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What that poll really meant is that 51% of Americans are in favor of restricting OTHER people’s civil liberties for security, not their own.
On Pete Eyre’s video, “Is this what happens when a good or service is provided by a monopoly?”
I swear I first misread “good” as “god.”
Your friend Pete… Pretty ballsy.
Most Americans choose to restrict liberties for safety rather than change foreign policy. Liberty says “Eat it! You still won’t be safe until you address the foreign policy thing.” Americans respond by limiting transfat intake for national security, raising taxes to improve cultural tolerance, and signing petitions against cancer. Wars to continue.
Remember, they hate us because we are free!
Off topic alert:
I thought this was funny (and serious, too) and the TSA has been a topic often covered on theagitator.
Secure your checked bags — fly with a gun
Pete Eyre’s video is blocked where I work. I am so oppressed (although not so oppressed that I couldn’t take the time to share how oppressed I am).
Being afraid of terrorists is like being afraid of losing the 100 meter hurdles to a paraplegic or losing to a down-syndrome patient on Jeopardy.
Are we really scared shitless because of an idiot with explosives in his shoes and another guy with gun powder in his underwear? Absolutely zero chance either of these buffoons would succeed. Zero. I am embarrassed to be associated with the pussy Americans at the TSA and Fox News who are terrified by these are laughable attempts of terror.
Just Mencken’s “Democracy is…” quotes are more enlightened than 99.999999999999999999% of anything else ever written.
A good urban photographer will see a stunning picture where one of us, standing in the same place, would notice nothing of particular interest.
Q: Where do terrorists succeed in killing Americans?
A: Afghanistan and Iraq
Q: Where do terrorists succeed in their goal of “terror?”
A: 50 states
I can’t imagine the horror those folks in Haiti are living through.
HMM. I can see where Polytheists might have a point.
My first thought on the Haiti quake was “What else could possibly happen to those poor people?”
As close as I can figure, the only thing left is a major meteor impact.
We must rebuild Haiti so those people can…live miserable lives under Haitian government.
A big complaint by cops is when civilians act like ass hats with attitude when they interact. Pete Eyre demonstrates just how ass hatty cops are when civilians try to interact with them. The whole “It isn’t “MY” squad car…I don’t “own” it” bullshit and general smirking attitude shows *gasp!* the hypocrisy of the badged and armed thugs doing exactly what they hate. Three cops, three opportunities to do the right thing, three failures.
Pete’s video has a little bit of everything wrong and would serve as an excellent opportunity for LEOs to be trained better, but that won’t happen. Well versed in how to never indict themselves (can’t blame them), cops will instead run rough over the peasants.
Not only is this a monopoly, but a unionized monopoly with cheerleading badge lickers buying them rounds after they shoot grandma in the back of the head because she made a sudden move.
But Boyd, we’re there to help give them a stable corrupt, miserable government.
Isn’t it odd that after all the attempts that we’ve made to bring stable democracy and prosperity to Haiti, they’re still a basket case? (Before the earthquake, which would have clobbered anyone.) And yet, we are endlessly willing to go try the same trick in much larger, more hostile countries which are further away.
Why, it’s almost as though democracy and prosperity were things really hard to externally impose or provide, even with lots of money and guns.
I feel bad for the people in Haiti, but I think the worst thing we could do is send more aid. I read an article that stated that the UN fed upwards of 1 million people in Haiti every year. (That’s 10% of the population.)
We are not helping these people, we are hurting them in the long run by feeding them. Let them come to an equilibrium by disease/war/famine. Nature fixes it’s own problems.
This sounds cold hearted, but the truth is nobody can fix the problem of hunger and overpopulation without people in this country screaming about morals. We can’t offer free birth control, we can’t kill a million people. So the choice is to keep feeding them and letting the population keep rising, against the will of nature. I say let them take care of themselves or not.
•Your H.L. Mencken quote come to life of the day.
Not to nitpick — I’m a frequent quoter of Mencken, he’s inexhaustible really — but the more apt quote in this case is from Ben Franklin, who wrote: “Those who would trade their liberty for security deserve neither.”
If you really want an appropriate Mencken quote for this context, then this is the one: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
OK, I’m done now.
Mattocracy:
I don’t think so. Some large chunk of American culture has internalized the worship of power, especially the worship of big, dangerous, heavily-armed guys in uniform. We cheer for the torturers and the assassins and the war criminals. We cheer for the bad guys to get raped in prison, or waterboarded endlessly. That’s mainstream US culture.
I wish this weren’t so with all my heart. But it’s as much a part of us as that seed of antisemitism in Germany and Eastern Europe that led to murdering six million or so of their neighbors for having the wrong grandparents. It comes out in our TV shows, our movies, our books, our political pundits.
How many people find a way to justify the cops shooting someone during a wrong-address no-knock raid? Or make jokes about, say, Bernie Madoff or Ken Lay being raped in prison? Our country doesn’t have to be this way. It can change, and we can have a part in changing it. But the first step in that is realizing where we are now.
I’m beginning to think the second worst thing that can happen to a developing country is foreign aid from the west. The worst thing would be when the west comes in and “liberates” them.
In either case, it seems to make them corrupt, weak, and permanently dependent. You know, about the same thing that happens to an advanced heroine addict.
BTW, in the post above, I was referring to “help” that Haiti had from the outside before the quake.
#18- For now, they truly do need aid. The infrastructure is gone. They don’t have the ability to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, because there is no boot or strap. When you start with little, and that is taken away, you leave nothing.
