Gods help us...

[Ilion]

:thumbsup:

[Ilion]

Rob Graham wrote:

i agree that BSG has degenerated into a tale of moral relativism carried to the absurd extreme. When there are "no Good Guys and no Bad Guys" then there is no moral compass whatsoever, and any atrocity can be justified by an appeal to "victimology". BSG has become, as Stan points out, an attempt to justify an absurdly flawed world view in which there is no right or wrong, just shades of victimization. A dark, sad tale indeed.

The "absurd extreme" is there from the beginning; it is implicit in the premises of moral relativism.

[Rob Graham]

I don't think they're trying to "blur the distinction between good and evil", I think they are denying that there is a distinction; asserting that it is merely a matter of point of view.

[Ilion]

Well, of course, when one attempts to "blur the distinction between good and evil", one is merely denying that there is a real/objective difference in the first place. (Sheesh! Consider who you're talking to.) But "blurring the distinction" is the phrase quoted in the OP.

[Rob Graham]

Well, what might one expect from employees of an NBC division that is changing its name from SciFi to SyFy (which it turns out is a polish name for a venereal disease) because they can CopyRight the new name and "Brand" it. It's already being referred to as the VD Channel.

[Ilion]

:laugh:

[Oakman]

Rob Graham wrote:

BSG has become, as Stan points out, an attempt to justify an absurdly flawed world view in which there is no right or wrong, just shades of victimization. A dark, sad tale indeed.

A follow up - NPR today had a celebration of BSG - mentioning in passing the battle scenes but gushing over the "morality" of the show. Someone named McHale who works for the "E" channel was apprently the only TV critic (I use the word loosely) they could find to rave about it. I suspect that once you become the favorite SF show of NPR, you aren't likely to appeal much to you or me.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

To say that Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus, or locked up the legislature of a state in order to keep them from voting the way he didn't want them to has anything to do with the Supreme Court is, at best, a weak red herring.

I'll give you that point. But I maintain that it was still the ethical thing to do. Lincoln was not trying to acquire some kind of dictatorial control of the country for his own gain, he was trying to guide it through a period of extreme trauma. And to have not prosecuted a war that promised to end slavery itself out of concern for habeus corpus for only free people would have been true moral relativism. He did the right thing (and that is a damned hard thing to say for a good southern boy like me).

Oakman wrote:

Seems to me the problem is, you so need to protect your hero from charges that he violated the Bill of Rights by wiretapping American citizens without a court order that you now are in the position of saying that sometimes it's necessary to destroy the constitution in order to save it

But I won't give you that point. The notion that we are endowed by our creator with an unalianble right to put our voices into a copper wire is a court based interpretaion of the first amendment. The president has every right to ignore it to defend the nation, and the constitution, from attack. It was the ethical thing to do. To let people die so that you can order pizza without being spied on is, again, moral relativism of the highest order. As a former telephone technician, I can assure you your telephone calls are not private, and cannot be.

Oakman wrote:

which is, of course, exactly what FDR, and Obama claimed.

Except that they were (are) actively trying to change the constitution in order to change the country for their own political purposes. That isn't the same thing at all. Lincoln and Bush's motives were not for their own personal or political gain.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Stan Shannon]

Thats an excellent way to phrase it. But the issue really goes far beyond that. This speaks to an overt collaboration between the political community and the artistic community to formulate and promote a particular world view. It is a conspiracy and you don't need a tin foil hat to appreciate it.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

Lincoln and Bush's motives were not for their own personal or political gain.

I doubt that FDR thought he would personally gain anything from being President - he had a vision for this country, as did Jefferson, and lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. Each of them was/is as convinced of their righteousness as you are. And convinced that they needed to subvert the Constitution in order to protect it. As you say you would. Believe me, most great villans are not Snively Whiplash out to tie Little Nell to the traintracks - they are men with great visions of what the world could be and what must be done to drag it to its destiny. It doesn't mean they are right or that one should cut them slack or anything of the sort, but it's never wise to underestimate the opposition.

Stan Shannon wrote:

As a former telephone technician, I can assure you your telephone calls are not private, and cannot be

There is a rather significant difference between secret and private. When the government listens in for the express purpose of gathering evidence against you they are breaking the rules we live by. When Sally Throckmorton listens to some call passing through her switchboard that's relatively unthreatening to the basic liberties of Americans. You don't seem to get that wiretapping without a warrant is a crime. There are laws against it and if we were still of nation of laws, it would be as illegal for the FBI to violate them as it would be for anyone else. There are specific methods for getting phonetaps authorised, even ex-post facto. Breaking them is illegal; it is a subversion of the law of the land; and it breeds little other than increasing mistrust of the governors by the governed. In short, it is part and parcel of the attitude displayed this year by the producers of BSG. There are no absolutes, no right and wrong - just opinions and situations.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

It is a conspiracy and you don't need a tin foil hat to appreciate it

Why don't you take yours off to check that out?

