Do Process

I'm guessing The Antenna is half the length of one of my dominant thought wavelengths, cause her latest post seemed to resonate with me. I started what I thought was a short comment and it just spewed out till I got busy.

You can either read it there, or below:

I hear you.

It seems that most people are shocked that the inept NY bomber was able to buy guns while his name was on the terrorist watch list. The ones I've heard seem to be of the opinion that being on that list should have prevented him from buying firearms.

There are over 2 million people on the terrorist watch list. I suspect that the vast majority of them are not a threat and when I say the vast majority, I'm talking greater than 99.95% who are probably not a threat, yet there seems to be a consensus that believes having a name on a list should have deprived them of a Constitutional right.

Now that's a dangerous mindset for America. Have your name put on a secret list and no longer be able to protect yourself. If that becomes policy, how long till there will be lists that prevent you from assembling with who you chose, speaking your opinion, moving, buying a house or car, ect.?

Hearing the progressives talk about 'redistribution of speech' suggests that our freedom of speech may be coming under assaults more restrictive than McCain-Feingold.

I've also seen that certain criminals are looking at indefinite jail time after their sentence. The undesirables in this case are sex offenders and while I think child molesters should have a $5,000 bounty on their head and rapists half that, the idea of keeping people imprisoned indefinately without due process violates the spirit of the Constitution as well as the letter of the Constitution.

I had started this paragraph "A worst case scenario would be..." but it's not really worst case. Oppressive governments in the past and currently around the world arbitrarily imprison people. It's only natural for an entity to remove threats and therein lies the conflict. What is the priority, right of the individual or rights of the state?

It seems that some people get confused at this point, but the way I see it, 'rights of the state' is really 'rights of the ruling class at the expense of everyone else' and is somehow camoflagued as 'equality'. In that light I can only devalue the rights of the state till they are less than the rights of the individual.

The many headed, multi-tentacled beast in my life known as work is awake and hungry. I must go feed it.