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Everybody loves to talk about government overreach, but if a total war (such as WW2) strikes Canada, the US, or any other freedom-loving country, they will roun

Everybody loves to talk about government overreach, but if a total war (such as WW2) strikes Canada, the US, or any other freedom-loving country, they will round up millions of young people, give each of them a rifle, and tell them exactly what to do, where to sleep, what to eat, and a whole bunch of others, and eventually shove them into a transport ship and tell them to run into a trench and start shooting people. Penalty for desertion is death. Somehow, all of this is constitutional, and these countries didn't descend into Orwellian hell after WW2. Context matters, and desperate times often require desperate measures. I consider quoting 1984 as a very lazy form of argument, because it can be applied to everything the government does, regardless of context. It has no predictive power, and is no better than Godwin's law.

Proziam 7y ago
> Somehow, all of this is constitutional, and these countries didn't descend into Orwellian hell after WW2. Context matters, and desperate times often require desperate measures. The US has been stripping rights from its citizens as its national pastime since WW2. We spy on our citizens, and the world. We took away the rights of minorities to own arms, then extended that out to the rest of the populace piece by piece. We've manufactured new laws that allow civil forfeiture, put innocent people into "plea out or risk your entire life" situations, and allow the complete disregard for the 4th amendment (see police dog signals, no-knock raids, etc). Oh, and we decided that we'd just imprison every person of a specific group during the war. If the technology existed to make all of the above easier, it would have been used without question. It exists now. > "Drafts exist" Yes, war is another evil. The existence of one evil doesn't somehow make the other thing 'not evil' or even 'less evil' > I consider quoting 1984 as a very lazy form of argument because it can be applied to everything the government does, regardless of context. It has no predictive power, and is no better than Godwin's law. I'm not 'quoting' 1984 I'm using the term Orwellian because everyone understands that to mean 'over-reaching surveillance state that does bad things to people' which is exactly what is being discussed.
- yongjik 7y ago
  > The US has been stripping rights from its citizens as its national pastime since WW2. Back in 1946, black people couldn't sit on any empty seat of the bus they damn liked. What are you talking about?
  - Proziam 7y ago
    I gave half a dozen concrete examples of the ways American citizens have had their rights infringed upon. Cherrypicking an example of progress doesn't make any of those other things not true. Apparently that's not enough, so I'll add more. We've invented laws that make it so felons can't vote, or defend themselves even after their sentence has been served. This affects innocent people who are wrongly convicted. [0]We've intentionally flooded specific minority communities with crack cocaine and criminalized it as well as many other drugs in common use (despite federal studies suggesting we should not do so). --> The guy who brought that story to the press was found dead, shot in the head twice, and his death was ruled a suicide. This is the origin of a now often repeated joke/criticism about the CIA "Yeah he was shot in the back of the head twice. Worst case of suicide I've ever seen." [1]We used the uptick in 'crime' to warrant selective enforcement, leading to more single fatherhood and weaker communities. This contributed to the poverty and cycle of crime these communities have experienced. [2]Remember when I cited the 4th amendment being violated above? Yeah, that played a massive role in the above. Policies like "stop and frisk" were implemented in undeniably unconstitutional ways. Clearly, minorities haven't had it super rosy lately, either. But the rights of everyone get stepped on repeatedly, not just minorities. That's what I'm talking about [0]https://citizentruth.org/gary-webb-cia-crack-epidemic-los-angeles/ https://citizentruth.org/gary-webb-cia-crack-epidemic-los-an... [1]https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=mjrl https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... [2]https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stop_and_frisk https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stop_and_frisk
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
      > I gave half a dozen concrete examples of the ways American citizens have had their rights infringed upon. Yeah, but none of the examples you gave are new since ww2. At most, some of them have new names. Your examples don't speak to the question of whether people are more free, politically and otherwise, today in the US than they used to be. The answer to that question is plainly "yes," especially when you take into account the plight of minorities before civil rights movement. But even white people are more free today than we were before ww2.

Proziam 7y ago

> Somehow, all of this is constitutional, and these countries didn't descend into Orwellian hell after WW2. Context matters, and desperate times often require desperate measures. The US has been stripping rights from its citizens as its national pastime since WW2. We spy on our citizens, and the world. We took away the rights of minorities to own arms, then extended that out to the rest of the populace piece by piece. We've manufactured new laws that allow civil forfeiture, put innocent people into "plea out or risk your entire life" situations, and allow the complete disregard for the 4th amendment (see police dog signals, no-knock raids, etc). Oh, and we decided that we'd just imprison every person of a specific group during the war. If the technology existed to make all of the above easier, it would have been used without question. It exists now. > "Drafts exist" Yes, war is another evil. The existence of one evil doesn't somehow make the other thing 'not evil' or even 'less evil' > I consider quoting 1984 as a very lazy form of argument because it can be applied to everything the government does, regardless of context. It has no predictive power, and is no better than Godwin's law. I'm not 'quoting' 1984 I'm using the term Orwellian because everyone understands that to mean 'over-reaching surveillance state that does bad things to people' which is exactly what is being discussed.

yongjik 7y ago
> The US has been stripping rights from its citizens as its national pastime since WW2. Back in 1946, black people couldn't sit on any empty seat of the bus they damn liked. What are you talking about?
- Proziam 7y ago
  I gave half a dozen concrete examples of the ways American citizens have had their rights infringed upon. Cherrypicking an example of progress doesn't make any of those other things not true. Apparently that's not enough, so I'll add more. We've invented laws that make it so felons can't vote, or defend themselves even after their sentence has been served. This affects innocent people who are wrongly convicted. [0]We've intentionally flooded specific minority communities with crack cocaine and criminalized it as well as many other drugs in common use (despite federal studies suggesting we should not do so). --> The guy who brought that story to the press was found dead, shot in the head twice, and his death was ruled a suicide. This is the origin of a now often repeated joke/criticism about the CIA "Yeah he was shot in the back of the head twice. Worst case of suicide I've ever seen." [1]We used the uptick in 'crime' to warrant selective enforcement, leading to more single fatherhood and weaker communities. This contributed to the poverty and cycle of crime these communities have experienced. [2]Remember when I cited the 4th amendment being violated above? Yeah, that played a massive role in the above. Policies like "stop and frisk" were implemented in undeniably unconstitutional ways. Clearly, minorities haven't had it super rosy lately, either. But the rights of everyone get stepped on repeatedly, not just minorities. That's what I'm talking about [0]https://citizentruth.org/gary-webb-cia-crack-epidemic-los-angeles/ https://citizentruth.org/gary-webb-cia-crack-epidemic-los-an... [1]https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=mjrl https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... [2]https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stop_and_frisk https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stop_and_frisk
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    > I gave half a dozen concrete examples of the ways American citizens have had their rights infringed upon. Yeah, but none of the examples you gave are new since ww2. At most, some of them have new names. Your examples don't speak to the question of whether people are more free, politically and otherwise, today in the US than they used to be. The answer to that question is plainly "yes," especially when you take into account the plight of minorities before civil rights movement. But even white people are more free today than we were before ww2.