"After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman Emperor. Though retaining its legal position as under the Republic, in practice, however the actual authority of the Imperial Senate was negligible, as the Emperor held the true power in the state. As such, membership in the Senate became sought after by individuals seeking prestige and social standing, rather than actual authority."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_senate#Senate_of_the_Rom...]

Imagine for a moment, further expansion of executive autonomy and power. Then review recent elections with the definition of populism in mind. There are stark similarities.

"When Hitler was appointed in January 1933, Germany was a democracy. Germany had fair elections; nobody had their right to vote abused; there were numerous political parties you could vote for etc. To pass a law, the Reichstag had to agree to it after a bill went through the normal processes of discussion, arguments etc. Within the Reichstag of January 1933, over 50% of those who held seats were against the Nazi Party. Therefore it would have been very unlikely for Hitler to have got passed into law what he wanted. Many saw Hitler as a fall-guy politician who would have to shoulder to blame if things got worse under his leadership.

Hitler had promised a general election for March 1933. This would have been, in his mind, the perfect opportunity for him to show all politicians who opposed him where the true loyalties lay in the German people. In fact, 1932 had shown Hitler that there was a possibility that support for the Nazis had peaked as their showing in the November 1932 election had shown. Anything other than a huge endorsement of Hitler and the Nazi Party would have been a disaster and a gamble which it is possible that Hitler did not want to take.

One week before the election was due to take place, the Reichstag building burned down. Hitler immediately declared that it was the signal for a communist takeover of the nation. Hitler knew that if he was to convince President Hindenburg to give him emergency powers - as stated in the Weimar Constitution - he had to play on the old president's fear of communism. What better than to convince him that the communists were about to take over the nation by force?"

[http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi_Germany_dictatorsh...]

Even in a well formed government, there are possible scenarios that play out with catastrophic results. As politics become more polarized and government exerts more authority, it is more likely that individual opportunists can raise to dominant positions and wreak havoc on policy and settle vendettas against political opponents.

Understanding the dynamic nature of governments, especially ones as expansive as the US government, is necessary I think to appreciate how little democracy we actually have in the United States as it now stands. If we want to pin things to the definitions historians use to differentiate the Roman Republic from the Roman Empire, I think we passed that point with FDR to be honest.

FDR def.; probably Wilson

I suspect Martin-Niemöller had some insight into how this happened:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

The second part is fallacy; you obviously cannot remove the ability to point a gun (or knife) at someone and make demands, and any attempt to do so necessarily tramples other's rights. In reality there are two effective choices - the person being mugged can defend them-self and/or the government can attempt to find and punish the person after the fact. The second one does not do a bit of good for the current victim, of course.

Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free speech, if such a tradeoff existed).

When I say you cannot remove the ability of people to do it, I mean only that - you cannot remove the ability. And that is what all the gun-grabbing hoopla is about - physically removing the ability to do so by restricting access to guns. That, I contend, is impossible and absolutely infringes on individual rights.

The threat of retaliation, either by the victim immediately or after-the-fact by the government, is of course effective at prevention. The former is more effective, as evidenced by crime rates in areas where the government does not infringe on the right to self-defense.

Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free speech, if such a tradeoff existed).

It does not matter which rights - the government may not pick and choose which individual rights to value over others, it's their duty to protect them all equally - and for all people equally.

Of course it is your right to determine which rights you value the most, but it is not a power of the government. And it's a power of neither you or the government to determine which rights I value most.

Moreover, this is the moment when you can show whether you are really free.

Free men do not mind dying when their time comes.

When I say "freedom", I talk about choice. Options. Influence over one's light cone. All of which are drastically diminished whenever you're locked in a cell, or threatened by a madman with a gun.

I might be taken out. I might take my enemy out (shooting a person is not as trivial task as it seems). Or I might just cause enough trouble for the bad guys so their total cost goes up, hopefully beyond break even point.

It is no different attitude than the one US tries to project upon the world.

I only acknowledge that nobody will fight for me if I don't fight for myself.

Examples of peaceful countries like sweden or switzerland can be given, but what did they do to stop hitler? Poland started to crack the enigma code and later turing with his friends in secrecy completed it in England.

What we need is people that can be trusted to be in power. The voting system in America is just plain wrong. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g

If you have zero physical security, that means that anyone can come up and just knock you down and take your things, your woman, whatever... Not my idea of "freedom".

I think that it follows that you do need some security in order to live a free life. Does that justify secret government spying programs? Probably not!

People here seem to have awfully black and white thoughts about some aspects of life.

> yet we are losing our liberties at an alarming speed.

Except for minorities (at least for some things, like, say, being able to vote in Alabama), gays, people who consume marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and various others who have gained rights recently. It's not black and white.

These are orthogonal issues. There are strong reasons to believe that the modern stability that we enjoy is maintained by networks of mutual self-interest, soft social norms and overall cultural sophistication. The idea that we are being protected by the state is just a fairy-tale and there is no scientific evidence of this whatsoever.

Saying that something is not "black and white" sounds clever, but can be used as a way to disguise unscientific, mushy ideas.

