Well, the beauty of a democratic society is that if a majority agree with you, then you can change the system. Personally, I disagree with you, but it's a free country.
Your comment about the military is so rude, though, that it was difficult to write a temperate response. You ought to feel ashamed of yourself.
There's certainly nothing rude about pointing out a relevant and possibly non-obvious truth: military life is so distinct from civilian life that it may result in drastically different perspectives about what it means to be free. If merely being exposed to a hypothesis you disagree with offends you, then I don't understand how you can ever hope to have a meaningful debate.
Moreover, this isn't a new idea, it led to the opposition many founding fathers had to "Standing Armies".
Soldiers are, in a sense, slaves. A standing army is a vast apparatus under direct control of an executive.
But, the opposition to standing armies is long forgotten. We also forgot the reason why only congress was given the authority to declare war, which has become dead letter, and these ideas considered quaint and outdated. But 1776 wasn't that long ago in the history of human governments, and the history of human governments is the history of abusing power.
"Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever." - Cicero
> Soldiers are, in a sense, slaves. A standing army is a vast apparatus under direct control of an executive.
The U.S. military's only oath is to the Constitution of the U.S., not the executive. They are to follow the orders of the executive to the point that they are in keeping with upholding the defense of the nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Officers don't even take an oath to zealously follow orders, only to properly discharge the duties of their position.
While I'll grant that it's true that there is a lot of leeway and deference to the executive branch in what counts as a 'lawful order', it's incredibly concerning to me that so many people here have so little understanding of the U.S. military that they can claim with a straight face that the standing army is Obama's personal political tool.
This is true in theory, but soldiers the world over a trained simply to follow orders without question. How many soldiers when given an order, stop and think to debate the Constitutional issues, if any?
Mind you, there are good reasons for training soldiers this way - In the heat of combat, the Platoon Commander can't put everything to a vote. But this way of life does have its negatives.
Generally, in the US military, officers (which include virtually all pilots) and senior enlisted actually do take into account legal (constitutional, other laws, and rules of engagement) concerns in making decisions. Even in combat, decisions about what weapons can be used do have legal input (i.e. can we blow up a mosque? What if it's actively being used to fire on us? Or what if it just has a spotter in it relaying fire missions to a mortar team elsewhere in a crowded village square?).
Junior enlisted, yes, generally just follow orders from their immediate superiors.
Speaking of oaths, the President's oath is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution," not to protect the health or safety of Americans in general. Do NSA officials take an oath like the President's?
Every NSA employee knows they're violating the constitution. Keith Alexander's statement in an embarrassment, which only calls attention to the corruption or ignorance at the top.
(1) Completed or attempted desertion with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service. Dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 5 years.
(2) Other cases of completed or attempted desertion.
(a) Terminated by apprehension. Dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 3 years.
(b) Terminated otherwise. Dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 2 years.
(3) In time of war. Death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.
Yes. That applies after you have volunteered to be bound by it in the current military.
The draft register is still around but the draft itself was eliminated in 1973 (or thereabouts). So, that U.S. military force propping up NATO and facing down the U.S.S.R. during Reagan's saber-rattling in the 1980s? ALL VOLUNTEER, believe it or not.
Also interesting is that Milton Friedman considered his role in ending the draft his proudest achievement.
Friedman had no qualms about describing himself as a libertarian and not a conservative, and his influence in the Reagan administration was considerable, even outside of economics.
I find it strange that so many conservatives admire Reagan as their ultimate hero, but ignore any libertarian influence in his administration.
It's surprisingly easy to get back out of the military, if you really want to. You just have to be willing to deal with a general or other-than-honorable discharge.
Indentured servant is probably a better term to describe what the OP was intending. They agree to enter into a period of service, during which they give up control of most aspects of their lives that civilians take for granted, e.g., they face jail time if they leave.
Slavery could, historically, be entered into voluntarily. John Stuart Mill wrote some interesting things about this.
But clearly, this isn't the basis of my comparison. A soldier is completely subject to the arbitrary will of his superiors, without any real legal protections.
See also: Ratio of reported rapes vs. prosecuted rapes, scandals of enforcement agents.
