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Comment by uxp100 | Hacker News Reader

Not clear how central the patriot act was to this operation, but it does pop up here.

Russ Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot act. I really do think about that a lot.

Votes that lose by a large margin have no information. They’re commitment free actions taken purely for political gain. Narrow wins are the only ones where you can really learn something.

If everyone else is voting for some necessary evil, it frees me up to vote against it while still wanting it.

I think that effect still exists on small margin votes too. You know pretty much how it’s goona go down on every vote. 99-1 feels a little different to me. That no one else even wanted to claim that lane.

Yeah, I think narrow wins are the only ones you can count on. Those require participation. Otherwise it’s all local constituency branding.

Hardly true. Have you never tried to be the lone dissenter in a crowd? Make that crowd a nation.

Then why not 2 no votes? Or 3? Hell, even 95-5 is functionally equivalent to 99-1. And as others have pointed out: being the first to go against universal consensus is a lot harder than being the second or third. Even our leaders are often followers. And yet, no other senators decided to be part of that small group, which suggests to me that Feingold did do something worth noting and that we should remember.

For me it wasn't so much that he was the only one to vote against it, as it was that when he did vote against it the people of his state promptly replaced him with a more Law and Order senator.

In the US we claim we want freedom, privacy, and all that good stuff. But where the rubber meets the road, it becomes pretty clear that we don't.

Feingold served another 10 years following his vote on the Patriot Act.

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