Uh, most things involving people are kind of mushy, because you can't experiment on them like you would with rats. And they tend to behave oddly at times. Also, there are a tremendous number of things that bear on their behavior - isolating them is not easy.

> modern stability that we enjoy is maintained

Could it be that the modern stability also exists because most of us feel relatively safe in our persons?

It's not as if the only thing preventing most of us from running amok is the presence of police, but some kind of security force does act as a backstop for those individuals who do not care about your self-interest, social norms, or whatever.

Once again: not trying to justify the NSA stuff, but I think the idea that no security at all is needed for one to live in freedom is handwavy bullshit.

You mean, stability is mantained by structures like the state?

But that happens now. All the examples that are being given on why we need security are examples of things that are happening now WITH security.

"I think that it follows that you do need some security in order to live a free life. Does that justify secret government spying programs? Probably not!"

My problem is that this security is just a false sense of security. With all of the restrictions and all of the money poured into the DHS and other counter-intelligence, we still get things like Boston. I wish people would realize that bad things happen, and giving your rights away isn't going to stop them from happening.

"Except for minorities (at least for some things, like, say, being able to vote in Alabama), gays, people who consume marijuana in Washington and Colorado, and various others who have gained rights recently. It's not black and white."

They haven't gained anything. Nothing is stopping the feds from swooping down and arresting these individuals. They are still breaking a federal law. Also, in reference to the gay marriage thing, I feel it is kind of low to say they are gaining rights as there was no real legal reason (that I could think of) to prevent them from being able to marry.

Obviously. It's impossible to eliminate bad things completely. They would happen more without anyone providing security.

> They haven't gained anything

Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone.

To me, this argument is based on how one views human nature. Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior.

"Ok, fine, whatever, the world is moving only in one direction, with no nuance, no complexities, and in a very simple, easy to understand way. Nothing has gotten better for anyone."

I probably should have phrased my response better but at the time was stuck in a better way to do so. Surely there are places that have improved in people's lives but it isn't like those same improvements couldn't or wouldn't have been made without a state providing security.

What is your definition of serious? Sure, most people don't want to kill others, but what about non-violent crimes. What about fraud? Not paying taxes? Although you might argue that taxes are usurping our freedom somehow, I like having infrastructure.

"What about fraud? Not paying taxes?"

Maybe I'm just naive but I don't think the average person walks around conspiring to commit fraud but is discouraged by the fact they could go to jail if caught.

As for the taxes issue, in this scenario, taxes would most likely decrease since there would be no big security machine (DoD, DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA) to feed, or at least budgets would be slashed. On top of that, there could be systems put into place that automate the taxes and make the current way of doing taxes a thing of the past. The lower taxes and the automated system could make it easy to pay taxes as well as harder to avoid paying taxes.

You don't need "majority", you need just a handful of really really bad ones.

The modern state we have is here not to build Heaven on Earth, but to avoid Hell. Eliminating all crime is impossible, but without state intervention you end up with Somalia, Afghanistan or post-Katrina New Orleans.

What you're describing is total freedom in a causal society - the only constraint on what people do is what they _can_ do. It may not be your definition of freedom, but from an unbiased observer, it is arguably the most free a society can be.

You (and a lot of other people, I think) are conflating freedom (being able to do whatever you can) with rights (a guarantee that certain conditions will exist in a governed society). Granting rights necessarily diminishes the total freedom of a society.

Hodor. Own woman. Hodor. Hodor. Hodor.

Perhaps (well, hopefully) I'm reading into your comment too much though.

the position you state was formed by Greek and Roman civilizations. Majority of people in these civilizations were slaves. And security was a precondition for the freedom of few at the top of these ancient societies.

The American revolution was a break in that order of things. It resulted in granting of unheard of freedoms while dismantling a lot of Imperial Britain security. And now we're sliding back to imperial level of security and freedom.

The American Revolution carried forward slavery.

The US once was the most free countries and indeed helped and inspired others, but that was more than a hundred years ago. The problem is while other countries emerged (possibly because of mistakes, losing wars, being split, reunited, etc.) the US has had a few problems that got them stuck.

I think and it's just my opinionated explanation. I might be completely wrong, but I think the biggest problem for the US where the two world wars and the cold wars. Basically it made the country/government learn that espionage, military, etc. is a good thing, because they only win. They win no just like the war itself, but they win control of people, they pretty much unite them, but even that is not all. The military system allows the US to do what other countries do with welfare. They reinvest tax money, the out it into families of veterans, have a huge military industry from weapons to mercenaries. It works. Just like it allows them to do heavy espionage in the name of national security.

On the other hand there is expensive education or bought education (VISA policies), not the best health care system, still a lot of weird stuff, like death penalty (an example of how the US is stuck), bad infrastructure (streets, internet, etc.) and a lot less liberties or equal treatment of sexes and "races" for example.

This is something that stabilizes the US. I don't know, in a way it is a valid thing. Stability is good and there is pretty much no country that does so well that it should judge the US for that.

Another problem is that they tend to do overpropaganda, so they can't really change. They had stuff like the cold war, so communists (Russians/Chinese) people are super evil. Also there were no other reforms. The two party system where both have pretty much opinion. That's no way of choosing. For example the death penalty thing I mentioned. Republicans are pro, Obama is pro. So no movement in sight.

