@bolwerk Excellent point. The ACLU is pretty transparent about their intentions. They fight to protect our Constitutional rights.
@Simone_De_Beauvoir Good point. “Trust, but verify.”
@KNOWITALL As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” What’s the first move any would-be despot makes? They set up a massive, invasive secret police agency. Hitler has his SS. Stalin had the KGB. They aren’t looking for law breakers. They are looking for anyone who disagrees with their political hegemony, and they kill them. If you haven’t read George Orwell’s 1984, you should. If you’ve read it but forgotten what “Big Brother is watching you.” and thought crime means, read it again. We’re moving into a time, technologically, where Big Brother really is watching you. All we need is to elect some psychopathic leader like Hitler, Papa Doc Duvalier, General Galtieri, Stalin, or Mao and our Democracy is dead unless we pour into the streets, pitchforks in hand, to fight for it. Why let it get to that?
@RealEyesRealizeRealLies True though it it, that only illustrates the half of it.
@ARE_you_kidding_me I’m completely with you in not being willing ti trade essential liberty for temporary security. As Benjamin Franklin correctly noted, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” He could easily have added that they get neither, as well.
@Rarebear I’m sure you are right that most of the agency’s personnel are honestly directed at rooting out real terrorists. But this question about current news shows how easily corporate power and money could merge with the power of government to create a new fascist movement cast in the mold of Mussolini and Hitler’s Corporatism. The bottom line is you cannot defend the constitution by running it through a shredder.
@stanleybmanly Agreed.
@MadMadMax When secret police agencies really get going eliminating any and all political opposition, people don’t end up charged with crimes. They are just “disappeared.”
@flutherother Very well said.
@kritiper If I have to pick a one-sided organization; it will be one that sides with Constitutional protections of our freedoms, and not one that shreds the Constitution.
@Blondesjon As soon as you limit Constitutional protections to groups or people you like, there is no more Constitution. There is just being part of the in group. That’s precisely what the US was set up to escape.
@stanleybmanly Exactly. Like them or not, we have to respect their Constitutional rights. Otherwise, there is no such thing.
@ARE_you_kidding_me Exactly the point. Their job is to defend it, not crap all over it.
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