Because most people don't realise they can just roll through. By doing things like this you're re-enforcing people's idea that they have to stop and do whatever a policeman tells you. They're training people to be obedient.

And if you've done nothing wrong what's the problem eh?

Thousands of people have shown up to testify at the capitol about this bill. We're only talking about this woman. Her speech was obviously effective. If I gave a few more shits, I'd link it... but you can find an interview with her where she describes exactly what drove her to scrap her prepared speech and go with this one instead. Having read reports and listened to personal accounts from friends who where there, her comments were actually relevant. And I'm glad she said them.

Obedience doesn't drive change. You respect Crist and Obama because they have money behind them and a good PR crew. They're on the right side of a false dichotomy. They play "good cop" for people who share a similar world view with you.

You watched a video of this nobody insulting elected officials because she's interesting and has balls for days.

And another one. So now that we have it in print, can we drop the pretence and call it what it is: the world's most sophisticated system of industrial espionage.

I'd complain about being spied upon by supposed friends and allies, but as recently declassified documents showed, the Allied Control Council reserved the right to spy on any and all communications in Germany, even beyond the reunification in 1990. So it's not like we had any privacy to begin with, only the illusion of privacy, lasting a whopping 61 years. And it's all legal. Unconstitutional, but legal.

Snowden's material included surveillance statistics, showing that the NSA is intercepting, on average, 20 million phone calls a day in this beautiful country of mine. Most of it will be plain old industrial espionage, just like the bugs they planted at the EU offices.
So I'm rather surprised at the lack of outrage coming from my government. I know they don't give a rat's ass about the privacy of us plebs, but industrial espionage on a massive scale? I'd assumed they wouldn't like that one bit. Not a peep though, only silent obedience.

Anyway, everything's presented as shocking news in the media, so I thought I'd just link a certain document, aptly named AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL. As you can see, it is a report that was presented to the European Parliament in 1998.

Skip to 7.4.1:

The Interim report said that within Europe, all email, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by Satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK.

And that was just Echelon, the 20th century cousin of PRISM, Stellar Wind, Tempora, whatever you want to call it. Much less sophisticated, much less capable.

I know, I know... paranoia. *shrug

Yes those are good points, however one thing I've found in my studies (in part, sitting through an ethics class every week for the past 2 years) and elsewhere is that the Nazi regime is used as a way of objectively describing what 'bad' is and contemporary examples are overlooked. The main examples of this 'bad' are the way in which they conducted human research, the genocide they committed and the fear they instilled in their own population to be obedient through the SS, propaganda etc. Of course there are many other examples but those are a few of the main ones. The issue I always have sitting there listening to these lectures is that we are turning a blind eye to what is happening in the world today, it's easy to understand why if you do a bit of thinking on the matter, but most people don't seem to be able to do that, or they are simply too scared to talk about it for fear of reproach.

So to start with, I could name countless things that America (and other countries such as the UK/France etc) has done over the past 50 years that would make any rational person cringe if they hadn't known about it previously, however you can find those things out yourself with a little research on the internet, so there's no point listing them here (and I'm sure you know many of them already anyway). I think what is important is why these things don't seem as objectively bad to you as what's been done in the past. The answer would have to be pretty complex, however I think one reason is that things are not done as overtly these days. Wars are often waged by proxy, or people are led to 'buy in' to the excuses that are often given to begin wars, change leaderships etc.

I mean, it's easy to think, ,OK so the Nazi's sent around death squads to ensure people were obedient and that's objectively bad, but how does one quantify how immoral or unethical it is to watch/listen to and record almost the entire world's digital communication exchange between individuals and groups and then have the ability to send drones with bombs on them to kill anyone they feel like (with an unknown amount of collateral damage) without fear of reproach. No reproach being literal, the US has ~half the worlds military expenditure after all.

Now you might say, well nobody is knocking on my door making sure I'm pro-Obama and killing my entire family if I'm not, however I think the thing people often overlook, and it comes back to my previous two points. These things are happening in other countries and they are often by proxy, so to fully comprehend the level of immorality the US has sunk to, one first has to educate oneself on all these events, then one has to have enough empathy to care about the events and people involved, then one has to be educated enough in morals and ethics to be able to make some measurement as to how bad they are.

In my opinion it's a tall order to get most people to understand/learn all these things, most people are too worried about keeping their jobs, looking after their families or friends etc. Even those that meet all those requirements won't all agree that these things are bad, and even if they know they are bad, they are too fearful to speak their mind about it, or perhaps they have a specific agenda (i.e. someone like Jay Carney who is paid to spout BS for the president all day). There are lots of ways things can be justified, and lots of angles that can be taken in arguments.

