| Notes | Book |
Most people seem to think that foreigners have no constitutional protection from illegal search and seizure.
The same people were content to go to war in Iraq on an evidentiary basis that would have been speedily thrown out of most trials in the US.
Restrictions on state power are there to prevent the state from making mistakes while using its destructive capabilities. They have arisen over time in response to some very violent and insane actions by governments.
It is just as important to prevent the state from harming foreigners, as it is to keep the state from harming citizens.
A society founded on the belief that “All men are created equal” should apply that belief directly. All men should be protected against the power of the US Government, not just US citizens.
A society that abrogates to itself the authority to arbitrarily harm members of other societies will soon be viewed as a danger to the world, and rightly so.
Fortunately the revelation that the NSA is spying on US citizens is likely to have more political implications than the President and his gang currently believe.
That is because that most citizens in the USA are criminals in the sense that most of us have done, or are doing, things that we'd rather the government not know about. And we like to discuss these actions on the telephone and in emails.
If the government ever decides to actually enforce all the laws on their books using all the technology at their disposal, the consequences are hard to imagine, except that they would surely be catastrophic.
The levels of violence, hypocrisy, and logical inconsistencies in our society are so high that it is difficult to visualize how we will cure the situation without major social trauma.
On the other hand, could any cure be worse than maintaining the current level of craziness?