Are the sheep winning?

[basscatfrank]

Or is the game already over? I recently posted on another forum I frequent my thoughts on the story out of Aurora, CO where the police handcuffed everyone at an intersection in an attempt to locate suspected bank robbers. Like most here, (I assume), I was outraged. Circumventing constitutional freedoms in an attempt to make law enforcements job easier is detestable. What I find even more appalling was the number of posters who could find no fault in those actions. Most typical was the "I wouldn't mind because I have nothing to hide" sentiment, followed closely by "at the end of the day the bad guys were in jail and nobody got hurt."

Have we really fallen this far? What prompts one to so easily surrender what was fought so valiantly for? I fear we have reached a tipping point with regards to freedom and liberty that will take another revolution to restore.

 

[Climbnsink]

revolution rarely increases freedom. the new leaders do what the old leaders did, sometimes worse, sometimes not quite so bad. you need a new continent or planet.

 

[basscatfrank]

revolution rarely increases freedom. the new leaders do what the old leaders did, sometimes worse, sometimes not quite so bad. you need a new continent or planet.

And you need to brush up on your American History.

 

[MisterHappy]

This is not a new situation, it's just that it's been slowly growing as envelopes are pushed, and there's no real push-back.

The REAL difference is that communications has much improved. Before ubiquitous electronics, this might have been a hearsay story or maybe a letter to the editor in the West Treestump Advertizer and Gazette; now, within minutes everyone from Colorado to Kuala Lampur can click on the story.

So....the attitude has changed little, but the publicity has improved.

In the final analysis, most people think this is a good idea. I"ll bet at least half of the "detainees" are pleased to have "helped to catch the bad man."

 

[basscatfrank]

This is not a new situation, it's just that it's been slowly growing as envelopes are pushed, and there's no real push-back.

The REAL difference is that communications has much improved. Before ubiquitous electronics, this might have been a hearsay story or maybe a letter to the editor in the West Treestump Advertizer and Gazette; now, within minutes everyone from Colorado to Kuala Lampur can click on the story.

So....the attitude has changed little, but the publicity has improved.

In the final analysis, most people think this is a good idea. I"ll bet at least half of the "detainees" are pleased to have "helped to catch the bad man."

I don't know if I agree with your summation, but if it's true, heaven help us all.

 

[glockstar]

It seems that every generation becomes a little more removed from the sacrifices that were made to have these rights that most take for granted. The idea that the common person has rights that trump what a police officer can do and how they do it arent discussed in most circles and to bring it up brands you as some kind of trouble maker. This " well I have nothing to hide" attitude is just burrying your head in the sand as more and more liberties are slowly stripped away has become daily practice. Its even more sad to think of how much worse it will get if we dont stand our ground. So simple to think Revolution, but do you think Americans can stand as one to do so as they once did? And even if we can do we have what it takes to rebuild a true government for the people by the people and set things right again or has dependency and laziness become a birth rite of the younger generations? Its all very troubling, and I dont see and easy fix to it.

 

[MisterHappy]

Guys....Amreicans ARE standing as one....in the line at the Airport, for a choice of Gate Rape or the X-Ray Glasses deal.



And they're happy about it. Well, maybe not happy, but secure.

BTW the Americans did not stand as one in the Revolution - 1/3 Rebel, 1/3 loyalist, 1/3 dont care is, the usual rough breakdown IIRC.

Now, it's 1/10 rebel, 2/10 loyalist, 7/10 don't care.....as long as there's cable, and accessible internet to rot the brain.....

 

[Climbnsink]

And you need to brush up on your American History.

it ain't the same

 

[Deleted member 12999]

There will never be another revolution in North America like the one upon which the United States was founded. The cultural differences and dependencies between then and now are far to great to even begin to compare them to one another. Sure, there's a handful of wistful idealists who like to imagine themselves as somehow similar to the men and women who fought that original rebellion, but they're not. And there's a very remote possibility you might end up with autonomous, agrarian, liberty loving enclaves after a complete economic collapse, civil war, and mass pandemic, but even that is pretty slim.

IF and it's a big IF anything ever happened, it would look more like this:

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

 

[mark056]

And you need to brush up on your American History.

The poster was talking about revolution in general: French, Russian, Chinese, Mexican and so forth. Some historians have argued that the American Revolution was not a classic revolution in the sense of one class or group overthrowing a government. It was a reaction really, to a tightening of the rules by Britain, namely the enforcement of the Navigation Acts, the Tax Stamp Acts and other policies which were not rigorously enforce or even promulgated prior to the French and Indian War (a theater of operations of the Seven Years War). In effect Britain wanted to crack down on the colonies and restrict trade and increase taxation to help fill the coffers depleted by the Seven Years War. The people of Great Britain were being heavily taxed and the British Government felt that the American colonists were not paying their fair share. The Americans on the other hand, wanted to enjoy the status that they had in previous years, and more importantly representation in the British Parliament. This is hardly revolutionary. It was only when the British Government was adamant about not giving the Americans representation in Parliament and limiting the economic freedom that they previously enjoyed, that the Americans finally resorted to rebelling against the government.

