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As a counter-point to the SOPA/PIPA demonstration
IainB:
They will ram their police state legislation down our throats, and if they fail there, they'll ram it up our asses.
-Renegade (January 19, 2012, 10:10 PM)
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Well, is it possible that that is all the nation (collectively) deserves?
I think you may find several examples of this sort of post commentary: Don't Trust Your Instincts
Look at this piece of instinctual wisdom: Everyone should vote. In the last big election, only 90 million people voted out of more than 200 million eligible voters. That's terrible, we're told. But it's not terrible because a lot of people are ignorant. When I asked people to identify pictures of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, almost half couldn't.
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An implication of this is that some people might say, for example:
That if a public majority are unable - for whatever reason - to take the responsibility for understanding what they need to vote about, and then actually exercising that vote, then maybe they don't need to vote. Maybe it's just too much to expect of them, and maybe all they really need is to be told what to do, when to do it and how/what to think, and they'll be quite happy in that state.
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Could that be a substantiation for your police state?
If moves towards becoming a police/totalitarian state have already been started by degrees, then maybe it's all over for you by now anyway.
For example, this discussion: Opinion — Mark Levin: You Cannot Have This EPA and a Constitution
- since the EPA is apparently riding roughshod over the thing.
Mark Levin says America cannot at the same time have a Constitution and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is doing what the EPA is doing today.
Levin made the observation in an interview with CNSNews.com about his new book, “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.”
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How about this? Is the EPA "The Very Definition of Tyranny"?
SpoilerIs the EPA "The Very Definition of Tyranny"?
By John C. Eastman
Posted September 25, 2000
Next Monday the United States Supreme Court begins a new term. Already on the Court's docket are several significant cases testing the Court's recent federalism jurisprudence. Solid Waste Agency v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers considers whether the occasional presence of migratory birds in a wholly intrastate wetland is sufficient to confer jurisdiction in the Army Corps of Engineers under Congress's power "to regulate commerce among the states." In University of Alabama Board of Trustees v. Garrett, the Court will consider whether the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted pursuant to Congress's powers under the 14th Amendment rather than under the Commerce Clause, and thus whether suits against the states are permitted or are barred by the sovereign immunity doctrine the Court has derived from the 11th Amendment. And in Cook v. Gralike, the Court will again take up term limits, addressing whether it is permissible for a state to identify on an election ballot a candidate's position on the issue.
All of these cases raise important questions about the role of the states in our constitutional system. Our nation's Founders designed a system of government based on a division of the people's sovereign powers between the national and state governments, so that each level of government could serve as a check against the abuses of the other.
The separation of powers between state and national governments was only one-half of the Founders' constitutional vision, however. One of the chief "auxiliary precautions" devised by the Framers of our Constitution to protect the people's liberty lies in the very structure of the Constitution.
Drawing on the political theory of Locke and Montesquieu, the framers designed the new government so that the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government were separate from one another, out of recognition, as James Madison put it in Federalist 47, that the "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
Our nation's Founders viewed this separation of powers within the national government as a complement to the structural federalism that the Supreme Court has in recent years revitalized to protect the people's liberty. Madison called the two structural components of our constitutional system a "double security" for the "rights of the people."
Our Constitution assigns its enumerated legislative powers to the Congress, and does not permit Congress to delegate its lawmaking function to the executive or the judicial branch. This structural protection had two purposes: it guaranteed that those who made the law were accountable to the people, and it ensured that the laws were made by the body best suited for deliberation.
For more than sixty years, however, this "non-delegation" doctrine has been honored only in the breach. This term, the Supreme Court will hear a case addressing whether that old principle, which our Founders thought essential to liberty, has any lingering vitality. At issue in Browner v. American Trucking Associations, Inc. is whether Congress improperly delegated its lawmaking powers to the Environmental Protection Agency when, in the Clean Air Act, it authorized the EPA to set national air quality standards at levels "requisite to protect the public health" with an "adequate margin of safety." How high the air quality standards should be, and at what cost, are quintessentially legislative decisions that constitutionally must be made by Congress alone. The Court of Appeals therefore held that the Clean Air Act is unconstitutional unless the EPA can offer an interpretation of the statute that confers upon the EPA only a gap-filling, and not a lawmaking, authority.
Browner is a highly complex case, but much more is at stake than just national air quality standards. In a way, the validity of the entire administrative state is at stake. Independent administrative agencies, run by government officials who are neither elected to their new lawmaking capacity nor answerable to the chief executive, combine the lawmaking, executing, and judging functions of government in a single place — the "very definition of tyranny," according to James Madison.
The repudiation of the constitutional separation of powers principle was no accident. The assault on this foundational component of the Constitution's structure was waged openly during the heyday of the Progressive movement, and greatly expanded during the New Deal movement in the 1930s and the Great Society movement of the 1960s. The Progressive vision, propounded by such devotees of the administrative state as Woodrow Wilson, viewed the separation of powers as a barrier to rather than a facilitator of good government. Under Wilson's theory, the government needed to be freed from the shackles of separation of powers so that a professional class of government bureaucrats could manage the government, the economy, and our lives with precision and efficiency. Government "gridlock" became an evil to be overcome rather than a means for fostering the kind of public deliberation that could ensure that the public good, rather than the transient will of temporary majorities or special interests, would be furthered.
