Obama and the NSA Controversy

What has happened to our president? What happened to that young senator who harshly criticized the Bush administrations tactics that have destroyed our civil liberties? Obama is not the same man who ran for president in 2008. It seems all of his promises will never be fulfilled. Instead of scaling down the controversial acts of President Bush (such as renditions, suspension of Habeas Corpus, Guantanamo bay ect...), Obama has just increased the size and scope of the federal government and has continued down the same path of Bush in destroying our freedoms. 

Listening to Obama defend the unconstitutional PRISM program made me sick and all I heard was the same things Bush and his people said during his administration. In specific response to the criticism of the program, David Jackson of USA Today quoted Obama as saying "They help us prevent terrorist attacks" are valuable despite what he called "modest encroachments on privacy." Well I have a feeling Obama's understanding of "modest encroachments" and the majority of American's understanding of modest encroachments is completely different. Also by Obama saying this is proof that they are gathering at least some data on Americans. I don't care if its modest or not!! Any gathering without probable cause and a warrant is unlawful!! Data mining from all these massive corporations which the majority of Americans use is a massive encroachment on all of our civil liberties. 

While the federal government believes they can do whatever they want, if its for "our security", the constitution does not agree with that. I have quoted Benjamin Franklin before on this blog and I will quote him again when he said, in essence, that those who would trade freedom for security are worthy of neither. Compare that to what David Jackson quoted Obama as saying "It's important to recognize that you can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience". I would rather have less security and more freedom because in the end if the government  does manage to provide 100% security we will have 0% freedom. 

Freedom is the most vital thing that we have in this country and by limiting our freedom because of fear of further terrorist attacks actually just gives the terrorist the victory. Because of 9/11 we have successfully destroyed our own country and ostracized ourselves throughout the world because of fear and given the terrorist the victory they wanted. America needs to wake up!! We need to take the higher moral road even if it costs us security. Will we continue to lose our freedom because the government says others are threatening it? So in the end we will lose our freedom, but not to the enemies our government says are out there, but to the very government that is sworn to protect our liberties. We must not allow fear to replace reason. 

This controversy is scary because it is so close to fulfilling two of C.J Friedrich's requirements for a totalitarian regime. The two of the four requirements that our government is seeming to fulfill is "one mass party" and a "technological monopoly of power and communication". Now before you shut off just keep reading for a moment and ill explain. 

We all know that totalitarian regimes only have one party such as the communist in the USSR or the Nazis in Germany. Well we have two parties right? I am starting to believe more and more each day that the Democrats and Republicans are not very different from each other and we almost have a one party system. This controversy helps give evidence to this claim. Look at what Bush did after 9/11 and Obama criticized it, but now he is doing almost the EXACT same thing as Bush with just a different face. They were both part of different parties but nothing has really changed when the different parties switched power in government. The whole point of multiparty systems is that when one party acts badly (like Bush and the Republicans in congress did) they get voted out of office and the other steps in to fix things and return a balance to the system. Well with these two presidents of different parties no balance has returned and the same things have happened under both presidents. Its almost as if we have lived under 4 Bush terms. The other requirement of a "technological monopoly of power" is pretty obvious in this situation. Look at the scale and size of the power the government has over all of our technology. They can get into anything they want at a moments notice. The whistle-blower who leaked the details of PRISM painted a scary picture of a government with an out of control ability to manipulate the technological society of America and the world. 

I will say it again: we are NOT a totalitarian regime, yet. The mere fact that I can blog about this supports that. However, in Germany before they fell to totalitarianism they had freedom of speech and elections. They debated about Hitler and his power, but before they knew it everything was gone. So we must be careful and sniff out the totalitarian tendencies of our government and fixed before they spread too far. I believe the whistle-blower Snowden is a hero for leaking this information especially since he knew the costs of such an action.
   
(David Jackson's USA Today article http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/07/obama-clapper-national-security-agency-leaks/2400405/)
(The Image taken from: http://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ap444214607313-nsa-careers-prism-data-collection-analysis.jpg?w=880)

What is the Proper Role for Government in a Persons Survival?

Recently there has been an issue coming to the medical forefront again and the government's role in it. There is a little 10 year old girl named Sarah Murnaghan is in dire need of a lung transplant. Her doctors say that she could receive an adult lung transplant but she cannot because the rules, set by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and the United Network for Organ Sharing under contract from the department of Health and Human Services, say that a child has to be 12 to qualify to be put on the waiting list for an adult lung transfer. So even though he doctors say that her body is physically capable for an adult lung transplant she cannot receive it because the rule says she has to be 12.

In response to this issue, many in congress have appealed to the secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, to push the private organizations in charge of making the rules to allow Sarah on the waiting list. However, the secretary has refused to push them to change the rule saying "she can't pick and choose who can receive a transplant, who can have another chance at life and who cannot".

