Church spreading aids

Are you aware that our elected leaders swear fealty not to the government, or to the administration, or the president, but to the Constitution?It is that document which forms the basis of our America freedoms, and it is against that document that treason must be judged. As such, the White House, Pentagon, even the President himself do not represent unassailable institutions, but rather subservient powers to the Constitution. If those powers do not serve the Constitution it is they that are treacherous. Currently, the actions of Emporer Ashcroft, et al. represent a far, far greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist plot.Also, in that sense, it is your comment that is truly trecherous to our American freedoms, not Moose's.

To the contrary, they're highly defensible. I'm sure he did not wish for the deaths of hundreds of American citizens, but only for the disappearance of those institutions. There's nothing un-American about wishing for drastic change in the government. More like, a rationalist. Living in Minnesota, I'm not really much of a terrorist target. The major threat to my freedom is from the government taking it away to "protect" me from attacks that likely won't affect me.Don't you think, if the terrorists hate us for your freedom (as Bush would have us believe), giving it up to protect ourselves is exactly what they want? People like you, who would sacrifice our liberites for security (don't forget what Ben Franklin had to say about people like that), aid terrorist intentions more than any airplane, dirty bomb, or sleeper cell.

If you can prove to me that his comments represent "a clear and present danger" to the US, which I understand to be the Supreme Court standard, maybe you have a case. As it is now, all you have is somebody saying something you find offensive, which is still protected speech. Yeah, he's interested in what websites you visit. And what books you read. And if you have gay sex. And if you like to launch model rockets. And if you've ever ordered a set of lockpicks. And any number of things that reasonable people do, for very reasonable reasons.Sure, people like you and I don't have much to worry about. it's lawabiding people on the fringe who suffer first when freedoms are eroded. How do you think Nazi Germany started? With the gradual erosion of the freedoms of people nobody liked. Pretty soon though, everyone suffers. I have and do. If you think I toe the liberal party line because I treasure individual freedom, you're quite mistaken. The ability to repel by force those who would take our freedom is an important right in this country.The answer to terrorism and forceful oppression isn't "understanding" or a meta-parental surveilliance state, it's for all people to realize that the world isn't a particularly safe place, and to take a little responsibility for their own defense.

I don't have to. The Supreme Court says that speech is protected under the First Amendment so long as it doesn't constitute a "clear and present danger that they will bring about substantive evils Congress has a right to prevent" (to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes).As the constitution is the highest law in the land, and Moose's comment is protected under the First Amendment, US Code does not apply. You do recognize the First Amendment as an important civil protection, correct? Perhaps if you had read the Bill of Rights, you might have noticed Amendment 9:

quote:

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The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

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which of course means that the argument "that right isn't in the constitution" isn't at all valid. You don't see it as the first step? Then you are truly naive.I wouldn't be so worried about the erosion of rights if it had been proved to increase safety. But a survaillience society has never been shown to be safer than any other. And I'd be a little less worried if terrorism was a little more clearly defined. As it stands what's to prevent Bush from saying that all american Muslims are terrorists?Nothing the Homeland Security department can do is likely to make us demonstratably safer. The threats always come from those things we can't predict. Keeping things secret doesn't make us safe. Only an open and transparent government infrastructure will allow us to predict threats before they come.

I guess we're arguing at cross-purposes, then. I assumed by "treason" you meant an act of illegal, seditious speech. Since Moose's comments can't be construed as illegal, I take that to mean they can't be construed as treason. Certainly I didn't find them so.If you're so worried about Moose why don't you call the cops on him? Or could it be it's just a little ridiculous to get all worked up about something posted on the internet? To the contrary; all Article 9 says is that these can't be denied as rights simply because they're not in the constitution. You've basically set up a straw man; I never said rights should be granted just on the basis of the 9th Amendment. All I've said is that they shouldn't be denied soley on the reasoning that they're not in the constitution. You have to come up with a better argument to deny these "rights".In your last post you hand't done that; you'd just made the argument that certain "rights" weren't in the constitution, therefore they could not be rights. I pointed out your error. Do you have a cogent response? I don't think we should rush to make sweeping governmental reform, mere weeks after the event, without stopping to consider the consequences far off down the road. Nothing I have heard or read suggests that Congress's actions were anything but reactionary. I find reactionary government dangerous. Don't you?

I guess that would reassure me if I thought our president had ever used one...

Perhaps a little off-color, but nothing outrageous. Maybe even a little callous, yes. I'm not really prepared to do the work it would take to defend those as rights to you. I just wanted to point out that a summary dismissal of any proposed "right" soley on it's lack of enumeration in the constitution is fallacious constitutional reasoning. We seem to agree on that point. I certainly grant that Article 9 does not, by itself, grant approval to any proposed rights. And within a year we'd put thousands of law-abiding Japanese-American citizens in our own concentration camps, for no reason. I think have very good reason from history to be concerned when the government tells us we need to suspend some of our civil liberties - or worse, some other peoples' civil liberties - for the common good. All I'm arguing for is caution and reflection, not hasty rushes to "protect ourselves" from the spectre of boogyman terrorists.