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)
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