry, but that guy is only thinking about commiting murder."
One might be tempted to think of that as "attempted murder," but attempted murder would happen when you've tried to kill someone and they didn't die.. that is.. the action already occurred.
In your example, I would think that the word "murder" wouldn't appear in the charges at all.. they'd probably just slap the person with some kind of "brandishing a weapon" charge. There are plenty and I don't know any specifically.
I have emailed my congressman, reported this to the local tv news station, and am trying to find a submission page for the local newspaper.
I also sent an email to the House Judiciary Committee asking them to re-evaluate the sponsorship of this bill, considering the companies that own Lamar Smith.
If by "attack" you mean by exercising my 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, then yep.
Imagine the apocalyptic image of millions of dead Americans who took up arms against a rising dictatorial regime. I don't think even the worst of the worst could stomach it.
And correspondingly, American students are scoring higher on tests than ever.
Oh wait, it's exactly the opposite, with American testing standards reaching new lows every year.
The problem is that a raw dollar amount tells you absolutely nothing about the health of the educational system - its testing results, do.
And America is failing miserably. Students couldn't care less why the Revolutionary War was fought, much less care about the rights and freedoms that were being fought for.
And so, here is the world we have handed ourselves.
On the same website that is reporting the Gonzales/censorship story, we find the following piece of hilarity and counterpoint to Gonzales obsessive need to be frightened of the mere mention of sexuality:
I have to agree. With Google and other search engines being my top X referrers and my home page only dominating a measly 36% of landing pages on my site, do I then have to redirect all new traffic to my home page, thus rendering useless search engine results?
<sarcasm>Yes. Yes you do. And given that I know from experience that this is actually impossible to do (given javascript disabling and cross-browser incompatibilities), your only recourse is to shut down your website or bribe the government to not take you to court. I hope you make good money off your website.</sarcasm>
Would this count, and would my site suddenly be indecent? What if someone, searching for information on that particular type of wine, came to my site and saw a picture of the bottle/label? Do I go to jail?
No, but they become so incensed that they actually saw a shadow of a woman's nipple, that they send a cease and desist order to your webhost, who informs you that because you didn't use the proper labelling, the content must be removed within 24 hours or your website will be taken down without notice.
If that sounds farfetched, just remember we live in the Sue-Happy States of America.
"A third new crime appears to require that commercial Web sites not post sexually explicit material on their home page if it can be seen 'absent any further actions by the viewer.
This one actually makes sense."
Actually, that's the part that makes the least sense to me.
For the 1st issue, labelling the site, it's easy enough as a website operator to say that your site MAY contain adult content (I'm thinking of forum operators here, who don't usually have much control over the content of the forum every second of the day). I don't think these labels should be government mandated, and in fact a huge number of popular sites do use the ICRA labelling system.
For the second issue, misleading words, well, most of the search engines try to do a good job of not returning adult results unless you've turned off safe searching. Words like "Barbie," which is apparently a popular name in the adult world, don't return adult search results.
But for number three.. how do you define a homepage. What if a search result links to a page that isn't your homepage. I am a programmer and web developer and I can say with experience that it is effectively impossible to make sure someone takes the path into your website that you want them to take. There are just too many ways in and too many ways around any approach one might use.
In the end, I don't think the government needs to be proposing any regulation of this sort. In the modern parlance, "it ain't the government's job".
Let the people get furious at what a website has done, and then make them change. That approach seems sufficiently effective to me.
Blasphemer! You have suggested an idea that is antithetical to the "Good of the people" as defined by the current administration.
Stay put; the black ops agents will be there soon, where they will take you to a nice, relaxing facility designed just for "free thinkers" like yourself.
An old man, once tall and proud, now tired and beaten, slumped in his chair, speaks one last time to his grandchildren. He hopes, in vain, that they will hear, and understand, and that maybe something will change.
He knows, deep down, it never will.
He speaks.
"Once, we were free. We didn't really know it; we took it for granted. We assumed that people would always do the right thing, in the end. We thought that people loved freedom as much as we did, we just quibbled over the details.
"If you ask me the day we lost our freedom, I won't be able to answer you. That's because it didn't happen on one day; we didn't lose a war, we didn't pass a Tyranny Act, we didn't plunge into economic chaos and come out of it a dictatorship. No, we lost our freedom in pieces, bit by bit, and with each piece we said, "We're doing it for our safety, and for our children's future. We're doing it for the children, we're doing it for ourselves and our posterity. We're doing it because we think it's right."