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[RichardM1]

John, which wire tapping are you talking about? Are you talking about tapping international IP packets that happened to come through the US at some point? Are you talking about tapping a number, in another country, that belonged to a known or believed ter, and a US citizen called that number? Are you talking about targeted taps of numbers known to belong to US citizens w/o an warrant as a general policy? Are you talking about FISA taps were they did not wait for a warrant? I'm asking to find out, I apologize if the ordering or wording of the questions seems leading.

Silver member by constant and unflinching longevity.

[Oakman]

Any wiretapping done by the government, of citizens of the U.S. without a warrant, is illegal. Since the president does not have the power to suspend or ignore laws because they are inconvenient, doing it under his authority is illegal and unconstitutional.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[RichardM1]

Any intentional wiretapping of US citizens by the US government without a warrant is not admissible in court. "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." I may be vague on my definitions, but an attack on CONUS might, from certain points of view, be seem as, maybe, an invasion, right? You know, with foreign terrorists enemy combatants soldiers missionaries friends entering our nation with intent to kill do harm convert show us a good time. Oh. Ok. I see where this is going. Writ of Habeas Corpus being specifically protected in the constitution, and an exclusion given allowing it to be suspended, doesn't that tell you that other, lesser protections, might be suspendable? Or is wire tap a Privacy Clause (which article is that in again?) issue, like abortion? Unreasonable search and seizure does not mean that if you walk into the middle of an investigation scene, carrying a pound of coke in a plastic bag, the government can't prosecute you, but the argument you give is that it can't even look at you. Does it mean that if the government is tapping my phone line, and you call me, they have to turn the tap off, if the warrant does not name you directly? Don't they at least have to figure out it's you, before they can turn it off? By your argument(statement, you don't give any argument), the gov should not be allowed to tap internet traffic in South West Indobania, since there is some chance that any particular packet may have crossed US soil at some point. Or Iranian or Russian military comms, since there could be a US citizen who decided to work for them, and they might actually use that comms channel. To take the extreme argument, I don't believe the government has the right to use the military against US citizens, so I think that in any combat situation, the military should have to check the citizenship of all the other people on the battlefield before using violence. Of course, letting the military ask me for my papers probably is using them against me, so they shouldn't have the right to ask me for my papers. So I guess any use of military force is right out, since a US citizen might get acted upon by the military, and that is not allowed. Piss Off. That is the argument against wiretaps outside the US, and it is BS. The law allows, without warrant, tapping when "the

[Oakman]

RichardM1 wrote:

I may be vague on my definitions, but an attack on CONUS might, from certain points of view, be seem as, maybe, an invasion, right?

I might claim that 20 million illegals pouring across our border is an invasion, but unless the Congress proclaims it so, it isn't. However, Habeas Corpus is a power given to one branch of government to use against another branch of government. It has little to do with rights granted to citizens by prohibiting actions to abrogate those rights. Most of those can be found in the first ten amendments, added to the document at the insistence of the libertarian-types like Jefferson. Most of your arguments have nothing to do with my main point since they all suggest that the government had placed a wiretap on someone else legally, and that their conversation with me would make the tap illegal. I never claimed that and I don't believe that. However, my understand is that the government could not prosecute me using any evidence they obtained - however I'm not a lwayer, even though I've played one on TV. Sorry to otherwise ignore your polemic.

RichardM1 wrote:

The US government can't keep a secret to save it's life.

There's always agreement to be found. I wonder how long it will take before some nut jobs are trying to kill the AIG Executive's kids, not that Cuomo has the list.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[RichardM1]

Oakman wrote:

I might claim that 20 million illegals pouring across our border is an invasion, but unless the Congress proclaims it so, it isn't.

LOL - whether or not Congress proclaims it so, it is so, but I understand your point, even if it clearly makes us both racists.

Oakman wrote:

Most of your arguments have nothing to do with my main point since they all suggest that the government had placed a wiretap on someone else legally, and that their conversation with me would make the tap illegal.

:confused: That was YOUR point: that any tap that catches a US person is illegal w/o a warrant. I was showing you that that is not a legal, or logical, viewpoint. SCOTUS has stated that Bush had war time powers, triggered by congress see Hamdan v. Rumsfeld[^].

Oakman wrote:

Habeas Corpus is a power given to one branch of government to use against another branch

No, it gives us the right to curtail gov power. That it gets applied through the judicial system does not make it a gov power. It also gives congress the power to wave it (but not the exec branch). THAT is giving the gov power.

Oakman wrote:

I'm not a lwayer, even though I've played one on TV.

Cool (koull?) - what show? :laugh: I'm not an actor - but I have seen one on TV. :-\ As far as AIG - there are waayyy too many stupid sheeple in this country.

Silver member by constant and unflinching longevity.