Unprincipled SOPA Opposition

Glenn Reynolds states that InstaPundit will not be going dark today as part of the SOPA protest.  Fine, neither am I.

But check out this anonymous email Reynolds received from Congressman Tim Johnson’s office.

“Glenn, no name please. I work for Congressman Tim Johnson. Just to let you know, we’re getting about a hundred emails an hour opposing SOPA. We were already opposed, but this certainly makes us feel that much better about our opposition.

“Feel better” about being opposed?  Feelings should not come into play in opposing SOPA.  Principles should.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/18 at 01:29 PM

  1. Yesterday a friend asked me via email if I signed the protest and I said I did not and this is the reason I gave:

    “The protestors are not going far enough and I told Jimmy Wales this, the owner of wiki, more than a week ago. This bill drafted by the congress is in direct violation of at least 2 constitutional amendments, the 1st and the 4th, and simply *asking* the drafters to not implement it is not the way to deal with it. If you or I violated the constitution we would be in a world of hurt immediately and permanently and I can expect nothing less for the people hired under oath to adhere to that supreme law of the land. No one gets to violate the constitution otherwise everyone gets to violate it. My suggestion is that the authors of the SOPA bill would face impeachment proceedings and all of the legal consultants that did all of the leg work, but are not bound by oath, are to be dismissed and banned in perpetuity from future government employ.”
    “As it stands, if the protestors are successful in preventing SOPA implementation as it is it will simply be redrafted and the whole process will take place again with absolutely no impediment upon the authors of doing so. I believe in fixing problems in such a way as to prevent them from happening again and the protestors method does not do that, it simply applies a bandaid to an amputated head that may staunch some bleeding but will not prevent the country from dying.”

    Well what do you know, already Chris Dodd has stated publicly that there may be *technical issues* with the way the current bill is written that may need to be addressed but no mention at all about the violations of the BOR. These people do not give one damn about rights at all.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/19  at  11:57 AM

  2. ‘Feelings’ come into play because these ‘politicians’ have been bred to believe that their job is to make ‘the people’ happy and not to do what is right for the country.  So, the more they hear that the People are against this thing, the more votes they have in the bag for next election.
    In a sad way, can we blame them?  The more they violate the Constitution and BOR, the more of ‘the people’ they make happy (we broke the 50% mark for welfare recipients versus taxpayers, didn’t we?  Or are we still right on the verge of breaking it?)  Either way, the political class has only one job: to get more votes.
    Basically, there are only two ways to get the majority of politicians to vote correctly: make them feel good about it or scare the ever-loving crap out of them.
    Doing the right thing no longer feels good, so how do we start scaring them (without going to prison… or gitmo)?

    Posted by Mark Roote  on  01/20  at  08:56 AM

  3. ...so how do we start scaring them (without going to prison… or gitmo)?

    Quit obeying them.

    Posted by John Venlet  on  01/20  at  09:37 AM

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