Except that WWII and the Vietnam War both involved mandatory drafts in the US, and as a result, almost all US citizens of our age are barely two generations descended from a veteran of the US military. Even if your father didn't serve, your father's father probably did, taught him with a perspective colored by having been a slave in the military, and he likely raised you with a perspective colored thereby also.
Recruiting standards have been too high since 2007 actually. You're actually more likely to get in the military as a descendant of a middle-class family than from a poor family. And if you exclude the Army, that has been true since 2001 or so.
And post-2009 when active operations in Iraq were ending and the economy really went to shit it's gotten even harder to join. You essentially can't even get into the various Officer Candidate Schools without being either in peak physical shape (Army/Marines) and having good grades, or having a GPA of 3.4+ with good physical scores (Navy/Air Force).
Correct, but that is why it is in a sense. I think if you expand this thought it is similar to how many people buy into their own company's bullshit while you stand on the outside and just shake your head.
Well, the beauty of a democratic society is that if a majority agree with you, then you can change the system.
This is technically true, but ignores the fact that it's a totally rigged game. You have a news media that's intent on dividing people over relatively small issues and pushing certain narratives. You have contractors who are paid to do the same online. You have a system of surveillance that could be used to discredit (or worse) promising political figures, and intimidate journalists. You have a large part of your government that operates in secret, under secret laws, preventing any kind of meaningful debate beyond "we need more transparency." All of this makes it incredibly difficult to get a majority to agree with anything that established powers don't approve of. It can be done (like we're seeing with marijuana legalization), but it requires a Herculean effort.
People who disagree with this comment and say it's false would do well to read this book http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104810/ Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky. It is very well researched, carefully documented. At least look at the information and think about it. The people don't have nearly as much control as it seems.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
This is such arrogant bullshit. You're basically saying that if only everyone else were as enlightened as you, they'd care about the objectively important issues like NSA spying, instead of "relatively small issues" like abortion or gay rights, etc. Among my group of friends, DOMA generated far more interest than the NSA news. Are they just misled by the media?
Among my group of friends, DOMA generated far more interest than the NSA news. Are they just misled by the media?
I wouldn't blame anyone for taking more interest in gay rights than the NSA. The emerging widespread acceptance of gays as fellow human beings is probably unique to human history. It is hard to overstate the significance of that. But at the same time, I wouldn't give too much credit to the news media. It was a convenient wedge issue, but I suspect established powers were largely indifferent as to the outcome.
Among my friends, gay rights, abortion, the environment, wrongful convictions (of poor black kids in the inner city, not "patriots" like Snowden), taxes, social security, and healthcare all outrank "privacy" in terms of importance. Are they just brainwashed into this by the "established powers"?
Brainwashed is a strong word, and I've never met your friends. But I would argue that the NSA story is vastly more important than the issues you mentioned, except possibly the environment (and see my comment above about gay rights). My reasoning has more to do with the potential for abuse than the abuse that has already come to light. I think it is best summed up by this NY Times excerpt on Frank Church, the first senator to investigate the NSA:
He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."
You think the NSA story is "vastly more important" based on your calculus of how it might be abused and how likely it is to be abused. Don't you think people are entitled to come to differing conclusions about that without accusations that they are brainwashed by the media? Because that's basically what you're doing when you reject the impact of the democratic process in all this: people can't be trusted to hold their own opinions because they're guided to opinions by the media.
This is not a moral gray area. The NSA is the government breaking its laws, throwing off its checks, and establishing tyranny. The other issues that have been brought up in this thread (gay rights, abortion) are pittances as a people we humbly request of the government.
Or, the NSA program is a targeted intelligence system designed to stay within the wide latitude afforded by the law and the 4th amendment? Not the establishment of tyranny, but a mundane apparatus that ultimately will have little real impact on the lives of ordinary Americans.
I think reasonable minds can differ about which characterization is appropriate.
Someone who sacrifices everything he's got, exposes a bunch of bad things his government is doing at great personal risk to himself has definitely earned the patriot label, Snowden is doing a lot more to improve America than most of the flag waving bumper sticker crowd that happily affix that label onto themselves.
