According To YouGov Poll, Snowden Support Declining Among Americans 658
eldavojohn writes "A recent poll from the YouGov consisting of one thousand responses shows that Snowden's support among Americans has shifted. Now, according to the poll, more Americans think he did the wrong thing rather than the right thing when asked: 'Based on what you've heard, do think Snowden's leak of top-secret information about government surveillance programs to the media was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do?' The results and breakdown are available online (PDF). Without getting into racial or political breakdowns, the results now show that 38% say he did the wrong thing, 33% say he did the right thing and 29% remain undecided about the results of his actions. Instead of charging the populace into action Snowden may be facing apathy at best and public disapproval at worst."
Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
From The Q&A Snowden had with readers of The Guardian:
Q: What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?
A: This country is worth dying for.
Despite this latest poll, I still think Snowden was right. Future generations will hail him as the hero he is. And that's coming from a non-American...
Should we be surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every single issue over the last couple decades has been met with more and more apathetic responses. The problem is going to get far worse before it gets better.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Whistleblower: The government is watching you. The wealthy elite are enslaving you. The politicians are oppressing you. These facts are obvious, and I have proof.
Public: Meh.
No wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
...when you condider the 24/7 anti-Snowdon propaganda in the US-media.
Shooting the messenger has a long tradition.
Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this really a surprise? Most sections of the media have spent the last month or so trying to portray Snowden as a traitor, who's weakened the national security of several countries, endangered inter-governmental cooperation (because now they know they were all spying on each other rather than just assuming they were), is possibly a bit weird and is now "palling around" with Russian and various South American states who are "enemies of teh freedoms".
In that context, of course peoples' opinions are going to start to shift.
5% shift (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow does this headline have things reversed.
Edward Snowden has been subjected to a month long attack campaign. This started with go after his girlfriend for being a pole dancer. It followed with other negative news stories and criticism by major politicians. From there there was a federal espionage indictment. He then had to flee the country and the USA has gone to extraordinary lengths putting pressure on countries to isolate him. The media has been mainly complicit. And after all that is approval rating has dropped a mere 5 points.
That's the story.
Of course they are going to vote against him (Score:4, Insightful)
Declining support by creating desinterest (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should we be surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, who cares what a YouGov poll says?
YouGov is one of those pollsters that will show whatever you pay them to show by selecting biased samples.
I believe it was them who at the last general election in the UK on the same day put support for the Liberal Democrats at something like 19% and 29% because two different papers had asked for 2 different poll outcomes to support their chosen supported party (FWIW the actual result was 23% at the election). That's not in the realm of legitimate statistical error margins and is proof of outright biased sampling.
So the problem is that whilst this may be an independent study it may also not. Given that we know for a fact they do seem to produce results to order it's impossible to tell which of their polls are and aren't biased. The safest option then is to just ignore them or risk being grossly misinformed.
Re: No wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously.. We have journalists suggesting journalists should be executed as traitors for doing journalism and we don't think this s all part of an organized propaganda effort?
Re: Terrible news... (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree. Anyone who truly believes in a cause should abandon it as soon as possible to face the assigned consequences, thus proving sincerity.
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
but how many people are actually willing to step up? As it turns out, very few.
Which is why guys like Snowden deserve an enormous amount of latitude. The relatively few among us who are willing to put their lives on the line for the causes we give lip-service too deserve our unwavering support.
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Which is precisely why the government officials that are required to swear into the office are required to uphold and protect the CONSTITUTION.
NOT THE PEOPLE.
Not the government, not the white house, not the justice system but the LAW. The US Founders knew that relying on people making right choices is a terrible idea, democracy doesn't work at all, it quickly dissents into authoritarian nightmare because it promises too everything to everybody for nothing (actually it promises to subsidize the unproductive majority by stealing from the productive minority). Eventually you destroy what you tax and this includes all types of taxes.
From just the tax rates on income and property, to various rules, laws and regulations that government imposes upon business to buy votes (be it minimum wage, various laws that give employees special powers to sue employers for any perceived 'wrongdoing', any kind of entitlement to the employers and customers that end up being obligations upon the employers and producers).
This eventually ends up destroying the productive class of people and destroys incentives for people even trying to become productive, here is a good satirical overview of the problem [youtube.com].
