Paul Krugman and the surveillance state

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   innersmiffposted 12 years ago

   http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06 … nce-state/
   
   Economist Paul Krugman has declared the US an "authoritarian surveillance state". Thanks for calling it out but I see something wrong here:
   
   
   
   
   

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      Education Answerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I'm more amazed by the fact that I actually agree with something Krugman said!

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         innersmiffposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         It is not wholly unusual for a liberal to accept that the Obama administration presides over a police state, yet somehow hold the simultaneous belief that it is wholly good and should be given massive power. Where I come from, this is called cognitive dissonance.
         
         Some lefty Facebook page made me laugh the other day:
         "Despite the NSA debacle and drone strikes, we do not hold that Obama is a war criminal"
         
         So basically, Obama is not a war criminal when you ignore all the war criminal stuff going on. I guess?????

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   Sooner28posted 12 years ago

   It's not necessarily cognitive dissonance, because most liberals believe the government can have a positive impact on the economy.  They just don't believe the government's foreign policy isn't great.  Examples would be SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and the like.  Pointing out foreign policy successes at ANY point is difficult.
   
   Anyway, I am glad to see a famous liberal standing up and saying something about the spying. 
   
   As for the facebook page you visited (I happened to read through all the comments on this discussion), that's just bizarre.
   
   If an individual commits a war crime, either by ordering it or engaging it in directly, they are a war criminal.
   
   They then claim Obama has ordered drone strikes, which, according to them, are a war crime.
   
   But, they don't conclude Obama is a war criminal?  WHAT?  Someone needs to go back to logic 101.   It's a simple modus ponens.  If P, then Q.  P.  Therefore Q.
   
   I don't like pages that blatantly support one political party over another.

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      innersmiffposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I suppose it is a valid argument to suggest that a group of people are good at one type of thing, and bad at another - but just from a practical view point: why is giving a group of people responsible for the deaths of millions more power over our lives a smart thing to do?

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