But it totally had a functioning democracy when the President had a team of henchmen breaking into the offices of his political opponents, during an era where the Joint Chiefs had a plan to depose the President if he was unwilling to abide by impeachment.
Certainly, democracy must have flourished during the time where the administration waged an undeclared war in Central America that sponsored death squads and brokered arms deals with the Iranians, in part as an effort to undermine the campaign of the preceding incumbent President.
And democracy was no doubt stronger during the era of the Vietnam Draft.
And it absolutely had a functioning democracy during a time when the House had a committee on "Un-American Activities" that subpoena'd citizens and had them testify under penalty of perjury --- a penalty that actually imprisoned Americans --- for merely sympathizing with the aims of Communism.
And surely we had a functioning democracy during the times where voting was controlled by literacy tests --- "Question 13: Spell Backwards, Forwards" and dogs and firehoses greeted people who dared challenge enforced, legal segregation.
The idea that it's never been worse in American, because some government agency might be reading your Facebook posts, is lunacy; an insult to people who actually stood up to real malignant government power. It's an easy mistake to make: it's the availability heuristic. You understand the implications of worldwide Internet surveillance, but barely remember (if you even knew about in the first place) HUAC.
I don't know what Carter's excuse is, though; he surely knows about Watergate, Iran-Contra, HUAC, Tuskegee, COINTELPRO, and the Hoover FBI. Carter is just being a coot.
You're right. We should all just sit down, shut the fark up and let the government do whatever it wants.
We should not raise a peep against the NSA, afterall, as you state - its lunacy to think we are not better off now than we were in the past. Further, who should complain about a government agency given supposed "legal" freedom to do absolutely anything it wants with any and all human communications across the globe!
All this in a time where the reach of the US military is literally global and can kill any stated enemy combatant at the push of a button. If you're innocent little snowflake is killed in that attack, gee, sorry about that, we must have had bad intel!
So, in the end, while your comment that things were also bad "back in the day" -- this in absolutely no way should preclude anyone from complaining about the excessive, tyrannical over-reach of the NSA and the USG. So to that end, I say fuck your argument, completely because its a cop-out to the fact that the world, and the NSA in particular, have gone to far.
I want my privacy, my freedom and my safety (even from the arm of the USG) and all at the same damn time!
Based on the words you used and the order in which you wrote them, that is how I took your comment. If that was not your point, then maybe I am being obtuse and over reactionary? But when you posted what you did, closing with a criticism of Carter being a "coot" -- you certainly appeared to me to be making the point: "The USG has always been thinly veiled totalitarianism disguised as democracy, and as such one should certainly not be surprised, nor objectionable to the current version of the same-old-same-old"
These actions, now and in hte past, are unacceptable. Period - under any government in any era.
Democracy has been trammeled before. This does not excuse it being trammeled again.
The scandals you list at the end of your comment had, largely if not entirely, investigations and consequences. The NSA scandals largely have not. (The chief counsel to the Director of National Intelligence got laughs when he testified that his office had tried and obviously failed to hide mass collection of phone records. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-i... )
I would say Jimmy Carter has admirably high standards for our country, except that's not it. The rest of us, generally speaking, simply have very low ones.
Individual freedom might be a difficult thing to measure quantitatively (aside from incarceration rates, which have been getting significantly worse), but Daniel Ellsberg recently argued that the Nixon era was far less threatening for whistleblowers: "Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago."
I didn't read Carter saying that it has never been worse in America, or even that it is worse now than at any previous moment in history, but that seems to be the sort of claim you're arguing against in this entire comment.
But it totally had a functioning democracy when the President had a team of henchmen breaking into the offices of his political opponents, during an era where the Joint Chiefs had a plan to depose the President if he was unwilling to abide by impeachment.
That president was forced to resign after public, televised House hearings showed the country what was going on.
Certainly, democracy must have flourished during the time where the administration waged an undeclared war in Central America that sponsored death squads and brokered arms deals with the Iranians, in part as an effort to undermine the campaign of the preceding incumbent President.
The public Iran contra hearings exposed what happened and sent Oliver North to jail.
And democracy was no doubt stronger during the era of the Vietnam Draft.
Nightly news programs showing the war and giving the count of US deaths led to protests that ended the war and the draft.
