I don't understand all of the fighting in this thread. I don't understand why people are acting like every liberal was on board with these policies until the election. It's simply not accurate.
Two groups of people who completely agree that mass surveillance is a bad thing will go at each other's throats about _when_ the other speaks up about it needing to be dismantled. You're on the same fucking side and chances are, if you actually believe that mass surveillance is bad, you've both been at least mildly against it the whole time.
The expansion of surveillance powers under Obama was probably _the most_ consistently cited dissatisfaction amongst HN contributors one, four, and six years ago. Threads critical of these policies were consistently on the home page during the Obama presidency. Security and privacy conscious individuals on the left and right agreed. The top thread at the moment mocks liberals: "Well, sure, unconstitutional power grabs are tolerable when someone I like is in power…" but that straw man simply isn't in line with reality, not on this forum at least.
More broadly, yes, masses of people have given up their privacy. Go talk to them, stop bitching at people who agree with you.
> I don't understand why people are acting like every liberal was on board with these policies until the election.
As a libertarian, I agree. Many liberals have opposed these policies. I think even Glenn Greenwald may have or may still identify as a liberal.
However, every person I know who self-identifies as a "Democrat" and not a "liberal", has supported "all" of Obama's policies (including mass surveillance), and has condemned Snowden in the strongest terms. There are a few of those on HN, but I agree that by far most HNers oppose mass surveillance (unless there's a large "hidden" segment as is apparently the case with Trump supporters, who have come out en masse on HN in the past few days).
I consider myself a liberal leaning person. I voted for Obama in 2008 with the hope that he would unwind the worst of Bush era policies. He failed to to this in my estimation, and doubled down on espionage prosecutions, so I did not vote for him in 2012. Rather I voted for a 3rd party candidate.
I have long warned friends that Obama's refusal to address the proliferation of technologies supporting a future turnkey totalitarian state was a huge risk to our future stability.
With Trump's ascension to the presidency I am dismayed to find myself perhaps proven correct. At the very best interpretation, Trump will not use these executive powers to target opposition. However his future potential use of these powers will cause a large segment of the population to mistrust everything he does.
Most progressives despise Obama as well for exactly this, and for betraying progressive ideals. That's one of the factors that lead to Sanders' popularity and Clinton's loss.
It amazes me that journalists publish things like this with a straight face, then don't understand why nobody trusts the media.
"Well, sure, unconstitutional power grabs are tolerable when someone I like is in power, but this new guy is bad!" Yes, that's how it always works. That's explicitly the reason our government was designed the way it was. Why do educated people forget this every time "their guy" gets into power?
It's amazing how many articles I've seen in the last week by people suddenly finding limited-government religion.
When people campaign against the expansion of government powers, it's not because we're afraid that the Good Guys are going to abuse them, it's because we know that eventually the Bad Guys will.
It's not just journalists. I've had multiple, extended conversation with Ivy League educated, highly compensated, otherwise rational people about how burning it all down now for sure is preferable to potentially burning part of it down later.
There is a sickness in this country, and it is called partisanship. Its destructive power is more frightening than anything Trump could hope to do.
Did the media or Time in particular ever advocate mass surveillance? Pretty sure they've been railing against it for years. We wouldn't even know about it without the NY Times exposing Bush's Stellar Wind. They're just placing a new urgency on it now that our President-elect has promised to grossly abuse it.
This isn't a journalist. It's an opinion piece written by an activist.
Please show where this activist writes in support of the NSA programs in the past.
Even if there were such a thing as homogenous left: I believe the number of people from the left defending these programs has been pretty short for as long as I can remember.
Evan and FFTF have been actively working against NSA spying under the Obama administration.
The EFF and EPIC, which have been around longer, has worked against NSA spying under the Obama, Bush II, Clinton, and Bush I organizations; the ACLU, all of the above and more.
I love however how the left suddenly rediscovers the dangers of unlimited government power and benefits of limited government powers. Too bad it won't last.
One reason is that for a substantial subset of these people, they imagine they'll be one of the commissars, instead of one of the anonymous bodies in a ditch.
Why would he, when he authorized it? Not only did he strengthen Bush's anti-constitutional policies, he enacted new ones, like the NDAA which spits in the face of the constitution.
