Quote: Fidoohki wrote:I'll say this in small words then:
All the beliefs and well wishes in the world won't stop a bullet in flgiht. It's a matter of Reality trumping Idealogy and if you refuse to
acknowledge
the former it will most likely end in another 'y'... Tragedy.
If you take away our rights, that will not give us safety.
Allow me to reinterate, more verbosely:
Your warrantless wiretapping will not stop bullets in flight either. We live in a world where our lives are constantly in danger. There will always be assholes
who want to kill people and won't care who and no amount of law-making will ever prevent them from killing you. Period. Tomorrow you could be run over by a
car, or mugged and killed by a guy with a knife, or hit by a falling piano, or blow up by a nuclear explosion or the Yellowstone supervolcano could erupt and
wipe all of North American civilization out.
What you have succumbed to is the politics of fear. You fear the speeding bullet only because someone has pointed out that the bullet exist. the bullet was
always there, and it was always seconds away from killing you and it always will be. The people who sell you fera have no way of deflecting that bullet, their
efforts can not possibly make that bullet go away or delay it. They are lying to you, plain and simple. You are buying it. You are eating it
up because you are afraid and they are cackling in glee because you are a stupid, frightened little man.
Freedom does not require that we ignore the bullet, or wish it away. Freedom requires that we accept the bullet. That we stop fearing the bullet. Because it
will always be there. Someday, I will die and I may very well die in my old age home or tomorrow at the hands of some desperate
heroin-addicted mugger. And I'm okay with that.
This is because I am not concerned with length of life, but quality of life. Freedom is one of those qualities that makes my (and everyone elses) lives better.
Even if, EVEN IF, it was proven that lifespans are on average longer in a hellish draconic tyrannical dictatorship where I have no freedom from being spied
upon or vanished without a trace I would still choose to live in a world where i was free to think and say and associate with whomever i wish.
But the choice the fearmongers are offering you is false. They can not gaurentee your safety, they never could. The only safety the fearmongers are concerned
with is their own. And if they have to kill you to feel safe, then they will. And that is the choice you make when you choose between freedom and
"safety". You are choosing between having an enemy who is far away and less able to hurt you and having your own government as your enemy. Repressive
regimes are not, and have never been, better for the lifespan and happiness of everyone involved.
I'll sum up my thoughts:
Fidoohki, you were living in a world the was exactly the same before 9/11 as after. Exactly. The. Same. Yet before that time you felt safe and happy, with no
need for warrantless wiretaps. Why then, should you feel safer now? Simple, because you bought into the politics of fear. You let them make you afraid, and you
let them tell you what wouuld make you not afriad. They lied to you Fidoohki, and they are still lying to you. They can't keep you safe, no one can.
Anybody who tells you different is selling you something.
-----------------
Epsilon