[ARCHIVED THREAD] - I seriously doubt... (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 7/22/2005 4:12:45 AM EDT
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... looking in my bag before I board a subway train will cause the disintegration of our Constitution. We are at war. Many people don't grasp this because the fighting since the 9/11 attacks has been on the other side of the world. We are complacent because our lives are fairly normal and we aren't very inconvenienced in our routines. We are at war. There are people who are determined to kill us because we are Americans. Young, old, male, female, children, it doesn't matter to them. You can't reason with them and they don't want your empathy. They just want to kill you. We are at war. We have people here who are more terrified of a policeman looking in their bag in the train station than they are of the terrorist who wants to blow up the station with them in it. We are at war. The whiney, liberal, ACLU types who try to hobble the police, FBI, etc. from doing their jobs are the modern day version of the liberals who micromanaged the Vietnam war, tying the hands of the military and enabling the NVA to come out on top in the end. We are fighting an enemy who is extreme in his hatred for us, his ideology, and his determination to throw his life away in an effort to kill as many of us as he can. We need to meet them with extreme measures to defeat them. Frankly, peeking inside my backpack isn't an extreme measure, and anyone who thinks it is really doesn't understand what's going on. |
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Within context, we aren't talking about submitting to the tyranny of King George III. We are talking about prudent, moderate measures to try and prevent bombing like those in London. You can't possibly mean that you'd rather have trains blowing up than have somebody's bag randomly searched??? 
You'll quote Franklin until your ox is gored. |
submitting to a bag search is hardly an abrogation of liberty. compare bag searches to: He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; For imposing taxes on us without our consent; For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury; For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses; For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies; For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments; For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. |
Really, What if you (or me) is legally CCW at the time of the "search", then what? |
Officer here's my permit. Have a nice day. |
And yet NONE of you have explained how the right to get on public transporation without being searched is "essential liberty." |
Where does prudent stop? Will you just keep agreeing with these measures until we've got absolutely no freedoms left? Will you deem cameras on every street corner prudent? How about cameras in our homes? Hey, we're at war, right? Have to preserve the so-called 'safety', right? If you're doing nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about, right? George Orwell was a frigging soothsayer. 
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Maybe down in YOUR neck of the woods, people around here are wound a little tighter, sir. |
From another thread:
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That lack logic does not work. It's the same as saying if you don't have kids you should get a break on taxes because you don't have child in the public school system. |
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"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. " A bag check doesn't sound too "unreasonable." |
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated |
my political beliefs are based on that but i'm seriously conflicted on the whole damn situation. do we err on the side of liberty or on the side of hunting these cocksuckers down and killing them??? |
It's just mind-boggling to me that people are actually making things easier for terrorists in their opposition to having bags searched before boarding public transportation.
Reality still hasn't hit home for you. 
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Exactly. Even if it's the simple matter of a chick carrying her vibrator in her purse and not having to go through the embarrassment of a JBT seeing it or pulling it out and checking it, that's enough. They simply don't have the right to go through your bag. Any more than I do or some other stranger. |
Exactly. Ray Charles could see the difference. |
It begins with calling a spade a spade. Search those who have been causing the trouble. Not just random searches because you don't want to offend anyone. It is quite obvious that such searches are just a show. There is no such thing as true safety. At least not without a complete elimination of personal rights. Say bags are searched everywhere. Then the nutjobs will just start carrying bombs in their rectums. What then? Will everyone have to submit to a cavity search before boarding public transportation? Hey, it's prudent and for the common good, eh? And it will save me the $15 copay for that prostate checkup. Just one big slippery slope. And sometimes one must dig their heel in and climb back up that slope. |
Highways and streets are public. Would you feel it is reasonable, in the name of safety, to be searched every time you left your property? It is true that this would prevent anyone from setting an IED on the side of the road somewhere, or taking a bomb to a public place, but would it be reasonable? You might say that it would be impractical (to have enough manpower to search someone every time they left private property), but would it be reasonable?
