[extropy-chat] Tyranny in place

[Lee Corbin]

Samantha writes

> On Oct 14, 2006, at 9:27 AM, Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
>> In very many ways the government has become
>> an enemy of its citizens, but this hasn't started just
>> in the last decade. It remains to assess how much
>> "we" are being targeted by government when those
>> governments attempt to target Al Queda.
> 
> Personally, I don't believe that Al Qaeda is their target.

So you see (as you explain below) that any inconvenience to
Al Qaeda that occurs overseas  is just a side-effect of a 
government grab for more power?  Would you try to make
that argument apply to America in World War II, the Civil
War, Korea, and Viet Nam?  Or is something different now?

> I think massive expansion of government power and control
> and a near blank check for any military adventures they deem
> desirable is the primary target of their efforts.

I think that the Bush and Blair administrations would like nothing
better than to have buried Al Queda, especially by 2008, so
that they could turn to the electorate and say "See?".

One thing that is more dangerous now than in any point in
Western history is the huge size of the bureaucracies, and
their self-sustaining agendas. Far more civil rights were
abrogated during the Civil War and World War II, and
in effect in World War I, than now, but it was easy to pull
back once the menace was contained.

There are two very sad reasons why we'll never return to
the halcyon days of the 1990s when the U.S. really was
a superpower (or at least everyone thought so), and there
seemed to be few threats from disgruntled individuals and
groups.   One is simply technically small groups and 
individuals can threaten organized society like never 
before, and the other is that the unbelievably huge
centralized bureaucracies that have been created to
deal with them have self-sustenance as their primary
goal. 

Lee