Eventually the mob eats and chases away the part of the society that actually is productive and pays for all of this conspicuous consumption by the mob and then the society is doomed to failure because of the failing economy. So the principles are the same for anything else that concerns rule of law - equal justice under the law, privacy from government intrusion, transparency of government in the first place.
ALL democracies are destined to failure, that is not an option, it's an inevitable consequence of the rule of mob. That's why to keep working the system is supposed to set those types of feelings and desires aside and concentrate on constantly and vigilantly protecting the rule of law, equality before law, equality of opportunity by providing equal application of law, prevention of discrimination by the mob, by the government. Once those concepts are breached, the society is on the path to self destruction and unfortunately I have never found an example in history where the society actually stopped short of destroying itself this way once it became democratic, AFAIC history shows that the destruction is imminent.
Re: No wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course I'm not surprised. Goebels would be proud to see how well his lessons were learned and laugh on the irony of how his victors would call themselves moraly superior.
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
most people aren't even willing to see a 1% increase in their taxes in order to fix this nation's problems.
Tax increases won't fix the campaign corruption, erosion of rights, separation of church and state, nor establish a government who is working for the people. Stop beating that drum.
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad reality of this is that, apparently, telling on a misbehaving government is a risk to ones live.
The reason people dislike him is, IMHO, because he reminds them of their inability to act on their government.
Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
The public may not have clued in, but the "journalists" are aware they Snowden also outed them for their incompetence and corruption.
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Very few people would support it, because very few people would believe that the tax money would actually go towards fixing that problem. The government will just spend it however they damn well please, as with anything else.
And even if the problem was fixed by the tax, they would keep the tax as permanent to spend elsewhere. Many taxes are declared "temporary" only to be made permanent later.
Maybe it's worth dying for the country, but it sure as hell ain't worth it dying for the politicians.
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
The proper channels do not work. There is no "right" way to be a whistleblower. The systems are in place to define any possible effective attempt to whistleblow something this big as "wrong".
He is rocking the boat, don't rock the boat (Score:5, Insightful)
Life for most of us is already complex enough. We know we are in a tiny sinking life raft with an insane incompetent captain on a hostile ocean filled with sharks. If someone then starts to show just how leaky the boat is by poking at its holes... well, they can expect a punch in the face.
Those that are upset by all the revelations are the people who thought the captain was competent and sane, the ocean was our natural home, the raft an ocean lines and the sharks to be dolphins.
In reality of course, the spying while much worse then what the dreamers thought is probably in reality far less effective. If it worked, they would be capturing more terrorists and criminals. Most of us in the real world DREAM of an effective secret shadow government ruled by aliens, it would mean that for once somebody intelligent was in charge. Or at least something with a plan. It doesn't matter that the plan is to harvest your organs, at least it is a goddamn plan.
Take the attitude in the US towards veterans. The average American KNOWS the average US veteran is a war criminal. Plenty of examples even very clear once like the Mai Lai masacre. Point out however that just because someone is a vet, they are therefor NOT automatically worthy of worship and they will spout all sorts of nonsense, even going so far as liberals stating that orders are orders.
The same people who cry foul (justly so) over Japan worhshipping its war criminals, can't see the tree in their own eye.
Because it rocks the boat. And people HATE that.
Ideally people want today to be followed by tomorrow and for it to be not to much worse.
If you read about daily life in the death camps of the holocaust, the normalcy of it all is the most shocking. Life went on, even if all around you it didn't. The same is true of children raised in the most appalling conditions. Humans adapt, to ANYTHING. It allows us to survive. Both Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett have written about this, we all need to be slightly drunk all the time because if we ever saw the world sober, we would lose our minds.
Think about this, while you are reading me prattling on, children are being hurt and killed, are dying of hunger RIGHT now and all your are doing is wishing you had mod points to mod me up/down. YOU (and I, because I am prattling on while I could be saving someone) can't deal with the real world all the time.
And snowden tried to force us to do so, to see the man behind the curtain and we hate him for it. Well not hate, just wish he would go away so we can pretend the world ain't that bad after all.
Want proof? Red nose day. A british charity event were they gather money through comedy. It is VERY succesful. Because it offsets the horrors for which the money is needed with plenty of entertainment and happy endings to make us forget how horrid it all is. Charity organizers know this, you show a BIT of misery, the photogenic part because if you just show thousands of dead children, nobody would donate anything because nobody would watch. Show however a story of how a child went from carrying water all day to sitting in a happy classroom and you can't accept the donations fast enough.