Because he has a new perspective on what unbridled data collection can render, not only with the hindsight of the Snowden debacle, but also because I am around 100% sure he didn't posit Mr. Trump as the future Head of State.
Maybe we should remember the words written in the founding document that precluded our noble country's separation from the English State:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men/women (language added by me) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men/Women (same semantic addition), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness
If one's right to privacy is being infringed upon, we are bound by this document to remind the powers that be that they are beyond their right to govern.
I think the initial thought is incredibly prescient, as Trump seems far more laissez-faire when it comes to moral governance than President Obama is and has been. Let's not put the cart before the horse, but let's also make sure the toys are all child proof before we hand them down, n'est-ce pas?
When it was possibly used against the people they did not like then it was acceptable. Now when it may become after them has it suddenly become a problem. How pathetic.
I also can not say that many have not warned against this scenario. Something, something about not standing up.
It was never acceptable to many of us. But the threat of unbridled autocracy was less present under Obama than it will be under Trump, for the reasons stated in the article. It is possible to oppose these programs with some but not utmost urgency, and then be catapulted into utmost urgency by an event such as a minority of the voters electing a fascist.
Trump isn't even in office yet, and already he's done more to advance the libertarian agenda than 40-ish years of libertarians have managed.
Democrats are coming out in support of the Second Amendment, the right of secession, and limited government. They're now apparently opposed to the surveillance state and the expanding powers of the Executive.
Surveillance is not a Democrat belief. Most Democrats/all progressives are against surveillance. The problem is that Obama went against liberal ideals and enforced and extended Bush's policies, which is why Obama was generally hated by progressives.
Fascism was all over the country a long time before recent events. I'm not a Trump supporter but assuming that this problem is something that should be of people's concern only now is just childish.
I've seen this comment in various guises over the last few days, and I struggle to understand what it's intended to accomplish.
If you think the problem is old news, that doesn't make it any less urgent to fix. It's like seeing firefighters arrive and tell them not to bother, because the house started burning hours ago.
You know, libertarians have been saying for a long time that it's best to keep government as local as possible, so you could choose how you wanted to live, and live that way to the greatest extent possible, without having to worry about what happened in other states or in the federal election. You decide how you want to live and others can decide how they want to live.
Liberals responded with a policy of moving as much power to Washington as possible, explicitly to enforce a policy of, No, we will decide how everyone lives, and enforce it federally to minimize others' ability to escape our reach.
Libertarians have been saying that judges should do their best to interpret the meaning of the legislators, so that whatever laws we had would be those written by legislators elected by the people. Liberals said, No, we want judges to interpret laws to mean what they ought to have said if they people had done as we wanted, so that the laws will be what the political elite want them to be, regardless of what the know-nothing rabble choose for themselves. So now, we have the precedent established and argued for for years from the left that the law is what the court wants it to be, not what the people said. Nice work.
All along, those promoting local government rather than central, unescapable authority have been derided as fascists by liberals. Now the chickens come home to roost. Do you think now that maximizing and centralizing and moving out of reach as much power as possible was a good idea? No? Want to change it? Why didn't you in all the years you were in power and advocated the opposite, because now you've turned that power over to another group. It didn't have to be this way, but you wouldn't stop. Probably still won't and will instead just fight to regain control.
For starters, there is no united group known as "liberals" whom either of us can speak on behalf of, but I will indulge you and also speak in generalizations.
Liberals do not arbitrarily support "moving as much power to Washington as possible". Rather, they believe strongly that human rights should be dispensed equally to everyone in the country. If abortion is a right, then being born in Texas shouldn't deprive a woman of that right any more than being born in the south in the 19th century should've deprived blacks of their freedom. Similar arguments can be made for gay marriage, miscegenation laws, female suffrage, the availability of healthcare for the poor, quality education, etc.
There's nothing whatsoever baked into the liberal ideology that supports things like domestic spying and warrantless wiretaps. Rather, the better explanation is any branch of government (in this case the executive branch) is incentivized to increase its own power, and people tend to be biased in favor of their party's presidents. But I've met countless pro-Snowden liberals, and I think you've really mischaracterized the essence of what makes liberals liberal.
I absolutely agree with this premise philosophically, but history speaks against it sometimes.