After nearly a century of experience in this country with a partially centralized administration, and with the disastrous results of the former Soviet Union's purer form of centralized socialism, it is time to realize that Wilson's experiment has failed. The Supreme Court can take a major step in that direction by reinvigorating the non-delegation doctrine when it decides Browner.
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Renegade:
I agree that 2012 will be pivotal. The hideous shadow of world government is looming. It's becoming (well, has been becoming for years) a world of sheeple ruled by the elite.
-kyrathaba (January 20, 2012, 07:06 AM)
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+1
@40hz - love that graphic! :) It's just bang on!
@Iain - Regarding this:
Maybe it's just too much to expect of them
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In many ways it is too much.
Society has been destroyed in so many, many ways... We've gone from 1 income to needing 2. Some people work 2 or 3 jobs.
Fact is that humans have limited amounts of energy/resources, and when they are overwhelming consumed by just trying to get by, well... go figure. They don't have time/energy/resources to do the work needed to become informed about politics.
When everything runs from 9 to 5, and they're at work, they have no opportunity to do anything. They're excluded from participating because they need to work to live.
"Hey, can I get this week here on the calendar off? I'd like to go to the caucus and campaign for someone who won't screw us over with infinite wars, etc. etc."
Like, does anyone really think that they could ask their boss that? At best that would be kissing their holiday time goodbye. People need to rest periodically, and zero holiday time is just bad.
So, in many ways I can understand why it's so difficult for people to get involved in politics at any level. The deck is stacked against them.
In short, don't expect people to donate blood after you've thrown them to a pack of vampires.
wraith808:
Another interesting article from Ars on the whole MegaUpload raid:
Why the Feds Smashed MegaUpload
And an interesting footnote on MegaUpload
Before shutdown, Megaupload ate up more corporate bandwidth than Dropbox
Renegade:
Another interesting article from Ars on the whole MegaUpload raid:
Why the Feds Smashed MegaUpload
And an interesting footnote on MegaUpload
Before shutdown, Megaupload ate up more corporate bandwidth than Dropbox
-wraith808 (January 20, 2012, 10:23 AM)
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I read some similar articles.
I'm finding a few things disappointing.
1) The media is spinning things. What cars they drive just isn't relevant.
2) They're not going to get a fair trial. It is imperative that these people receive due process.
3) They've been crucified even before any verdict.
About #3 there - They've already destroyed MegaUpload. It's gone. Poof. Nadda. Zilch.
Ahem... Ummm... Seriously? WTF?
Union Carbide (now owned by Dow) is guilty of one of the biggest environmental catastrophes of all time and nothing significant has happened to them. Nothing.
BP similarly was guilty of utter criminal behaviour that led to another gigantic environmental disaster... What happened? Nothing.
Numerous banks and financial institutions have caused unheard of suffering and destruction throughout society. Their behaviour is criminal. What happens? Nothing. Ooops... Sorry... They get massive bonuses...
Big media lies and publishes defamatory and libel garbage... What happens? Nothing. They get some awards or some crap as they pat themselves on their backs and stroke... well... you get the idea there.
The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on...
MegaUpload is insignificant compared to anything above. What happens to them? Crucifixion.
I'd like to see some rule of law applied. But... That's too much to ask. I know... I'm a radical freak. I believe in equality and the rule of law and other insane concepts like that... :-\
Just watch. This case and the Anonymous reaction will be used to strip more freedoms and liberties away from people. They'll scream about how "piracy costs trillions of jobs and bajillions of dollars" (just like they always exaggerate with insane numbers) and how the hacktivists are "cyber terrorists out to destroy the planet and eat your children". We need to enslave you so that you can be safe and free. War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. Just watch... It's coming. The first quarter of 2012 will prove me right. >:(
Stoic Joker:
Fact is that humans have limited amounts of energy/resources, and when they are overwhelming consumed by just trying to get by, well... go figure. They don't have time/energy/resources to do the work needed to become informed about politics.
When everything runs from 9 to 5, and they're at work, they have no opportunity to do anything. They're excluded from participating because they need to work to live.-Renegade (January 20, 2012, 07:36 AM)
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Exactly. Now compound that by the convoluted manner in which the issues are addresses during election debates/interviews. The one classic example that always stuck with me was when ABC's Charlie Gibson interviewed Sara Palin. He asked her a simple direct Yes-on-No question. She responded by babbling for 10 minutes straight, and never once said yes, no, or even addressed the friggin question. Charlie countered by re-asking he exact same question and directly specified that he was looking for a Yes-or-No reply. Her response? 10 more minutes of distracted puppet shit.
When a politician answers a direct question the only thing that can be guaranteed...Is that nobody in the room will have the slightest clue what the fuck their talking about. Because it's just one long string of complete bullshit.
Now let one of us try that shit in a court of law... HA!
I want to see politicians subjected to the exact same treatment that any other crackhead junkie whore would be given if they got evasive in court. <-- Senator... If the next word out of your mouth isn't either yes...or no ... Your ass is going to jail for somewhere between 90 days and whenever I damn well feel like you've learned your lesson. --> Now that's a government that fears its people.
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