the_gneech | Not So Nifty

Grrrroowwwlllll...

This kind of crap is why I wish the U.S. had a decent libertarian party, instead of The Immoral Mobsters vs. The Reactionary Police State.

And don't tell me it's some kind of "Bush vs. Gore" nonsense, because a Gore administration would be doing exactly this same crap right now. It's all about control; whether the tyrants on the left or the tyrants on the right have it, they both agree on that one aspect.

There are two phrases I keep remembering as things progress in this country. I don't know who said them, but whoever it was knew what they were talking about:

Those who give up liberty for security, end up with neither.

...and...

The last act of any democracy will be to elect a dictator.

Sigh.

-The Gneech

Current Mood: pessimistic

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

unciaa.livejournal.com

Judith Krug, the American Library Association's director for intellectual freedom, tells worried librarians who call that they should keep only the records they need and should discard records that would reveal which patron checked out a book and for how long.

Glad to see at least some people aren't laying down to lick the boot when commanded... Crap like this just pisses me off to no ends, it really does. *shakes head*

By the time this is all over, the ~4000 lives lost in the 9/11 attacks will probably be just a footnote on a long list of casualties that atrocity caused.

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

"By the time this is all over, the ~4000 lives lost in the 9/11 attacks will probably be just a footnote on a long list of casualties that atrocity caused."

I certainly concur with the Ben Franlin quotes, and generally agree with The Gneech on his analysis (although I see far worse abuses elsewhere). But I am curious as to exactly what you meant b your statement. Can you expand a bit? (I can, just had lunch...) ;)

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

unciaa.livejournal.com

I'm being a bit of a drama queen as usual [Exaggerations Inc. ;], but my point was that given where this seems to be heading, the immediate consequences were just a prequel to what followed. Was the act horrific? Yes. Was it worth reducing the rights of +250 million people for it [with European governments all too happy to follow it'd seem. Bloody hell, I'm moving to international waters]? I doubt it.

Call me paranoid, but the events of last year scare me a whole lot more than the terrorist threat. Security organizations given power that would before be unthinkable, legalized communications monitoring, then the whole RIAA-kills-streaming fiasco that just furthers my belief that large corporations have too much power...
Have we hit bottom yet and we'll soon be going back up or is this a one way road? I'll refrain from Orwell references for sake of not repeating myself.

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

You seem to have connected large corporations to terrorism, and personal freedom with the ability to obtain the works of creative persons without cost. ;)

I'm not exactly sure that these things are that closely connected.

Orwell that ends well, perhaps. We shall see.

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

unciaa.livejournal.com

I was just listing my worries in that paragraph, it wasn't really all on topic. Sorry for the confusion. *g*

(deleted comment)

From:

mouser.livejournal.com

Actually:

They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.
--Benjamin Franklin

A society that will trade a little order for a little freedom will lose both, and deserve neither.
--Thomas Jefferson

Dunno who said which first.

From:

scixual.livejournal.com

And: "beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy."

From:

chipuni.livejournal.com

It's midnight in America.

My wife,

misseli, is studying to be a librarian. She's trying to specialize in First Amendment issues. And she's very, VERY sharp about this whole mess.

If you need any question answered about this, leave a note in her journal.

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

Your midnight metaphor went particularly well with your choice of icon, Chipuni. But I would not be quick to equate a cloud overhead with the total absense of light.

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

chastmastr.livejournal.com

*hug*

From:

mammallamadevil.livejournal.com

Weimar Republic and Hitler...

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

Hello, Mammalammadevil,

That comparison strikes me as a bit of a stretch. The decision to allow inspection of library records is not the result of a single person's executive order, but rather part of a law package passed by House and Senate and duly signed into law. A bunch of people felt that it was a reasonble trade-off.

You may disagree with this; I do. But, to jump to the Hitler comparison right off the bat makes it difficult to distinguish things of even more significance. If every infraction is the end of the world, we will waste much effort not knowing what to focus on.

The subtlety is the difference between Bad, Very Bad, and Worse, I think. The balance that Congresscritters are trying to strike is reasonable in concept, but many bad ideas get through the process and are almost guaranteed to do so. This is one of those, and should be challenged on constitutional grounds in my opinion.

As The Gneech pointed out, this is not so much a Republicans versus Democrats, as what people tend to do when they are afraid and angry. That was the mood when this was passed. Thoughtful would have been better.

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

mammallamadevil.livejournal.com

my comment was not on the entire posting, or the fact that censorship and fear have possibly temporarily taken the place over common sense, but the last sentence...

The last act of any democracy will be to elect a dictator.

I regret any confusion incurred...MLD

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

No problem, and it certainly is hard to argue in that context. ;)

And I apologize for mistyping "Mammallamadevil". Pesky typos. I suppose that if I didn't put them in I couldn't complain about not being able to take them out. ;/

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

softpaw.livejournal.com

this wouldn't work in Arkansas, back in aahhh 90 91 something like that a law was passed that made it so that you COULDNT look it up to see who checked out what book anymore, cause someone did that for some beauty queen and found out she only checked out ONE book ever.