Civil rights are a great example. Minorities living in the south during Jim Crow were always legally allowed to move north to freer states that wouldn't discriminate against them. But they didn't. Mostly because they were economically and informatively suppressed to the point where they no longer possessed free movement - either they could not afford the cost, or did not know the option existed through intentional disinformation.
The same applies today, for everything from legalized cannabis, to right to die, to bathroom law, to abortion availability and rights, to gay marriage before the supreme court decision. People who are oppressed by hostile local legislation still choose to stay, often because they don't have a choice.
But that is fairly black and white, and reality really isn't. The more interesting, and I think where the liberal argument gets its support more than anything, is in those who have the choice but have to weigh their options. It is an awful situation to be in to decide between gaining rights and leaving everything you know behind. People really resist leaving their homes, in all definitions of the term. There is resistance to leaving your parents house. To leaving your hometown. To leaving your home culture. And that resistance often defeats people who would, objectively, and purely analytically, be better served just leaving.
But that is 20/20 hindsight showing itself. At the time, these people do not know what might happen. They have to weigh the risks. And there is a tremendous natural human aversion to risk. It drives millions of people who would be more prosperous - economically, personally, etc - to stay where they are and not take what they perceive and weigh as unnecessary risk.
A lot of this is a problem of the times. The more opportunity you have in your destination the lower the risk of moving there. Opportunity, in aggregate, is at generational lows today in the US. It suppresses mobility, and that generational lack of opportunity and thus promotion of conservative decisions regarding your own prosperity and rights creates the environment for top-down policy to centralize authority over the whole, to use a wide brush to direct ideology than letting people chose their own. Because in practice, many people cannot make that choice, objectively or as a product of their own uncertainty, and the liberal wing that pushes centralized power to assert their beliefs see that people suffer in conditions they wouldn't need to if they had perfect information and had no emotional baggage holding them back from seizing opportunity.
Distributing power, localizing governance, and making it as democratic as possible in the process is the path to maximal liberty and happiness. But it requires that people actually take advantage of that opportunity. If you build it, how are they to come if they don't know its there?
I really ought to know better by now, but I'll bite.
> libertarians have been saying for a long time that it's best to keep government as local as possible, so you could choose how you wanted to live
... and maximize the reach of the market, which is more global than any government on Earth, and in practice works in the opposite way: organize your life around making yourself useful to those with money, fast, or you will starve. If that means uprooting your family and moving someplace where you can work yourself to an early grave in the coal mines, so be it. If that means neglecting your duty as sherriff and looking the other way while the company machine-guns striking workers, so be it. If that means giving blowjobs to strangers on the street, So. Be. It. Such liberty! Very freedom.
> Libertarians have been saying that judges should do their best to interpret the meaning of the legislators
... unless they're striking down regulations that are a result of government overreach, which is quite OK.
Every corner of the political spectrum accuses judges of judicial activism precisely when the rulings don't go their way. It's like complaining about the referee in sports, except easier, because laws for society are much more complicated than the rules for sports, which are complicated enough. Yesterday's legislators and their laws agreed with each other about as well as today's legislators and their laws, which is to say "not at all," so everyone has a claim to the judicial activism argument and everyone uses it when they want to sound insightful but don't want to expose themselves to the risks of talking specifics. Yawn.
> All along, those promoting local government rather than central, unescapable authority have been derided as fascists by liberals.
That usually happens when local government is being especially asinine -- buying their police department tanks, targeting minorities, making poverty illegal, making protests illegal, etc. Local != benevolent. Local != escapable, either, because opinions and incentives tend to be highly correlated between communities, so even if it is worth it to up and move you'll find that every other "local" government is doing the same damn thing. Options without choice. Something that should be all too familiar to free-marketeers ;)
> Now the chickens come home to roost. Do you think now that maximizing and centralizing and moving out of reach as much power as possible was a good idea?
Even if we wanted, an option to federate power was never really on the ballot. All parties want power, that's why they seek it. Everyone thinks they are right, or else they would change their opinion, and everyone wants (reasonably) to fight for what is right. Show me a politician who wants to devolve power and I'll show you a liar. They may not know it yet, especially if they've never won power, but it's true.
