If by some horrible miracle --- a "horribilicle" --- we had upon us a series of public referenda on a Constitutional amendment enabling foreign intelligence services to ignore the 4th Amendment in the service of any reasonable pursuit of Islamic terrorists, how do you think "WE" would vote on it?
I know how I'd vote ("fuck no"), but I don't think I could predict whether the amendment would pass.
It's worth keeping in mind that the government exists to serve all of us, not just us noisy nerds on Hacker News, and that we don't all agree on things that everyone on Hacker News believes we agree about.
Right, this is one reason I'm not actually a big fan of government and "democracy" at all... the "tyranny of the majority". Nonetheless, within the framework of what we are working with here, I think it's important that our government be very transparent, so that at least the option of holding the government accountable exists.
I have not read any of those three, so definitely thank you for sharing. FWIW, my individualist anarchist tendencies have largely been influenced by people like Lysander Spooner and Murray Rothbard.
I know how I'd vote ("fuck no"), but I don't think I could predict whether the amendment would pass.
It's worth keeping in mind that the government exists to serve all of us, not just us noisy nerds on Hacker News, and that we don't all agree on things that everyone on Hacker News believes we agree about.