I remember when we could buy a CD and listen to it wherever we wanted. You think I'm crazy, don't you kids? You've never even dreamt of such a thing. But it's true, and I got to live it. Oh for a few short years, I got to live it.
"I remember when I could record my favorite TV shows on my computer and watch them over and over again. You can't do that anymore though; after the Content Rights Act of 2011, it became illegal to possess any content on your machine that you didn't pay for every time you watch it. Or if you preferred, you could accept RIAA-approved AdWare to display advertisements at predetermined intervals as you watched your recording.
"I remember when I knew that my privacy was protected, that the government needed a reason to search my private data for wrongdoing - remember the 5th Amendment kids? You learned about that in history class right? Remember what year it was appealed? 2012, good, you've been studying.
"I remember trusting my government and my elected officials. I remember not being afraid of everything I did, because I knew I lived in the land of the free. I remember being proud that my country upheld personal liberties above corporate power and the rule of politicians. But alas, I didn't realize I was free.
"And so it is gone. Each time a freedom was taken away, I did nothing. I sat and accepted it, because I had my own things to worry about. I had to go to work, and clean the house, and pay the bills, and throw in some vacations. I didn't have time to consider revolt. I didn't have time to remember that our Founding Fathers revolted for far lesser grievances than have been visited upon the world these days.
"Remember my words, kids, because it's illegal now to speak of them. You won't find them in books, or in emails, or on television or in music - those are all sanctioned now, only approved content can be delivered in them - I remember that too.. TV used to be so interesting.. until someone said "Think of the children." Even cable TV can't have cuss words now. You probably don't even know any, do you? Too bad. A good swear can really take the pressure off once in awhile.
Only one thing will change the world, kids, and it ain't talk. Have the courage to stand up for your freedoms - your freedom of thought, your freedom of speech, your freedom of action, and your freedom to live without fear.
Remember this:
The worst they can do to you is take your life.
The worst you can do to them is destroy their civilization.
The loophole is the fact that owning more than one ounce of gold bullion is illegal in the United States (although, I may be wrong - there is some fuzzy law passed in 1973 that may have repealed that law).
Land of the free, indeed.
The other loophole is the simple fact that those coins are collector's items for a reason - there are too few of them ever produced to be useful legal tender.
As a former employee of a large national bank, I can tell you with certainty that if someone were to pay you with Gold Eagles, you would only be responsible for the face value of the coins. I say this from experience - if someone came into our bank branch with a 1914 Gold Eagle (worth thousands) we would still only give them $20 for it.
The value of currency is its face value, not its material value, which is part of why the government tried so hard to get us to adopt dollar coins a few years ago - they cost less to manufacture and are worth almost exactly $1 (material value), whereas your typical dollar bill will cost around $3 over time (since they have to be replaced approximately every 18 months).
Corporations are accorded all the rights and freedoms of an actual person. When that doctrine was established was the beginning of the rise of corporate dominance, the end of corporate accountability and the point at which we lost all ability to control what corporations did to our countries, our environment, our governments, and our people.
That was probably the single biggest mistake in all of human history (save the burning of the Library at Alexandria). It spelled the end of what we would ever know as "freedom" - it spelled the beginning of the rule of money over morality.
Not that money wasn't always more important to people. It had simply never been given the legal power to be, before.
"For the record, Americans have never been freer right now in its history. Or did not realize women did not have the right to vote, and blacks were slaves."
Unfortunately, this statement is a result of bait-and-switch: we'll give you some bread crumbs to make you think you've got what you wanted, and we'll keep the loaf of bread.
Women have gained the right to vote - and voting means less and less as fewer and fewer people vote and when they do, they don't vote informed and it's not like it matters anyway because all the power lies now in "Commissions" that are not elected and are not run by elected officials (FTC, FAA, anything else beginning with "F"...)
We have the freedom to choose one of any of a hundred models of MP3 player. We have 1000+ television channels to choose from, thousands of choices of fast food, gourmet food, car models..
But none of those things makes us free. Freedom consists not in freedom of choice, but in freedom of action and association and as long as the government believes it to be their business to know as much as possible about you (*cough* Social Security Number *cough*), we will never be free.
