OK, this is all getting really messy.
1) Fascism
refers to a specific political movement. It's general use
as an insult is so poorly defined as to be meaningless, and this is true since before the second world war. If we are throwing it around accusations of people being fascist we can at least make the effort to use a version of the word with a definition?
2) The
Overton window is a thing.
The Overton window is a political theory that describes as a narrow "window" the range of ideas the public will accept. On this theory, an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within that window rather than on politicians' individual preferences.
In practice each country has such a window of acceptable policies. These windows differ from country to country. In the UK the idea of privatising the NHS lies on the far right of our particular window. In the USA the idea of nationalised healthcare lies on the far left of the window.
Within a country descriptions of left and right (or any other axis you care to speak of) tend to be based on that countries particular window. When comparing countries you tend to judge policies and politicians based on their position in your own window. So Obama is centre/right-right wing economically speaking in Britain's current window, but still on the left of America's. And voters in America are unlikely to give a damn about where he lies on Britain's, given the window is in no small part defined by the range of views and general perceptions of the voters themselves.
3) From what I've seen, advocates and supporters of these programs (including those in the administration) still believe in the rule of law while those opposed to them don't.
This is a generalisation, but a substantial number of pieces opposed to the programs are less opposed to the programs themselves - as leaked and written into law - but rather to potential illegal actions expanding on them. They are afraid of extra-judicial killings and extraordinary rendition, and believe such things are likely tools of the administration. They see minimisation procedures as legal CYA boilerplate and don't imagine that such things are actual limits on what can be recorded and used by authorities.
This is significant because, from a position where you still respect the rule of law, the administration's policies and statements are rather internally consistent and hypocrisy is limited to the usual state spying and covert action stuff. If instead you come from an angle where the administration is assumed to be breaking the law casually and the rule of law has absolutely no value then the very efforts to enforce the law against Snowden's leaks is high hypocrisy.
4) The pretence that other nations are morally better in this area.
The US has some of the most robust
legal (again, requires some remaining faith in the rule of law) protections for it's citizens and residents in the world. Which is probably why even the suggestion that they are maybe violating some of those protections is huge news. Similar programs have been implemented in the UK with hardly a whisper. In places like China it's pretty much assumed that the government is doing things like this.
This isn't about the USA being morally bankrupt compared to other countries. It's their doing what other countries do and not morally superior to them. Which can be an issue when the USA tries to impose it's moral views elsewhere.
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Topic: NSA Leaks - GHCQ in court for violation of human rights (Read 105398 times)