I was a library assistant and spent a good part of my JR year blacking out names from the checkout cards in the books, was interesting at times..I did the WHOLE biography section *small school* and since the HS I graduated from was the same one as both my parents and there family I'd find books THEY checked ou

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

I hope that the laws of the United States apply, even in Arkansas. We should fix this one at the federal level, I think, rather than secede from the Union.

Besides, I have had no valid library card for decades, and am a high school drop out. So, by this approach, I am completely uneducated. I would readily admit that I am not qualified to be a beauty queen. ;)

I am not much in favor of providing a cushy existence to Taliban combat captives in our custody. The United States arguably does not owe them even the provisions of the Geneva Convention regarding prisoners of war, but we should do this anyway because of who and what we are, which is NOT the Weimar Republic.

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

softpaw.livejournal.com

it's not that they are going AGANST the fed law..its that for years they haven't KEPT a list of who checks out what book becuse of this law..at least that is what went on to my understanding of it. so the feds would have a hard time checking on someones list of books they checked out

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

To the best of my understanding, the law does not require the keeping of such records. It does seem that the Bureau can ask questions of almost any establishment during an investigation -- I wonder to what extent the federal funding of libraries plays into this logic.

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

jbadger.livejournal.com

Someone I know that lives in DC is always worried about the nature of over record keeping, and how if teh records are there they can get misused.
At the time I thought all these ramblings were a stretch -- these kind of things do not happen here.

Thinking about some of the records that are kept on me in mydailly life though..
Shopping. I have a couple of those shopping cards -- they keep records of the foods I buy and my shopping habbits
Roadway Tolls. Even though E-ZPass has rules to protect the records -- court orders can open those records at any time and find out where I travel.
Cameras on roads -- video is said to be kept now 3 years by some agencies.
Cameras in stores. Video face Ident software.
The list goes on and on.
Yes I am worried about all of this now.
I try not to use the shopping cards anymore unless it will save me more then a dollar.

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

Robert Heinlein commented once that when a planet is crowded enough to require IDs it was time to move on to the next planet.

I am aware of a number of arrests made through analysis of grocery shopping records. In one instance, a thief with a very young child had a taste for a particular seasoning. These purchases were detected in Seattle, even though the thief had left his native Los Angeles where this pattern was established.

This system has been in place for at least four years that I am aware of. I was impressed; that's a large database to manipulate -- but also troubled by implications.

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

wabbitcalif.livejournal.com

"Robert Heinlein commented once that when a planet is crowded enough to require IDs it was time to move on to the next planet."

---Lazerous Long. Yep, I've gotta agree with that one... but where to go?

The whole thing seems to be everybody zeroing in on small things in order to divert attention from the Really Big Screwups -- I've read the articles now that have stated that Bush knew what was going on and chose to look the other way.

But the fact that this seems to be so easily voted into law is still scary...

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

"I've read the articles now that have stated that Bush knew what was going on and chose to look the other way."

Consider the noise level: We are unable to prevent an attack tomorrow, and we know what our enemies are capable of. To curtail every possible attack means an invasion of civil liberties on a grand scale, and also picking the one good subset of clues out of millions of false leads that are part of each day's data. A tough job, indeed.

Woodrow Wilson Smith is something of a mentor to me. For that matter, so is The Gneech. ;)

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

wabbitcalif.livejournal.com

....and have you noticed that both W.W. Smith and The Gneech are redheads? Ooooohhhh...

To answer the rest of your post: a good point. However: if it was told to several people higer up, and repeated several times, why not do the prudent thing and investigate? Furhaps it might have mitigated what happened.. or maybe I'm being to idealistic...

From:

jbadger.livejournal.com

I look at these things black and white.
If you catch the people before they act: mark that as a sucess.
If you do not chatch the people before they act: mark that as a failure.

How you react to such failures is vary important.
Congress' witch hunt meathod I just do not think works for me nor a lot of the laws that have been passing to be since 9/11. I really think after every failure you should ask "why"? not "whos fault" and not finger point. Fix the system.

But then I always beleagve there will be failures of inteligence. "Sometimes the dragon wins..."

From:

wabbitcalif.livejournal.com

Good point; I also agree that there will be failures of intelligence -- not just of the information kind of inteligence, but also of the intelligence of the people trying to fix the problem after it's happened. We need thoughtful decisions, not hasty ones.

From:

torakiyoshi.livejournal.com

Meep! *Hides his Republican Party membership card from The Gneech*

They tried this in Colorado after the shootings at Columbine to attach other people to the Neo-Nazi movement or something. It wasn't at Denver Public Library. It was at The Tattered Cover (http://www.tatteredcover.com), Denver's largest bookstore.

Officials entered the store demanding the records of certain individuals they thought to be Neo-Nazi terrorists, and the owner refused to allow this. She stood on a federal law that said they had no right to do so.

Denver citizens and the community of independent bookstores in Colorado rallied behind the owner of the Tattered Cover and supported her, because they also believe this should not happen.

It escalated over three years and finally went to the State Supreme Court. The ruling was given 2-1 that the owner was correct, and that the federal law prohibited such blatant misuse of records.