Do you think we lose this right if we use anything publicly owned? |
| to me, it ain't about being "inconvenienced", it really and truly is about freedom and what makes this country what it is. but i'm searched at the airport, i'm searched at the courthouse, and i'm searched at some gov't bldgs. so, i dunno. maybe it's cuz this is so close to these bombing incidences it seems like a knee-jerk reaction by the .gov...and when the .gov has a knee-jerk reaction it's usually a knee right to the crotch of civil liberties... |
Do you realize that you are also saying, "As long as a terrorist isn't carrying a sign that says, 'I'm going to blow up the train", he should be free to go about his business without the embarrassment of anybody taking a peek in his rucksack?" Think about this in broader terms than your inconvenience. Terrorism is pretty damned inconvenient. |
| I think its like going to a rock concert, if you want to use the service you are consenting to a possible search/pat down. Dont like it dont use the service. Now who is going to get miffed by this? Thats right people who want as many people as possible DEAD now. Thats all |
Yep, freedom is a bitch, ain't it? |
gov't id's then? submit your request to the feds along with your prints and a photo and wait for the background check. if you're deemed "safe" you get a card that allows you to use public facilities. but it has to be reapproved yearly or every five years. you can't buy a car without the same background check. can't get on an airplane. can't buy a gun. can't check out certain books. can't go to certain "safe" cities. how about can't go anywhere with a population over x-thousand or with .gov offices? at what point do you say i've given up enough freedom? what about bomb dogs? i'd rather have them patrolling everywhere. that way you don't have to bother with bag checks. |
How about this story. "Forty-three people died this morning, with another seventy-two seriously hurt, in a subway bombing in New York City. The explosion took place as people were queing up to have ther bags searched and the explosion was triggered by an officer opening the suspected bag. Meanwhile Osama Bin Laden and his followers celebrated their victory as more and more Americans are living in fear and terror" Its a catch 22 anyway you look at it. |
Wow. That's the most flippant comment I've ever seen. So you're OK with watching carnage of innocent people on the evening news, as long as it doesn't inconvenience you. Look beyond yourself. It was a pretty damned inconvenient situation for the people on the trains & bus on 7/7. |
As long as we keep fighting them with gloves on, we wil lose more and more freedoms. We need to do what needs to be done in the Middle East but unfortunately we cannot. |
But it also won't stop anything either. A cop asks a terrorist to stop so he can search his bag durring the jammed early morning or afternoon commute and what does ol terrorist do, he just detonates it then and still kills people. So it doesn't stop them and it doesn't deter them. Doing this is like saying passing a law that says it's illegal to use a gun in a crime will stop criminals from using guns in crimes. It's nota deterant. It is only a false sence of security. |
It isn't about inconvenience, it is about freedom. That's what that little clusterfuck in Iraq is about, isn't it? |
So let's toss up our hands and do nothing? |
Just out of curiosity, do you belong to the ACLU? The things you're saying could come straight from their press releases. |
It sure as hell is to me. I'm a white boy, I don't even come close to fitting the profile of a terrorist, and a muslim terrorist at that, to me it is unreasonable for the police to search me or my bag in the guise of trying to stop terrorism. It is unreasonable for them to seach the little old lady, the punk rocker goth kid. It is unreasonable for them to search those that don't fit that profile without something more substantial than "trying to stop terrorists" that is way to broad. |
Kind of, but what I'm really saying is they should search ALL middle-easterners not nubile co-eds because the JBT is a perv and wants the searches to be "random". Profiling is the way to go. We have a well established profile of the enemy...let's use it. THAT would be REASONABLE. ETA: It's not convenience I'm worried about, it's liberty. |
Under that kinda logic, will it be ok to begin searching bags after a lot of people get blown up? |
No but freedome to use PUBLIC transportation paid for by your tax dollers is something that you should expect to be able to use without being hasseled for a very broad and damn near all encompassing reason. Being able to fly is a totaly different thing as that is a private business. It is not public transportation and as such they could make you do what ever they want in order to be able to fly. Getting on a city buss or train system is different. |
I concur that profiling should be used, but also keep in mind that we must employ other methods. Anybody remember how the bomb got on Pan Am 103? It was made by a man who would have fit this profile, but it wasn't carried on board by him. |
We are already doing things, but what you are advocating won't deter a terrorist hell bent on meeting his god. If you want to start doing "random" rearches, than start them by randomly checking those that most fit the profile of a terrorist. Thats a start. When 80yo women start bombing subways, then start searching them, when 20somthing goth kids or suburban white kids start doing it, start searching them. You have to start where the problem is, and the problem is not with every group, it's with a certain group and thats where we need to star looking. |
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For some people, the cost of liberty is somebody else's life, and they'll gladly pay it. Heck, many will even say that they would willingly face death at the hands of a suicide bomber than suffer the ignominy of even a minor intrusion by an officer. But realistically, stop and consider for a moment if your wife or mother or child was on a train that was blown up. Would you just shrug your shoulders and say, "That's the price of liberty", or might you start thinking, "Maybe checking bags isn't that big of a deal?" |