Taxes, social security and healthcare are important, but they are not more or less important than privacy on an absolute scale and they are not on the same axis to begin with. You can have a perfect police state with social security, healthcare and low taxes and 0 privacy.
Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
What good is it to have the right to abortion, gay marriage, immigration amnesty etc. if tomorrow you can be taken away and locked up for the rest of your life, without any due process, all because of an email you wrote?
The UN Declaration of Human Rights is not law in the United States and recognizes many things that are not recognized as fundamental rights in the United States: right to international travel, right to social security, right to "desirable work" and to join trade unions, right to "rest and leisure", right to education, etc.
Also, your hypothetical is disingenuous. It wraps violations of due process in with monitoring of e-mail. I'd imagine most people would consider the real outrage in your hypothetical to be the "without any due process" part, not the "because of an e-mail" part.
> Well, the beauty of a democratic society is that if a majority agree with you, then you can change the system. Personally, I disagree with you, but it's a free country.
The majority are disengaged, disinterested and apathetic.
Furthermore, the particularly abhorrent feature of these programs is that their existence was kept secret. Secret courts issuing secret orders to secret services to work in secret violating citizens' right to privacy.
Without these leaks, citizens lacked the capacity to change this system, because they had no idea this system even existed.
> the beauty of a democratic society is that if a majority agree with you, then you can change the system.
This is false. The NSA considers itself outside the realm of law:
> "NSA does not have a statutory charter; its operational responsibilities are set forth exclusively in executive directives first issued in the 1950s. One of the questions which the Senate asked the Committee to consider was the "need for specific legislative authority to govern the operations of...the National Security Agency."
> According to NSA's General Counsel, no existing statutes control, limit, or define the signals intelligence activities of NSA. Further, the General Counsel asserts that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to NSA's interception of Americans' international communications for foreign intelligence purposes."
I served in the military. I have nothing but respect and admiration for our service members and their sacrifice. But when it comes to liberty, a military life isn't one filled with it. I don't see what is rude about making this statement. Obviously this officer doesn't understand the meaning of the word, at least now how I understand it.
I admit I regret my phrasing. Instead of "but it is not surprising that officers in the military do not understand what liberty means since they have not lived a life of liberty" I should have said "but it is not surprising that an officer in the military may not understand what liberty means since they have not lived a life of liberty"
What was it, aside from "mob rule" of the majority, that passed amendments 14, 15, 19, 24, and 26 to the Constitution? Those would be the amendments that specifically expanded the freedoms of minorities (on the basic of race, sex, wealth, and age)
EDIT: oh, and I mean the supermajority & state level process required to amend the Constitution.
In the upper ranks of the officer class, this is certainly true. I met many LT's and Captains that I enjoyed working with, but once they reached beyond those early grades, they became part of the officer's elite/gentleman's club, where they became further detached from their subordinates and more interested in appealing to their masters.
That's only true if the voters have visibility of what they're voting for. That's wht is so bad about this situation, the secracy negates the foundation of democracy
Am I dreaming? The USA is not a democratic society. The will of the people is not only unrepresented in the government, but the legal means by which the will of the people would be imposed are totally dismantled. Furthermore, it's not a free country by a long shot. Do you know anyone that does not have to live relying on centrally distributed energy and food?
Solar/wind account for a fraction of US energy usage, and such people are unfortunately the extreme exception.
It's almost impossible for a human alive today to truthfully live free from oil - even if they are exceptional. How much harder would it be for an ordinary person who actually lives in US society?
The military comment strikes me as uninformed. Military officers [1] I know tend to be above average in understanding our rights, liberties, freedoms, and responsibilities.
> Well, the beauty of a democratic society is that if a majority agree with you, then you can change the system.
That may be a reasonable response to the PRISM/FAA702 disclosures. But in relation to the blanket domestic phone-metadata surveillance? The program which was based on an very expansive interpretation of the FAA business-records provision? The program which was kept secret from not only the US electorate but most of the US Congress? As was the legal interpretation justifying it? The program which even the US Congressmen who had heard about it and found it objectionable were not permitted to inform anyone about? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HNm...
Your comment about the military is so rude, though, that it was difficult to write a temperate response. You ought to feel ashamed of yourself.