Haiti has ’bout 10 million people disproprtionately spread across an island the size of Massachusetts. If the Boston metro area was levelled, you can be pretty sure that Massachusetts would need help, and a lot of it, regardless of the state of economy beforehand.
Dave: heroine addict
“I’m a heroine addict. I’ll only sleep with women who have saved somebody’s life.” -Mitch Hedberg
Ben
Miep Gies and Mother Teresa are both dead now.
;P
Cynical in CA
Since we’re nitpicking, the Ben Franklin quote (he probably said it more than once, but his wording is consistent as regards my point) is:
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Whether one agrees with him or not, the implications of Franklin’s actual quote are that:
1) Some liberties are non-essential
2) It may be acceptable to give up some liberties to achieve significant safety.
Ben Franklin was generally a friend to liberty, but the accurate quote of his words in this case doesn’t show it well. He probably would agree with both (1) and (2).
For what it’s worth, wikiquote says that Franklin denied be the author of the anonymous work in which the words appeared, though he was the publisher. I think that historians generally believe that he was the author, despite his denials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_who_would_give_up_Essential_Liberty
“that’s the way Americans are now. They’re willing to trade away a little of their freedom in exchange for the feeling—the illusion—of security.”
-George Carlin, 1999
@ | MattJ | January 14th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Your construal of that quote is curious.
The general view is that the usage “liberty” in the sentence is singular, not plural. IOW, liberty itself is essential, not that there are essential and inessential liberties. Further, the usage “temporary security” is taken to mean that whatever security gained will be temporary and, by implication, there is no permanent security.
OTOH, with your gift for twisting meanings and since John Yoo is no longer White House counsel, you may be able to apply for the position.
Hahaha! And I can’t wait to see Angelina Jolie play the heroin in Atlas Shrugged.
Ok, I’m going to sound like an asshole and get voted down like crazy, but I agree with #18.
I feel bad for the people in Haiti and wish that I never had to experience something like that. However, the Haitian people have been receiving aid for over a decade now, and all it has done is create a bigger need for aid (before the quake).
All population growth (in any species) is a function of food availability. So, providing food to those who cannot provide it for themselves (be it because they are too poor or because they live in non-arable land) only encourages the population growth, therefore increasing the amound of aid needed. If we nip the problem in the bud, and do not aid these people to begin with, then population will actually shrink and adjust to what nature can provide, bringing the area more into balance.
It sounds cruel to “let” these people go hungry but, in the end, it’s what is best for them and us.
Nando
I’m not going to downcheck you, but I think you are grabbing the wrong end of the aid problem here.
Other than immediate disaster relief – ie, the kind of help you’d give your neighbor if their house burnt down – aid creates dependency. I have always felt that the aid we donate stifles initiative and enables corrupt government bureaucracies to maintain their rule. Aid thus becomes an instrument of oppression.
Although there have been others that have made this argument, it is far from the consensus view. I know when I have advanced it with my non-libertarian acquaintances, I have been roundly denounced for “not caring about the poor.” When I point to the counterexample of Hong Kong and how the people there lifted themselves from desperate refugees with no resources to one of the world’s wealthiest groups, the response is usually a grudging admission that I could be right followed by an emotional outburst about how “we’ve got to do something for [whomever].”
With those who propose aid programs there seems to be a total disconnect between their immediate ‘feel good’ actions and the long term consequences of those actions.
Personally, it is my conviction that the aid to third world countries has been a crime against humanity. The only “aid” that works is lowering our barriers to their exports (and encouraging them to lower their barriers against imports.)
Aresen,
I totally agree with you. I think we’re arguing the same thing, just a bit different.
I was trying to make it a short post and not ramble on, so I stuck to the “aid creates more need” argument.
Nando, I believe you have hit the nail on the head regarding a subject I have been mulling for quite some time — namely that there is a bubble in people.
With jobs now being permanently lost, unemployment in the US nearing 20% (U-6), we will find out just how essential any of us is.
Stossel compares the quake in Haiti with the similar magnitude 1989 quake in California.
THREADJACK ALERT:
A new breakthrough in obtaining an impartial jury:
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO133130/
Dave Krueger @ 35
It’s an awful joke, but I’ve heard it said that the difference between the First World and the Third World when a natural disaster occurs is that in the first world there’s 100 deaths and 100 million dollars in damage; in the Third World, there’s a 100 million deaths, and about 100 bucks in damage.
If, when disaster strikes, those who fail to prepare for it are treated better than those who spent effort and money in preparation, why should anyone prepare for disaster?
Holy crap! Just watched Pete’s video. How does he manage to get around? Does he carry his balls behind him on a trailer? I didn’t see him pushing a wheelbarrow. :)
Pete better be careful:
http://www.publicopiniononline.com/localnews/ci_14185308
Gets worse from there.
I posted words to the same effect on Pete Eyre’s website.
Whatever gets your rocks off, but that strategy is futile and dangerous.l Not a good combination.
At least they didn’t shoot Doyle’s dogs.
Re the Haiti airlift: Some interesting parallels between that and the Berlin Airlift in the late 1940s: lack of available airstrips and control personnel, for example. Hope somebody in the Obama cabinet has thought to tap the brains of the remaining pilots and ground controllers from that adventure.
Ben and Dave:
There’s a story about Roky Erickson, former memberof the 13th Floor Elevators. In the 1980s, he had a band called the Aliens.One night, the other members were hanging out in the green room when Roky walked in and said, “Guys, tonight we’re going to do heroin.” Of course, all of them started freaking out–”Oh man, I don’t want to get hooked!” “My best friend in high school nearly died from that stuff.” As Roky left the room, he said, over his shoulder, “I think it’s in D.”