←back to thread

523 points sva_ | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.264s | source
Show context
southernplaces7 ◴[] No.44316005[source]
So, aside from the first Amendment no longer applying to anyone in the U.S (not just citizens mind you) as has always been its interpretation, the government has given itself the right to explicitly, wholesale, normalize the total invasion of anyone's private "papers" (translate that to the modern era) in the name of bullshit entry security theater.
replies(1): >>44316153 #
godelski ◴[] No.44316153[source]
Just an FYI for anyone reading, according to the constitution, the first amendment applies to everyone, not just citizens. It specifically says "the people" rather than "citizens". Courts have ruled time and time again that citizen rights are specifically those with the verbiage "citizens" and rights like these apply to everyone.

Not that that exactly matters to this administration, who is happy to act first and let the courts figure it out never

replies(2): >>44318293 #>>44323173 #
1. southernplaces7 ◴[] No.44318293[source]
Just to add to that: the same logic is supposed to apply to the fourth amendment too since it also doesn't specify citizens. It's of course also being violated wholesale here (and has been for a long time, since before the Trump Administration). While that particular ship has sailed since long ago, it's worrisome and sad to now see the same prying and winnowing down being applied to the 1st too, which has probably been the best defended of the 10 main amendments.

This is how normalization of deviance works on a bureaucratic administrative legal scale. One administration, with just a mildly lackadaisical attitude about staying within the bounds of things like rights, laws, legality and so forth, stretches what's legally allowed or normal just a bit, here and there, only to be followed by another more or less reasonable administration that does it a bit more. Then however, you might get a less common but not extremely rare administration that simply doesn't give a tin shit about anything resembling legality insofar as it thinks it can get away with it, and all those previous deviations are aggressively pried into and expanded as much as possible.

This is why it's important to fight deviations of respect for individual legal rights and constitutional boundaries even when they're small, committed by administrations you otherwise largely respect. You simply don't know who will come along later, or how much political tendencies will change over time having been already given ever more free rein to do so illegally.

Then on the other hand, there is also that large subset of the population that, as long as a particular administration shares its ideological fixations, simply doesn't care about legality or deviations from constitutional responsibility.

On the contrary, they'll actively bark for their new leaders to break the rules as much as possible against anything they don't like. They're idiots for doing this of course, because it can very easily bite them right back in the ass later, but try explaining that when rational discourse goes down the drain in favor of dogmas.