Out of Pod Experience

I agree when we are discussing war on a battlefield against enemy armies. But when there is no defined army, when the battlefield is suddenly declared 'everywhere' then we face that last paragraph.... it's among our own citizens. (This is why we used to declare war with a very seriously thought out and defined process.)

Once we declare and accept that war is everywhere, all is a battleground, all are possible enemies... this is a nightmare scenario and we live it. It is a dystopian horror that perverts everything we believe in.

We should never sacrifice freedom for security, it is why America is supposedly "the home of the brave" because we dare to have a free society and rule via a just legal process. And we don't just do it when it's convenient and everything is sunshine and rainbows. It's our grace under fire that makes these principles worth living... otherwise we are less than nothing. A mockery of the ideals we preach to ourselves, each other and the world.

When we compromise those ideals that allegedly make us what we are, we have already lost the conflict. The fight is over, we surrendered. Many in our nation do not understand this axiom. Just as a traitor may always switch sides again, you no longer have any principles solely because you've proven your willingness to give in and abandon them.




If there is no thing as a right than this nation never existed to begin with and western society itself is a facade.

That is our foundation, that there are certain inalienable rights afforded to human beings.

Again, when you abandon this principle, you have no principles at all. You are merely acting out of survival at that point. You concede all moral high-ground... you no long er have a sense or need of justice. And in this nation, that means you've stripped yourself of the very authority on which you act... leaving us as what? Just another ham-fisted despotic group of monkeys out to get ours. Just one that spews very nice sounding rhetoric while living by none of it??

Your rights are not intact, according to your words. You said rights don't exist. The illusion that you personally have them (an illusion you acknowledge but perpetuate out of self-delusion, as we all might ) simply hasn't been disrupted.

At that point the only concern you have is that the illusion isn't disrupted? That no one is ever given a reason to think you are an enemy, coloring outside the lines? Because you personally aren't being impacted by injustice you can pretend it doesn't exist?

From that viewpoint do you not simply live on their terms? Willingly acknowledging that as long as they leave you alone you are happy enough. A life without principles... or at least no principles that aren't selfish and apply only to you.

This seems very bankrupt to me.

I prefer the pursuit of the ideal. I was sold a series of products when I was born. Justice. Freedom. Liberty.
And I intend on seeing them delivered. Too many have made very expensive payments for me not to demand them.

The constant pursuit of true freedom and justice. A principle idealistic by it's nature, never to be fully realized but always pursued. My rights exist because I choose them to, I insist upon it, I'll die before I concede them.

More than that, less selfish. When I was younger I took an oath to protect those rights (afforded to all) from all enemies. I took it because I believed it with every fiber of my being.

As long as we plant our feet and say "NO" and do not budge, those rights can still be real.

Do you not believe in war, or do you not believe our enemies could come here?

Now the 'war on terror' is a very convoluted war and a bad example which leads to a convoluted discussion. Our government is trying to broadly paint portions of the world as 'the bad guys' and I can't even begin to defend it for the context of this particular bill. I'm not saying it should have passed.

The point is that we should have a clear way for the law to distinguish between enemy combatants and our citizens when they are on our own soil. The truly unfortunate part is that we have handled that distinction so badly up to now. Japanese internment. Communist witch hunts... and now the 'war on terror'. This is a difficult topic and we won't get any breaks.







This is fantasy. Anyone can alienate you from all of your rights with the swing of a sword. There is only what you can do, and what of those options you choose to do or not do.

Believe in war? Well... it's not exactly Santa or God we're talking about here. Give me some credit.

Of course our enemies could come here. This has always been a possibility and we've shown in the past (and hopefully learned from) that we tend to deal with those situations most inappropriately, irresponsibly, unfairly (unjustly) and many could argue cruelly.

Until someone can show me that the judicial system is unequipped to handle terrorists or any other enemy on our soil, I'll never permit that these types of unneeded and overreaching legislations ever need be considered. Anyone can argue for them, but I doubt they can actually present convincing evidence, forget about proving it's necessity.

