Rooting For The Laundry: The Absolute Insanity Of Decisions About The NSA Being Made Based On 'Liberal' Or 'Conservative' Ideology

from the up-is-down,-left-is-right dept

“And instead of our report being truly understood as a middle ground, based upon taking into account all of those perspectives on both sides of the spectrum, I think the White House got moved by thinking of our report as a liberal report,” Stone said.

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Geoffrey Stone, one of the members of the White House task force which suggested that the President needed to end the Section 215 bulk collection of phone records, has said that he was told that the White House rejected that plan because they viewed the report as "liberal." God forbid a supposedly "liberal" President actually do something he considers "liberal." And, indeed, it seemed that his non-proposal in which he pretends to reform NSA surveillance was predicated on not pissing off the hawkish conservatives who tend to support the surveillance state.So... what happens now that the supposedly conservative, hawkish, surveillance state-loving Republican Party has agreed that the program is unconstitutional and should be shut down?To some extent, it really does seem to go back to the corruption of power . Those in power always seem to trust themselves not to abuse that power -- and unthinking automaton partisan hacks seem to flip their position based on whether their guy or the other guy is power.There's been an insanely stupid debate over the past few weeks as to whether or not folks like Ed Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange were somehow "ideologically pure" enough to be supported by liberals -- which highlights the monumentally asinine level of political discourse in the country these days, further highlighted by President Obama rejecting the task force's opinions as being "too liberal."As can be seen by the flip-flopping of "liberals" and "conservatives" over the surveillance state, the entire concept of those labels is really no different than if you're rooting for the orange team or the yellow team. It's like the old joke about how if you root for a sports team, you're really rooting for the laundry . People focused on whether something is "liberal enough" or "conservative enough" are wasting everyone's time. These issues are not about being "liberal" or "conservative." They're about doing what's right. It's not about partisan politics or which team you play for or root for. It should be about what is best for the countrythe wider world in which we live.It's incredibly disheartening that we seem to live in a world where that aspect is barely considered but what color your team is matters the most.

Filed Under: conservatives, democrats, ideology, liberals, nsa, politics, republicans, surveillance