So I guess my point is that despite the fact things are not as bad for you as they would have been under the Nazi regime, that doesn't mean millions of people in dozens of countries are not being oppressed in similar ways to what they would have been back then. the US doesn't precisely meet Emilio Gentile's definition of a Fascist state, however it meets many of the criteria, and I think if you look at the big picture (primarily what's happening in countries that the US wants resources from) you can see that @Fusionaut's remark wasn't too far off the mark.

It's incredible how malleable the human brain is.

It just goes to show how much power peers have over someone (usually a child or a stupid or desperate person), to convince them to disregard their intellect and common sense in favor of blind obedience to incredible, nonsensical tales of grandeur.

It's probably a good measure of whether someone prefers to obediently follow a perceived authority or actually think logically and for themselves. I'm pretty sure if we could somehow get rid of all the people who pronounce it 'jif' the world would get better overnight.

I apologize, I did kinda neglect my point. My point was that I understand why people believe in a god. it's easy, you don't have to think about it too much. God did it because god did it because I believe in it because I want to believe it. Obedience is all that is required. Obedience is easy.

Learning is hard. Understanding is hard. It's taken us thousands of years for us to get this far and even more for us to even be sentient. It takes a questioning mind, it takes investigation, it takes hard work and long study. Virtually every one who has been serious about learning things has one of those moments where they think X, but are presented with evidence that X actually isn't true, Y is, and here's why. You're pissed because you were certain X was right and your ego is bruised. but either someone explains it to you or you go through the evidence yourself and you eventually see where your error was. Guess what...you LEARNED something!

All science is is someone asking a question, creating an explanation to answer that question. creating an experiment that tests that explanation, perform that experiment and record your results so other people can do the same experiment and see if their results match yours.

Does it take faith to ask a question? Nope.
Does it take faith to come up with an explanation to that question? Nope
Does it take faith to come up with an experiment to test that explanation? Nope.
Does it take faith to perform an experiment? Nope.
Does it take faith to record the results of your experiment? Nope
Does it take faith to have someone else repeat your experiment? Nope.

That's interesting. In his Democracy in America Vol 2, Chapter XX "HOW AN ARISTOCRACY MAY BE CREATED BY MANUFACTURES", Baron de Tocqueville warned of these dangers (in 1840!):

In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more
extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more
narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advances, the arti-
san recedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more
manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the
cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount
of capital employed more considerable, wealthy and educated
men come forward to embark in manufactures, which were here-
tofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The mag-
nitude of the efforts required and the importance of the results to
be obtained attract them. Thus at the very time at which the sci-
ence of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the
class of masters.

While the workman concentrates his faculties more and more
upon the study of a single detail, the master surveys an extensive
whole, and the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that
of the former is narrowed. In a short time the one will require
nothing but physical strength without intelligence; the other
stands in need of science, and almost of genius, to ensure success.
This man resembles more and more the administrator of a vast
empire; that man, a brute.

The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and
their differences increase every day. They are connected only like
the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills
the station which is made for him, and which he does not leave;
the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the
other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to com-
mand. What is this but aristocracy?

Then in Vol 3, Chapter VI, "WHAT SORT OF DESPOTISM DEMOCRATIC NATIONS HAVE TO FEAR" he goes on, describing a situation where a democratic nation has become
subject to a despotic government, and when the people give up and stop participating in democracy:

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by
the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to
resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to
surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is grad-
ually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedi-
ence which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only
exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it
upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people
who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to
choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this
rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it
may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties
of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually
falling below the level of humanity.

Or in other words, once you have managed to oppress the people of a democratic nation, the very equality that defines a democratic nation leaves them powerless and unable to organise together and throw off their chains.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/George-Carlin-Please-Wake-Up-America

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."

"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

"You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

Thanks for the heads-up. In return you should be aware every news outlet of the American enemedia save FOX and the Wall Street Journal is an obedient, water-carrying shill for taxocrat party tyranny.

Anonymous is quite literally....anyone.

Why should we listen to just....anyone.

Just like....anyone else, there are things we will agree with and there will be things we disagree with. Anything else is mindless obedience. Kinda like the mindless obedience the right has to the NRA, Grover Norquist, Rush Limbauh. and Fox.

No one elected these assholes, yet for some reason, they have more influence over our government than it's own voters.

bareboards2, your arguments all, may be condensed into one barrel of the same bilge.
Inflammatory rhetoric tinctured with convenient appeals to some idyllic world where assholes don't exist.

How bout some wake-up news from June of this year?? Hugo (Penn's best buddy) Chavez, cocksucking "president" of Venezuela, did what all great "leaders" do when they want no dissent and a country full of obedient and easy-to-control automatons:
-Outlawed all private ownership of guns, except of course for the military, the police, and certain private security monkeys. Their judicial system is total shiet, do some reading-up on how completely fucked it really is-

He's been in office since 99', "elected" once again by "popular" vote (give me a break), and if cancer doesn't kill him he'll probably die in office.

