Liberty, the saying goes, dies by inches. It seems we've been a lucky bunch in the distant past when sayings like this were still true.
Today they're going at her with nukes rather than knives. The secret disservices do what they want to do, and we're mostly afraid to raise our voices against it. Afraid of being called unpatriotic, or find ourselves Fox-hunted as dangers to National Security on CNNBCBS...
Liberty dies by miles these days.
Ron Paul talking about the Spitzer affair in the House last week in a way I would have wished Democrats to tackle this issue said:
Sacrifice of our personal privacy has been ongoing for decades but has rapidly accelerated since 9/11. Before 9/11, the unstated goal of collecting revenue was the real reason for the erosion of our financial privacy. When 19 suicidal maniacs attacked us on 9/11, our country became convinced that further sacrifice of personal and financial privacy was required for our security.
"The driving force behind this ongoing sacrifice of our privacy has been fear and the emotional effect of war rhetoric — war on drugs, war against terrorism and the war against Third World nations in the Middle East who are claimed to be the equivalent to Hitler and Nazi Germany.
And the method is Let's do it.
They want to do, but it is against the Law. Well, why don't we just change the Law?
Oh, it's unconstitutional? Why don't we try to pass an amendment?
Not possible? Too many Liberals around. F*** them, but we'll do it anyway.
A court orders us not do it? We'll ignore this, because we disagree with the court.
I don't agree too often with this Texan, but he's got a point there.
Recently we've been told that this increase in the already intolerable invasion of our privacy was justified because the purpose was to apprehend terrorists. We were told that the massive amounts of information being collected on Americans would only be used to root out terrorists. But as we can see today, this monitoring of private activities can also be used for political reasons. We should always be concerned when the government accumulates information on innocent citizens.
Sometimes I find friends in unlikely places...
Liberty dies by inches? Let's believe it one more time - for the good old times.