The main argument then I believe that is coming out of this circumstance is over the governments role in the medical field. Right now private industry is setting these rules for transplant and the rules they have set do not allow a chance for this girl to live. Now obviously the private corporations did not set the rules just to let children under 12 die but it is just the way it happened. So the main question is: should the government step in and force them to change the rule to those under 12 to help save this girl's life and others under 12? Is it the governments job to ensure that she has a fair of a chance of survival as a 12 year old? Throughout this blog I have probably come off sounding pretty libertarian when it comes to government interference but I do believe that there are times when government interference is necessary. I believe this because the private world is often just about profit and gain and not what is best for other people. I believe the government should step in and change this rule. This is not just about Sarah but about every other child under 12 that could receive an adult lung and survive. Why should age determine if you get a transplant or not? I believe this rule needs to be changed and if the private industry is not going to do it then the government needs to step in. Morality needs to be at the forefront of every decision either of private or of the government. If the private industry isn't going to make a moral decision then the government needs to step in and make it.  

(This is the link to the article I got my information from http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/report-sarah-murnaghans-family-goes-to-court-over-lung-transplant-92281.html#ixzz2VNUwqY24)

Immigration and Totalitarianism

For another one of my classes I had to do a project in which I was required to research a controversial US state issue. So being from Arizona I naturally decided to research the recent controversy over Arizona's immigration act SB 1070. In a nutshell (for those of you who do not know what this act is) the act was basically an attempt by the state to curb illegal immigration by allowing state and local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of people they suspected to be in the country illegally. Now there is more to the act besides this, so I encourage you to research the rest of the bill to understand the full impact it would have.

Anyways while I was researching the act, the idea of having to have people always have identification on them really concerned me. No doubt legal Mexican-Americans would have had to start carrying their identification at all times in fear of being targeted as an illegal based on their complexion, which no person should have to do.While the act specifically stated that their should be no racial profiling by law enforcement officials I do not think that this would have stopped it because in reality there are not many illegal white people running around the state, so they were bound just to go after Latinos. If we allowed this to happen to Latinos where would it stop? If the government began to think in this manner could it easily spread to thinking it needed to start to control even further into society? This whole act leads to the commonly referred to phrase of a "papers please" state which brings back memories of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Now I AM NOT calling Arizona a communist or Nazi state, I am just saying this act had a very bad tendency that obviously had a totalitarian feel to it. That is the whole point of this blog is to see where there is totalitarian tendencies so we know how to recognize it and dismantle it before it becomes too strong. Thus I believe that SB 1070 would have been a scary step in a totalitarian direction. In my first post I quoted C.J Friedrich who gave four criteria for a state to become totalitarian and one of those was "terroristic police control". I believe that this act would have set up a basis for this control to have begun slowly in Arizona. Luckily however, the supreme court struck down most of the controversial points of the act and now only allows law enforcement to check immigration status after a lawful arrest for other reasons, which is already allowed under federal law.

These are the types of things that we need to fight in the United States in order to keep us free. Even if these acts are popular among the people it does not make them right and sometimes we must push against the majority to keep our freedoms and to awaken them to reality. I am a firm believer that the biggest threat to our freedom comes from within not from outside.

Some Political Thought From 1934

For my class I recently read an article written in 1934, called "Dictators and Democracies" by Calvin Hoover. In the paper his main goal is to understand what is causing the rise of these dictatorial regimes and what can be done in the rest of the democratic world to defend itself from falling.

The main argument from Hoover is that chaos, either economic, political or social, is the main cause for any government succumbing to a dictator and eventually a totalitarian regimes. A democracy, in his view, will not fall during prosperous times. His main evidence for this claim is the fall of the interim parliamentary government in Russia to the communist and the Weimar Republic in Germany to the Nazis. He claims that if a democratic government cannot maintain “tolerable economic conditions” then the masses will support a dictator because a dictator promises to restore peace and security and the democratic system will collapse. 

Ultimately people have a desire to live in peace with their family and friends but when that is disrupted for any reason people start to go to extremes to find peace and security. We can easily see this in the reaction of the German people to Hitlers rhetoric and the Russian people to the communist ideology. Hoover pushes it further though by stating that a democratic government is inherently weak and susceptible to a dictators rise because when chaos hits the government is too divided and they lose the will to fight and lose confidence in their ability to pull their country out of chaos. Because of this weakness, dictators have an easy opportunity to come to power.

I believe that Hoover is correct in concluding that chaos precedes a democratic fall. This is almost common sense and is seen time and time again throughout the world. I think it goes both ways though. Dictatorships fall when they are not provided prosperity and security as the "arab spring" has shown us. Any government must provide peace and security or it is running the risk of collapse. 

