4 ms·

Not to sound rude, but I'd rather lose 10,000 American souls then lose the freedoms that make America.

Sven7 13y ago
That isn't a solution. Nobody is going to get elected on that platform.
hga 13y ago
That's unrealistic, because we simply won't put up with mass casualty events. The key is to focus the response productively and avoid mission creep. It's the potential if not inevitability of the latter that makes the current NSA et. al. stuff so bad. This is different, this is a president who's cut from the same cloth as Nixon, in everything from being the first one since him to refer to his political enemies as "enemies" to this new model of the Plumbers ... except the establishment and media hated Nixon with a passion starting in the late '40s, 1950 at the latest. Obama hasn't been subjected to that level of feedback, e.g. note how many on the Left are happy with or at least excusing his Administration's suppression of the TEA Party et. al., which is one of the things that casts the NSA's extreme data gathering---not "collection", you must understand...---in sharp relief.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  >That's unrealistic, because we simply won't put up with mass casualty events. Honest question: Why not? Obviously we don't want mass casualties, but we don't want thousands of traditional murders or automobile fatalities or cancer deaths every year either, and we don't allocate insanely disproportionate budgets or construct a surveillance state to address any of those things. If anything we under-perform in addressing them. I mean let's even compare to other mass casualty events. There have been hurricanes that have caused more deaths than 9/11. Where is the call for a war on CO2 to reduce climate change induced mass casualties? The answer is that there is no lobby for it. Nobody is going to get paid a trillion dollars, if anything the oil and coal companies would lose money. So the mass casualties there don't get politicians, lobbyists and PR flacks whipping the media into a frenzy over it, instead it just gets swept under the rug. We as citizens have a duty to not allow ourselves to be manipulated like this.
  - hga 13y ago
    Well, my take on the American character is wildly different, then again I'm culturally a Southerner, we're always ready for a fight. (I mean, if you've missed "the call for a war on CO2 to reduce climate change induced mass casualties" we are definitely existing in different universes, then again We've always been at war with Eastasia, I remember when it was SO2 we had to fight since it was obviously causing an ice age.) But, geeze, this united the nation for a very brief period, I mean, when the ruling class in their national cathedral sings The Battle Hymn of the Republic 3 days after 9/11 it does mean something (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic#Popularity_and_widespread_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic...).
jivatmanx 13y ago
Millions of our ancestors died fighting for freedom in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI and WWII. To lose freedom would to squander their sacrifice. They would not forgive us, nor would those yet to be born. "Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." -Edmund Burke

Sven7 13y ago

That isn't a solution. Nobody is going to get elected on that platform.

hga 13y ago

That's unrealistic, because we simply won't put up with mass casualty events. The key is to focus the response productively and avoid mission creep. It's the potential if not inevitability of the latter that makes the current NSA et. al. stuff so bad. This is different, this is a president who's cut from the same cloth as Nixon, in everything from being the first one since him to refer to his political enemies as "enemies" to this new model of the Plumbers ... except the establishment and media hated Nixon with a passion starting in the late '40s, 1950 at the latest. Obama hasn't been subjected to that level of feedback, e.g. note how many on the Left are happy with or at least excusing his Administration's suppression of the TEA Party et. al., which is one of the things that casts the NSA's extreme data gathering---not "collection", you must understand...---in sharp relief.

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
>That's unrealistic, because we simply won't put up with mass casualty events. Honest question: Why not? Obviously we don't want mass casualties, but we don't want thousands of traditional murders or automobile fatalities or cancer deaths every year either, and we don't allocate insanely disproportionate budgets or construct a surveillance state to address any of those things. If anything we under-perform in addressing them. I mean let's even compare to other mass casualty events. There have been hurricanes that have caused more deaths than 9/11. Where is the call for a war on CO2 to reduce climate change induced mass casualties? The answer is that there is no lobby for it. Nobody is going to get paid a trillion dollars, if anything the oil and coal companies would lose money. So the mass casualties there don't get politicians, lobbyists and PR flacks whipping the media into a frenzy over it, instead it just gets swept under the rug. We as citizens have a duty to not allow ourselves to be manipulated like this.
- hga 13y ago
  Well, my take on the American character is wildly different, then again I'm culturally a Southerner, we're always ready for a fight. (I mean, if you've missed "the call for a war on CO2 to reduce climate change induced mass casualties" we are definitely existing in different universes, then again We've always been at war with Eastasia, I remember when it was SO2 we had to fight since it was obviously causing an ice age.) But, geeze, this united the nation for a very brief period, I mean, when the ruling class in their national cathedral sings The Battle Hymn of the Republic 3 days after 9/11 it does mean something (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic#Popularity_and_widespread_use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic...).

jivatmanx 13y ago

Millions of our ancestors died fighting for freedom in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI and WWII. To lose freedom would to squander their sacrifice. They would not forgive us, nor would those yet to be born. "Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." -Edmund Burke