3 ms·

Politicians like this never seem to understand that when I strongly oppose their position and challenge the law they want to pass, I am thinking of the children

Politicians like this never seem to understand that when I strongly oppose their position and challenge the law they want to pass, I am thinking of the children. In particular, I don't want the next generation to grow up in an authoritarian surveillance state, where thought-crime is punishable, deviation from conventional wisdom is an anomaly to be corrected, and these punishments and corrections are mostly enforced automatically by some impersonal system where no-one in power has any real responsibility or accountability for the effect they have on other people's lives. The things that happen to some children are awful, and of course any decent human being wants to see them stopped and to see the people who would do them kept away from those they would harm. However, these events are not the only important factor here. We need a rational, considered position on the issues as a whole, not an extreme position based on one emotionally-charged issue and the near-exclusion of all other considerations.

roenxi 7y ago
If you pare it back to the basics; the government has two actual powers: 1) Send in the police and have people imprisoned 2) Send in the army and have people killed In practice they have a lot of much softer options because they leverage the basic powers into more subtle ones, but government is fundamentally about who controls the army and the police. Feinstien, like all people in the US Congress, has made decisions that ultimately involve some really, truly horrible outcomes for other people. She lives in a world where horrible things do have to happen sometimes to keep order, even in the more optimistic models of government. It is unlikely, so say the least, that the implications around civil liberties escape any long-serving politician. The enforcement of laws necessarily sits on the edge of abusing civil liberties. It is more likely she just doesn't want to talk about that.
- zlaaa 7y ago
  3) Fine you with some made up sum. If you don't pay, you lose you credit score, your home and everything else. This is rarely applied to members of the government, the rich or corporations. It is the favorite instrument to keep the middle class work horses under control.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    And how will the government deal with a fine non-payer who keeps their wealth in physical form? Say they have no money in the bank but keep gold bars in a stack under their bed. They barter for everything they need. At some point it devolves to burly men with or without guns making people do things. Or women in this enlightened age. In practice it hopefully isn't a common thing but there has to be a level of physical compulsion backing up everything that communities don't enforce among each other anyway. A major job of people in Congress is to work out exactly what does happen when people refuse to comply and at some point it gets physical (quite quickly if someone is really bent on being uncooperative). Issues like that would be close to the top of every politicians's mind.
    - raidicy 7y ago
      It is possible to confiscate physical wealth if it's "assumed" to be obtained by illegal means.

roenxi 7y ago

If you pare it back to the basics; the government has two actual powers: 1) Send in the police and have people imprisoned 2) Send in the army and have people killed In practice they have a lot of much softer options because they leverage the basic powers into more subtle ones, but government is fundamentally about who controls the army and the police. Feinstien, like all people in the US Congress, has made decisions that ultimately involve some really, truly horrible outcomes for other people. She lives in a world where horrible things do have to happen sometimes to keep order, even in the more optimistic models of government. It is unlikely, so say the least, that the implications around civil liberties escape any long-serving politician. The enforcement of laws necessarily sits on the edge of abusing civil liberties. It is more likely she just doesn't want to talk about that.

zlaaa 7y ago
3) Fine you with some made up sum. If you don't pay, you lose you credit score, your home and everything else. This is rarely applied to members of the government, the rich or corporations. It is the favorite instrument to keep the middle class work horses under control.
- roenxi 7y ago
  And how will the government deal with a fine non-payer who keeps their wealth in physical form? Say they have no money in the bank but keep gold bars in a stack under their bed. They barter for everything they need. At some point it devolves to burly men with or without guns making people do things. Or women in this enlightened age. In practice it hopefully isn't a common thing but there has to be a level of physical compulsion backing up everything that communities don't enforce among each other anyway. A major job of people in Congress is to work out exactly what does happen when people refuse to comply and at some point it gets physical (quite quickly if someone is really bent on being uncooperative). Issues like that would be close to the top of every politicians's mind.
  - raidicy 7y ago
    It is possible to confiscate physical wealth if it's "assumed" to be obtained by illegal means.