> libertarians have been saying for a long time that it's best to keep government as local as possible
Libertarians have in practice spent far more time trying to remove as much power from government as possible and handing it to corporations[1]. This strategy is either very naive or based on self interest, because it doesn't actually address the concentration of power; it only moves it to a different group of people.
The way to manage power is to spread it out as much as possible, subject to as many self interest based checks and balances as possible. Neither governments or corporations[2] can be allowed to "win", because it is the struggle itself that keeps power restrained to a necessary minimum. The system fails without both: corporations need to use their money and influence to push back against government overreach, and governments need to use their various powers to regulate the corporate world.
> those written by legislators elected by the people
That's what the judges are addressing, because it isn't always clear what those laws actually say, especially in ambiguous situations that didn't exist when the law was written.
> we want judges to interpret laws to mean what they ought to have said
Yes, which is necessary because the law isn't magically unambiguous. How else do you think we should interpret the law in ambiguous or unforeseen situations? Also, remember that the legislature - the people that were elected by the people - can simply override judicial interpretation at any time.
> the laws will be what the political elite want them to be
That problem happens anyway. The branch of government used is simply whichever is currently convenient. This is an orthogonal problem (that needs to be addressed).
> Liberals responded with a policy of moving as much power to Washington as possible
You are seeing what you want to see, which seems to have led to some very creative misinterpretations of how government works.
Instead of following the politics of fear and blaming a very large group of your fellow citizens, I suggest trying to find ways we can work together to dilute power away from "the political elite". A lot of people will try to distract from this idea with suggestions that prey on fear and ignorance to simply move power around, so this will require a lot of effort, vigilance, and sometimes a sacrifice. That cost, unfortunately, is the price of liberty, but it's a manageable cost if it keeps power form concentrating in the hands of the few.
[1] and the people, but most of the time the capital to actually take advantage of the power vacuum is usually held by corporations.
[2] the people (and things that serve the people directly like trade unions and civil rights orgs) are, of course, also involved as a check on the other two groups.
Ah, yes, those evil liberals and their centralising ways. Never mind that conservatives have, in actuality, done more centralising than liberals have.
Also, can you give some examples of "deciding how everyone lives"? What have liberals actually put in place in the US that curtail what people can do, that isn't in the name of freeing up part of the population (such as anti-discrimination law). What are some actual examples of federal liberal enforced monoculture in the US?
This was one of the reasons why Hillary lost. It WASN'T ok that Obama got, expanded and strengthened it. Still today come to light uses and misuses of it under current administration. And Hillary would had kept that trend for sure. It is one of the things that should change, and for sure she wouldn't do that.
Yes, Trump could make things even worse, or not. Is not the same people that actually set things as it was in the last years, unless the people behind both sides on this is the same, of course.
In any case, shutting down/disabling/destroying all dangerous things that US may have in stock or running now (nuclear, cyber, biological, foreign interventionism/destabilization and so on) that the narrative on Trump could misuse could finally give some meaning to Obama's Nobel prize.
This has always been one of my biggest fears as well.
IMHO this was the one thing that allowed the Nazis to create the kind of power structure they had. They spied on themselves to no end, bugging their own officers, hitler youth teaching children to spy and report on their parents.. everyone was afraid to speak out or step out of line no matter how bad it got.
It would be terrible to see these systems used as a method of control.
It's the same reason you don't keep a loaded gun in your night-stand when you've got a 5 year old. Immense power to defend your home is a good thing... but that's probably not what's going to happen.
We're having a close call. We just caught the child peeking into the drawer and got a quick education on why certain powers should be kept safely locked up by the constitution. Even if it makes them a bit harder to use when we "really need them".
I extremely doubtful that an "on the way out" president would be able/allowed to do that. Hell he can't even get a SCOTUS nomination appointed, a constitutional power.
The panic over trump is starting to get comical. Aren't you americans proud of your guns to protect you from power abuses? Dont you have probably the worlds best democracy that many would be jealous of?
NSA surveillance, while terrible, is also kind of a red herring.
The bigger risk to people is the enormous pile of data at large Internet companies and ISPs which any government would find useful in implementing a policy of mass deportation or "extreme vetting".
NSA has legal and institutional barriers on domestic surveillance. These are damaged, but still exist. What private industry collects is completely unregulated and far broader in scope.
Like Calexit, this proposal is so unrealistic as to be unserious and not worth discussing.
