Why Libertarian Organizations Like The Cato Institute Love The NSA Outrage

[napoleon_in_rags]

26. You make some good points there.

Yeah, the right wing are working an angle here, you hear them lumping together the IRS issue, NSA issue, even Obamacare in a unified messaging package of government overreach. So in some ways they have the easier messaging task, those of us who believe government has a role to play in doing good thing, even really big things, have a more complex argument to make when we stand against certain government actions. But as you point out, there is a fundamental hypocrisy there, as almost all this spying is tied to powerful corporations.

But we're talking about a time when the way policies should have gone are way different from now. Just the fricking weather man... We should have had a huge effort to move to green energy. To at least design the patterns for the developing world, if not ourselves. But even if we had president Gore, I'm fairly convinced that the president can't do this. The power of Big Oil, of need of the MIC for constant war, would drain all the resources and redirect anything positive. That drain has gone to fund this giant security apparatus, which claims it needs powers way beyond the cold war to fight people with pressure cookers. But what could we have accomplished with the same money if we had moved toward peace and domestic development?

I'm not turning against President Obama, I'm just awakening to the real limitations of what POTUS can actually do in this environment.

Edit: I'm changing this post because I want to end on something positive, constructive. What you have here is this critique of federal govt. policy which the right have successfully tied to attacks on Democrats/Leftism. That tie is the biggest problem. Here's the issue: Liberalism/Leftism needs to scale. It needs to be something that can be practised in a meaningful way by individuals, small groups, a town, a company, or a the nation. It needs to stand for something separate from govt., so we're not getting blamed for policies of Bush.

PEace