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What Happened To My Country?
Yes, it's time for another rant. Americans are showing themselves to be a weak people, it's pitiful. We are willingly trashing our own rights in the name of protection from terrorists. Not for protection, just for the idea of it. What happened to the image of a bunch of American rednecks not afraid of a damn thing, the "if it bleeds it can die" group. What happened to those people? When did we all become such easily lead fearful sheep? Why are we giving away our rights in the name of protection, especially when we appear to be doing it out of fear and effectively just throwing them away?
Do you want protection from terrorism? Then just be aware. Increase your awareness of your surroundings. Stop going through every day in a self-absorbed cloud. Wake up and watch for the unusual. Did someone set down a bag on a bus and walk away quickly? Report it right away. Someone acting funny? Take notice and do something. Throwing away your rights willy nilly because someone told you that if you did they'd protect you is not the right way. It's not bringing you safety and they don't come back as easy as they go. It's far easier to get a bill passed giving away freedom than it is to get one passed granting it. This is because power granted is power used and power used is power kept. That is why power must have proper checks and balances, if not it becomes power abused. Wake up, we are removing those checks and balances. This power is being misused already and they still want more.
Sure they want more, they wanted more to track 60's radicals, then to stop organized crime, then drugs, then pedophiles (think of the children), but none of that worked. Then came terrorists and you freaked out and willingly gave away those rights you denied them before. They've always wanted more. They've always desired to remove those checks and balances because they get in the way. It's so much easier to chase bad guys when you can sneak into their homes without them knowing and not needing a judge's permission to do so, get all their library records, get employment, medical, financial records, listen in on phones, tap internet connections, read e-mail, all while gagging everyone involved. It's much easier to catch bad guys if you can do that.
It makes perfect sense on the outside. I'd want the same thing in their shoes. Except for one thing. I believe in freedom and I believe in the right to privacy. There must be proper checks and balances. It must be difficult, not impossible, but difficult for the government (or anyone else), to peek into my life, to read my mail, to listen in on my phone, and to enter my house without my permission. And if I'm going to give up any freedoms, I better get something very substantial in return. So I ask you, what are you getting for just throwing away your rights and freedoms?
You don't know that do you? Well, you think you might. I'm sure you can spit out a bunch of rhetoric that was fed to you by the media mills. But are we actually getting anything in return? What we do know is that none of it has caught a single terrorist. Yet we see the news stories of countless innocents tangled up in it's web. Life made more difficult for people like you and me. So again I ask you, what are we getting? More aggravation? Getting to live in fear of what color the alert banner will be today? Come on people, if you are that scared then go back to living with mom. Build that safety fort out of couch cushions that protects you from all the bad guys. But for $diety's sake keep your damn hands off my rights.
Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas said "the right to be let alone is the beginning of all freedom" and he was absolutely correct. Unfortunately that right is being too quickly thrown away. Tossed away like old socks, for little in return. I grew up thinking that this was the greatest country on earth. Heck, no matter where you grow up you are taught that. But I believed it because this was the country of freedom from oppression. The one that let people live as they desired. The one that gave you the right to be left alone to be you. The country where the people pulled together to help themselves and favored the underdog. The country of freedom and rights. I still believe this, but I'm highly saddened by what I'm seeing.
This is a country of people living in fear. People wanting safety so bad that they'll allow themselves to be watched all the time in hopes of getting that safety (if they are busy watching you, who's watching the bad guys?). After all, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, isn't that how it goes? Bullshit, you don't have the right to violate my privacy and then tell me that if I have nothing to hide I should be happy to let you do it, that is not what this country was about. This is a country of people willingly tossing the very freedoms, checks and balances, that it was founded upon all because someone scared them. It's a country of people haphazardly disposing of the things that made it great. This isn't the country I grew up believing in, was it the one you did?
/steve
Stephen K. Gielda
09/12/2005 - Edited 09/17/05
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