What is needed now are technologies of resistance. We need the private sector companies who essentially built this monster to give us the tools to render it nugatory. Not only is that the only way forward, but they owe us that.
In all honesty i see very little evidence that mass surveillance would naturally increase under Trump more than it has prior to him, or more than it would under Clinton or any other candidate.
Also anything that Obama does now can easily be reverted; there is little time nor there is sufficient political capital to pass this as a law, and any executive order can be overturned completely by the next administration.
Obama can't dismantle the NSA, he can't cut their budget, he can't do anything of meaning at this point there is too much momentum behind these programs to stop them if the next administration would indeed want to keep them or expand them.
In his last 2.5 months he can't really do anything but pack.
9/11 allowed all this, next time let's not be little scared kids that hand away our freedom so easily for security. They are hard to get back, probably even need revolutions to get that back.
A decade and a half and we still can't shake this overreaction. "They hate us for our freedoms", so our representatives went ahead and took away our freedoms.
Both parties are responsible and we need to start being American over The Party of your chosen type. If you like a one party system and vote in line with it every time go to China, you'd fit right in.
Snowden is a hero as is every other statesman that is left that puts country over party. It is time to start helping this country not your party.
Unbelievable hypocrites. It was fine during Obama but somehow he needs to shut it down because they all despise Trump ? no it was shameful back then and it should have never existed.
[+] [-] wwalser|9 years ago|reply
Two groups of people who completely agree that mass surveillance is a bad thing will go at each other's throats about _when_ the other speaks up about it needing to be dismantled. You're on the same fucking side and chances are, if you actually believe that mass surveillance is bad, you've both been at least mildly against it the whole time.
The expansion of surveillance powers under Obama was probably _the most_ consistently cited dissatisfaction amongst HN contributors one, four, and six years ago. Threads critical of these policies were consistently on the home page during the Obama presidency. Security and privacy conscious individuals on the left and right agreed. The top thread at the moment mocks liberals: "Well, sure, unconstitutional power grabs are tolerable when someone I like is in power…" but that straw man simply isn't in line with reality, not on this forum at least.
More broadly, yes, masses of people have given up their privacy. Go talk to them, stop bitching at people who agree with you.
[+] [-] jnbiche|9 years ago|reply
As a libertarian, I agree. Many liberals have opposed these policies. I think even Glenn Greenwald may have or may still identify as a liberal.
However, every person I know who self-identifies as a "Democrat" and not a "liberal", has supported "all" of Obama's policies (including mass surveillance), and has condemned Snowden in the strongest terms. There are a few of those on HN, but I agree that by far most HNers oppose mass surveillance (unless there's a large "hidden" segment as is apparently the case with Trump supporters, who have come out en masse on HN in the past few days).
[+] [-] rabboRubble|9 years ago|reply
I have long warned friends that Obama's refusal to address the proliferation of technologies supporting a future turnkey totalitarian state was a huge risk to our future stability.
With Trump's ascension to the presidency I am dismayed to find myself perhaps proven correct. At the very best interpretation, Trump will not use these executive powers to target opposition. However his future potential use of these powers will cause a large segment of the population to mistrust everything he does.
[+] [-] pfarnsworth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perseusprime11|9 years ago|reply
What about the wars? Does anyone here even know why we are bombing Yemen?
[+] [-] liber8|9 years ago|reply
"Well, sure, unconstitutional power grabs are tolerable when someone I like is in power, but this new guy is bad!" Yes, that's how it always works. That's explicitly the reason our government was designed the way it was. Why do educated people forget this every time "their guy" gets into power?
[+] [-] cheald|9 years ago|reply
When people campaign against the expansion of government powers, it's not because we're afraid that the Good Guys are going to abuse them, it's because we know that eventually the Bad Guys will.
[+] [-] kchoudhu|9 years ago|reply
There is a sickness in this country, and it is called partisanship. Its destructive power is more frightening than anything Trump could hope to do.
[+] [-] tootie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt4077|9 years ago|reply
Please show where this activist writes in support of the NSA programs in the past.
Even if there were such a thing as homogenous left: I believe the number of people from the left defending these programs has been pretty short for as long as I can remember.
