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.
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congress was given the authority to declare war, which has become dead letter, and these ideas considered quaint and outdated.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
Except that in the US, military service is voluntary.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Please see http://terminallance.com/2013/05/17/terminal-lance-president... for a description of how little reverence there is for the President within the military.
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.
Junior enlisted, yes, generally just follow orders from their immediate superiors.
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.
Edit: spelling
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.
What utter self aggrandizing tripe.
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.
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."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25bamford.htm...
I think reasonable minds can differ about which characterization is appropriate.
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?
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.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
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.
Total surveillance is one of the many tools, that the political elite uses to prevent the majority from changing 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."
> http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/C...
We'd have to overthrow the "government" as it's existed for the past 50 years or so to get rid of the NSA.
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"
[1] Edit: And enlisted men and women!
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?
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.
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...
Sadly, I suspect one day you'll have to recall this statement.