For the Liberals... How do you argue having much less of Big Brother on your back?

Question

I had a debate with my father about having too much big brother on your back after watching a documentary of the Camera Systems in the UK.
The US is trying to adapt their way of "Spying" on Americans. Especialy with the CONTROVERSIAL PATIRIOT ACT!!!

His response was that "If you don't do anything wrong, then you don't have to worry."
I went back at him, " That is not the point, we have our Constiutional rights that are being violated.... The Government has no right to spy on us either way... blah blah blah...."

"We are fighting a different war now, If it means spying on us to save your little brother from getting killed by a Terrorist, then spy all you want!"

I couldn't really validate my argument after that because everything I said always led to, "what if they kill your Brother for your "Freedom."

I thought to myself for a while, how do I argue this?

Thank you for all the great answers!!!

A few of them reminded me of Mr. FBI himself. I red a few books on his "Legacy," as Director... He spied on American Citizens for his or "Friends" personal gains. What will stop our government from doing the same?

Thanks again!! I can now have a better debate when something like that is said...

Answer 1

People who argue for domestic spying often love to point out that "freedom isn't free." The price for freedom was war and death for our revolutionary predecessors.

If we are willing to abandon our freedom in order to fight terrorism, why not abandon it in order to fight crime? There are certainly more deaths in American as a result of crime than from terrorism and yet people remain unwilling to simply allow the police to enter their homes or bug their phones just to make sure that they haven't committed crimes.

Why would these people be willing to give up their freedom (that we are supposedly fighting terrorism to keep) in order to combat a fairly remote threat - terrorism, and yet not willing to do so to combat a more realistic threat - crime?

Besides, if we are willing to give up our freedoms to fight terrorism, what is it that we are fighting for anyway? I thought it was for our freedom.

Answer 2

Well, they have killed your freedom for your brother.
And they killed his freedom too.
I'm amazed that any man of any age still considers the government the most effecient keeper of secrets, even such slight ones as your social security number, the reason and date of your last hospitalization, what books you took out, who sent you a letter last Christmas and has a suspicious name. All innocent things until they decide its not, or they lose the computer that some guy took home and you find you can't get health insurance, and your social security number meant your identity was used fraudlently to get a credit card, and you can't fly because your name is now on a no-fly list. Its not just that they can collect it, its also that they can use it, or lose it or have that info stolen. So you can be perfectly innocent of any misbehavior, but since the gov has got the info, all of a sudden you have to trust them to care for it and store it much better than they do. In all our previous years, we did alright won our wars, and kept the one thing that makes us United, our constitution. If we get rid of it, or have it chopped up by executive decision, we don't have a country at all like we have been fighting for, all we will have is the leftovers of whatever political diner is at the table.
Pretty sad for a great democracy. We have, can and do have the ability to legaly tap phones with a warrant, even three days after we have already tapped in, so in an emergency you can tap first apply later, in fact, in all this time only eleven no warrant taps were used, out of thousands, and they won't tell who it was, so that means they want no one to know, and we just have to trust them that it wasn't a political enemy or their wives or daughters, or a preacher they don't like or an author whose work they don't agree with. And thats when it gets really scary.

Answer 3

As I see it your fathers argument that by giving up our rights your brother will be safer is what is called a "Red Herring". A "red herring" argument is one which distracts the audience from the issue in question through the introduction of some irrelevancy.

I assume your brother is in the military so the fact that he may be in harms way has absolutely nothing to with what is going on in the hallways and bathrooms of your school; however, your father has cut through that and equated the two.

The link below will take you to a site that will explain many types of fallacies. Check it out.

Answer 4

PAUL K, and FSJD make outstanding points. The only thing i would like to add that if Bush truely cared about protecting us, he would have made border security a much more important issue than he has. The whole we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over his rhetoric is B.S. Republicans use to be about less government, but there not anymore. There using terrorism as an excuse to monitor us 24/7.

Answer 5

They use excuses for the installation of Big Brother cameras. Why are'nt they used to spy on terrorists? Instead, they are used on American citizens. Merely "saying" they are using them to "save your little brother", is what's known as an obfuscation. In other words, Big Brother wants to use cameras on Americans, whether or not terrorists exist.

Answer 6

They are not liberals, they are Leftists. There is a huge difference. Socialists create a top-down system of control that true Liberals reject.

The duty of Government is to defend your Rights in the order they are listed: Your Life, then your Liberty, then your Pursuit of Happiness. If the population is killed, the others don't matter.

Regarding the Patriot Act - it was created as a direct response to the known methods of an enemy. It is nowhere near as severe as the intrusions into your Rights that occurred during WWII. We won WWII partly because of the ability to detect internal spies, the ability to silence the Press about issues of national security, the ability to compel the population to take actions that would improve our odds against the enemy, the ability to monitor communications that might aid the enemy, the ability to arrest anyone who 'leaked' information that might aid the enemy...

I agree with you that we should be wary of unnecessary intrusions into our Rights. However, if you are an American, I expect you to be willing to help fight the enemy for your own sake as well as your neighbor's.

Regarding Britain: That nation has been taken over by Socialists. They are doing exactly what George Orwell warned of in his book "1984". Orwell rose high in the Leftist system until he became disgusted with it and wrote a novel about it.

Socialists around the world follow the same pattern as you'll learn from studying NAZI (Socialist) Germany, Cuba, the Soviet Union, China under Mao, North Korea... and just watch Hugo Chavez convert Venezuela into that same abusive system.

As Socialists gain more power through the Democrat party in the US, you should expect to see more abuses of your Rights that are not justified by actual defense against an actual enemy.

Answer 7

In Nazi Germany, it was incredibly safe for white Germans. Does that mean their tactics were just? No. Liberty and Freedom are worth dying for. And to sacrifice them in the name of safety is giving in to those who want to destroy America. If we live in a country where the government controls everything we can stop terrorists attacks. But they won't attack anyway since they've already won in destroying America.

Answer 8

Conservatives want to be "Big Brother". They say they want to get government out of peoples lives, they mean "their life", they definitely want to involve themselves in the life of people they don't like, which is anyone who wants what they have, but don't. They just prefer that you don't know about it.

Answer 9

That's what we want - big brother Bush off of our backs, out of our business, away from mail and our phone calls.

Answer 10

The button he pushed was your little brother. And thats the button the neo-cons LOVE to push. So next time say, "Well, if it means spying on us to save all the illegal immigrants coming across the border, then spy all you want"? Or, "if it means spying on us to save all the drug addicts and heroin dealers, then spy all you want?"

You can push back at the absurdity of his argument. The neo-cons LOVE to try to push a sensitive button that will give them the right to spy on everybody, all the time, even spying on your little brother someday.