Clarification

2001-10-5 00:01:00

Larry writes:
"(2) Additional government powers of surveillance, such as examining e-mail, web surfing activities etc of suspects."

The above statement of yours is my basis for believing that you advocate increased powers of surveillance for government. It is not my intention to dispute what you have not said, or implied.

JJ:
I'm glad to have opportunity to correct you here for you misread my post. The three items I listed were prefaced with the following statement:

"There are a number of other measures which have been proposed."

The three statements in my article were current proposals by others NOT myself. I was listing that which others were proposing and commenting on them. You need to look at my comments on these proposals to correctly disagree with me; otherwise you may find yourself thinking you disagree when you do not.

Here was my comment:
"I would support some types of surveillance if it were limited to real terrorism or horrendous crime. I would not support it for lesser crimes including drug traffic and an increase of powers should be definitely forbidden by the IRS. The honest citizen has enough worries about paying taxes as it is now."

Do you disagree with this? Do you not support even "some" surveillance for the terrorists?

I did not name the types I would support in that post but did elaborate more on this later.

Larry:
It is in the details of implementation that I sometimes question your application of the principle of freedom.

JJ:
Perhaps you could give me an example from something I have actually supported.

Larry:
Secondly, and as I said earlier, I think you have a naive trust in our government and do not clearly see the rot that has set into it.

JJ:
Believe me, my friend I have no naive trust in the government or any other organization with appointed authorities.

On the other hand, even with its flaws the government is not completely useless. Our government is the only tool we have at present to bring the terrorists to justice and I support the logical steps they are taking in this direction.

We can't just call the government evil and oppose all that it does without examining it on a case by case basis.

The problem of the "rot" you mention occurs in all governments and organizations where there is appointed authorities. The only reason problems in the U.S. government stand out to many is because we have more power than others. The line of least resistance for appointed authorities is to use their power in the direction of their job description colored by the desire for personal power and praise. Until this direction is held in check by some outside force, it becomes destructive.

In a totalitarian regime these appointed authorities are often given free reign, but in the democratic countries the appointed authorities are sometimes caught and redirected. Thus there are indeed abuses of power in the democratic countries, but I do not think we realize how much worse it would be if we did not have a freely elected government that still has some power to hold agencies responsible.

I have spent thousands of words writing about the solution to this freedom issue and in a nutshell it boils down to promoting the molecular concept of firing appointed authorities and replacing them by elected ones.

Larry:
Perhaps, but are you are aware that this power has not been used even once? The government is over timid about using this power instead of being over aggressive as you assume.

You need to take a look at the facts because this is simply not true.

JJ:
You may be right. I was going from a statement made last night by Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Report. He is usually very careful about his facts and I find he is normally quite accurate. He stated in commenting about this detaining power, that we have not used it once since 1995 when it was implemented by Bill Clinton.

It will be interesting to see if he reads any letters tonight from anyone who may correct him.