The Old 'Partisan' Lines Don't Fit Nicely With Modern Civil Liberties And Tech Policy Issues
from the rethinking-partisanship dept
I've said a few times in the past that, as someone who doesn't identify with any particular group on the political/partisan spectrum, I've appreciated the fact that the issues I tend to cover aren't normally considered "partisan" and can often create "strange bedfellows." Copyright, for example, isn't an issue that fits into partisan lines at all (though, unfortunately, that's because for a long time, both major parties supported ever greater maximalism -- though that may finally be changing). In fact, when issues did become partisan, it often meant that all reasoned discussion and debate (and chance for actual forward motion) went out the window. Net neutrality was a good example of that. When it first came about, the discussions concerning net neutrality weren't partisan at all, but then the Democrats embraced it, and the Republicans lined up against it, and any reasoned or nuanced discussion or debate about it seemed to vanish.Still, some issues are historically associated with one side or the other. Things like "national security" often seem to be an issue that the traditional "right" lines up behind, while "civil liberties" is an issue that the traditional "left" lines up behind. I'm old enough to remember when being a "a card carrying member of the ACLU" was used as an insult by Republicans to smear Democrats. Obviously, there are libertarians who are often (in my view, incorrectly) associated as being on "the right," who care deeply about civil liberties, but for the most part, the general stereotype is that Republicans on the "right" lined up behind strong national security fights and were less interested in civil liberties, while the Democrats on the "left" were "weak" on national security.
So it's at least a little bizarre to see this piece in Foreign Policy Magazine talking about how the Heritage Foundation, often considered the keepers of the Republican platform, refused to publish a paper that defended the NSA's surveillance efforts as perfectly legal and constitutional. The Heritage Foundation was a big supporter of the Patriot Act, and urged that the key provisions that enabled the dragnet data collection of phone records be renewed. Even more bizarre? When Heritage refused to publish the paper, Benjamin Wittes, of the Brookings Institution -- often considered a "liberal" think tank in DC -- jumped in to publish a version of the paper instead:
Cully Stimson, a senior Defense Department official in the Bush administration who now runs Heritage's national security law program, called Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of the national security blog Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.Now, there could be a few different things at work here. For example, while Brookings is traditionally considered more on the liberal end of the spectrum, Wittes has long been a full on cheerleader for the surveillance state, so it was a natural fit. Similarly, Heritage is now under the leadership of Jim DeMint, who has long been identified as being more closely aligned with the more libertarian wings of the Republican Party. So this could be simply a case where the leanings of those two individuals resulted in what might be seen as a "strange bedfellows" situation with this paper.
Stimson "asked me whether Lawfare might be interested in [the papers], and I was delighted to publish them," Wittes told The Cable. "We asked Steve to consolidate them into a single paper, and there were some subsequent revisions as well because of the document release that took place in the intervening period," Wittes said, referring to the government's decision in August to declassify a large number of documents about NSA programs.
Alternatively, there's an argument that rather than a sort of post-partisan issue that some of us hope these kinds of issues will become, this really is an overtly partisan issue, to the point that Heritage is less eager to support NSA surveillance by the administration because it's not "their guy" in the White House, The same may be true for those on the left who are willing to support the NSA's actions (even when they protested angrily about similar, and potentially less egregious, civil liberties abuses under George W. Bush) because it's okay with President Obama in charge. If this is true, it's not just incredibly cynical and short-sighted, but it's kind of depressing at the intellectual dishonesty of it all.
While either of those scenarios may be true, I'm still hopeful that more and more of these important issues having to do with technology and civil liberties policy will be viewed as post-partisan (which is very different than "bi-partisan"), in that they're important issues that should be dealt with on their own merits, rather than if you happen to prefer the red team or the blue team. Part of the problem that many of us who focus on things like innovation and civil liberties policy have with the way the political efforts break down is that neither party comes close to representing what we're interested in. If more of these important issues that are getting attention don't fit neatly along party lines, perhaps the political landscape can be reconfigured in a more effective way to actually deal with the issues of tomorrow, rather than mere bickering about the issues of the past.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: civil liberties, conservative, intellectual property, left, liberal, national security, partisan politics, politics, right, think tanks
Companies: brookings, heritage foundation
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
They never did. Always look like arbitrary lines to me.
The post-partisan future is solidly corporate fascist, people. "Post-partisan" means de-industrialized, privatized, surveilled TOTAL STATE. Focus on technology (meaning empower corporations making the gadgets which increasingly surveil you) guarantees losing sight of the fundamental rights of "natural" persons, and that's exactly as the mega-corporations want.
