"He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security."
- Benjamin Franklin by Alexander Massa
(libertarian)
Monday, November 16, 2009
Many Americans are all too ready to turn in their liberties in exchange for empty promises of security from the government. This liberty, by the way, is the same liberty that hundreds of thousands of men died to save. And yet, we are more than ready to just give it away to any would-be dictator that is willing to take it from us. Whether that dictator is George W. Bush or Barack Hussein Obama is irrelevant. For all intents and purposes, they are different heads of the same Hydra, which is totalitarianism masquerading as mere security from terrorism.
Terrorism, while dangerous, isn't dangerous enough to necesitate a police state, which is what is rapidly being established. Look at how dramatically our country has changed since September 11, 2001. We have an entirely-new cabinet level government agency - the Department of Homeland Security, which, by all accounts, is simply a money-guzzling bureaucracy that in reality serves no real purpose. What job does DHS do that wasn't already being done by the myriad of other alphabet soup government agencies (FBI, ATF, CIA, NSA, etc.)?
We also now have the infamous USA PATRIOT Act (which actually is a very long acronym, for those of you who don't already know), which, although designed as a fairly temporary measure, now seems to be permanent. While I personally believe that the PATRIOT Act isn't as bad as many say it is, I'm certainly not a proponent nor a fan of it. It, like DHS, is just another way for the federal government to expand it's power.
While September 11th was an extraordinary event that called for increased vigilance on the homefront, that doesn't mean that we have to become a paranoid nation. 9/11 happened, but that doesn't mean that we can militarize our entire society for the next thousand years just so that it becomes harder for terrorists to hit us. And besides, that isn't even true, because we are no safer now than we were before 9/11. People think that we are, but are we really? The sad truth is that if these people have such a fanatical hatred for the United States, they will find a way to hit us, no matter what we do. There is no way to be 100% safe from terrorism, so there is no need to confiscate liberties from the people.
We need to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act, for it has served it's purposes. Remember, it never was meant to be a permanent measure. We also need to get rid of DHS and streamline the other agencies. Cutting federal funding to the FBI and CIA will force them to actually get work done. They have so much money nowadays that they have lost their frugality and have become careless with our money. If we force them to be frugal, they will make sure that they get the most bang for their buck (they don't really have any other choice, unless they want to set up a bake sale to fund themselves).
One of the main reasons we never stopped 9/11 from taking place in the first place (if you believe the official story of 9/11; there are too many holes in the official explanation for me to believe it) is because the different security agencies refused to work together. Instead, they worked by themselves, thus causing the deaths of 3,000 innocent men, women, and children. If we streamlined the federal security agencies, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
We need to return to the Constitution and the rule of law. 9/11 scared a lot of people and made them more likely to support things like DHS and the massive expansion of federal power that took place in the wake of the terror attacks. We must demand that the government act responsibly and not take advantage of terror attacks by using them as a pretext to create massive bureaucracies and pass laws that restrict civil liberties.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 7
thumbs so far
The views expressed
in this article are those of Alexander Massa only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
Alexander Massa is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated
with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Posted By: Brian McCandliss
Date: 2009-11-18 14:08:47
"Many Americans are all too ready to turn in their liberties in exchange for empty promises of security from the government."
Perhaps the majority are; meanwhile, the minority doesn't have a choice, since the sitting government officials are the sovereign authority; meanwhile the remaining minority-states have no power against them.
Contrary to popular belief, the Constitution was never intended to be upheld by the majority in the electorate or federal government-- either in Congress, or on the Supreme Court. Rather, the Constitution was intended to be upheld by the minority of states, via their power to nullify federal laws that violate the Constitution-- or, in the event that this was not sufficient, to depart from the Union entirely via secession.
However in 1833 the neoconservative Republican majority falsely claimed otherwise, revising history to claim that only the federal union had supreme national authority-- not the individual states; meanwhile in 1860, neoconservative Republicans likewise heinously suppressed each state's sovereign power, by censoring the fact that each individual state-- not the overall union of states-- is a sovereign nation unto itself; this censorship took not only the form of imprisonment and torture without trial, but the armed invasion of all non-conforming states-- including killing more than 250,000 of their citizens who failed to submit to it.
Since then, few dared to dissent on this subject; and those who have, are censored by public pressure, via assault on their reputation and credibility, if not their professional standing outright.
Thus, trading liberty for security is not only a ship that has long-since sailed: it is, seemingly, quite the American tradition.
Want to comment on
this article? Leave your comment
here. Your email address is required to track your
comment. However, we will neither publish your email
address nor distribute it to other organizations or
persons. The only reason we might use it would be if
we needed to contact you regarding your comment. All
comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