A true Revolution is usually reflected in a class struggle and the total over taking of the existing government and social structure. This did not happen in our "revolution", so maybe you need to brush up on your political science

 

[dnepro-mike]

Guys....Amreicans ARE standing as one....in the line at the Airport, for a choice of Gate Rape or the X-Ray Glasses deal.



And they're happy about it. Well, maybe not happy, but secure.

BTW the Americans did not stand as one in the Revolution - 1/3 Rebel, 1/3 loyalist, 1/3 dont care is, the usual rough breakdown IIRC.

Now, it's 1/10 rebel, 2/10 loyalist, 7/10 don't care.....as long as there's cable, and accessible internet to rot the brain.....

sooooo trueeeee..........

 

[jefftk]

Guys....Amreicans ARE standing as one....in the line at the Airport, for a choice of Gate Rape or the X-Ray Glasses deal.



And they're happy about it. Well, maybe not happy, but secure.

Loki, from the Avengers movie reminded me of this mentality... his recurring message to people was he was going to 'save them freedom' and 'in the end, they will kneel'.

 

[CBudz]

Or is the game already over? I recently posted on another forum I frequent my thoughts on the story out of Aurora, CO where the police handcuffed everyone at an intersection in an attempt to locate suspected bank robbers. Like most here, (I assume), I was outraged. Circumventing constitutional freedoms in an attempt to make law enforcements job easier is detestable. What I find even more appalling was the number of posters who could find no fault in those actions. Most typical was the "I wouldn't mind because I have nothing to hide" sentiment, followed closely by "at the end of the day the bad guys were in jail and nobody got hurt."

Have we really fallen this far? What prompts one to so easily surrender what was fought so valiantly for? I fear we have reached a tipping point with regards to freedom and liberty that will take another revolution to restore.

The problem is they haven't fought, brainwashing isn't as hard as it may seem.

 

[Business]

The sheep never win only the Shepherd does

 

[calsdad]

IF and it's a big IF anything ever happened, it would look more like this:

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

Things will never get as bad as that story.

Everything will collapse first.

Everything in human society rests on work. If nobody works, there's no food, no water, no roads, no airplanes, no babies - no nothing.

The further and further human society tilts towards favoring the non working or the handicapping of the working - the further and further it tilts towards it's own destruction.

The only thing that will keep a non-working society alive - is outright slavery.

And that collapses too.

Socialism and all that are in the end - self correcting problems. Societies that adopt that philosophy - or people who adopt the mentality of being a ward of the state - are not long for this world in the grand scheme of things.

 

[endus]

I guarantee you 10 years ago more than half the people posting here would have been supportive of the patriot act.

People never realize until it's too late. They think every case is a special case. Seeing the connections is beyond most people's ability.

 

[BOBKATT]

You're all going to die relatively soon. Maybe you want to do it for a reason.

 

[Smash05]

My job is to advocate for people's rights. When I tell people what I do, they look at me like I am scum. People have no respect for their rights until "THEIR" rights are threatened. When it happens to someone else, they must have deserved it, or "it happened to them because they are guilty." I have no doubt that a "conservative" would act the same way as a "liberal" in this regard under the majority of circumstances - as has been my experience.

 

[bullseye]

The sheep will only win until they are in the pen, then they are cooked. The rest of us, will be long gone and in the mountains at our retreats.

 

[bolt]

You're all going to die relatively soon. Maybe you want to do it for a reason.

 

[shadyduk1979]

BTW the Americans did not stand as one in the Revolution - 1/3 Rebel, 1/3 loyalist, 1/3 dont care is, the usual rough breakdown IIRC.
Now, it's 1/10 rebel, 2/10 loyalist, 7/10 don't care.....as long as there's cable, and accessible internet to rot the brain.....

Stop posting things that i agree with so much i put them in my signature!

 

[StevieP]

The sheep never win only the Shepherd does

Sometimes the wolf does, too.

 

[GunGrey]

I dont think so


Apathy is winning

 

[NHAtHeart]

The sheep think they are winning, I think that's worse than everything else.