Snowden showed us the Auswitz that is our privacy and we can't cope. It is to much, to far. He didn't just rock the boat, he nuked it out of existence. And have us nothing in return. He didn't give us any tools to stop Prism. EVERYONE is in favor. The only ones speaking out against it so far are SOME tea party members and socialist semi-dictators. In Europe NOBODY has spoken out against it.
We can now either face the full machinations of the system OR wish Snowden went away.
I am betting on the latter. Because I am a old middle class man who frankly has every bit of fight beaten out of him. I used to be an activist for a local union, then had people who fought me every way demand that they get all the benefits they didn't fight for... let someone else fight this fight. I am done and frankly I can see why some people walk f
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, most people aren't even willing to see a 1% increase in their taxes in order to fix this nation's problems.
It's not that most people aren't willing to give another 1%, it's that we're so pissed off with how wasted and mismanaged the first 20-40% are being handled we can't bare to just heap more on and have it be wasted yet again.
I'm in the US, when I add up my federal and state income taxes, property tax, sales tax, meal tax, fuel tax, excise tax, as well as all the other little misc. taxes and fees mandated by the government it ends up about 40% of my gross income.
The government will ALWAYS want just one more percent...
So please don't confuse people not wanting to pay more taxes with not loving their country, USA or otherwise.
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who is a NSA contractor, I would retort that we do a lot more good than bad
Of course.
so I think the ends justify the means.
Of course you do.
I don't know about you, but it is my firm believe that individual liberties should take precedence over safety. If you can't save people without violating their rights, then perhaps you should simply accept the casualties.
Re:Maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
Right or Left, we choose to disbelieve math and science when it doesn't fit our view of the world.
Disbelieving an internet poll is another matter entirely.
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight. The problem under discussion is the government recording the trail of every email and phone call, and you think the answer is to give them more money? For what, so that they can do bigger and better tracking?
Re:Weasely "interpretation" of Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Odd, ain't it? How the US resemble more and more the USSR after the USSR is no longer...
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
"well the government finds my cute pictures of cats, my kinky texts to my gf, and my like of korean-mexican fusion, so what?"
To brag to the world he holds no controversial opinions, does no activism, thinks nothing more about fitting into his sister's jeans, foodie obsessions, and the latest pop culture trends and celebrities he worships. Of course the implication is that everyone else is doing bad things, and he's naturually better.
Its a sole reminder there is a social latter and dissent is a good excuse for competitors in climbing it to kick you down a notch for sticking up for your rights.
Re:He is rocking the boat, don't rock the boat (Score:5, Insightful)
While I certainly condem the spying, full out, and sympathize with snowden, its extreme.
Re:Weasely "interpretation" of Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
You Americans deserve what you're about to get.
I suspect that this has more to to with the limited public attention span fostered by the 30-second soundbite that passes for journalism these days. I don't think the symptom is unique to the US. All of the media seem to be in a conspiracy to disengage peoples' brains from actually thinking about what they are reading.
I suspect this is why so many of the media manage to get away with recycling the same syndicated garbage day after day (or sometimes for weeks on end). This is why I absolutely refuse to take out subscriptions to any of the major media.
A Hero (Score:2, Insightful)
Snowden is a Hero. And Americans are stupid to believe the propaganda their TVs tout at them. And by stating this I probably will be unable to travel to USA just like those two British tourists where not able to travel there.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure most people work for a living, and it's a small minority - about 1%, in fact - that steals from said productive people to support their parasitic lifestyle. And that would be a minor annoyance by itself, except that's not enough for them - no, they play at being "businessmen" by recklessly endangering the livelihood of the productive majority for their economic poker games, and then start throwing insults at the very same people who's labour supports them.
Who are these mystical "producers", since they are apparently not the employees in your mind? And why are you upset that the working class and the owning class define their relationship through laws, given your own insistence on the importance of the rule of it? Does it simply burn you that some laws actually side with the serfs rather than the parasites on top?
All systems are destined to failure due to nothing lasting forever, it's the inevitable consequence of time passing in a reality where chaos theory holds. Your assertion is dramatic but meaningless.
So how does that equality before the law work when both parties are responsible for paying for their lawyers and the other has thousands of times as much available cash? How does equality of opportunity work when taking any opportunity likely has investment and opportunity costs and one party can pay them and the other can't?