[+] [-] jdp23|9 years ago|reply
The EFF and EPIC, which have been around longer, has worked against NSA spying under the Obama, Bush II, Clinton, and Bush I organizations; the ACLU, all of the above and more.
What about you?
[+] [-] smsm42|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hga|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intended|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluetwo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfarnsworth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|9 years ago|reply
I guess you might be referring to a particular provision from a particular year? You're going to have to be more specific.
[+] [-] opt4altruism|9 years ago|reply
Maybe we should remember the words written in the founding document that precluded our noble country's separation from the English State:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men/women (language added by me) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men/Women (same semantic addition), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness
If one's right to privacy is being infringed upon, we are bound by this document to remind the powers that be that they are beyond their right to govern.
I think the initial thought is incredibly prescient, as Trump seems far more laissez-faire when it comes to moral governance than President Obama is and has been. Let's not put the cart before the horse, but let's also make sure the toys are all child proof before we hand them down, n'est-ce pas?
[+] [-] eveningcoffee|9 years ago|reply
I also can not say that many have not warned against this scenario. Something, something about not standing up.
[+] [-] diyorgasms|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idlewords|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] LyndsySimon|9 years ago|reply
Democrats are coming out in support of the Second Amendment, the right of secession, and limited government. They're now apparently opposed to the surveillance state and the expanding powers of the Executive.
[+] [-] pfarnsworth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dontelmewhatodo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idlewords|9 years ago|reply
If you think the problem is old news, that doesn't make it any less urgent to fix. It's like seeing firefighters arrive and tell them not to bother, because the house started burning hours ago.
[+] [-] revscat|9 years ago|reply
But even if what you say were true, it invalidates nothing.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwwit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SiVal|9 years ago|reply
Liberals responded with a policy of moving as much power to Washington as possible, explicitly to enforce a policy of, No, we will decide how everyone lives, and enforce it federally to minimize others' ability to escape our reach.
Libertarians have been saying that judges should do their best to interpret the meaning of the legislators, so that whatever laws we had would be those written by legislators elected by the people. Liberals said, No, we want judges to interpret laws to mean what they ought to have said if they people had done as we wanted, so that the laws will be what the political elite want them to be, regardless of what the know-nothing rabble choose for themselves. So now, we have the precedent established and argued for for years from the left that the law is what the court wants it to be, not what the people said. Nice work.
All along, those promoting local government rather than central, unescapable authority have been derided as fascists by liberals. Now the chickens come home to roost. Do you think now that maximizing and centralizing and moving out of reach as much power as possible was a good idea? No? Want to change it? Why didn't you in all the years you were in power and advocated the opposite, because now you've turned that power over to another group. It didn't have to be this way, but you wouldn't stop. Probably still won't and will instead just fight to regain control.
[+] [-] csallen|9 years ago|reply
For starters, there is no united group known as "liberals" whom either of us can speak on behalf of, but I will indulge you and also speak in generalizations.
Liberals do not arbitrarily support "moving as much power to Washington as possible". Rather, they believe strongly that human rights should be dispensed equally to everyone in the country. If abortion is a right, then being born in Texas shouldn't deprive a woman of that right any more than being born in the south in the 19th century should've deprived blacks of their freedom. Similar arguments can be made for gay marriage, miscegenation laws, female suffrage, the availability of healthcare for the poor, quality education, etc.
There's nothing whatsoever baked into the liberal ideology that supports things like domestic spying and warrantless wiretaps. Rather, the better explanation is any branch of government (in this case the executive branch) is incentivized to increase its own power, and people tend to be biased in favor of their party's presidents. But I've met countless pro-Snowden liberals, and I think you've really mischaracterized the essence of what makes liberals liberal.
[+] [-] zanny|9 years ago|reply
Civil rights are a great example. Minorities living in the south during Jim Crow were always legally allowed to move north to freer states that wouldn't discriminate against them. But they didn't. Mostly because they were economically and informatively suppressed to the point where they no longer possessed free movement - either they could not afford the cost, or did not know the option existed through intentional disinformation.
The same applies today, for everything from legalized cannabis, to right to die, to bathroom law, to abortion availability and rights, to gay marriage before the supreme court decision. People who are oppressed by hostile local legislation still choose to stay, often because they don't have a choice.
