Worgen said:
dragoongfa said:
McAfee may be crazy but the potential implications to everyone's freedoms if this goes ahead have been highlighted by many others as well.
In the end Benjamin Franklin put it best:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Its a good quote but it also ignores the fact that we have always done what he warned about. Look at ww2 where we interned Japanese Americans, or the McCarthy era where we black listed a lot of people cause they might be commies. I'm fairly sure even in the revolutionary era we were doing similar things as well, but its been too long since I had a good history class.
And most of those times acting like that not only didn't solve a problem but actually brought either shame or more problems down the road.
The internment of Japanese Americans was at the least hypocritical when contrasted with the treatment of German and Italian Americans; at worse it was a cowardly and abhorrent act against 'enemies' who the US government could easily strike at the time.
McCarthyism on the other hand, I have yet to see evidence that any of its many victims had any intention in harming the USA.
I consider myself right wing conservative and as such I do agree that during times of crisis certain measures have to be taken in order for the society to get through that crisis with as little damage as possible. However such measures must be for a singular purpose and only in order to combat the emergency that is that purpose. There has never been any reason for a society to sacrifice certain freedoms for an indefinite amount of time.