Why do you need further ways to address an enemy combatant on our soil aside from the laws we already have in place? We have an entire litany of laws to deal with someone planning ill on us, citizen or otherwise.

I find it amusing when a statist needs to stoop to moral relativism to defend their absolutes.

You confuse the mistakes of leaders for errors in legislation. Assuming our leaders will impose martial law when they don't need to, and that they will press great injustice on their people doesn't help anything. If they were that malicious and incompetent we'd have that outcome regardless of what legislation was in place. It's already failed when that's happening.


Being prepared for an enemy force on our soil is an obviously good idea. Making sure we define what a combatant is ahead of time to prevent abuse of our citizens is obviously a good idea.

While the rest of us have these discussions in the real world about if or how to do it correctly in the real world, you post blatant bias and argue by proxy using extreme labels and hyperbole to finish or continue the thoughts of others so you can challenge the shortcomings of your own assumptions.

You are a sensationalist of the highest order, and your opinion on politics is entirely invalid.

IMHO of course.

ib4l

Why is it the state's good conscious to look at this hideous bill and then go "hmm I dunno know guys, should we pass it??herp"

It's poorly written and abstract.

How could your own citizens be declared the enemy? That's really not a government that answers to the people. US Gov answers to another entity (surprise, that would be corps and banks). This is an apparent problem the whole world sees- that american's literally have no control of their own government and the actions of it.

Now they want a bill to quickly kill the rights off and kidnap you off the street and detain you as you're a suspect of terrorism. ha what a joke. Wait, they've been already doing this...... .

if this bill miraculously passes, that would be a sad day. Obama has his balls down throat deep in the mouth of the corps.



btw now is a good time to reform your government before they go "ups! I accidently Iran into ww3"

If the American government was more responsible, then I wouldn't be as scared of this bill as I am. However, the way our government has acted in the last 10 or so years (especially Congress), they have proven that their own peoples' well being is far down on the list of their priorities. I don't trust our government with this kind of authority. I'm also afraid for our European friends, this bill coupled with the online censorship bills that are also in the works sets a nasty precedent that could easily be followed abroad.

You know, as much as Ron Paul scares me in the way of being so utterly naive in certain foreign affairs, he may just be the jolt or rather the reset button we need at this point in our history.

I also find it funny that not two years ago the tea party was up in arms about obama being some sort of commie liberal fascist, despite the three being completely distinct and in no way related or capable of being related, and now people are laying into him about being a puppet for the corporations. First he's not capitalist enough, now he's too capitalist. I'm all for joining a movement which automatically excludes such bipolar lunacy. The tea party and occupy movement are two sides of the same coin, I need a different coin all together.

Nah, just need a 3rd party, a "moderate" party. Normally voting for a 3rd party is throwing your vote away under the US system, but if the existing two parties are too polarized to compromise and the parties are more or less equal in voting numbers, then a 3rd party would have the votes to break ties, thus making a (small) 3rd party incredibly powerful. The other two sides would have to kiss up to (i.e. compromise with) the 3rd party to get anything done.

it might not work that well. I'm not that familiar with the parties in the States, but from what I've seen, they seem to be either center-right (more to the right) wing, or right wing.


issue here is that a 3rd party would need to be either "left" or "center-left", and in the states, anything related to left = comunist/socialist, so it would die even before it would be born.

coincidentally, having a 3rd party that is right wing, would be more of the same, and I can tell you for sure that a "center" party would be able to do zero.


in sum, you guys are kinda ****** with your two-party system, unless somebody came up with a 3rd party that can play outside the right-left system.


as far as europe goes, the EU is a nice concept but the France-Germany axle (oh man I just said that) seem to want a uniformization of the EU, and that's really impossible, unless they started invading **** left and right.


or, they die. "Mercosy" are a ***** tbh. Never liked both and they are totally inflexible, thinking first about their countries (understandable), by giving zero space to the rest of the EU members(not ok).