I believe that hoover dramatically overestimates the weaknesses of the parliamentary system based a few weak democracies. Not all democracies are as weak as the Weimar Republic in Germany or the interim government in Russia and have leaders who do not run at the sight of chaos but stand firm in the defense of democracy and are able to combat the chaos that would result in their fall. Hoover is right that chaos always is present at the rise of a dictatorship, but his statement that parliamentary systems inherent weaknesses are the cause of the rise of dictators is dramatically overstated. Many democracies have withstood chaos and did not fall to a dictatorship. 

While I have tremendous respect for Hoover ,the final pages of his article severely frighten me. What comes is his suggestion on how a democratic government avoids falling to a dictatorship and ultimately a totalitarian regime. His solution is to have democratic governments leave their traditional laissez-faire economic ideals and take an authoritarian style role in the economy.In order to achieve this authoritarian style control over the economy, Hoover states that the executive branch of the government would need more power entrusted to it. There would also have to be control of the different branches of government by a single party not coalitions or split government. Hoover believes that if a democracy can do this and be successful at economic control then the threat to internal overthrow by Fascists, Communist, or Nazis would be highly unlikely. 

What Hoover is not understanding is that a government does not necessarily have to completely fall to become a totalitarian regime. It can transform itself into one from the inside. He lived in a time period where revolts and revolutions came from the people against the government and I dont think he thought about it the other way around. The government could easily revolt against its own constitution and people. If the executive branch is given extreme power in the economy I do not think it would stop there and it would expand its power into every part of society. Especially if there was one party ruling in government. There has to be an opposition party in government to keep the other party in check. I think Hoover's suggestions would lead a democratic government to become a totalitarian regime and would lead to the horror that he wanted to avoid.     

Hoover's ideas however, seem to have taken hold in the United States over the years. Since the great depression the executive branch has had massive power entrusted to it (which in reality is a violation of the constitution) and has taken a very large role in the economy. We are slowly leaving a laissez-faire economy and becoming an authoritarian style run economic system. The more power the executive branch has gotten in the economy the more it has tried to interfere in other things not related to the economy. I believe that the executive branch has way too much power and needs to be reigned in an brought back to its original role as laid out in the constitution. This is where I differ greatly with Hoover and believe that by allowing the executive branch to get more power indirectly leads to a totalitarian regime evolving from a democratic regime. The reason people want the executive branch to have so much power is the same reason people want a dictator. They believe it makes things get done and they dont have to abide by ridiculous regulations and can provide them with more security regardless of the freedoms they sacrifice to gain that security. I will end with a paraphrased quote by Benjamin Franklin who said that those who sacrifice their freedoms for security are worthy of neither. 

image take from my.opera.com

 

Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Communist Russia

Nazis, Fascists, and Communist, Are They Different or the Same Evil in Different Costumes?                          

Growing up, I was taught in school that there is a "left" and a "right" and teachers tried to portray the fascists on the right to be something vastly different from the communists on the left. The U.S foreign policy during the cold war also hung onto this idea, so much so that the U.S supported right wing governments against the communist as if they were a better alternative. An example of this was the United States support of the Apartheid government in South Africa against the communist in Angola. The interesting thing is the far right governments, like the one in South Africa, were just as repressive and brutal as the communist regimes were. The United States was stuck on the traditional spectrum which has a right and a left and that is it. I however like the non-traditional circular political diagram. While not completely accurate, I believe the circular diagram shows more of the truth of politics than the traditional spectrum does. It shows a right and a left in ideology but instead of heading in opposite directions both ideologies curve and end up in the same place: totalitarianism. So in the end the right and left extremist are no different; they want and need complete power.

      Traditional Political Spectrum                                            Circular Political Diagram 


   
Granted they all stem from different desires and goals and at the start there could be made a distinction between right and left but that slowly fades away. The communist in Russia were driven by pro proletariat ideals, the Nazis in Germany were driven by pro race ideology and the fascists of Italy were driven by ideas of a strong Italian Nation. Even with these different goals they ended up in the same place. So while many people automatically relate totalitarianism with racism because of Hitler, a totalitarian regime does not have to be driven by racism just taking the examples of Italy and Russia prove that.
So what does this have to do with us? Well understanding the circular nature of political ideology and seeing that different motives can lead to totalitarian regimes should make us wary of radicals on both sides of the spectrum. Its not only racists that can lead us to totalitarianism but those driven by hyper-nationalism or class issues as well. We must be constantly vigilant and not let ourselves get wrapped up in any form of radical thought, for all radical thought slowly leads to tyranny and slavery.
(Images taken from fhsdfhn.sharpschool.net, www.flame.org and www.thoughtsaloud.com)