Every government is by its very nature, the roots of tyranny. That is the trade off in Hobbe's social contract. We agree to limit our freedoms only so far as it benefits all of society as a whole - no further. Allow any government more power than that, and they become a tyranny.
We were free, once, long ago. That time is long past.
I really have no interest in flaming or fighting over this; I simply look out at a world that believes it is free and am filled with great sorrow at how much we have lost.
Actually, before the Constitution was signed there was no such thing as a "Career Politician." Ever wonder where the "Nomination" process came from?
Originally, someone elected to office did not run for office - it was considered ungentlemanly. Instead, people would nominate who they thought would be a good choice for office, and those people would be the ones who were on the ballot. No campaigning. No campaign finance. No corruption.
Over the 20-30 years following the signing of the Constitution, it became increasingly popular for someone who wanted nomination to run for office; this was made possible by the fact that those eligible to gain positions of power were no longer limited to those of Royal blood - e.g., the rise of the "Common Man."
And the rest, as they say, is history. Campaigning, campaign finance, corruption, and the rise of the career politician who will say anything to get elected and then do nothing but abuse his position.
The days of the honest politician are gone - not because none of them are honest, but because in this country, none of them can afford to be.
"All 22-year-olds in every country are outraged at their government."
The first thing I have to say to that is: balls. The second thing I have to say to that is, whose fault is that?
Is it impossible for you to imagine a world in which people actually do the right thing because it's right? In such a world, would "all" 22-year-olds have a reason to be outraged at their government? There was a time when young people were PROUD of our government - when they wanted little else than to find a way to serve it. Go to any high school or college campus today and see how much of that is still true.
The problem is, we're at a cusp in history we have never been at before: never before in history has a government been so capable of complete and absolute control over the thoughts, actions, and daily lives of its citizens. The ONLY thing that prevented such power in the past was the inability to be sufficiently efficient with information collection and processing. With the advent of computing technology and the massive automation that accompanies it, that limitation no longer exists.
We are truly at the edge of a Brave New World - and to quote from The Outer Limits:
"If knowledge is power and power corrupts, how will the human race ever survive?"
Slashdot Mirror
I would say the quote is most likely not attributed to Abraham Lincoln; it would have to have been said sometime after the 1886 California court ruling in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad that made corporations legally equal to individuals.
o wEnemy_ITT.html/
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Kn
That it was said so long ago and is more true now, though, should give one pause.. that someone saw it coming so long ago.
less = less and less to go around for buildings, materials, and educators = less and less prospects of your "investment" paying off.
I agree with that part.
I had a dream once, where I owned a massive area of land that was completely walled in, safe and sound, fully self-supporting, with a full repository of all of human knowledge (as much as I could collect, anyway).
Outside the wall there were riots, terror, and the general destruction of all of the world.
Inside, was peace and calm and the willingness to wait until the world had destroyed itself, and the wall would be opened to restart the world.
I sincerely believe that dream was prophetic.
The last time I was in a chat room was over 4 years ago. One of the reasons for that is I got sick and tired of people coming in saying they were a hot "17wf" when it was obvious from their conversation that they were some stupid 22 year old college frat boy trying to give people a rise (even followed a few of them around chat rooms to see all the different identities they'd give themselves).
I just figured, if I can't interact honestly with people [online], why interact with them at all. I'm something of a draconian at heart in that regard. If someone is going to bullshit me, I won't even bother to call them out on it; I'll just walk away. My time is too precious for someone else to waste it.
Now ME wasting it on the other hand...
>> In all seriousness, is it time for a changing of the guard?
/. story today:
I have asked myself this same question many times in the past couple of years.
There was a time I believed civil discussion was possible; when, if people merely understood what was at stake, the question would become moot and people would act in their own self interest.
But there are two problems here, and I was foolish to believe they were ever not problems:
1. The corrupt have spent the past 100 years telling people what is good for them - and "freedom" isn't included in that list. People now care far more about their video iPod and their sewage line and their electricity and their American Idol, than they do about freedom. Freedom, to most, is only a means to an end.. and they have been given their ends, without the need for freedom.
2. The gradual erosion of our freedoms is a much more effective tool than the sudden enslavement of a people. I will ask this question I asked on another
Is a person still a slave, if they do not know they are a slave?
