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> The laws up for discussion in this thread are largely there to give the FBI a backdoor to surveil the general public without requesting a warrant with clear d

by pdonis 3y ago

> The laws up for discussion in this thread are largely there to give the FBI a backdoor to surveil the general public without requesting a warrant with clear details on what they're looking for and where they can look. Yes, if we restrict discussion to warrantless surveillance then I think the restrictions ought to be much tighter. > I also don't expect our government to protect me in any meaningful way and would rather depend on my fellow citizens for that instead. In some respects this is already part of our legal framework: for example, there have been multiple court rulings at multiple levels that the police do not have a duty to protect individual citizens from crime. However, the public policies adopted by the government regarding crime can have a huge effect on overall crime rates, which in turn affects how much you need* a means of protection other than the government's overall police powers. This is more a matter of state and local governments than federal, but even here federal policies have an effect. Also, I didn't limit government protection to police vs. ordinary crime. Government also has responsibility for national defense, border control, gathering intelligence abroad, preventing terrorism, etc.

_heimdall 3y ago
> Also, I didn't limit government protection to police vs. ordinary crime. Government also has responsibility for national defense, border control, gathering intelligence abroad, preventing terrorism, etc. Sounds like we largely agree on the earlier points, this where it gets to my admittedly less common/popular opinions. I don't agree with standing militaries, if we're under direct threat and our people are willing to fight then the government's role should be to coordinate and supply this effort. I also don't agree with most border controls, before enforcing solid borders we should have melted down the Statue of Liberty and sent it back to France (who ironically also doesn't believe in sending them your hungry, poor, or weak anymore). We continue to chase our tails attempting to close borders but never seriously consider the motivations leading to mass migration. If we can't feasibly close our borders we need to reconsider whether entitlement programs are worth the tradeoff and sustainable when someone can walk across the border and add to those budgets. I really don't mean to say I have the answer on what we should do, only that there's a fundamental challenge between wanting to ensure access to what we deem as core necessities when all it takes is physically being here and we can't effectively control borders. With regards to terrorism, I'm of the opinion that terrorism can't be defeated through primarily military means. Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare against a population, you defeat that by not allowing one-off attacks to stoke fear and drive to over reactions. If we only learned one lesson from two decades of war in Afghanistan it should be that, when it comes to non-state actors, cutting off one head does in fact lead to multiple new heads popping up.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > I don't agree with standing militaries The libertarian in me doesn't either. The realist in me isn't sure we can just stand them down in our current world. > I also don't agree with most border controls The libertarian in me would agree with this too, but only in the libertarian version of the US where we don't have a welfare state (which, historically, was the condition under which all previous immigrants to the US came here). You appear to have a similar view. > I'm of the opinion that terrorism can't be defeated through primarily military means. I don't think this is true. What is true that, to defeat terrorism militarily, you have to be willing to let your military do whatever is necessary to accomplish that mission, rather than hamstringing it with completely unrealistic rules of engagement. The French, for example, had no trouble defeating terrorism in Algeria militarily. They did it by, for example, not caring about how much civilian collateral damage was caused when the terrorists used civilians as human shields. The obstacles to, for example, doing in Afghanistan what the French did in Algeria are political, not military. > Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare against a population, you defeat that by not allowing one-off attacks to stoke fear and drive to over reactions. Yes, and also by convincing the population, most of whom are not terrorists, that the terrorists are going to lose. If your military gets excoriated in the press every time a civilian is killed as collateral damage, then not just the terrorists, but the civilian population in their country, will understand that the terrorists are not going to lose--because you don't have the political will to defeat them.

by pdonis 3y ago

_heimdall 3y ago

> Also, I didn't limit government protection to police vs. ordinary crime. Government also has responsibility for national defense, border control, gathering intelligence abroad, preventing terrorism, etc. Sounds like we largely agree on the earlier points, this where it gets to my admittedly less common/popular opinions. I don't agree with standing militaries, if we're under direct threat and our people are willing to fight then the government's role should be to coordinate and supply this effort. I also don't agree with most border controls, before enforcing solid borders we should have melted down the Statue of Liberty and sent it back to France (who ironically also doesn't believe in sending them your hungry, poor, or weak anymore). We continue to chase our tails attempting to close borders but never seriously consider the motivations leading to mass migration. If we can't feasibly close our borders we need to reconsider whether entitlement programs are worth the tradeoff and sustainable when someone can walk across the border and add to those budgets. I really don't mean to say I have the answer on what we should do, only that there's a fundamental challenge between wanting to ensure access to what we deem as core necessities when all it takes is physically being here and we can't effectively control borders. With regards to terrorism, I'm of the opinion that terrorism can't be defeated through primarily military means. Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare against a population, you defeat that by not allowing one-off attacks to stoke fear and drive to over reactions. If we only learned one lesson from two decades of war in Afghanistan it should be that, when it comes to non-state actors, cutting off one head does in fact lead to multiple new heads popping up.

pdonis 3y ago
> I don't agree with standing militaries The libertarian in me doesn't either. The realist in me isn't sure we can just stand them down in our current world. > I also don't agree with most border controls The libertarian in me would agree with this too, but only in the libertarian version of the US where we don't have a welfare state (which, historically, was the condition under which all previous immigrants to the US came here). You appear to have a similar view. > I'm of the opinion that terrorism can't be defeated through primarily military means. I don't think this is true. What is true that, to defeat terrorism militarily, you have to be willing to let your military do whatever is necessary to accomplish that mission, rather than hamstringing it with completely unrealistic rules of engagement. The French, for example, had no trouble defeating terrorism in Algeria militarily. They did it by, for example, not caring about how much civilian collateral damage was caused when the terrorists used civilians as human shields. The obstacles to, for example, doing in Afghanistan what the French did in Algeria are political, not military. > Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare against a population, you defeat that by not allowing one-off attacks to stoke fear and drive to over reactions. Yes, and also by convincing the population, most of whom are not terrorists, that the terrorists are going to lose. If your military gets excoriated in the press every time a civilian is killed as collateral damage, then not just the terrorists, but the civilian population in their country, will understand that the terrorists are not going to lose--because you don't have the political will to defeat them.