[SGVLUG] Scary stuff for us Geeks.

[Terry Hancock]

On Friday 23 September 2005 08:08 pm, Dustin wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2005, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> > bombing. From the way I read it seems like a similar thing could
> > happen here are I don't see anything that is massively different then
> > the laws in the US.
> 
> Yes, very scary.
> 
> There is one difference in principle--an actual hierarchial legal system
> with a Bill of Rights that trumps statute law.  As (I gather)  Roosevelt
> joked with Stalin at one of the big three Allied meetings that "the
> British Constitution says whatever Mr. Churchill says it means."
> 
> Yes, all of you can put down your keyboards, it doesn't necessarily help
> in the short term when a popular administration is determined to abrogate
> civil liberty.  (Of course I have *no* *particular* administration in mind
> when I say that.)  It does help a lot in redressing the balance later when
> the political winds are different.

But how many people will get hurt in between, and how many will *really*
get their lives back afterwards?

The US managed to forget about civil liberties quite thoroughly in cases
like the Japanese Concentration ... err "Internment" camps in WW II, and
managed not to formally apologize until, what? the Clinton Administration
or was it Bush's?  Anyway, pretty much after most of the people involved
were already dead.

And we apparently didn't learn much, seeing as we have taken similar
steps with regard to Muslim Americans in the present (yes, we haven't
gone *quite* so far, but what we have done is nothing to crow about).

Kind of reminds you of the Catholic church finally apologizing for that
little Galileo incident in the *1980s.*

It's easy to apologize later after you've already gotten away with the
crime, but is that really a deserved absolution?


--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com