Re:He is rocking the boat, don't rock the boat (Score:5, Insightful)
We know we are in a tiny sinking life raft with an insane incompetent captain on a hostile ocean filled with sharks.
Bad time to be a small furry creature then, eh, a chinchilla perhaps... but I digress. Interesting post what you say is right in some respects, however just because, as you say you dont have any fight left in you, just because things are SNAFU, does not mean you and people like you cannot be passively supportive, which in its own way does help young are more motivated people change the system for the better wherever possible in a peer support kind of way. Of course I am not telling you anything you dont already know - I just thought it worth a minute to prattle on with you out loud because after reading your post, a weak mind might decide that it is all useless and just why bother. Well it is worth the bother, we (some of us) can do our little bit to change our world for the better, roll back injustices, expose powerful corrupt petty self interested people, even in the face off crafty devious "news" like this that is taking questionable methods to arrive and questionable conclusions all in order to tell use what we should be thinking with some semblance of credibility (again, that a weaker mind might buy into). As mentioned elsewhere in this thread - this is here as news right here and now because "they" are afraid, afraid that the curtain has been lifted even for a moment. Afraid that right now an unknown number of young motivated people are doing their little bit to change the status quo. For example all the geeks I can hear right now, frantically coding encryption solutions, plugins and gizmos that give the middle finger to the man, blind him even slightly to other peoples business, and in so doing reduce his absolute power just a tiny fraction (I accept might be overstating the case - maybe not afraid, just a little pissed off).
Think back through time, England was nothing more than a bunch of lords who owned all the land, all the people on it, everything they ever did, said, married or ate was their business, no privacy from the tax collector. Nothing changed for centuries. Your post is like the old guy sipping (swilling?) on the mead he illegally brewed, the last remnant of his earlier activist self, trying to tell the young uns that yes it sucks the lord can fuck any of their daughters/wives up in the castle whenever he likes, kick the them off the land they work to die next winter because they did not produce enough last year, send them all off uneducated untrained to a die in pointless war that only reinforce the lords holdings, cut off their hands or their tong if they complain about anything... that this is how the world is just accept it dont complain there is no point. There will always be a lord and they are all just dreamers if they think different or that anything can change to better "your lot in life". Look where we are today by comparison only a few short centuries later. Lucky for us all that not everyone took that old guys words as absolute truth.
the answer your looking for is 42. It is just that the time frame your looking at it is too short so it does not look like the right answer...
This libertarian/Ayn Rand bullshit got modded 5!?! (Score:0, Insightful)
It a nut shell. Democracy is bad because the useless eaters eventually learn to organize and use government prevent the wonderful rich people from oppressing them to serfdom. The rich only want whats best for everyone and you should never challenge their wisdom or methods. So when you are only making $2 day and are near starvation. Don't look to government or unions to help, blame yourselves. It's your selfishness for not wanting to work for free and need for food and shelter is simply holding the productive class back from improving your living conditions.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for providing the view of the political class, which views all this as perfectly okay, and can't understand why anyone would be upset. After all, you have secretly decided that secretly keeping all this data is okay because there is a secret court that makes secret decisions and secret warrants and the people really need to just trust it all to be perfectly fine.
Of course there is abuse, just as Russ Tice has pointed out [youtube.com]. That's easy because it's all in secret, and everybody is on the same team. You think if someone goes beyond the 7 days they are allowed to listen to calls without a warrant that anyone is going to raise a stink? The secret warrants are always granted anyway, and none of those guys are going to say anything about going beyond the secret rules. Hell, even when cops get caught on camera beating up citizens all the other cops circle the wagon and defend them and act like it was all perfectly okay - they were just "protecting the public". No wonder Snowden decided he had to get out of the country before he said anything. You deviate from being a team player in that environment and you're toast.
In the NSA game, there is NO scrutiny whatsoever. No citizen cell phones. No public court records. No accountability other than all the foxes pointing at all the other foxes going "No, no, we have rules and a system and we're all watching each other." Then a few hens go missing and SURPRISE! None of the foxes saw anything - must have been a terrorist that slipped through their oh-so-important net.
Those of us NOT part of your political class are pretty outraged, not just at what Snowden revealed (we pretty much knew it was happening), but the entire attitude of you and members of the political class entirely dismissing any complaints as unfounded, and telling people they need to just "trust" them. Clapper admitted to lying, and why isn't he in jail? Martha Stewart spent years in prison for less. Oh, but Martha isn't part of the club, is she? It's disgusting watching the entire federal apparatus lying and stealing and acting like it's all perfectly okay for them to do while they kill and imprison the people for lesser crimes, and damn Snowden for making them have to defend themselves.
