I just saw, on the Fox News Radio website, the results of a poll taken by Reuters that shows that more Americans see the security leaker Edward Snowden as a patriot than a traitor. And I must say that, while I understand that his ethics are questionable, that deep in my heart I am cheering him on and hoping that some government grants him asylum.
The most interesting aspect of this incident is how graphically it illustrates the divide between the ruling class and the people. It was the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, who condemned him as a traitor. Karl Rove, when he was interviewed by Greta Van Susteren after this story broke, flummoxed her by saying he had no problem with this massive government surveillance program. And, without exception, the supposed conservatives on the Fox News Special Report All Star Panel are fine with this tradeoff of privacy for security. Many of us little folk, however, have a big problem with this. And Mark Levin was particularly articulate, in yesterday’s radio show, in explaining how this was the very sort of thing the founders feared and why they drew up the fourth amendment in the Bill of Rights.
Here is what these members and near-members of the ruling class are failing to see.
First, we, the people, have become acutely cognizant, under the Obama administration, of how fragile our civil liberties are. He has trampled on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. The second amendment is under attack, the fourth amendment, the ninth and tenth amendments, the whole separation of powers, and he has even come after entire states who dare to disagree. He has refused to enforce laws he doesn’t like, and made up laws when he hasn’t liked the ones that had been passed by Congress. It has gone beyond not trusting our government – we have a degree of fear of our government that may approach or even surpass the fear the colonists had of King George.
Second, we can connect the dots, which those in the ruling class seem so loathe to do. Let me be sarcastic for a moment. Let’s say that I imagine that the government may target me for abuse simply because I believe in a smaller government. Those in the ruling class may be thinking I have to be really paranoid to think that my government would do such a horrendous thing. But if it did, don’t you think this huge database of all my electronic communications could help them target me. I may be getting e-mails from Sarah Palin. I may get fundraising calls from Hillsdale College. I do NOT want them storing this information.
Third, it is a really tough swallow to believe that the Obama administration is really that serious about national security. They are serious about their own security. Look at how cavalier they were when tipped off by the Russians about this Boston bomber. No, Obama has said himself that the war on terror is over. But the war on conservatives goes on.
Stay out of my life. Leave me alone. I want to be secure in my person, in my papers and communications. Do you get it?
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As a moderate with slight liberal and libertarian leanings (yes, there are plenty out there), I feel this is not a war on conservatives, but a war on those outside the status quo of Washington. Those without power in their own elite Plutocracy don’t matter to the power who condone these methods except as how they will continue to keep their own power and keep those of us outside their system (this system seems to actually have little to do with the Federal or State Government really except as a place of power these elite need to feel in control).
This is how I feel. The strange thing is, I didn’t feel this way a few years ago. Heck, I voted for Obama, because I found his call to stop the Rights violations moving and the right thing to do. Now I am disillusioned. He had and has no such intentions. I both pity and resent him now. I thought it conspiracy theory and paranoid nonsense. Now… now its reality and it saddens me to see how far our Democratic Republic has falling into such deep corruption and totalitarianism.
– Telrich
Response by David Hall:
Thank you for your comments. I’m hopeful that this wakes up a lot of people. The Left has campaigned on the illusion of defending our rights, and too often, those who have claimed to be on the Right have gone along and also been indifferent to the growth of government and the shrinking of our freedoms. Big government is not harmonious with civil liberties – choose one or the other because you can’t have both.
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God bless Edward Snowden, Dr. Hall, and all who believe that the common man has the right to conduct himself lawfully without fear of intrusion, oversight, or violation by government, no matter how malicious or well-meaning that government may be. This whole program is a violation of not just the fourth amendment, but the democratic free exchange of ideas. How can we speak freely when we know nanny government is watching, collecting what we say, what we do, where we go, to whom we speak — saving it for a rainy day even if there is not outright persecution at the current time? And this administration above all others ought not be given the benefit of the doubt, not after the IRS targeting those with unfavorable political beliefs and not after the hounding of news agencies for doing their jobs. Leave me my voice, my privacy, and my guns, I’ll take my chances with the terrorism that Obama claims has ended before I let some detached group of bureaucrats trample my freedoms from behind closed doors.
Response by David Hall:
Well said, Chris
We live in dangerous times, political correctness leads to abusiveness by government.
Rules are made for control. – fuzzy 38