But that is fairly black and white, and reality really isn't. The more interesting, and I think where the liberal argument gets its support more than anything, is in those who have the choice but have to weigh their options. It is an awful situation to be in to decide between gaining rights and leaving everything you know behind. People really resist leaving their homes, in all definitions of the term. There is resistance to leaving your parents house. To leaving your hometown. To leaving your home culture. And that resistance often defeats people who would, objectively, and purely analytically, be better served just leaving.
But that is 20/20 hindsight showing itself. At the time, these people do not know what might happen. They have to weigh the risks. And there is a tremendous natural human aversion to risk. It drives millions of people who would be more prosperous - economically, personally, etc - to stay where they are and not take what they perceive and weigh as unnecessary risk.
A lot of this is a problem of the times. The more opportunity you have in your destination the lower the risk of moving there. Opportunity, in aggregate, is at generational lows today in the US. It suppresses mobility, and that generational lack of opportunity and thus promotion of conservative decisions regarding your own prosperity and rights creates the environment for top-down policy to centralize authority over the whole, to use a wide brush to direct ideology than letting people chose their own. Because in practice, many people cannot make that choice, objectively or as a product of their own uncertainty, and the liberal wing that pushes centralized power to assert their beliefs see that people suffer in conditions they wouldn't need to if they had perfect information and had no emotional baggage holding them back from seizing opportunity.
Distributing power, localizing governance, and making it as democratic as possible in the process is the path to maximal liberty and happiness. But it requires that people actually take advantage of that opportunity. If you build it, how are they to come if they don't know its there?
[+] [-] jjoonathan|9 years ago|reply
> libertarians have been saying for a long time that it's best to keep government as local as possible, so you could choose how you wanted to live
... and maximize the reach of the market, which is more global than any government on Earth, and in practice works in the opposite way: organize your life around making yourself useful to those with money, fast, or you will starve. If that means uprooting your family and moving someplace where you can work yourself to an early grave in the coal mines, so be it. If that means neglecting your duty as sherriff and looking the other way while the company machine-guns striking workers, so be it. If that means giving blowjobs to strangers on the street, So. Be. It. Such liberty! Very freedom.
> Libertarians have been saying that judges should do their best to interpret the meaning of the legislators
... unless they're striking down regulations that are a result of government overreach, which is quite OK.
Every corner of the political spectrum accuses judges of judicial activism precisely when the rulings don't go their way. It's like complaining about the referee in sports, except easier, because laws for society are much more complicated than the rules for sports, which are complicated enough. Yesterday's legislators and their laws agreed with each other about as well as today's legislators and their laws, which is to say "not at all," so everyone has a claim to the judicial activism argument and everyone uses it when they want to sound insightful but don't want to expose themselves to the risks of talking specifics. Yawn.
> All along, those promoting local government rather than central, unescapable authority have been derided as fascists by liberals.
That usually happens when local government is being especially asinine -- buying their police department tanks, targeting minorities, making poverty illegal, making protests illegal, etc. Local != benevolent. Local != escapable, either, because opinions and incentives tend to be highly correlated between communities, so even if it is worth it to up and move you'll find that every other "local" government is doing the same damn thing. Options without choice. Something that should be all too familiar to free-marketeers ;)
> Now the chickens come home to roost. Do you think now that maximizing and centralizing and moving out of reach as much power as possible was a good idea?
Even if we wanted, an option to federate power was never really on the ballot. All parties want power, that's why they seek it. Everyone thinks they are right, or else they would change their opinion, and everyone wants (reasonably) to fight for what is right. Show me a politician who wants to devolve power and I'll show you a liar. They may not know it yet, especially if they've never won power, but it's true.
[+] [-] hiou|9 years ago|reply
everyone? Dial back the extremism for a minute. Get off Facebook.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kenji|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdkl95|9 years ago|reply
Libertarians have in practice spent far more time trying to remove as much power from government as possible and handing it to corporations[1]. This strategy is either very naive or based on self interest, because it doesn't actually address the concentration of power; it only moves it to a different group of people.
The way to manage power is to spread it out as much as possible, subject to as many self interest based checks and balances as possible. Neither governments or corporations[2] can be allowed to "win", because it is the struggle itself that keeps power restrained to a necessary minimum. The system fails without both: corporations need to use their money and influence to push back against government overreach, and governments need to use their various powers to regulate the corporate world.
