Redeye said:
If we used that logic, what would make "us" any better than "them"?
Yes, we are better than them. At such time as we are flying jets into buildings, blowing up schools, throwing acid at little girls, launching rockets into markets, hiding missile batteries in school yards and hospitals, defrauding the people and governments of other sovereign nations of millions of dollars in fraud, auto theft, narcotic trafficking, arms dealing and illegal fund raising, well....maybe then we should look in the mirror with a hangdog expression. Listening to an asshat (with his consent) talk to his lawyer? Not even fucking close.
Brihard said:
States run in the western liberal tradition do a lot of things that, pragmatically, may not make sense out of interest for the civil and human rights of those residing in that state. That's what makes our country as good as it is.; our government does not (at least usually) take the sort of shortcuts around due process that autocracies and petty dictatorships do.
That is the same reason that terrorists, and criminals in general, run roughshod over the citizenry of this country. I don't see this as making our country "good". I think it makes our country weak.
Brihard said:
These sorts of convenient abrogations of due process are a very slippery slope. We've watched it happening in the United States, which if anything has a stronger tradition of defense of civil rights than we do, yet predatory legislation has granted the government powers that sometimes are truly frightening in their potential for abuse. It will take years to undue the legislative damage that America has seen in the last eight years.
So rather than take the fight to an enemy that is clearly on our shores and had show a desire to destroy us, we should wring our hands and be fearful of the "potential" of misuse of possible legislation and procedures? That slope you refer to has two sides. The other one, the liberal socialist nightmare that would see our country resemble a farming collective, is just as slippery. And that happens to be the slope we are currently sliding down.
Brihard said:
Those legal protections all exist for a reason, and it's informed by hundreds of years of legislation, common law tradition, and legal and moral philosophy governing what a government owes its citizens. We cannot, as a free state, allow ourselves to backtrack along that course and let the government start ignoring parts of the law simply because it's not convenient.
Can you honestly say that a hundred years of tradition is a good reason to not change with the times? The running of the bulls at Pamploma is an old tradition. That doesn't make it any less idiotic. This is not the same thing as dealing with criminals. Criminals are motivated by greed for the most part and are more akin to animals. They are frequently ignorant but can potentially be corrected (not that anything in our system does that, but that is a whole other situation). Islamic extremists have dedicated their lives to destroying our culture. They are smart. They are motivated. They are persistent. They think (some of them anyway) they are doing Gods work. They will pursue every possible advantage they can find, and our supremely weak system creates a terrorism facilitating utopia for them. Canada is such a safe haven for terrorism and the fund raising that they so badly need. It is our laws and their ineffectivenes that allows this to happen.
As for what the law "owes" its citizens, it is protection from the wolves that would maul them. The system is currently 99.9% reactive. I would have thought that the Toronto 18 would have woken the sheeple up, but apparently a body count is all anyone is going to respond to.
As for "convenience", how does it make sense to create a massive briar patch of bureaucracy and red tape to tie the hands of the people that are trying to protect this country?
Brihard said:
If they genuinely feel that this is something that needs to be changed to protect our country, send it to Parliament and let the representatives of the Canadian population decide if they want to make that change to our society. Our freedoms are far too important to let the executive branch or federal agencies take measures to circumvent the law without the due attention of our legislature and judiciary.
Seriously? You really think that anything productive is getting done in Parliament these days? And the judiciary are the ones who can be thanked for the shabby state of the country. They don't need a larger hand in this, they've done quite enough as it is.
Brihard said:
We walk along a thin line these days.
I agree. Some of us are trying to keep the whole thing from falling into the abyss.