And it absolutely had a functioning democracy during a time when the House had a committee on "Un-American Activities" that subpoena'd citizens and had them testify under penalty of perjury --- a penalty that actually imprisoned Americans --- for merely sympathizing with the aims of Communism.
And those public hearings ultimately led to the downfall and disgrace of McCarthy.
And surely we had a functioning democracy during the times where voting was controlled by literacy tests --- "Question 13: Spell Backwards, Forwards" and dogs and firehoses greeted people who dared challenge enforced, legal segregation.
Would those tests have ever ended if they were not publicly known?
The idea that it's never been worse in American, because some government agency might be reading your Facebook posts, is lunacy; an insult to people who actually stood up to real malignant government power. It's an easy mistake to make: it's the availability heuristic. You understand the implications of worldwide Internet surveillance, but barely remember (if you even knew about in the first place) HUAC.
You're purposefully trivializing what has been going on. All of the situations you described were ended by public knowledge of what was going on. In the current case not only is there no public knowledge, there is the threat of imprisonment for those who discuss what they know publicly.
I don't know what Carter's excuse is, though; he surely knows about Watergate, Iran-Contra, HUAC, Tuskegee, COINTELPRO, and the Hoover FBI. Carter is just being a coot.
Carter has always listened to a different drummer. He's also been willing to speak for others. In this case he happens to be speaking out for us.
You're romanticizing. It's easy to talk about how public information solved these crises in hindsight, but in reality the US government did a far better job of concealing things from the public during the 20th century than it does now. As a concrete example: the entire Vietnam War was predicated on a lie that was only fully uncovered in 2005.
The NSA issue is just beginning. I'm not prepared at this stage, less than 2 months in, to declare a defeat for democracy.
Watergate, Iran-Contra, Vietnam, and McCarthyism each took years to run their course to a good resolution. The U.S. federal government is not optimized for speed, it's optimized to achieve the best result...eventually.
I believe you miss the point, which is summed up with this quote from the article "the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far."
Bad things have happened in the past but we shouldn't discredit what is happening now.
Just like the past, Americans as citizens of the world need to take action against the wrongs that are being done.
Carter said nothing (at least, nothing quoted in this article) about this being the first such moment. You've read something into his comment that just isn't there. Unless you have an expanded quote from some other source?
I would agree that his comment is somewhat hyperbolic, but I think there's enough truth in it that I'm glad he said it. I'm also glad to see him publicly defending Snowden.
And although there certainly have been times that our government kept secrets from us that we would have wanted to know, I am inclined to think the danger is greater now. If Carter's statement wakes even one person from the complacent slumber that so many seem to be enjoying, I think it will have served its purpose.
And we totally had a functioning democracy when nixon 'temporarily' turned the US dollar into fiat currency... so we can finance the perpetual wars, and vastly enrich the elite...
(Actually, I'm pretty sure democracy WAS functioning quite well in that instance. democracy is inherently unstable, per Aristotle)
I'm getting to really, really dislike even seeing or hearing the word 'democracy'. No coincidence, it's one of dubya's and bummer's favorite words.
Certainly, democracy must have flourished during the time where the administration waged an undeclared war in Central America that sponsored death squads and brokered arms deals with the Iranians, in part as an effort to undermine the campaign of the preceding incumbent President.
And democracy was no doubt stronger during the era of the Vietnam Draft.
And it absolutely had a functioning democracy during a time when the House had a committee on "Un-American Activities" that subpoena'd citizens and had them testify under penalty of perjury --- a penalty that actually imprisoned Americans --- for merely sympathizing with the aims of Communism.
And surely we had a functioning democracy during the times where voting was controlled by literacy tests --- "Question 13: Spell Backwards, Forwards" and dogs and firehoses greeted people who dared challenge enforced, legal segregation.
The idea that it's never been worse in American, because some government agency might be reading your Facebook posts, is lunacy; an insult to people who actually stood up to real malignant government power. It's an easy mistake to make: it's the availability heuristic. You understand the implications of worldwide Internet surveillance, but barely remember (if you even knew about in the first place) HUAC.
I don't know what Carter's excuse is, though; he surely knows about Watergate, Iran-Contra, HUAC, Tuskegee, COINTELPRO, and the Hoover FBI. Carter is just being a coot.