The answer is unhesitatingly YES. However, few are capable of making that distinction anymore, because they no longer are able to draw the line. If told you were a slave in a world that appears free, would you believe it?
Would you want to?
Would you care?
By gradually changing what people expect as a standard of freedom, freedom loses meaning.
Welcome to the 21st century.
I fully intend to overthrow the world, and I am patient enough to wait 50 years to do it. The world is beyond saving; only its destruction can save it now.
Go ahead, FBI, come after me. And I'll make you wish you were never born.
The legal recourse to armed rebellion is the 2nd Amendment of the United States - that is why it is there. 8 of the states refused to sign the Constitution unless the Bill of Rights was added - the 2nd Amendment among them.
That is WHY the 2nd Amendment was added - to protect the ability of the populace to rise up against the government should it ever become unworthy of power - what philosophers of the time called the responsibility of the citizen to overthrow a corrupt government.
The British attempted to outlaw weapon ownership in the Colonies, too. It got them a revolution.
I wonder what it will get us.
Ironically, in legalese, only a country can levy war. So I'm not entirely sure why that clause is in the Constitution; I would have to re-read that commentary in the Federalist Papers.
Remember this next time someone has a gun to your head and the police say, "Sorry, but that guy is only thinking about commiting murder."
One might be tempted to think of that as "attempted murder," but attempted murder would happen when you've tried to kill someone and they didn't die.. that is.. the action already occurred. In your example, I would think that the word "murder" wouldn't appear in the charges at all.. they'd probably just slap the person with some kind of "brandishing a weapon" charge. There are plenty and I don't know any specifically.
I have emailed my congressman, reported this to the local tv news station, and am trying to find a submission page for the local newspaper.
I also sent an email to the House Judiciary Committee asking them to re-evaluate the sponsorship of this bill, considering the companies that own Lamar Smith.
That phone number is looking tempting, though.
If by "attack" you mean by exercising my 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, then yep.
Imagine the apocalyptic image of millions of dead Americans who took up arms against a rising dictatorial regime. I don't think even the worst of the worst could stomach it.
And correspondingly, American students are scoring higher on tests than ever.
Oh wait, it's exactly the opposite, with American testing standards reaching new lows every year.
The problem is that a raw dollar amount tells you absolutely nothing about the health of the educational system - its testing results, do.
And America is failing miserably. Students couldn't care less why the Revolutionary War was fought, much less care about the rights and freedoms that were being fought for.
And so, here is the world we have handed ourselves.
Is not a devil with horns.
It is the desire to kill freedom and subjugate all of humanity.
There was an interesting question posed on the most recent episode of Doctor Who:
Is a slave, still a slave, if he doesn't know he is one?
The answer is yes, and anyone who says otherwise has something to gain from enslaving people.
There is only one solution to the coming subjugation of the human race...
Revolution.
On the same website that is reporting the Gonzales/censorship story, we find the following piece of hilarity and counterpoint to Gonzales obsessive need to be frightened of the mere mention of sexuality:
9 -1041_3-6062548.html?tag=nefd.pulse
http://news.com.com/Kids+outsmart+Web+filters/200
I have to agree. With Google and other search engines being my top X referrers and my home page only dominating a measly 36% of landing pages on my site, do I then have to redirect all new traffic to my home page, thus rendering useless search engine results?
<sarcasm>Yes. Yes you do. And given that I know from experience that this is actually impossible to do (given javascript disabling and cross-browser incompatibilities), your only recourse is to shut down your website or bribe the government to not take you to court. I hope you make good money off your website.</sarcasm>
Would this count, and would my site suddenly be indecent? What if someone, searching for information on that particular type of wine, came to my site and saw a picture of the bottle/label? Do I go to jail?
No, but they become so incensed that they actually saw a shadow of a woman's nipple, that they send a cease and desist order to your webhost, who informs you that because you didn't use the proper labelling, the content must be removed within 24 hours or your website will be taken down without notice.
If that sounds farfetched, just remember we live in the Sue-Happy States of America.
"A third new crime appears to require that commercial Web sites not post sexually explicit material on their home page if it can be seen 'absent any further actions by the viewer.
This one actually makes sense."
Actually, that's the part that makes the least sense to me.
