use Perl

• I guess you deserve neither so quit complaining (Score:1)

  by Sifmole (3409)

  You accept the laws that protect you from criminals and in so doing have given up many liberties. In general it is the giving up of some liberties to a greater good that moves a group of people from Anarchy to a more civilized lifestyle.
  
  That said -- the "Patriot Act" is a horribly scary thing.
  • Re:I guess you deserve neither so quit complaining (Score:1)

    by Sifmole (3409) on 2003.04.03 7:48 (#18730)

    It was a bitcy day and I probably wasn't clear....
    
    I take issue with people who trot out pithy little sound bites but ignore the full implications of them; In this case Ben's quote regarding liberties, freedom, and safety. We all give up liberties ( and I know he refers to "essential" ) in order to become part of a civilized society.
    
    So, is retaining your privacy regarding what toothpaste you use an "essential" liberty -- probably not, what books you read may well be. The tough question is, as you said, "where do you draw the line?". The FBI has kept tabs on certain books for years; for many people this is only coming to their conciousness now.
    
    The tough question for me is -- given the possibility, and not remote, that there are many someones out there with the desire and will to strap a "backpack" nuke to their back and wander into NYC which is altogether too few miles from my son, my wife, my family, and myself. What am I willing to give up to decrease the chances of that coming to reality?
    
    Remembering breathing the smoke laced with the blood of 2000 people on 9/11 and thinking that possibly, and only possibly, it could have been prevented if the FBI/CIA had been empowered to question why Muslim extremists only wanted to learn how to fly straight and didn't care about landing. The people who lost loved ones when Timothy McVeigh blew up the building in Oklahoma City must wonder, what if the FBI/CIA had been more empowered to wonder why a non-farmer needed a load of fertilizer that big.
    
    I have always been one to talk about the "slippery slope" of giving up freedoms -- and I have spent a great deal of time vascilating over this very issue, to no conclusion.
    
    Perhaps the only answer is to stop all likely, even remotely, such individuals at the border: "Sorry America is Closed, please return to where you came from." -- is that the nation we should become? Or do we preserve our need to keep private what toothpaste we are using to brush our teeth while we watch the 5th suicide bombing in an American mall in a month?
    
    I truly don't know....

    Reply to This

    Parent

    • Re:I guess you deserve neither so quit complaining (Score:1)

      by nicholas (3034)

      Perhaps the only answer is to stop all likely, even remotely, such individuals at the border: "Sorry America is Closed, please return to where you came from." -- is that the nation we should become?

      But Timothy McVeigh was born inside America, so that wouldn't have stopped him.

      Or do we preserve our need to keep private what toothpaste we are using to brush our teeth while we watch the 5th suicide bombing in an American mall in a month?

      Presumably turning people away at the border is somewhat akin to fir
    • Re:I guess you deserve neither so quit complaining (Score:1)

      by chaoticset (2105)

      It could be argued that this is essentially a "last 5%" kind of problem -- that there's a great bulk of things handled by the imperfect system, and that making the system perfect requires a huge amount of expenditure of some form.

      Witness: There are problems, of course, and random violence and whatnot in many places. But on the whole, people are (forgive me) benevolent, if not necessarily all that bright. Most people walk around not knowing any better and not being able enough to exact vengeances agains

      --
      
      ------------------------------
      You are what you think.