We need to roll back the "innovation" that's controlling us.
Google wants you to know you're under our ever improving state-of-the-art personalized surveillance! We learn your interests, habits, and associations! All "free", courtesy of other corporations!
07:30:08[i-901-8]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: They never did. Always look like arbitrary lines to me.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: They never did. Always look like arbitrary lines to me.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: They never did. Always look like arbitrary lines to me.
We should not abandon or "roll back" technology. We should embrace it and leverage it to fight the corruption and decay that seems to have taken over modern governments.
Just think: before the internet, if some government goon said something on the media echo chamber, you had no choice but to believe it. How would you disprove it without data? But today, you can show to a global audience, in real time, that he is full of shit. You can crowd-source that information. And, most importantly, you can ask someone else from across the world - who has a completely different perspective, often not conditioned by your cultural/political/etc biases - how full of shit the man is.
Technology bridges the gap between mighty and weak, brings people together and makes them stronger. This is made evident every time some new, potentially life changing technology comes forth and governments rush to legislate it and severely limit its usefulness - and with it, the potential that it can be used against them.
Internet. Drones. 3D printers. Every new technology that might empower "the people" is being castrated, often in the name of that elusive "national security" that our supposed enemies are always on the brink of shattering, or some moral and/or economic principle from yesteryear like copyright that has almost lost its meaning in the information age, but that some groups still hang on to because it gives them the ability (or at least an illusion of that ability) to control the masses.
The truth is that they fear that the masses will turn to these technologies and use them to topple their little empires.
They fear technology. Let's use that to our advantage.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just look at the recent budget crisis. Nobody cares about the fact that our government partially shut down for a couple of weeks and nearly defaulted on its debts. Instead, all the mainstream news headlines are about how Team Red blinked first and lost the staring contest they had with Team Blue.
Public well-being? Representation of constituents? Keeping the nation from falling apart due to financial mismanagement? Nobody cares. What is important is that Home Team beats Visiting Team.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
What I'm saying is, you can't ALWAYS judge what people are thinking about things by what the media is saying, but you sure as hell can tell what they are thinking by what they are saying.
And much of the time, it's knee-jerk reactionary "Pick a team" nonsense. The number of times I've been called a "Liberal Socialist" because I'm a moderate conservative is ridiculous, and the pressure to pick a team if you want to remain associated with certain people online is intense. I've had to block a few people I once counted as friends over it. I will NOT be shamed into picking a side when neither of them is on my side and it's all a sham to distract us from the real issues anyway.
We need to stick together and work together if we're going to get anything done. And you know what? We don't have to agree with each other 100% of the time to do so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
That aside, I agree with your comment here. I, too, align with no tribe completely. In part because I think that tribalism is poison to our nation, and in part because it's just being intellectually lazy. If you just align with a camp, you don't have to really think the issues out for yourself to know what you think.
A million times this. A would add that if everyone is thinking for themselves, nobody will agree with each other 100% of the time. And that's a good thing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
1. Spin me a tale, bad man! The press use experts on spin/"politics" to tell people about why exactly politicians x and y act like they do. The meta-analysis is catching some popular interest, but completely drops any political topics. Furthermore, instead of the spin effecting the populations, the spin makes politicians change stances to be better equipped for spinning the issue correctly instead of actually caring. The lobbyists are experts in providing what the politicians supporting them needs and therefore this type of tv is playing them into the hands of lobbyists!
2. Meta meta! The press analyze the political opinion data to inform people. This is very common close to elections. From a politicians perspective it is terrible since it can make people vote tactical to skew the numbers instead of voting for a politic! There is nothing wrong with this specifically, but it will not inform people about what the political package they vote for entails nor the political parties with data on where their dream-candidate should stand. Makes politicians go for "safe" plays for their party line and district.
3. Facts are facts! The press look for a boolian answer to the question: Is what the politician says true? Fact-finding is absolutely an improvement on the spin analysis and meta data analysis, but it is still way too simplified to take a few remarks and find out what is behind them.
What media needs to do is digging up the background literature and daring to describe what it says. I know it actually takes quite some time for a journalist to get informed enough to do that, it doesnt have the postman bites dog and therefore cannot create the spectacular headlines the modern media needs and there will be many people who do not see the value to them instantly. However, it is a necessity for people to actually start to understand politics. In this respect Mike Masnick, while biased, is doing an admirable job of reading and commenting both the lobbyist memos that create the lines from the politicians and the reports that inform their actions.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It's called "Horserace politics."
The only way to get rid of our high incumbency (short of a very violent takeover) would be to incentivize them to voluntarily retire.