The US is also stuck in nationalism. Like really, do you know any other developed country that is so much into flag waving and where everyone is like "Mall of America, Bank of America, X of America"?

Like I said. It's not bad. It brings stability, which is something people want, but it also means that progress simply stalls.

In this regard the US is actually quite the same as China or Russia. Big countries, which pretty much always the same government, lots of propaganda, lots of nationalism "the others are all bad (or envious)", death penalty, secrecy, lots of military investment, our country is the best, etc.

It might also be a thing of size. There have been political-philosophical works about this, partially with practical implementation (The Breakdown of Nations).

However, as history tells us (see various empires) these things break down in bad ways. Sadly it usually means the next nation will become like this and won't be any better at all. And yeah, I am not a friend of nations and stuff, but I am realist enough to know, no matter how long the US remains like that (yeah, I think it is trembling, but I think it's far from falling) or whatever, this isn't going to change. I also don't think there can be any kind of utopia. It would be really cool if people just abandoned stuff, but no matter how wrong communists are. There is one thing they got correctly (but usually still don't live after, else they wouldn't be communists): It might be nice for a while, when everyone understands how shitty things were and how nice it is to just live together, but people forget that and then it really starts from the beginning.

But they do have some. And they have police, don't they? So they provide some security to their citizens, meaning that their people are free to live without someone bigger than them taking all their things.

When I look back at history, I see that the worst people that have done the worst things are in fact people in state governments, using the powers of government against civilians.

That's because you're looking at the largest damage influenced by a small group of people, instead of total amount over a period of time.

Obviously the most damage done by any single person was done by a person with a lot of power, and thus probably a member of the government. That doesn't mean more damage is done when a government is present rather than in total anarchy.

Consider a choice between:

1. A mad governor that kills 100 people yearly, but prevents any other killings (somehow)

2. An anarchy system where 100 mad people kill 10 people each every year

Your heuristic of 'the worst people that have done the worst things are in fact people in state governments' still holds, because any other murderer only killed 10 people. However, comparing the two options clearly shows the first one is better.

TL;DR - availability bias

That's the official story. In reality, those things are used to enslave people and keep them happy on the modern plantation, looking to the master to keep them safe. Freedom is the absence of coercion, and those things have utterly failed to safeguard that, and indeed have actively warred against it.

It's entirely legitimate to question whether the NSA has been going too far -- there's been debate about it for years. However, there is zero evidence that any of the data being collected had even been used in any way that impacted or threatened the freedom of people in the US -- it's all possibilities and abstract paranoia. It's difficult to have a serious debate when people put on tin-foil hats, plug their ears, and refuse to even acknowledge the broader realities. It's not all just a conspiracy to monitor Facebook and take away our bitcoins. All of these issues demand a dynamic balancing of risks and benefits, and of the rights of individuals against society. Any extreme philosophical positions are dangerous.

Either that or not make broad generalizations.

But my broader point was, larger government surveillance and national security powers won't stop genocides or wars between governments. This isn't what they are there for. They are there to prevent groups which are deemed politically dangerous ("terrorists" which evidently include nuclear protesters, environmentalists, and states' rights advocates).

It's one thing to have spy agencies. However widespread spying on one's own people is never a good sign.

(By all means read "Creature from Jekyll Island" to learn the details of that deliciously evil story. :)

The requirement to pay taxes in USD is the primary "inherent value" which makes that particular commodity circulate as money. The "inherent value" is to increase the odds that one may continue living outside of a cage.

When I call that value "inherent", I am obviously speaking very loosely and tongue-in-cheek. Remove the threat of force, and USD paper cash has no significant value -- it's too rough to use as toilet paper and doesn't even burn particularly well in the winter. It is durable enough to function as wallpaper, though with a rather busy and avant garde retro design.

Combine that dynamic with the Mandrake Mechanism described in "Creature", and you have a very powerful monopoly fiat money, consisting of cash and bank "deposits", useful for financing horrors like World War I, the Marxist overthrow of the Kerensky government, endless bailouts of banks and corporations throughout the '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00s, and a litany of other ridiculous, juvenile schemes.

It is the monetary inflation, produced by the central bank buying government debt (i.e. a promise to tax), which gives governments most of their "spending money". Taxation itself merely gives people a reason to accept the USD in the first place, and also serves as the principal means of social engineering.

When you look at it that way, taxation and inflation are seen as two mutually recursive functions, whose fixed point is the gun.

Or perhaps it's to bring wars and genocide to people in other countries.

I do have an extreme philosophical position: that relations among people should be by mutual consent, or not at all. It is compromise that is dangerous.

I'm going to single out the US in the "western democracies" and state that while this may be true, it certainly isn't true for just about anybody alive in this country today. The last time we actually fought for OUR freedoms, in my mind, is the War of 1812. Other than that, it was fighting for our interests, which are not the same. But, those in power need to keep up the idea that the war machine always needs to be at the ready because those darn communists/socialists/terrorists are after our freedoms and we need to be proactive.