For the 1st issue, labelling the site, it's easy enough as a website operator to say that your site MAY contain adult content (I'm thinking of forum operators here, who don't usually have much control over the content of the forum every second of the day). I don't think these labels should be government mandated, and in fact a huge number of popular sites do use the ICRA labelling system.
For the second issue, misleading words, well, most of the search engines try to do a good job of not returning adult results unless you've turned off safe searching. Words like "Barbie," which is apparently a popular name in the adult world, don't return adult search results.
But for number three.. how do you define a homepage. What if a search result links to a page that isn't your homepage. I am a programmer and web developer and I can say with experience that it is effectively impossible to make sure someone takes the path into your website that you want them to take. There are just too many ways in and too many ways around any approach one might use.
In the end, I don't think the government needs to be proposing any regulation of this sort. In the modern parlance, "it ain't the government's job".
Let the people get furious at what a website has done, and then make them change. That approach seems sufficiently effective to me.
Blasphemer! You have suggested an idea that is antithetical to the "Good of the people" as defined by the current administration.
Stay put; the black ops agents will be there soon, where they will take you to a nice, relaxing facility designed just for "free thinkers" like yourself.
Damn good post. Thank you!
Correction, 4th Amendment.
An old man, once tall and proud, now tired and beaten, slumped in his chair, speaks one last time to his grandchildren. He hopes, in vain, that they will hear, and understand, and that maybe something will change.
He knows, deep down, it never will.
He speaks.
"Once, we were free. We didn't really know it; we took it for granted. We assumed that people would always do the right thing, in the end. We thought that people loved freedom as much as we did, we just quibbled over the details.
"If you ask me the day we lost our freedom, I won't be able to answer you. That's because it didn't happen on one day; we didn't lose a war, we didn't pass a Tyranny Act, we didn't plunge into economic chaos and come out of it a dictatorship. No, we lost our freedom in pieces, bit by bit, and with each piece we said, "We're doing it for our safety, and for our children's future. We're doing it for the children, we're doing it for ourselves and our posterity. We're doing it because we think it's right."
I remember when we could buy a CD and listen to it wherever we wanted. You think I'm crazy, don't you kids? You've never even dreamt of such a thing. But it's true, and I got to live it. Oh for a few short years, I got to live it.
"I remember when I could record my favorite TV shows on my computer and watch them over and over again. You can't do that anymore though; after the Content Rights Act of 2011, it became illegal to possess any content on your machine that you didn't pay for every time you watch it. Or if you preferred, you could accept RIAA-approved AdWare to display advertisements at predetermined intervals as you watched your recording.
"I remember when I knew that my privacy was protected, that the government needed a reason to search my private data for wrongdoing - remember the 5th Amendment kids? You learned about that in history class right? Remember what year it was appealed? 2012, good, you've been studying.
"I remember trusting my government and my elected officials. I remember not being afraid of everything I did, because I knew I lived in the land of the free. I remember being proud that my country upheld personal liberties above corporate power and the rule of politicians. But alas, I didn't realize I was free.
"And so it is gone. Each time a freedom was taken away, I did nothing. I sat and accepted it, because I had my own things to worry about. I had to go to work, and clean the house, and pay the bills, and throw in some vacations. I didn't have time to consider revolt. I didn't have time to remember that our Founding Fathers revolted for far lesser grievances than have been visited upon the world these days.
"Remember my words, kids, because it's illegal now to speak of them. You won't find them in books, or in emails, or on television or in music - those are all sanctioned now, only approved content can be delivered in them - I remember that too.. TV used to be so interesting.. until someone said "Think of the children." Even cable TV can't have cuss words now. You probably don't even know any, do you? Too bad. A good swear can really take the pressure off once in awhile.
Only one thing will change the world, kids, and it ain't talk. Have the courage to stand up for your freedoms - your freedom of thought, your freedom of speech, your freedom of action, and your freedom to live without fear.
Remember this:
The worst they can do to you is take your life.
The worst you can do to them is destroy their civilization.
I think a few lives are worth it."
And with that, he died.
What happens next? It's up to you.
Yep.
http://www.thegunsource.com/
The loophole is the fact that owning more than one ounce of gold bullion is illegal in the United States (although, I may be wrong - there is some fuzzy law passed in 1973 that may have repealed that law).
Land of the free, indeed.