As of this posting I have not received a US National Security Letter or any classified gag order from an agent of the United States
Encrypted with Morbius-Cochrane Perfect Steganographic Codec 1.2.001
Thursday, October 17, 2013 5:55:59 PM
lift toothbrush graduate hymn torture velcro holly slipper
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It's called "Horserace politics."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: stop with the default biz
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It's hilarious that you don't recognize your own far-left, liberal leanings.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
If Masnick has any political leaning at all, it's libertarian!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
CNN has referred to me as a "far right wing blogger." You refer to me as a "far left, liberal." Others have referred to me as "bolshevik socialist" to "tea party conservative."
Maybe you should try not using labels and pay attention to substance.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Maybe you should try not using labels and pay attention to substance."
Don't worry Mr Masnick, we do.
Even if you do it to others! Read your post Mr Masnick, count the labels you used !!!
Mr Masnick maybe you should try not using labels and pay attention to (the) substance.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
That comment is a case in point, Mike. They tend to pick on moderates in an effort to drag us deeper into the fold and make us go along with what they want.
I'm glad you're too smart to let yourself be limited or influenced by labels. I wish thinking for oneself was more popular, as so few people actually do so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It's hilarious that you don't recognize your own far-left, liberal leanings.
I mean, really?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: It's hilarious that you don't recognize your own far-left, liberal leanings.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pride And Partisanship
That's rather optimistic Mike. we keep electing and replacing congressmen every 2 to 4 years yet the new boss ends up being the same as the old boss, to borrow a lyric from The Who. Partisan pride has made any issue a partisan issue just to be on the opposite spectrum of the opposing party. This problem applies to both republicans AND democrats. as long as pride and partisanship dictates the divide, then government will remain the same as the world around it changes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Pride And Partisanship
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Pride And Partisanship
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Liberal vs. Conservative?
It's all comes down to money, after all. Maybe by employing some sophisticated higher math on the flow of money in D.C., one could come up with something like a tide chart for a very complicated tidal basin. Then maybe you can figure out who's doing what.
Regarding copyright, however, look no further than the right-wing loons who operate the Copyright Alliance. Don Nickles of the Nickles Group was tea party before there was one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Liberal vs. Conservative?
To truly track who's doing what, you'd need to work on an individual basis. "Democrat" and "Republican" didn't predict who would publish that paper. "Pro-surveillance" and "Libertarian" would have.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Liberal vs. Conservative?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Liberal vs. Conservative?
The other proposition is the leanings of the people behind the thinktanks not alligning 100 % with partyline.
The third reasoning of less democrat vs republican is more specific observations on bipartisan issues.
You could see it as the substantial issues are getting less partisan due to lack of real coverage.
Meanwhile the spin and handwaving from thinktanks are making the difference in factions into a presentation bias on their papers and opinions.
Politics is no longer about the law and specific issues. It is about who their friends are and how representable they appear! The fizzle is what sells, substance is so last year.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Liberal vs. Conservative?
But I probably still could not fit anywhere on that copyright spectrum. I am an abolitionist, but not of any "faction" that I can see gaining popular ground right now.
For instance, I try my best to make a point by avoiding the cliches that my side of the spectrum dish out: "it's not theft it's infringement!" "But the labels are too rich, anyway!", "I can't afford paying!", "They won't make their streaming channels convenient enough!". These not only show that one isn't thinking for one's self, the arguments themselves undermine a lot of what the sensible pro-copyright advocates say, which is not fair. I come from a background that makes a big deal about knowing the arguments of opponents well enough that I could put them myself if I wanted to.
I have yet to meet an abolitionist like myself who claims to be against copyright because IT is responsible for enabling pirates to easily cheat on their dues, and who would like to reverse the process by making pirates accountable for their actions by making all monetisation be dependent on assurance contracts (crowdfunding primarily, but also tickets, subscriptions, pre-orders, etc). That is certainly a far more sensible way than the utopian madness of copyright that seems to benefit everyone - publishers and pirates - EXCEPT the actual creators. "Either you are with copyright or you are with pirates" is ridiculous. You can be against both.
I also like to point out that I do accept the idea of "intellectual property" if we talk about skills as property, such as a house builder's "property" of his learned skills, or a plumber's skills, etc. But then I go on to say that copyright must necessarily be ANTI intellectual property because it holds hostage the rights of derivative artists and their "skills". The pro-copyright advocates who put forward John Locke's philosophy as an argument for copyright get quite pissed off when I bring up that very same philosophy against THEM but more strictly. Locke would not have been in favour of holding hostage some kind of property in favour of defending that exact same kind of property, and probably would have sided with the assurance contract model to protect original AND derivative more morally.
