[themaninthedark]

I am saying "No. Full stop." to the idea that we ever had a time when the government was attempting to carry out their roles in good faith.

"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law" - Óscar Benavides, former president of Peru.

This can only be true if the law is broad and relies on "good faith". This is why laws and court ruling are often narrowly tailored, to prevent a precedent being set that will open the door for future abuse down the road.

>Investigative agencies are going to be able to investigate people. So supposing that the "US government can ... investigate Richard Spencer ... based on a web post" isn't a compelling argument unless your goal is to completely reject the concept of government. As has been often said, you can get a grand jury to indite a ham sandwich.

I suppose I could have fleshed out this argument a little further, a distillation of my point would be that "investigations" are carried out with little or flimsy evidence as a pretext to go on fishing expeditions to find something, anything to actually charge the person with.

>we need to neuter the concept of sovereign immunity I wish we could get the government to hold themselves accountable, however they would need to pass a law to override the concept and they do not seem to be in any hurry to do so.

I am not attempting to say I told you so to you, nor normalize the situation. I disagree with your assessment that there ever was a "better time" and invite not only you but everyone to stand against bad laws and practices no matter the letter after the name.

[mindslight]

> I am saying "No. Full stop." to the idea that we ever had a time when the government was attempting to carry out their roles in good faith.

This is such a strong claim, I don't know how it could even be supported.

At the agency level (the context of my original comment), this is effectively an assertion that the FDA has never meaningfully cared about food safety, NPS has always had some hidden motive for hosting visitors in parks, and so on. I'm nowhere near the best person to wax eloquently about the value of government, and I'm probably coming from a much closer position to you of being skeptical, but I think we have to admit there is some value here.

At the level of individual government agents, it's even less supportable. For example, most ICE agents are not boxing in vehicles to create an excuse to execute their drivers who had been protesting. Most ICE agents are just trying to perform their stated purpose of enforcing immigration law. This is NOT a defense of the agency, their leadership, the part of their stated goal that I have to begrudgingly admit is lawful, the tendency for agents to close ranks and defend the worst agents, the totalitarian propaganda holding it all together, etc. Rather it's an acknowledgement of the actual reality. (that we have to work with if we're going to attempt to reform it, and I use the term "reform" loosely here. I think the moderate option at this point is "abolish ICE")

The point is that in all of these situations, there is authority being delegated to individual humans, who are then supposed to faithfully carry it out. This is why we have oaths of office, and whatnot. You seem to be rejecting this very idea of how any human structure necessarily functions, in favor of some idea that laws can be objectively defined and mechanically executed?

> I wish we could get the government to hold themselves accountable, however they would need to pass a law to override the concept and they do not seem to be in any hurry to do so.

but then:

> invite not only you but everyone to stand against bad laws and practices

What do you mean by "stand against" if not ultimately pushing for reform, likely culminating in demanding some kind of government-inconvenient legislation that curtails abuses?