"would you oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every househould?" me: Yes "but what if it were to reduce domestic violence?" me: STILL YES "but what if..." me: There is no BUTS, I oppose it for all reasons and forever.
as long as >1% of people are stupid enough to be willing to sell their basic freedoms for such a thing, the safety of my freedom is at risk.
That was quite literally NYC, Ireland, and most of the “democracies” in the world the past few years.
What did you think that QR code pass was lol
I had no choice but to junk it despite the excellent hardware underneath the hood.
This is the somewhat rare case of a push poll designed to elicit a response those running the poll think is bad, so they can complain about it, but the principle is the same. "Would you support X to prevent [Y that most people think is bad]?" is a garbage question, because saying "no" immediately suggests the person answering the question doesn't actually object to "Y". You personally may be comfortable implying to a stranger that you don't care about reducing domestic violence, but enough people are weirded out by the implication that they'll answer in a way that allows Cato to rile up their target audience.
Of course supporting actual policies can work the same way, but polls aren't really a good way to measure this because there is zero cost in answering a poll compared to actually supporting something like a new law. It's one thing to tell a pollster you support a measure designed to combat domestic violence because you don't want to give the impression you don't care about the issue, it's another to support the measure in reality because now you have to consider all the other implications.
Also this is hardly my biggest objection, but Cato predictably labels the Democratic party as "Democrat" in their results chart. In my experience this is remarkably accurate Shibboleth for obnoxious right-wing political actors and fundamentally unserious people.
Is that how tyranny works? Asking because I honestly don’t know. When the Americans rebelled against King James, was tyranny taking place because the majority of people were stupid and accepted safety by giving up some rights?
What about nazi germany? Did the German people support hitler because he provided them safety?
Or the original use of the word - did the Greeks accept tyrants as long as they provided safety?