This, I hope you can see, is not an argument that gets a lot of attention. And I think it is probably because there are few Marxist-dialectics who want copyright abolished and are willing to see how through the interpenetration of opposites.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Liberal vs. Conservative?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Liberal vs. Conservative?
I think I mentioned something about needing a scorecard.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Republicrats
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Republicrats
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The anti-group thinker by definition has no word to describe him.
The Right can adopt Left principles all the time, and vice-versa. It can happen to the point where the meanings of the words "Left" and "Right" change significantly. For example, being an isolationist and/or a dictator sympathiser in the name of realpolitik would have probably got you called far-Right-wing in the West back in the days of the Cold War. However, now this tendency to abandon third-world people to the fate of totalitarian-state thugs for selfish interests of one's own is very prominent among the Left - in particular, the anti-war faction. And it can all be explained by them getting high on capitalism and turning into two-legged pigs of their own. When you have (nearly) everything you ever wanted from a not-perfect but still very lucky civilisation such as the United States or the United Kingdom, who cares about third-world problems? There is a reason why the vast majority of people who give to a charity are among those who have most likely been actually affected by the troubles the charity is trying to fight: the corollary is that people who indulge in video games, booze and expensive clothes while still claiming that Western capitalism is the root of all evil have no urgent reason to care about such humanitarian causes - they have had the privilege of being the luckiest mammals who ever walked the planet in all its billions of years.
It was not like this back in, say, the 60s where poverty was more predominant. Ironically, Socialist solidarity was greater during this period, because there were more people around to have empathy with dissidents fighting dictators, as they could better identify with them in relation to their class divide. Even some sensible Communists got this point. Totalitarianism was, and still is, something to be opposed in ALL forms, and no comprise is up for discussion.
But now, most of the working-class have become middle-class enough to not care any more. You only need to look at the lack of help among Syria's refugees as well as the near-complete lack of solidarity with the people of Iraq during the last decade. For the "Left", it wasn't just enough to be against the war and it wasn't enough to stop any arming of the fighters against fascism - dictatorial and/or religious. They had to throw away any redeeming factor completely, and give only the tiniest aid towards the Iraqis as possible. Because ONLY Right-wing Cheney can be prone to and guilty of selfishness, right?
Yes, Bush's administration deserved a good deal of impeachment: not for "lies" told to and believed by gullible idiots who proceed to blame everyone else for their gullibility, but for incompetently not protecting Iraq enough from the religious fascists of Al Qaeda. Some gravely inexcusable mistakes were made such as giving Saddam's supporters enough time to retreat and rearm. But this is an argument for MORE intervention, not less.
You are going to get much more of this in your lifetimes. Don't think you wont. Syria is going to implode; Lebanon will suffer badly; Nigeria is in a state of chaos; Iran is on the brink of revolution; Russia's bullying against the Syrian people, journalists, homosexuals, punk rock bands and many others is going to provoke something nasty; Zimbabwe is under severe oppression; both Libya and Egypt are on the brink of civil war; Pakistan's nuclear weapons remain a grave danger; China have a seemingly unoverthrowable stranglehold, North Korea cannot possibly sink any lower. And this is to only name a few.
If you want a historical perspective on what ought our role in the world should be, unilateral or not, partisan or not, look to Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. We will not be able to do everything, obviously. And military intervention is obviously not warranted in all circumstances of human rights abuses. But there is such a thing as a totalitarian state that has hit the bottom of the barrel, and we should recognise it when we see it.
Take the side of the victim in each conflict, every conflict, and you will feel much more like what the Left used to stand for. And don't make excuses for Right-wing extremism. Wake up and smell the fascism. Then go and read ONLY the opening lines to Richard Dawkins' "Unweaving the Rainbow" and realise how inconceivably fortunate you are.
...and then realise that you may only live once, but you are not the only one alive.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
three major power struggles
Most prominent is the left (Democrat)/right (Republican) ideological split, the one focused on most by the media.
As discussed in this posting, there is also a divide between the civil liberties vs. security, and the sides of that debate do not correspond to left/right.
Finally, there is the entrenched power vs. "the people" split, which can be seen in copyright/DRM conflicts, in the influence of money on politics (as discussed by Lawrence Lessig), in the Washington lobbyist revolving door, and even the Tea Party and Occupy movements.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wag the Dog
You've just detailed the classic "WAG THE DOG",
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
humanrights
www.humanrights-denied.co.nz
[ link to this | view in chronology ]