Guns are not the problem, society in decline, culture in decline, morality, ethics out windows, retarded ego-maniacal control-freak paranoids asshole douchebags in power..THIS is a much more pressing problem that mentally-retarded idgits raised by the developmentally-disabled twisting-off and going on killing sprees. If this recent shit happened in Inglewood or South-Centra-LA, there would not be a national uproar. It happened in a hamlet in Connecticut and the kid was living in his out-to-lunch, survivalist mother's home that was loaded with a massive collection of guns.

Didn't some Chinese guy twist \-off a few months ago and walk into a school and kill about 30 kids....WITH A FUCKING KNIFE!!?? Crazy fucks are the problem sir, firearms in their hands simply let's them reach-out and touch someone else with crazy. SO, keep guns in the hands of citizens with judgement and restraint and sound minds...Or go live in some shit-hole where only cops, soldiers, and officers of the King have weapons...How about Vatican City?? Bet that place is safe enough for ya??

Sorry Maynard, keeping my guns until I expatriate to a country without retarded fuckers being bred like tadpoles!

Sounds harmless enough and he used some language that reflects my sentiments regarding society and how broken it is and efforts to adjust cultural mores.

That said I am confident that some comments on this subject here will continue to wax manically and emotionally bereft of critical common sense, and the most eloquent verbiage used to argue will still sound like automotomacious lackeys groomed for predictable, subservient responses to government mandates which subjugate responsible and humanitarian free-will.

These dysfunctional responses to society's cultural and spiritual demise from a broken governmental machine which neither represents my own sensibilities or is capable of making laws which do nothing more than to systematically turn us all into obedient husks??!.... I don't care what becomes of the laws concerning guns anymore in the U.S. As a citizen I will continue to own whatever firearm I chose to regardless of what list it's on and if I ever need the tools they will be there.

Laws providing ways for responsible people to have guns, not prohibitions. SANE
Prohibit imbeciles and the un-hinged from being a threat by limiting their access,.
SANE
More laws designed to make ME a fucking criminal. Fucking insane.

Prison State Evolution, read some fucking history for christfucking sakes!

I definitely don't see it as that. I know plenty of people who are or were in the military, and of everyone I know in that situation they strike me more as being naive enough to be fooled into a role of complete obedience, to the point where they're willing to violently invade other countries, murder their citizens who try to defend themselves, and then get shrugged off by the establishment when their time is up.
It seems to me that the Military is second only to the Catholic church when it comes to talking-the-talk, while walking in a completely different direction.

I can agree that it would be nice if everyone took part in their society. I think everyone feels that way, but we all try to see that through in different ways.

>> ^Sagemind:

I'm sorry Shinyblurry,
You seem like a genuine person who believes strongly what has been given to you.
BUT...
Really?
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities?
Those whom resist authority, will incur judgement from God?
That sounds a lot like Authority trying to rule over it's subjects.
Obey the government and all that it makes you do or you will incur the full wrath of our police force and military.
I have respect for myself and I have respect for others, but I don't need to respect authority that hasn't earned my respect. If we just comply with every command we are given, without question, then we condemn ourselves to be ruled and subjugated by the very power that is evil. Absolute Power is but Evil indeed.
If everyone bowed down and gave their power away, then there would be nothing left but mindless drones (sheep) serving the ruling class. This is something I WILL NEVER DO. No one person shall have power over me. Not one power should ever have power over any free mind.
Because you have bowed and given yourself away, (which I feel is a weak-minded action - sorry, no offense intended, that's just how I feel,) doesn't mean it's a good idea. This would only work if power didn't corrupt absolutely.
Antiquated rules by an antiquated idea of governance.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Romans 13:1
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.



No offense taken and I appreciate your sincerity. I will elaborate here and say that to submit to the authorities doesn't mean unquestioning obedience. Anything commanded by the authorities which is contrary to what God has commanded should be disobeyed, because we should obey God rather than men. In general, though, it is to understand that God is the ruler of the nations, and He has established the authorities for His purposes, and that their authority ultimately derives from Him.

I won't bow down to corrupt human institutions, but I do give them the respect that they are due. You are right, in that we could never completely submit to an authority because they are all corrupt, but there is one authority that is not corrupt, which is God, and ultimately that is the authority we submit to when we obey the lesser authorities. I think you're hitting on the main issue that some have, which is that they don't want to give up total control to any authority; as you said, with humans it isn't warranted, but with God it is warranted, not only because He is worthy of it, but because in the context of His sovereignty the control we have is actually just an illusion.

To follow Jesus is not weak minded; if you look at American Christians, the rarest ones are those who are living sanctified lives which reveal the love of God. Rare, because following Jesus is not an easy thing, but a very difficult thing which takes a fullness of virtues, and this can only be done with Gods help. The weak Christians are the ones who are living as the world does and slandering His good name.

Matthew 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.