What do you mean in tangible and concrete terms? How has my life been made worse by these laws? You need to explain that because these abstract concepts don't seem to motivate people to action.

Your life is worse because the government is openly antagonist towards the populace it was created to serve. Even if it doesn't effect you now all you need to do is look at historical examples from other nations going down the same path. There's a reason the poem "First they came ..." exists and it's a direct counter point to the argument you're making.

Otherwise I don't know what you want here, historically the masses mostly don't do anything until they start starving. Most large acts of rebellion were put together by a small band of agitators often high ranking members of the establishment who for whatever reason decide they've had enough then publicize and promote it and then often pay the common folk to fight. The US for instance was majority founded by a bunch of rich people who were tired of the type of taxes levied on them. The continental army for instance was paid to fight. My point being is any action is going to be taken by people who care about the abstract notions, the rank and file will be paid to care or provided some equal material value.

>Your life is worse because the government is openly antagonist towards the populace it was created to serve.

What does this mean in relation to the debate about NSA spying? How is the NSA antagonizing me? What is one example of a material impact on my life?

>Even if it doesn't effect you now all you need to do is look at historical examples from other nations going down the same path. There's a reason the poem "First they came ..." exists and it's a direct counter point to the argument you're making.

This is getting into slippery slopes and hypotheticals that don't seem to motivate anyone and they are the exact arguments that are used in defense of this spying. If we demand examples of the safety this spying supposedly provides, we need examples of the freedom this spying destroys.

>Otherwise I don't know what you want here, historically the masses mostly don't do anything until they start starving...

I am looking for anything that will motivate people to political action. It doesn't need to motivate people to overthrow the government. A simple here is why you real life is worse so vote for this candidate, volunteer with organization, donate to this cause, etc.

Something being bad doesn't have to have a material impact on you to be bad you should be against it simply because in principal it's a bad thing. Government over reach is a slippery slope and is bad therefor spying via overreach is bad. I'm not your personal savior I don't really care what you believe and I wasn't here to convince anyone of anything let alone you, I stated my personal beliefs.

Edit: I'll also leave off with where if your beliefs don't include government spying being bad you and I likely are coming from very ideologically different starting points and I have no intention of trying to spend my time walking you from A to B I'll leave that for the evangelists I have other things to fill my time.

You can reread my comments and you will see I am not against you on this. I started my first comment with "If we...". I am including myself in with the people who are failing.

I believe we need to get better at explaining this issue. We need people who are "trying to spend [their] time walking you from A to B" because flatly saying "you should be against it simply because in principal it's a bad thing" is not going to motivate any political change.

To be honest the entire thread sat weirdly with me, not sure why.

That said I just disagree with you that the masses typically are motivated about anything not just government spying I think action and change will come from a small group of people with vested interest, at least initially.

Everyone has that personal issue but it turns out that everyone's "I want this to change" issue is typically pretty different from one another so finding that similar group and banding together there to fix the problem I expect to be better than finding some key to ignite the masses.

And FWIW if the argument from the government is "See these people don't care about it so it can't be bad" is in itself a super weak argument. People and the government haven't cared about plenty of things that, at least in my set of morals, turned out to be super bad even if only a small set of people initially protested so.