Have we gone too far?

Have we gone too far in our paranoia?

  • Yes, too far.

    Votes: 11 73.3%
  • It's just far enough. Blow up dolls are serious business.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, we need to go further.

    Votes: 1 6.7%
  • Lock up the person that called in the bomb squad.

    Votes: 3 20.0%

  • Total voters
    15
OK, my last post may have been a wee bit snarky, and I apologize. I realize we've never met or talked and you know nothing about me. My point was a Nations cultural holidays shouldn't be zero toleranced or PCed out of the schools for the so called "greater good of society". I realize you're not a mind reader, so please accept my apology for my knee jerk reaction.

I understand, but no one is being arrested for celebrating christmas. I'm trying to keep this politics and religion free, and the point of my original post was the paranoia about bombs and such. A kid played a goofy prank, and faces 8 years in prison for it. A guy runs through an airport because he's late for something, and they shut down the airport - and the blame the guy for THEIR over-reaction.
 
I understand, but no one is being arrested for celebrating christmas. I'm trying to keep this politics and religion free, and the point of my original post was the paranoia about bombs and such. A kid played a goofy prank, and faces 8 years in prison for it. A guy runs through an airport because he's late for something, and they shut down the airport - and the blame the guy for THEIR over-reaction.

It's a shame what we've come to allow in the guise of what's good for the masses. :(

IMO yes, we've gone too far. I look back at what personal freedoms we've lost in my short 46 years and it puts into context what my dad always told me about the direction of things and what freedoms he lost in his short life.

I shudder to think what's going to be left when my boys are my age...
 
I understand, but no one is being arrested for celebrating christmas. I'm trying to keep this politics and religion free, and the point of my original post was the paranoia about bombs and such. A kid played a goofy prank, and faces 8 years in prison for it. A guy runs through an airport because he's late for something, and they shut down the airport - and the blame the guy for THEIR over-reaction.

It's a shame what we've come to allow in the guise of what's good for the masses. :(

IMO yes, we've gone too far. I look back at what personal freedoms we've lost in my short 46 years and it puts into context what my dad always told me about the direction of things and what freedoms he lost in his short life.

I shudder to think what's going to be left when my boys are my age...

When it comes to freedoms, it is a matter of Use Them or Lose Them. Every time that you give in to the abuse of "legitimate" authority, you contribute to your loss of freedom and that of everyone else.

skieur
 
This is not about politics? Not about left or right?
When you have to elect your local judge/sheriff based on his political stand and religious beliefs, this IS about politics.

The purpose of the law is not about punishment. It's is about deterring people from committing a crime.
A lot of people complained about Singapore canning that American boy's butt for spray painting their subway trains. Bill Clinton pleaded for him but Singapore went ahead anyways.
The fact is, you can probably find the same law in the US, only with different consequences. In Singapore's case, the principle on which they design the sentence is to deter. If you don't mess with the law, no one's going to chase you down the street with a whip on your ass.

In this case, a kid played a prank with its direct consequences pretty harmless and got prosecuted with a heavy sentence tells me one thing. The ones who is up holding the law does not understand the purpose of the law. Either the person has nothing better to do, or wants to show off what he can do with his given power, or simply wants to waste public resources.

Many complain that Obama isn't creating enough jobs. The big question is, are they qualified for those jobs even if there are plenty of jobs?

The security did the right thing, but the prosecutor is a clown.

Now you can just count on the judge that the community has elected to "serve justice". Better yet, just call Nancy Grace.


BTW, "freedom" is just a catchy slogan for voters' brains to get stuck on and forget about the progression of the country. Freedom is about sacrifices and I don't see people in this country willing to entertain this idea.
 
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Whether or not you want to consider it political/religious, the fact is, "Zero Tolerance" has gone waaaaaaaaaaaay off the deep end. It's predicated on the assumption that we, the people, have no idea what's good for us, but thank ****ing god our legislators and the criminal justice system do. Can you say "Police State"?
 
 
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^ While I truly despise country music, I watched, listened, and all I can say is these are exactly the things me and my friends talk about. The line about riding bikes without helmets made me remember a few years back when my best friend, his wife and two kids were told they had to helmet up or leave the park district bike paths. When my best friend told the park district Nazi there was no sign indicating that, the reply was along the lines of "we don't need a sign since no one in their right mind would let themselves or their children ride a bike without a helmet". Yep, things just keep getting better and better all the time.
 
The prank was just that a prank – the problem is that this country has had so many foreign and domestic attacks on schools/public areas that a school has to have surveillance cameras installed to begin with. I grew up in a large city went to school in a open campus high school, we didn’t have cameras, guards or gates. We didn’t need them because there were no problems that warranted them, now there are.

Grant it he just meant to pull a prank, the response had to be full up and professional and PAID for. “hooded individual placing something in the girls bath room” if you didn’t know what it was you can’t assume it’s nothing dangerous.
If he gets jail time (8 yrs or less) I believe it will be for what he caused rather then what he did.

Put yourself in the shoes of the people/person that had to go in the bathroom to find out what was in the package.
 
it's not just th U.S.. It's everywhere people are paranoid. It's good that "big brother" is observant, but when truth is that it was not what it looked like, the kid should of cause be judged for what happened, and not what "looked like what happened" .. He should maybe be told, hey that was a bad joke cause some paranoid people might get scared. That's it.. Sending him to prison in obviously retarded.
 
allot of it comes down to lawsuits. school district doesnt want to deal with lawsuits if that does happen to be something bad in the bathroom. so they go to the extreme. same with anything else. they don't want to risk lawsuits so they just go to zero tolerence. i believe in commen sence. but when you can smash a kethup bottle on a table and sue heinz and win because you got glass in your throat because there wasn't directions how to open the bottle, then your kinda forced to have to do everything you can to protect yourself. you dont want to hold your christmas pagent and have little timmy parents (timmy doesnt care) sue the school because they are athiets and its offensive. the easiest responce is to just not have the pagent anymore to save yourself the hassle.
 
Can you say "Police State"?
No

Guy, go travel around the world for a while and then come back and tell us if America is a police state.

Thats america's problem and always has been, it just sits in this isolated bubble thinking the world revolves around it.

People such as yourself end up being as paranoid as the paranoid people who locked up the kid.

All of these dinky news stories happened 30 years ago too, they just weren't as commonly heard of because they didn't have the internet to spread them around
 
Guy, go travel around the world for a while and then come back and tell us if America is a police state.

Been there done that. In fact, in the late 90's I had to get a new Passport almost four years before it expired because there were no more blank pages to stamp. Thanks for the advice, tho.

All of these dinky news stories happened 30 years ago too, they just weren't as commonly heard of because they didn't have the internet to spread them around

No, they weren't heard because law enforcement was never involved. They were handled internally by the schools through the use of detention, suspension, expulsion, etc.
 

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