And of course this is all backwards for a functional free society, which values personal privacy, but abhors government privacy. The US government is now advocating the opposite - that government should be doing all of these things in secret, and that the citizens should be okay with having no privacy at all. Transparency in government is the first requirement for a consensual governing. Without that, only tyranny can result.
Ahh the age old lie, (Score:0, Insightful)
implying the people are lazy and the wealthy are productive.
the unproductive majority by stealing from the productive minority
- The PRODUCTIVE MAJORITY are the working poor that work from their teen years until their death beds.
- The UNPRODUCTIVE MINORITY sucking the government tit are companies like Google with 3% effective tax rates, and other companies like Halliburton and Lockheed that exist solely due to government tit sucking.
You can move to Somolia and see your failed precepts in action, virtually no government and free reign to anyone with money, firepower, and the willingness to use them both. Leave my country alone.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Who or what are the government officials who want to prosecute Snowden protecting? Are they protecting the Constitution or themselves?
If the founders were so worried about the people's decisions, why did they bother mentioning things like "we the people" that emphasized a nation made up of free citizens?
I'm not sure who you are saying is being attacked when you say "productive class". Are you saying that only people who own business are productive? How do you explain Dept. of Labor reports that say something like 'productivity increased .3% in the last quarter' then? Workers had nothing to do with that? It's not just the owners of capital who are taxed. The workers are taxed too. And last I heard, corporate exec compensation was more than 100x what the average employee pay was. Doesn't sound like they are suffering to me
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
And Clapper actually spoke the truth, as it is understood things.
WHAT!?!?! LOL!!! They must be paying you a lot for "coding" if it prompts you to defend their actions with this kind of BS. Clapper has admitted to lying [webpronews.com], about the best he has done is claim that he used the least untruthful statement he could come up with [realclearpolitics.com]. Those of us not lawyers or politicians call that "lying."
You HAVE to be kidding me. You do not think that AQ or taliban is a threat to America? You do not think that 9/11 occurred? And the fact that the Chinese, Iranian, North Koreans, and even Russians (quasi issue here) are spying on us with a full court press is not an issue? Seriously? If you think that they are not a threat, then you have an issue with your logic. Or should I be asking, what nation you are from?
Al Queida? Really? There are plenty of "threats" to national security. As I said, protecting from those threats must not compromise the rule of law, and the rights of American citizens. This level of domestic spying does just that. And since it's not even effective enough to prevent things like the Boston Marathon bombing, there is no reason to violate people's rights for it. In fact, there is no justification for violating the Constitutional restrictions on the Federal government's authority, even for the claimed purpose of "protecting the American people."
And you claim that the constitution has been violated, yet, you provide ZERO proof of it. All you have is a bunch of accusations, with no proof.
Apparently, you haven't read it. There is ample evidence that the Fourth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the First Amendment, and the Enumerated Powers in Article 1 have all been violated.
The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties. This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity.
BTW, I asked how YOU would safeguard this, and yet, you come up with NOTHING? Why not?
Safeguard what? America? That's up to the Americans, not secret spy networks. You know what it really takes to prevent another 9/11? Do it once. That's it. As soon as word got out on 9/11 of planes being flown into buildings, the fourth plane could not be used the same way. The so-called "shoe bomber" was stopped by citizens on the plane. Same thing for the underwear bomber. Secret spying and TSA didn't do anything to stop that, the People did. You should trust them, not the liars, thieves, and elitist bullies in the Federal government.
Re:He is rocking the boat, don't rock the boat (Score:4, Insightful)
The average veteran in the USA is a war criminal. How is he supposed to demonstrate this fact other than by giving examples? Was Iraq invading the USA? Was Afghanistan? The people who fly the drones, are they fighting people who are attacking the USA?
The answer to all these things is clearly no. When people volunteer to take part in the US military, they volunteer to travel to some foreign country the other end of the Earth and bomb, snipe and shoot their way through the local populace to achieve extremely vague and open ended "goals" which are self evidently bullshit (bringing freedom or whatever). They volunteer knowing full well what they're going to do, how pointless it all is, and they sign up anyway.