> those written by legislators elected by the people
That's what the judges are addressing, because it isn't always clear what those laws actually say, especially in ambiguous situations that didn't exist when the law was written.
> we want judges to interpret laws to mean what they ought to have said
Yes, which is necessary because the law isn't magically unambiguous. How else do you think we should interpret the law in ambiguous or unforeseen situations? Also, remember that the legislature - the people that were elected by the people - can simply override judicial interpretation at any time.
> the laws will be what the political elite want them to be
That problem happens anyway. The branch of government used is simply whichever is currently convenient. This is an orthogonal problem (that needs to be addressed).
> Liberals responded with a policy of moving as much power to Washington as possible
You are seeing what you want to see, which seems to have led to some very creative misinterpretations of how government works.
Instead of following the politics of fear and blaming a very large group of your fellow citizens, I suggest trying to find ways we can work together to dilute power away from "the political elite". A lot of people will try to distract from this idea with suggestions that prey on fear and ignorance to simply move power around, so this will require a lot of effort, vigilance, and sometimes a sacrifice. That cost, unfortunately, is the price of liberty, but it's a manageable cost if it keeps power form concentrating in the hands of the few.
[1] and the people, but most of the time the capital to actually take advantage of the power vacuum is usually held by corporations.
[2] the people (and things that serve the people directly like trade unions and civil rights orgs) are, of course, also involved as a check on the other two groups.
[+] [-] vacri|9 years ago|reply
Also, can you give some examples of "deciding how everyone lives"? What have liberals actually put in place in the US that curtail what people can do, that isn't in the name of freeing up part of the population (such as anti-discrimination law). What are some actual examples of federal liberal enforced monoculture in the US?
[+] [-] gmuslera|9 years ago|reply
Yes, Trump could make things even worse, or not. Is not the same people that actually set things as it was in the last years, unless the people behind both sides on this is the same, of course.
In any case, shutting down/disabling/destroying all dangerous things that US may have in stock or running now (nuclear, cyber, biological, foreign interventionism/destabilization and so on) that the narrative on Trump could misuse could finally give some meaning to Obama's Nobel prize.
[+] [-] rando444|9 years ago|reply
IMHO this was the one thing that allowed the Nazis to create the kind of power structure they had. They spied on themselves to no end, bugging their own officers, hitler youth teaching children to spy and report on their parents.. everyone was afraid to speak out or step out of line no matter how bad it got.
It would be terrible to see these systems used as a method of control.
[+] [-] noonespecial|9 years ago|reply
We're having a close call. We just caught the child peeking into the drawer and got a quick education on why certain powers should be kept safely locked up by the constitution. Even if it makes them a bit harder to use when we "really need them".
[+] [-] njharman|9 years ago|reply
He could (and must) pardon Snowden.
[+] [-] greggy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idlewords|9 years ago|reply
The bigger risk to people is the enormous pile of data at large Internet companies and ISPs which any government would find useful in implementing a policy of mass deportation or "extreme vetting".
NSA has legal and institutional barriers on domestic surveillance. These are damaged, but still exist. What private industry collects is completely unregulated and far broader in scope.
[+] [-] bitmapbrother|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonstokes|9 years ago|reply
What is needed now are technologies of resistance. We need the private sector companies who essentially built this monster to give us the tools to render it nugatory. Not only is that the only way forward, but they owe us that.
[+] [-] dogma1138|9 years ago|reply
Also anything that Obama does now can easily be reverted; there is little time nor there is sufficient political capital to pass this as a law, and any executive order can be overturned completely by the next administration.
Obama can't dismantle the NSA, he can't cut their budget, he can't do anything of meaning at this point there is too much momentum behind these programs to stop them if the next administration would indeed want to keep them or expand them.
In his last 2.5 months he can't really do anything but pack.
[+] [-] drawkbox|9 years ago|reply
A decade and a half and we still can't shake this overreaction. "They hate us for our freedoms", so our representatives went ahead and took away our freedoms.
Both parties are responsible and we need to start being American over The Party of your chosen type. If you like a one party system and vote in line with it every time go to China, you'd fit right in.
Snowden is a hero as is every other statesman that is left that puts country over party. It is time to start helping this country not your party.
[+] [-] aikah|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply