Barr rips Bush administration on privacy issues…
May 28th, 2008 by Stephen Gordon…reads the title of this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article.
Speaking to the Clayton County (Georgia) Rotary Club, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr “blasted the Bush administration on Wednesday for eroding the privacy of U.S. citizens, which he called the most fundamental of American rights.”
Barr was asked during the program whether there is a way to balance the rights of private citizens and the need for the government to fight terrorism. This, after Barr accused the president and defense agencies of essentially duping Congress into granting them broad new powers to listen to Americans’ private conversations without establishing a link to terrorism.
Barr said the balance already exists.
“The balance is the Bill of Rights,” Barr said.
Afterward, Barr said he did not tout his own campaign during his speech because the Rotary Club is not a political organization and that he agreed to speak Wednesday before he announced his bid for the presidency.
He said his campaign team will be assembling in Atlanta in the next week. At that point he said he will begin more active campaigning. He already has campaign events planned in Washington, New York, Las Vegas and Portland, Ore., with more to come, he said.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:57 am
donate on july 4th
May 29th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I have been trying to find answers to what I feel are civil liberties, such as a woman’s right to choose. Where is this information for Mr. Barr?
May 29th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Secretarry of the Treasury: RON PAUL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 29th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Mr Barr, If you dont start media blitz right now,its ging to be tough.You must engage the two nit-wits and show the people why your differant
May 29th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Good article….
http://www.ajc.com/meetro/content/news/stories/2008/05/28/barr_privacy.html
Bob Barr will appear on the Colbert Report. Perhaps he’ll show up on http://www.google.com/trends after that show.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:52 am
how about civil libarties such as babies right to live. r we becoming like natzi germany, where with governmants approval u could murder a person. either all of us have the right to live or none of us do.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:53 am
this is what america might become http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp7GvccdoFo
May 30th, 2008 at 7:31 am
pls barr,i hope you will start a media tour real soon,john mcbush is out having a free ride.you have to start doing some groud work esp in the deep south.you stand a good chance than mccain.hope we will see you soon in the news.
true conservatives for barr
May 30th, 2008 at 9:06 am
“I have been trying to find answers to what I feel are civil liberties, such as a woman’s right to choose.”
Could you please show me where in the constitution you find this right? I keep looking but yet to find the issue addressed.
I don’t know but I’m sure Barr opposes murdering the unborn but would probably take the position that it is up to the states to makes laws on baby murder.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Bob Barr 08
May 30th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I don’t want to put any words in Barr’s mouth, but I believe that Mr. Barr has stated that the States should decide the Abortion issue. This is the only policy that makes sence, because it follows our constitution. I believe this was the same position that Ron Paul had. He too was pro-life. The point is criminal matters, unless crossing state lines, should be left up to states to decide. Now if a state decides that Abortion is a crime, then the state would be responsible for creating and enforcing the appropriate laws. If a different state allows abortion, then so be it.
Roe vs. Wade is based on the view that the constitution is a “living document” and “up for interpretation.” The obvious problem is of corse this line of reasoning sets precident for other abuses of constitutional athority such as the patriot act. If the constitution is a living document, then people can justify the right to change their interpetation of it based on events. If we decide that Abortion should be legally accepted nationally, then we should amend the constitution to that effect, in which case the federal government could be involved.
May 30th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
JMann Says:
May 30th, 2008 at 9:06 am
I don’t know but I’m sure Barr opposes murdering the unborn but would probably take the position that it is up to the states to makes laws on baby murder.
Thank you for your opinion. Can someone please tell me where I can find Mr. Barr’s opinion on this issue? Does he support the government making decisions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies?
May 30th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I’m not sure what Barr’s concise position is on abortion …
As for me, I abhor abortion. I have had ‘personal involvement’ with abortion, and it left a lasting negative impression on me. I am also an atheist and ardent classic American liberal. Despite my aversion to abortion, I still believe it is an individual’s private choice. For those of you who believe in God, it is not your concern, either here on earth or in the afterlife. Punishment, if there is to be punishment, is to be meted out by your God … not by you.
JMann makes a very common error … looking for an enumeration of all rights in the Constitution. Like many people, he believes if its not written in the Constitution, then its not a right. He is dead wrong !! Our Founding Fathers were clear that the Constitution defines [enumerates] the powers granted to the Federal Government by the people … ALL other rights are reserved to the States, and to the People.
The Federal Government has no more rights and power than those granted to it in the Constitution. People, on the other hand, retain ALL rights and power separate from those granted to the Federal government. Just because you don’t see it in writing, doesn’t mean its not an unalienable right.
The problem usually arises when people start to define ‘positive’ rights [like rights to education, and jobs, and health care and *** marriage] as opposed to the ‘negative’ [and unalienable] rights advocated in our Constitution. Positive rights always require you to give up something of yours to someone else, for the “common good”, or separates out a special group for treatment [like marriage for ****, or slavery for blacks]. People pushing for “positive” rights are always pushing an agenda of economic egalitarianism, which is Collectivism and Statism. Negative rights protect you from such compulsion by protecting your property, life, and liberty. Under the concept of negative unalienable rights **** are allowed to enter into any marriage contract they wish to, as equals of everyone else — just as black men and women are not allowed to be enslaved, because they too have the same equal rights before the law.
From the US Constitution:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Nowhere in our Constitution does it ‘take away’ a person’s right to choose what they do with their own body … it can’t — those rights are inalienable and preceded the Constitution. The duty of government is to protect those inalienable rights.
The hallmarks of the philosophy of John Locke which inspired our Founding Fathers to create a new nation based on unalienable rights was that Locke asserted individuals have the right to own property for their own exclusive use and disposal, and that each individual owns his/her own body.
I will not deny that abortion is a very difficult issue … it is the conflict between two unalienable rights: the “claimed” right to life of a fetus, and the “claimed” right to privacy and individual ownership of one’s own body. There is no objective measure which I can see which delineates those rights — only a subjective one. Therefore one of them has to give way — they can not both be ‘inalienable’ at the same time.
The Christian premise is, of course, that the right to life of the fetus must prevail, but then Christianity demands altruism and self-sacrifice of its followers for the benefits of others — basically, Socialism at its heart. It denies basic ownership of one’s own body and asserts that all men belong to God the Creator. Lest you doubt me, just refer to Jesus’ command to give up everything and follow him. If modern Christians were to actually practice Christianity as it is written in the Bible (instead of just paying it convenient lip service on Sundays), they would be Socialists, not Capitalists !!
Such altruism and self-sacrifice as Christianity promotes deny the inalienable nature of a right to privacy and ownership of one’s own body. My advice to Christians, and other religious persons who purport to believe in the Bible, is that they practice two core tenets of Christianity which they conveniently forget most of the time:
1) render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s !!
2) Judge not, lest ye be judged … condemn not, lest ye be condemned.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
One of my favorite oratories:
Reading from a book titled Best American Orations published in 1910 — from John Adams’ comments about James Otis’ 1761 argument before the Royal Governor’s of Massachusetts defending the colonies against the new Writs of Assistance [which are essentially the same thing as George Bush’s Patriot Act and FISA warrants that skip the FISA part !]
James Otis’ words as related by John Adams [signer of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and 2nd President]:
1. He began with an exordium, containing an apology for his resignation of the position of Advocate-General in the Court of Admiralty: and for his appearance in that cause in opposition to the Crown and in favor of the town of Boston and the merchants of Boston and Salem.
2. A dissertation on the rights of man in a state of nature. He asserted that every man, merely natural, was an independent sovereign, subject to no law but the law written on his heart and revealed to him by his Maker, in the constitution of his nature, and the inspiration of his understanding and his conscience. His right to his life, his liberty, no created being could rightfully contest. Nor was his right to his property less incontestable. The club that he had snapped from a tree, for a staff or for defence, was his own. His bow and arrow were his own; if by a pebble he had killed a partridge or a squirrel, it was his own. No creature, man or beast, had a right to take it from him. If he had taken an eel, or a smelt, or a sculpin, it was his property. In short, he sported upon this topic with so much wit and humor, and at the same time with so much indisputable truth and reason, that he was not less entertaining than instructive. He asserted that these rights were inherent and inalienable; that they never could be surrendered or alienated, but by idiots or madmen, and all the acts of idiots and lunatics were void, and not obligatory, by all the laws of God and man. Nor were the poor negroes forgotten. Not a Quaker in Philadelphia, or Mr. Jefferson in Virginia, ever asserted the rights of negroes in stronger terms. Young as I was, and ignorant as I was I shuddered at the doctrine he taught; and I have all my life shuddered, and still shudder, at the consequences that may be drawn from such premises. Shall we say that the rights of masters and servants clash, and can be decided only by force ? I adore the idea of gradual abolitions ! but who shall decide how fast or how slowly these abolitions shall be made ?
3. From individual independence he proceeded to association. If it was inconsistent with the dignity of human nature to say that men were gregarious animals, like wild geese, it surely could offend no delicacy to say they were social animals by nature: that there were natural sympathies, and above all, the sweet attraction of the sexes, which must soon draw them together in little groups, and by degrees in larger congregations, for mutual assistance and defence. And this must have happened before any formal covenant, by express words or signs, was concluded. When general councils and deliberations commenced, the objects could be no other than the mutual defence and security of every individual for his life, his liberty, and his property. To suppose them to have surrendered these in any other way than by equal rules and general consent was to suppose them idiots or madmen, whose acts were never binding. To suppose them surprised by fraud or compelled by force into any other compact, such fraud and such force could confer no obligation. Every man had a right to trample it under foot whenever he pleased. In short, he asserted these rights to be derived only from nature and the Author of nature: that they were inherent, inalienable, and indefeasible by any laws, pacts, contracts, covenants, or stipulations which man could devise.
4. These principles and these rights were wrought into the English Constitution as fundamental laws. And under this head he went back to the old Saxon laws, and to Magna Charta, and the fifty confirmations of it in Parliament, and the executions ordained against the violators of it, and the national vengeance which had been taken on them from time to time, down to the Jameses and Charleses, and to the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights and the Revolution. He asserted that the security of these rights to life, liberty, and property had been the object of all those struggles against arbitrary power, temporal and spiritual, civil and political, military and ecclesiastical, in every age. He asserted that our ancestors, as British subjects, and we, their descendants, were entitled to all those rights, by the British Constitution, as well as by the law of nature and our provincial charter, as much as any inhabitant of London or Bristol, or any part of England; and were not to be cheated out of them by any phantom of ‘virtual representation,’ or any other fiction of law or politics, or any monkish trick of deceit and hypocrisy.
There’s more but its less interesting …
May 30th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Dear Mr. Barr I really hope that you’ll be on the Chris Mathews and Meet the Press!
May 30th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
“If we decide that Abortion should be legally accepted nationally, then we should amend the constitution to that effect, in which case the federal government could be involved.”
I don’t think you need to amend the constitution. I think congress would simply have to pass a law making it legal. Of course a constitutional amendment would be the way to make the legality more permanent but I doubt it would ever be ratified.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Dear Mr Barr,
Of the “issues” facing our nation in this election year, critical as they each may be, I see none so critical as the failed integrity of Congress.
You know as well (likely better) than I that the excesses of the Bush administration are in fact failings of Congress.
This issue is so bad that Congress has all but abandoned it’s constitutional role as overseer and representative.
To wit:
Practically no bill which comes before Congress, in either house, is actually read by those who vote on it.
Many bad and unrelated issues are crammed into large and critical bills to ensure passage.
The people are often kept totally in the dark until after a vote is held and the “damage” is done.
And many more.
Our system of government is so broken that national elections have been largely reduced to the stature of sporting events, rather than the national deliberation they truly deserve to be.
The solution to these failings is very simple, if generally ignored.
In the typical blindness of politicians, none seem interested in real, simple, plausible solutions. But when the people are exposed to these solutions a large majority see the sense in them and ask “why not?”
I am referring to three acts that would change the rules and give Congress real incentives to reform and serve the Constitution as they have pledged.
1. Read The Bills Act.
http://www.downsizedc.org/read_the_laws.shtml
2. Write The Laws Act.
http://www.downsizedc.org/write_the_laws.shtml
3. One Subject At A Time Act.
http://www.downsizedc.org/one-subject-at-a-time.shtml
I believe that these acts are not only the foundational solution to our current crises, but a fantastic campaign opportunity.
Rather than battle the “Republicrats” on their own ground, on their own false issues, I urge you to consider breaking new ground and taking a stand that the American people can actually relate to.
That stand is simple, if powerful - Big Government Harms You.
Downsize DC has the answers already laid out - Seize this opportunity!
May 31st, 2008 at 2:58 am
Ntzis desided that jews can be murder. do u agree with that? what if a state desides that white males can be put ligally murder, would u support that as well? how about if a state deside that jews have no right to live(afterall they desended from a pig) would u support that as well? how about if a state would deside that we can have slaves. would u be in favor of that? Liberty strats with life. if u don’t protect inocent, one day someone might make your life useless and deside that u r not human and don’t deserve to live. and what if no no defends u then?
May 31st, 2008 at 3:05 am
JMANN go and vist austitz in Poland. i did. then, let’s talk about desiding who should live and who should not. or maybe u like that kind of stuff. what part of abortion(murdering of babies) do u like the best? is it tearing out their limps or cutting off the head? please let me know
May 31st, 2008 at 3:07 am
babies dna is different that the one of her mather, thus it is not woman’s body. JMANN, take bio classes, watch some movies about WWII and then let’s talk
May 31st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
dariusz- i’m pro life so I’m not sure why you directed the comment towards me.
As for ABB- I don’t think anyone would care if you killed yourself, which is your own body. When you want to take the life of another body, your own child no less, is when we have issues.
June 1st, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Don’t let’s get into this issue on abortion. Let’s talk about getting from 15% liberty to 90% liberty. Only when we are at 90% liberty should we talk on this. Otherwise because of all this quibbling about a single issue we will never ever get to that point.
June 1st, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Here is the Libertarian Party platform stance on abortion:
1.4 Abortion
Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration
There. Now relax! Those of you like me who are pro-choice are voting for the Libertarian Party platform when we help as many LP candidates win as possible, and that includes Bob Barr!
June 5th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Barr takes the same stance on abortion that Ron Paul does. He is pro-life, but as president he would fight to remove the federal government’s unconstitutional involvement in the issue, allowing the states to pass their own laws.