If only I believed that our elected representatives were motivated to preserve our rights,  more than they are motivated by a myriad of other political incentives.

Oh Monty, keep teasing us like this and everyone will think you've got a crush on us.

1) The argument that it is not a surveillance state  if the government keeps all digital information on it's citizens, but pinky swears not to look at it without a good reason, is comical.  If your activities are constantly being collated for later use by the government, you live in a surveillance state.

 2) There are plenty of allegations of blanket data collection.   And there is no physical obstacle to the NSA reading your e-mails or listening to your calls.   Only a moral one, they are supposed to get a warrant first.  Just like how the IRS shouldn't target conservatives.  

Under duress is still voluntary?

You really don't see a problem with the government aggregating all e-mail, facebook, twitter, phone ect data that it can store?

Do you agree with Andrew McCarthy that not only should phone-usage records be readily available to the government, but phone conversations need to be more easily monitored by government?  

This is not a joke.  He wrote that today.

It is a surveillance state.  The conservative defense of it is basically that no one is looking at the surveillance with out proper oversight.

There is enormous potential for abuse of this program, and with so little known about it, the conservative confidence that such abuse is minimal isn't much of a comfort.

The only reason to have this surveillance state is to protect us from terrorists.  So I don't find the line Fred has drawn to be a caricature at all, the way some people have described it

How afraid you are of terrorists vs how afraid are you are of the loss of core liberties, will determine where you come down on this debate.

Conservatives have confidence in good government here.  Which again highlights why I don't describe myself as one anymore.

In thread after thread I see us admitting this.  I'm not sure what posts you're reading.

I shall re-quote Ben Franklin for the upteenth time.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Just quoting Fred because it is easier than me typing this out on my own.

You don't think they were already avoiding them?

Time to bring Ben Franklin back into the debate.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

We have a government that has so many laws on the books that all of us are guilty of numerous crimes.

Now that same government has the ability to store everything about you via the large data providers.

Are you really naive enough to believe that it will be able to resist using that information to target political opponents?  Or are you just unaware of the fact that if the government looks hard enough, it can find reasons to lock you up for years?

Here's some more Mark Steyn.  Because we all need to laugh at times like these.

My comrade John Podhoretz, doughty warrior of the New York Post, says relax, there’s nothing to worry about. But how do I know he’s not just saying that because Eric Holder’s monitoring his OnStar account and knows that when he lost his car keys last Tuesday he was in the parking lot of Madam Whiplash’s Bondage Dungeon?

It is crazy to think that the government can gather this kind of information about us and resist the urge to use it for personal and/or political gain.

If the choice is, deal with increased terrorism, or deal with a government which knows everything about everyone and has so many laws on the books that we've all violated several, I'll take the increased terrorism.

It is certainly possible for his actions to be both criminal and heroic.  What is right and what is the law are not inherently congruent.

You're kind of an exception then.  Also, getting a chance to read up on history can hardly be described as 'work' by those interested in history.

Forgive my hostility, but I have friends who are teachers and they have been posting pictures of themselves by the pool for the past few days.  Even if they had a copy of the 'Decline and fall of the Roman Empire' with them, I don't think it equates to what the rest of us are still doing all summer.

Outstanding.

The problem here being that the topic as to whether there are natural property rights deserves it's own thread, and cannot be done justice in 200 word replies to one another.

There are entire books and research papers that deal with the topic of natural law property rights, and the implications for taxation and other government actions.  We can't re-argue all of these battles in this confined space.

If you would like my summary, natural law theory does entail the existence of a natural right of private property, and that this right is neither so strong as to demand a completely laissez faire government, nor so weak as to say that the government is free to do almost anything it wants with your property.