Posted on 01/18/2008 7:19:06 AM PST by freespirited
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans say that Security is more important than privacy. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 29% disagree and say privacy is more important. Twenty percent (20%) are not sure.
The survey also found public support for strict rules regarding identification needed to obtain drivers licenses. Sixty-nine percent (69%) say it is a good idea for the federal government to establish such rules, while only 17% disagree.
Over fifteen states have made headlines recently by speaking out against the REAL Identification Act of 2005, which would bar anyone not possessing the proper licenses from boarding airplanes or entering government buildings. In addition to concerns about privacy, many in the opposing states fear that states will not be able to create enough funding to comply with the technology required of new the licenses.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and supporters of the legislation feel there are too many types of identification that allow people into the country, and creating federal requirements on drivers licenses will limit the amount of illegal immigrants entering the United States.
The public is divided on whether or not the new legislation will cut down on illegal immigration. While 49% feel the Act is at least somewhat likely to reduce illegal immigration, 42% say it is not very or not at all likely.
Regarding the new drivers licenses required in the Act, a quarter of those surveyed (25%) see it as an invasion of privacy, while the majority (44%) disagrees. Thirty-one percent (31%) are not sure.
Nearly half of adults (45%) have followed news stories on the issue at least somewhat closely, while another half (50%) have not followed the stories closely or at all.
Personal safety is at the bottom of my list of priorities.
But the Teacher Unions destroy Generations of Americans.
Gov’t is the threat, security is not the problem.
When you turn to Gov’t to provide you for security, you are lost.
Freedom and privacy are different concepts in my book. One can give up some privacy and still have a great deal of freedom.
Thats a pretty naive statement. Freedom and individual liberty (which is what Americans use to call privacy before the ACLU made it unacceptable) are inextricably linked. In modern American the facade that they are not has been created by things like, Referrer Madness, violent TV, saving lifes and every foreign threat real or imagine that has come along in the 20th and now the 21st Century. True freedom isnt the ability to move around in your own state or country or go to the church or store or bar that you choose; true freedom is the freedom of thought and the freedom to do w/ your body and property what you choose to do so long as your not involving anyone elses body or property w/out their consent. It is also this type of freedom that the government has learned is the very hardest type to curtail. The only real way to curtail thought and personal action is to be able to track these things in your populace so that when a law restricting a particular thought or personal action theres a laundry list of them out there is past the governing forces know who to targeted and watch.
History bears watching; a country such as America, with the greatest military in the world, and the most armed populace in the world, has little to fear from foreign invasion and conquering but rather is much more likely to fall to its own tyrannical government.
It is a sad state of affairs.
The bottom lin e on all of this stuff. It's not about privacy. It's not really about security. It's about control. The government thinks it owns you, so it figures it has the right to tag you however it sees fit.
Substitute “liberty” for privacy” - which is what the debate is really all about - and see what the numbers are.
“Security” my foot. It’s just the excuse used by the G to oppress us wee folk.
PING
You hit it on the head man
And the sad part is that Americans today agree with and let it happen
Are you opposed to airport screening of your luggage? After all, it is an invasion of your privacy.
Tens of thousands of FReepers have been subjected to the idiocy of the Teachers Unions. Yet they managed not only to survive, but to see through these liberal kooks.
We are kidding ourselves if we think we could survive Al Qaeda nearly as well.
However, I guarantee you that Gov’t school is more of a threat than AQ will ever be.
Then you need to buy a new book. Invest some time and research the actual writings of the men who founded this nation. Actual history, as opposed to the propaganda mislabeled as textbooks by the Socialists infesting our schools.
All politicians, especially the more pleasant sounding and seemingly well-intentioned ones, are would-be tyrants. By its' very nature, the political class attracts narcissists, messianics, demogogues and megalomaniacs. Thus it is, and thus has it always been.
Over the course of human history, far more people have been killed, enslaved, and oppressed by those supposedly charged with their safekeeping than by all the rogue criminals and foreign bogeymen they conjure up to keep us in fear.
Our country's founders were not nearly naive enough to believe that the mere presence of democratic elections would keep us from ever handing the sceptre to a misanthrope. They also realized that the majority of the population can neither necessarily be trusted to act in its' own best interest. This is precisely the reason they give for our representative form of government, and the constitutional limits placed upon it.
Never empower any politician or governmental entity, with a tool that you would not want placed in the hands of an absolute tyrant, because eventually one will sit in the Oval Office. Bank on it.
The White House may have already played host to one or two individuals who would gladly have turned on us, were it not for that pesky Bill of Rights.
Will we be able to resist the next? Our ability to provide for our own safety depends upon privacy and freedom. Try to have safety at the expense of privacy or freedom, and we'll have none of them long. Government is the problem to all life's solutions, not the other way round.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
Marxism is our nation’s most serious threat. There are Marxists and their Useful Idiots throughout our government, in all of government bureaucracies, media, and culture.
The Marxists **most** important and effective weapon in its fight against freedom are our SCHOOLS!
We will and can survive a nuclear suitcase bomb. Freedom will NOT survive if the Marxists succeed in indoctrinating the next generation of voters!
However, I guarantee you that Govt school is more of a threat than AQ will ever be.
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Thankfully, there is at least one other person, besides myself, who sees government schooling as a **serious** threat to our freedom. When are thinking people going to wake up?
Socialists infesting our schools.
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Call them what they are: Marxists and Useful Idiots!
Since security is an illusion, those who imagine that Gummint can provide it are also not thinking clearly but imagining and have not the first clue what Gummint is.
Please reconsider your screen name.
And my person, and my "papers".
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