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Comment by swalkergibson | Hacker News Reader

> If you are a hard-core Liberal it is time you wake up and realize the monster your party has created.

Pardon, but this is not a partisan issue. I do not mean to derail this discussion, but these programs have been in place since the 1970's (with mail covers before that) and both sides of the aisle are equally culpable. The programs themselves are now just receiving their proper public reveal and the fact that they have existed for so long suggests that the Pandora's Box has been opened and the only way to shut is to bring the programs to the forefront of the national conversation and demand, as a people, that it come to a halt.

Splitting it into a partisan bickering match is exactly what the politicians want because it confuses the real issue at hand. Do not play into their hand.

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I totally agree; the constant partisan bickering match is exactly how politicians continue to stay in power, despite acting against the people's interests.

Furthermore, you can go back a little bit further in history to the regime of George W. Bush who stole the election and point out how his programs set the ground for this type of surveillance. Then you can go back further and point out the Echelon program under Clinton (and Waco and Ruby Ridge), etc. etc.

The point is we can continue this partisan bickering match from behind our keyboards ad infinitum and never take to the streets and work on building a movement.

How are broad based coalitions that demand change and get it built? By people setting aside their differences and working towards a common goal.

So the next time you see someone who's all herp-derp Ron Paul or an Obamazombie Libtard (I'm using inflammatory language here to make a point), instead of arguing with them to try and assign blame, why not invite them to the next Linux Users Group meeting and show them how to install crypto software? Or the next planning meeting for the next demo?

It's only by setting aside our political differences and taking small, baby steps working with a diverse group of people can we build a strong coalition that can't be divided by petty bickering as it starts to gain political power.

The 'monster' of our government is probably not a partisan issue in this particular case, but the growth in government size and power, and the erosion of individual civil liberties have always been done via large steps done by, predominately, liberals (most notably FDR, in my opinion).

That isn't to say that the Republicans aren't culpable, but in implementing the tools used to carve out more power for the government (abuse of the commerce clause, general welfare clause, contracts clause, etc.), you can almost exclusively look to the liberals for blame.

I should also point out that while I'll pile equal amounts of blame (but for different reasons) to both liberals and conservatives, I lay the blame at the feet of the citizenry pretty squarely, for not knowing what they're voting for, not bothering to check on who they're voting in, and for routinely voting in the better looking candidate, or believing rhetoric without comparing to voting records, and for continually violating Tytler's dilemma, which suggests that a democracy can only last so long as the citizenry doesn't realize it can vote itself favors from the public largesse.

Do you have a specific example of liberal policy eroding civil liberties?

Your final point is dead on. The populace needs to wake up and realize what a terrifying course we are currently on and do something to change it.

Obamacare is an easy one, as the government is leveraging the tax code to mandate that citizens obtain health insurance. Exacerbated somewhat by the idea that the health insurance is now a government-supplied good, and that they will have an effect on controlling its prices and such.

This was enabled by a couple of Supreme Cases under FDR - which, while I'm usually wary of attributing SCOTUS actions to the president of the time, FDR was responsible for the appointment of EIGHT Supreme Court Justices, stacking the deck - Wickard v. Filburn eroded all libertarian meaning of the Commerce Clause. Helvering v. Davis eroded the concept of personal economic liberty, in that since its interpretation, the government is allowed to take money from you and give it to others, as part of the New Deal push for Social Security.

These two cases are also considered, generally, to be some of the worst decisions by the Supreme Court, and both of which led to vast expansion in government powers. As those expansions were used primarily to take away from the citizenry, they subsequently eroded civil liberties.

The commerce clause is now what is used to allow the federal government to arrest California medical marijuana proprietors, even though it is perfectly legal in the state of California, which means that the impact of the clause has effectively eliminated the idea of states' rights. If the states have no sovereign rights from the federal government, then you can rest assured that the people don't either.

> These two cases are also considered, generally, to be some of the worst decisions by the Supreme Court

Funny, I would think that some of the worst decisions are generally considered to be Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Bush vs. Gore (the last of which a former SCOTUS Justice has even said they regret granting certiorari to the case).

> some of the worst decisions by the Supreme Court

whose impact is still being felt.

