02-10-2018, 01:05 AM
(02-09-2018, 08:50 PM)bobc Wrote:(02-09-2018, 04:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If it takes the Deep State (Armed Forces, law enforcement, and the CIA) to protect our democracy, then so be it. They may not be compatible with a Salvador Allende, but they seemed to have no problem with Obama.
Thank you for being honest enough to say how you really feel. That belief would apply to much of the "progressive" left.
For decades you probably condemned the abuses of the FBI, CIA, Patriot Act, 1970's CIA, etc.
Now you are just fine with the Deep State being a branch of government above that of the President and Congress.
I do not trust Donald Trump with my liberty. He would sell out the liberty of millions if such would enrich himself and his cronies.
The FBI did some bad things into the 1970s (including aiding the overthrow of Salvador Allende), but it eventually broke with Nixon once he tried to use it for partisan dirty work. Such would have made the FBI a secret police force directed by a political party, a very bad situation.The CIA has not been completely trustworthy because it is a spy agency, and spies are not the most morally-reliable people. The Patriot Act should have had sunset legislation attached... and when the Crisis is over it may be one of those 'emergency measures' that gets abolished.
I can see things getting worse. The President is beginning to act like a dictator or a despotic monarch. He has tried to get the FBI to do partisan dirty work for the Republican Party even if the GOP has had at most a razor-thin majority and the President got elected with less than a plurality. It is as if the Other Side is completely irrelevant, and the leadership of the GOP would be content if the Democrats became powerless except to yield a little to get some personal gain in return for selling out their constituencies.
I have plenty of conservative values. I consider law and order necessary for a civil society because lawlessness turns democracy into a sham. I consider tradition a viable alternative for destructive trends in the name of progress, and even a means of finding ways to deal with economic and technological change. I strongly oppose the merger of Big Government and Big Business... and indeed I question whether Big Government is itself a virtue. Legal precedent, established process, and diplomatic protocol exist to mitigate dangerous courses of action. I consider much of the lore of the past, including the great blossoming of intellectual inquiry of the ancient Greeks and the moral teachings of the Hebrew prophets relevant to modern life because such knowledge is best not re-learned the hard way.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.