The other loophole is the simple fact that those coins are collector's items for a reason - there are too few of them ever produced to be useful legal tender.
As a former employee of a large national bank, I can tell you with certainty that if someone were to pay you with Gold Eagles, you would only be responsible for the face value of the coins. I say this from experience - if someone came into our bank branch with a 1914 Gold Eagle (worth thousands) we would still only give them $20 for it.
The value of currency is its face value, not its material value, which is part of why the government tried so hard to get us to adopt dollar coins a few years ago - they cost less to manufacture and are worth almost exactly $1 (material value), whereas your typical dollar bill will cost around $3 over time (since they have to be replaced approximately every 18 months).
"YES! People have rights - they're people. Corporations have no entitlement to the same rights."
Unfortunately, this nation's courts disagree with you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation
Corporations are accorded all the rights and freedoms of an actual person. When that doctrine was established was the beginning of the rise of corporate dominance, the end of corporate accountability and the point at which we lost all ability to control what corporations did to our countries, our environment, our governments, and our people.
That was probably the single biggest mistake in all of human history (save the burning of the Library at Alexandria). It spelled the end of what we would ever know as "freedom" - it spelled the beginning of the rule of money over morality.
Not that money wasn't always more important to people. It had simply never been given the legal power to be, before.
"For the record, Americans have never been freer right now in its history. Or did not realize women did not have the right to vote, and blacks were slaves."
Unfortunately, this statement is a result of bait-and-switch: we'll give you some bread crumbs to make you think you've got what you wanted, and we'll keep the loaf of bread.
Women have gained the right to vote - and voting means less and less as fewer and fewer people vote and when they do, they don't vote informed and it's not like it matters anyway because all the power lies now in "Commissions" that are not elected and are not run by elected officials (FTC, FAA, anything else beginning with "F"...)
We have the freedom to choose one of any of a hundred models of MP3 player. We have 1000+ television channels to choose from, thousands of choices of fast food, gourmet food, car models..
But none of those things makes us free. Freedom consists not in freedom of choice, but in freedom of action and association and as long as the government believes it to be their business to know as much as possible about you (*cough* Social Security Number *cough*), we will never be free.
Every government is by its very nature, the roots of tyranny. That is the trade off in Hobbe's social contract. We agree to limit our freedoms only so far as it benefits all of society as a whole - no further. Allow any government more power than that, and they become a tyranny.
We were free, once, long ago. That time is long past.
I really have no interest in flaming or fighting over this; I simply look out at a world that believes it is free and am filled with great sorrow at how much we have lost.
Actually, before the Constitution was signed there was no such thing as a "Career Politician." Ever wonder where the "Nomination" process came from?
Originally, someone elected to office did not run for office - it was considered ungentlemanly. Instead, people would nominate who they thought would be a good choice for office, and those people would be the ones who were on the ballot. No campaigning. No campaign finance. No corruption.
Over the 20-30 years following the signing of the Constitution, it became increasingly popular for someone who wanted nomination to run for office; this was made possible by the fact that those eligible to gain positions of power were no longer limited to those of Royal blood - e.g., the rise of the "Common Man."
And the rest, as they say, is history. Campaigning, campaign finance, corruption, and the rise of the career politician who will say anything to get elected and then do nothing but abuse his position.
The days of the honest politician are gone - not because none of them are honest, but because in this country, none of them can afford to be.
Sorry, but I just have to respond to this:
"All 22-year-olds in every country are outraged at their government."
The first thing I have to say to that is: balls. The second thing I have to say to that is, whose fault is that?
Is it impossible for you to imagine a world in which people actually do the right thing because it's right? In such a world, would "all" 22-year-olds have a reason to be outraged at their government? There was a time when young people were PROUD of our government - when they wanted little else than to find a way to serve it. Go to any high school or college campus today and see how much of that is still true.
The problem is, we're at a cusp in history we have never been at before: never before in history has a government been so capable of complete and absolute control over the thoughts, actions, and daily lives of its citizens. The ONLY thing that prevented such power in the past was the inability to be sufficiently efficient with information collection and processing. With the advent of computing technology and the massive automation that accompanies it, that limitation no longer exists.
We are truly at the edge of a Brave New World - and to quote from The Outer Limits:
"If knowledge is power and power corrupts, how will the human race ever survive?"