How Americans go out of their way to engage in hero worship of vets is one of the most troubling and pathetic parts of US culture. You don't see it to anywhere near the same extent in other parts of the world. Maybe people if directly challenged would say "yes I support the troops" because any other answer is picking a fight, but the anti-Iraq-war rallies were the largest anti war protests in recorded history. That shows you what people really think of the military. I'll know there's a chance for the US when a politician gets up and says, "no, I don't support the troops". Not holding my breath.
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is precisely why the government officials that are required to swear into the office are required to uphold and protect the CONSTITUTION.
NOT THE PEOPLE.
Not the government, not the white house, not the justice system but the LAW. The US Founders knew that relying on people making right choices is a terrible idea, democracy doesn't work at all, it quickly dissents into authoritarian nightmare because it promises too everything to everybody for nothing (actually it promises to subsidize the unproductive majority by stealing from the productive minority). Eventually you destroy what you tax and this includes all types of taxes.
From just the tax rates on income and property, to various rules, laws and regulations that government imposes upon business to buy votes (be it minimum wage, various laws that give employees special powers to sue employers for any perceived 'wrongdoing', any kind of entitlement to the employers and customers that end up being obligations upon the employers and producers).
This eventually ends up destroying the productive class of people and destroys incentives for people even trying to become productive, here is a good satirical overview of the problem [youtube.com].
Eventually the mob eats and chases away the part of the society that actually is productive and pays for all of this conspicuous consumption by the mob and then the society is doomed to failure because of the failing economy. So the principles are the same for anything else that concerns rule of law - equal justice under the law, privacy from government intrusion, transparency of government in the first place.
ALL democracies are destined to failure, that is not an option, it's an inevitable consequence of the rule of mob. That's why to keep working the system is supposed to set those types of feelings and desires aside and concentrate on constantly and vigilantly protecting the rule of law, equality before law, equality of opportunity by providing equal application of law, prevention of discrimination by the mob, by the government. Once those concepts are breached, the society is on the path to self destruction and unfortunately I have never found an example in history where the society actually stopped short of destroying itself this way once it became democratic, AFAIC history shows that the destruction is imminent.
So then, you apparently believe the USA is not a democracy and never has been, which seems to me to be a bit disingenuous. Democracy does not have to mean pure mob rule, it's a principle and guiding philosophy that can be implemented in various different ways, with varying degrees of power being given over to the populace. The US constitution and the system of government it created currently stand as the most enduring in history, so we must be doing something right. As for the notion that pure democracy must always self-destruct, history doesn't support that even if you are indeed referring strictly to mob rule. Historically there have been precious few examples of pure democracy to go by, but I would wager that in terms of longevity democracies fare no better or worse than any number of other forms of government. In fact I would go further, and say that a certain degree a democracy is absolutely necessary for a post-industrial society to be both successful and enduring. Your viewpoint seems to be that the majority of the people are just too stupid or too greedy to rule themselves successfully, but where's the proof? Even animals often act altruistically in social situations, why are you so sure humans can't do the same? Until you show me some research to back up your assertions that democracies must inevitably implode, I will choose to put my faith in democracy. True, the USA does seem to be headed down the tubes at the moment, but this seems to be happening precisely because we have become less democratic than we used to be, not more. Furthermore, your thesis that high taxes always destroy
Re:Weasely "interpretation" of Constitution (Score:2, Insightful)
It constantly surprises me just how fucking stupid some people are. You want to point out to us where that "northern wasteland gulag" is, and where people are placed into slave labor conditions, while fighting over food and beaten to near death for trivial offences like "speaking out of turn" and "looking at a guard."
As a point, the US government has been doing some damned stupid things. And all the rest, but believing that "western agents posed a more serious threat to the USSR" is blind, stupid ignorance. And let me just say that as someone who had a family member spend 25 years in a soviet gulag for "refusing to give his cows to the state."
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you get yours? From the people who don't want to get their dainty hands dirty but claim the credit for the accomplishments of those who do, and then show contempt for them?
The grandparent talked about "unproductive majority" and "productive minority", and then went on to imply that the employees - the people who actually produce every single thing produced in this or any other country - are examples of the former. That is a lie, regardless of what Marx or anyone may or may not have "admitted".
Also, society can take burdens. It can support the needy poor, and it could easily support the idle rich. What it can't take is wolves who prey on others, and then try to blame their victims for the results. That's nothing more than the divine right of the kings revisited, and will end the same way as the last time.