The law she stood behind?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There is precedense against such actions by the FBI. Should they be challenged, the FBI must back down. We must not allow them to take away "our sacred honor and our freedom."

Ah, for the days of Lincoln's presidency.

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

I'll add in another thought, though I'm afraid I don't know it's origin, or even if it's a quotation of someone or not:

"Liberals are prepared to sacrifice freedoms for equality.
Conservatives are prepared to sacrifice freedoms for
security."

I can't honestly say I'm all that crazy about having my freedoms taken away, but I don't want to live in a monarchy, or see any of our cities under a mushroom cloud.

There is a middle road here somewhere between the two
extremes of losing our freedom and losing our lives.
Hopefully, once things have calmed down a bit, we will
regain our equilibrium enough to take down what I hope
are temporary measures to ensure our safety.

It is actually a *good* thing that these discussions
come up, and that both the left and right wing loonies
speak their minds, so that the sensible people in the
middle will keep the screams coming from the wings in
mind.

We're travelling down a white water river, and the people on the right hand side of the boat are shouting warnings, while the left hand does the same. As long as we keep *all* the warnings in mind, and do not surrender to either side, we should be able to keep to the middle of the channel, away from the rocks on both sides.

One day, the waters will run calm again, and sanity will prevail.

Scott

From:

torakiyoshi.livejournal.com

Yes, just as sanity prevailed fifteen years after the collapse of the Weimar Republic.

(Well, SOMEBODY has to be the pessimist...)

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

Your post was well taken, and the quotation is interesting.

I greatly mistrust the liberal concept of "equality" -- it always strikes me as "equally subservient to big government." At the same time, I do not believe that security is worth the cost of freedoms. The decisions are difficult, but the founding principals should underly each decision made.

I suspect that I fall into the "right wing loonie" category you mentioned -- as I support individual accountability and am a supporter of business -- but I have a variety of views that don't seem to mesh well with a partisan categorization.

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

kelloggs2066.livejournal.com

}I suspect that I fall into the "right wing loonie"
}category you mentioned -- as I support individual
}accountability and am a supporter of business -- but I
}have a variety of views that don't seem to mesh well
}with a partisan categorization.

Well, if everyone who wants to see business expand and employ more and more people were a "right wing loonie", I think that would include a huge swath of the political spectrum. On the other hand, there are people who would define a "right wing loonie" that way, though, I think I would say such people fall under the opposite category.

I would define "right wing loonie" as closer to honest to goodness fascism of the style of actual dictators, Napoleon, Mullah Omar, Ayatollah Khomeini (sp?), Hussein, Stalin et al.

Timothy McVey was a "right wing loonie". If you define yourself as one, I think you're pulling my leg or your own. ;)

I guess what I'm trying to say, (and not very well) is that we need the left and right wing nuts to help us define the center course. As long as both sides are screaming warnings, we're doing okay.

I've been looking for something I wrote back last September in the aftermath of the attack. It's kind of frightening when both sides of the spectrum start to agree.

Ha! Found it. Will post under another thread.

Anyway, I don't think that people who actually take the time to think for themselves fall into a stereotype, so I wouldn't put yourself in any pigeonhole if I were you.

Scott

From:

murrrmaiyd.livejournal.com

It's not so much each individual thing that bugs me as much as it is how all of these little things add up. I've heard so many little freedoms given away, so many little new powers given to authorities, that I'm beginning to think they're just trying to gain the total control that they want without making it obvious. They're taking advantage of the atmosphere of fear that recent events have caused to just tighten the screws.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but that's the way I see it.

Mur

From:

torakiyoshi.livejournal.com

Kinda reminds me of the FDR administration. And wasn't he a Democrat? There you have it. TG was right, had Gore won, he'd probably be doing the same thing. It's a scary time, and I, for one, do not envy President Bush his job.

From:

merryjest.livejournal.com

I did sort of say something like this might happen during this administration, even before the attacks. Of course at that time I got rather flamed..... hehehe.

From:

level-head.livejournal.com

Hmmm. Tens of millions of people predicted bad things for this administration, and tens of millions of people predicted bad things based upon a Democratic win. They were all correct, of course, until one gets into specifics.

That is sort of the problem that was going on here. A great many people were saying "this looks like trouble", and of course all of them were sort of generically right, but vanishingly few were right enough to matter. How do you spot which ones?

It can hardly surprise you that political differences can lead to unpleasant disputes. People get wound up about this topic more than most. I endeavor to avoid this, but my track record is not 100%. ;)

===|==============/ Level Head

From:

chastmastr.livejournal.com

I hope you won't dislike me for being more liberal than libertarian... though I heartily agree with you that the current situation, re our civil liberties, is terrifying. (I.e., I suspect that Gore would not have acted as badly as this, and I don't at all see liberal Democrats as "Immoral Mobsters.")

Have you read Noam Chomsky's stuff? You might like him (or not).

Still want to see Cardcaptor Sakura with you -- I've avoided your essay on it, actually, because I don't want to read spoilers by accident! :)

Still have not seen Sakura's Never-Ending Day.

Going to see Minority Report tonight!

HUGS!