There, I've fixed it. The cases you referenced have clearly been course corrected by amendments to the Constitution and subsequent cases. It would be foolish to suggest now that black people can't exercise judicial standing, or have access to the same water fountains as white people.

It would be equally foolish now to suggest that the government doesn't have the right to take your money and give it to someone else, though that was the case before the New Deal appointments to SCOTUS.

As for Bush v Gore, I understand that O'Connor has regretted granting cert, but not the decision on the whole. Beyond that, I haven't studied the case so I can't speak for its merits (or lack thereof), but either way, my citation of very bad Supreme Court cases is obviously a very incomplete list, but I thought the cases I referenced were particularly appropriate given the question asked.

Well, I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I'm a good bit more liberal than bmelton and I think Wickard v. Filburn is an absolutely awful decision, as are a lot of the decisions than rest on it. I'm baffled that it hasn't been overturned since, though perhaps that's the hubris of someone who enjoys making up con law arguments without having to submit them to an actual court for examination.

Stare Decisis is a bitch, and the Supreme Court's broad regard for it, and especially their unwillingness to overturn it except where absolutely fucking necessary in order to render judgement, effectively turns bad precedent into law.

The difficulty with which to find a case to directly challenge it on the merits you want it to be challenged, and have that case escalated to SCOTUS, and have that case be heard, and then receive a ruling clearly in your favor without some other myriad legal issues clouding it from the main point? The odds are infinitesimal.

Are there any governments that require the legislature to address ambiguities or other issues with laws raised by the courts, in a sort of common/civil law hybrid? Having a significant chunk of a country's laws based on obscure court precedents rather than deliberately worded legislation seems harmful to the goal of a legally accountable and educated populace.

Not that I know of (assuming I've understood you correctly), and coming from a common-law country myself I'd be very reluctant to give up that system in favor of a more civil one, warts and all.

It is a real problem though. One book that addresses these problems well is Robert Kagan's Adversarial Legalism. As for the situation in the US, there's a school of thought that argues sufficient resolutions have been lodged with Congress to warrant a Constitutional Convention, and last Spring, Indiana, Georgia, and Kansas passed fresh resolutions in hopes of getting some momentum behind the process. Of course the problem is the mutual suspicion and factional acrimony that would inevitably characterize such an undertaking, but then that was true of the first one as well. I'm with Prof Sanford Levinson of UT in thinking that it would a good idea to give the nation a legal tune-up, but my political views are, ah, eccentric.

I like the idea of courts being able to raise legal issues in a way that is binding on more than just the case at hand, but as a non-lawyer, I also want a centralized repository of law that I can be reasonably confident I understand. There are a number of other process changes I would propose to help the public be more informed (e.g. publishing laws as colored unified diffs rather than prosaic descriptions of word-by-word changes), but I doubt anybody who can change them is listening ;-).

> As those expansions were used primarily to take away from the citizenry, they subsequently eroded civil liberties.

Perhaps I have a different definition of civil liberties than you. I subscribe to the following definition, as proposed in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberties)

> Civil liberties are civil rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights. Though the scope of the term differs amongst various countries, some examples of civil liberties include the freedom from slavery and forced labor, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, freedom of conscience, religion, expression, press, assembly and association, speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment and due process and the right to a fair trial, as well as the right to life. Other civil liberties may also include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, and the right to bodily integrity.

What do you consider your civil liberties to be?

2nd Amendment.

Liberals may vote for favors, but mainstream so-called conservatives vote for "security" on the public credit card, as well as unfunded tax cuts for the very wealthy. (Look at the debt explosion under Reagan and Bush II.)

Making this about parties misses the point: they're playing for the same team and serving the same masters. All else is theater.

I don't exempt Republicans from my scorn, but the quoted text seemed to be an excuse to let the liberals off the hook in the name of non-partisanship.

I could cite plenty of examples in which the Republicans eroded our civil liberties and grew the military machine as well, but that didn't seem to be what the grand-parent was objecting to.

The OP included three party-focused paragraphs, one for liberals, one for conservatives, one for libertarians. Only the first one, trying to motivate liberals, was quoted.

I believe that's the same thing I just said.

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