 

[Rider]

I think that you need to frame the situation somewhat differently. The standard of and quality of life for most Americans is high, and the perceived level of freedom is also high. For most Americans most of the time, they can do whatever they want whenever they want, and nobody interferes with them. They even have this cool internet thing where they can get their free porn and say lots of offensive things to make other people feel bad, which gives them their ego boost and is a surrogate for having actual friends. They don't care about guns because they'll never own or even fire one, and since everything they know about guns is from movies or Call of Duty, they might even think people who do own and use guns are a little odd. They see the police as a kind of shark; you dread running into one, so when it swims past, or just smacks you with its tail, they are happy. So when the police do something like this, they are just glad they didn't get a ticket.

Erich Fromm wrote a rather boring but insightful book(Escape from Freedom) back in 1941 talking about how people in advanced societies seek the safety of an authoritarian state rather than the responsibility that comes with freedom. Indeed, they seek freedom from responsibility.

A huge part of the problem is that the media is not only complicit, but so many people are brainwashed that they unknowingly or unwittingly(let's give them the benefit of the doubt) frame situations in a biased way such that you agree with the conclusions, such as when the police shoot a dog because they were responding to a domestic violence call(but leave out that they shot the wrong dog at the wrong house) or when the Boston Globe publishes anything. The assumption is that their perspective is right, so they don't even consider alternative points of view. I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking about where people just assume the government has our best interests in mind, so anything they do is right and shouldn't be questioned.

At some point you reach a tipping point where so many people depend on the system that you can't turn the ship around. Europe has gone off the deep end. If the US isn't there, we are darned close. The entire point of Obamacare, and the Obama presidency, was to push the country past the point where the welfare state simply cannot be unwound. Can we support the weight of this burden? We'll see, but my basic math skills say no.

Sorry for the digression, but it all goes hand in hand.

 

[Alchemist17]

At some point you reach a tipping point where so many people depend on the system that you can't turn the ship around. Europe has gone off the deep end. If the US isn't there, we are darned close. The entire point of Obamacare, and the Obama presidency, was to push the country past the point where the welfare state simply cannot be unwound. Can we support the weight of this burden? We'll see, but my basic math skills say no.

Sorry for the digression, but it all goes hand in hand.

Even when you can't turn the ship around, one can still change direction and head straight down ...

 

[crazymjb]

I believe this is a lot more about appearance than it is about fact. In the long run I have faith that things like the patriot act will be seen as hiccups in what is otherwise a very free society. We have an exponentially growing flow of information that was never available before. As generations who were raised on it grow up, more and more of society will become networked.

As a factual matter I would not be surprised to find out that police forces were actually more corrupt in the past, and that ratio wise constitutional violations on the individual level were much more commonplace. We certainly hear about it more now, but I hope that helps to limit it in actuality. For example, I doubt very much that actions Lincoln or FDR took against the American public would be possible in this information age. Other countries massacre people trying to get to the bottom of these leaks, and they still can't plug them. Managing that in the United States would be close to impossible.

The biggest fault in America today is the fact that people just seem to care less and less about the world around them. We are in an incredibly interesting and crucial time with an incredibly unstable global environment. The U.S. is involved in its longest war, and just closed out another not even a year ago. People have no patience for learning about what's going on in the world. They'd rather watch "real life drama" unfold in stupid anecdotes about some gang bangers who shot each other or some mother who clearly has mental issues sticking her kid in a tanning bed, FOR WEEKS ON END. Most disturbing is the celebrity worship culture we have developed. If some stupid junkie whore dies, or a junkie pedophile, you may as well forget your Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/Iran updates for the next 2 weeks, because we need to listen to a bunch of calitards felate each other over what really caused this often talentless person who they idolize for being what their truly pathetic talentless selves could never hope to achieve 1% of to take all the heroin they did... but I digresss

Sorry for the rant.
Cliffs:
1. Constitutional violations are likely (I theorize) diminishing in scale relative to the population, but are more publicized
2. Now and in the future these violations will continue to become more difficult
3. Some will always take place/get through, but for the duration of "America" remain nothing more than hiccups
4. All this will be negated if socal doesn't sink fast and people continue to care more and more about stupid talentless junkie hookers

That is all

Mike

 

[Pilgrim]

The U.S. is involved in its longest war,

No where near the longest.

Vietnam - a military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.

 

[Scarecrow]

No where near the longest.

Vietnam - a military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_of_U.S._participation_in_major_wars

Afghanistan, followed by Iraq, followed by Vietnam. America was involved in Vietnam, but did not "officially enter into large unit engagement" until what is held as the official beginning date of August 1968. Not that any of it matters; arguments can be made either direction.

 

[crazymjb]

Vietnam is generally considered to have spanned from 1965-1975, at least as far as any real combat operations are concerned.

Mike

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