Brought to you by the Bush Junta!
The USA PATRIOT act is a not-so clever acronym for: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorists. They left out the part where they deny us our liberties; I suppose that would not have worked in the acronym. The act, which is over three hundred pages of technical jargon, has provisions which would scare the American public if they actually took time to investigate. Warrants, subpoenas, wiretaps, and pen/trap orders are all traditional modes of surveillance but under the USA PATRIOT act (how about USAPA) these tools have been greatly expanded. For example, those going on-line had better watch out for what they enter into search engines because the government can now spy on you if they think your activities will lead them to terrorist information. The FBI and CIA can now issue a roving wiretap or pen/trap (which allows the government to check all dialed numbers) to any citizen, including those not listed in a court order, if they think you may be a terrorist talking to your terrorist friends. Your e-mail can also be checked if the government thinks it includes terrorist related content. The definition of terrorism has also been expanded. Those who are planning to attend a protest better hope that it does not end violently because they could be charged with engaging in terrorist activities if it does. Also disturbing is the provision allowing for sneak-and-peek warrants. This allows officials to search the premises of a citizen named in a court order, when not at home, without prior notice. They need only leave a note saying they had been there. People who are contemplating a violent crime better think twice because now their DNA will be added to a database that will also include the DNA of terrorists. Why does the government need the DNA of violent criminals? Is this a precursor to a database of American citizens DNA? There are also other provisions which make stricter penalties for computer abuses and fraud, which is not really related to the apprehension of terrorists. This supposedly is aimed at terrorists but there are many provisions aimed at domestic criminals and citizens alike. That the government need only tell a court that they suspect a person of terrorism, and not notify the person, to obtain a wiretap, warrant, or pen/trap speaks volumes about the amount the amount of power given to the government and the amount of power taken from the courts and the American people.
Perhaps Im being too harsh on the Bush Junta. After all, the suspension of civil liberties in times of crisis is not a novel idea. John Adams, the most important American in history, in my humble opinion, enacted the Alien and Sedition acts to impede immigration and to silence journalists who spoke against the government or the president. Most notably, during World War 2 under Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the internment of 100,000 Japanese Americans. The justification was the protection of American citizens against Japanese saboteurs. Many believe that it is necessary, for our security, that certain liberties be denied in times of crisis so that we can be safe. We live in a country where those who would do us harm can take advantage of our liberties and use it to harm us.
In defense of John Adams, the Alien and Sedition acts were necessary to protect the fledgling nation. George Washington himself said that the libelous journalists needed to be locked up. The Alien acts were designed to prevent the infiltration of French revolutionaries who threatened the stability of the new nation. It was never enforced, however. In essence the acts were designed to protect the nation from revolutionary zealots, like Thomas Jefferson, who used newspapers to spread lies in order to gain popularity and demonize Adams and his administration. There is no defense for FDR's Japanese internment camps or Bush's USAPA. Benjamin Franklin once said that those who are willing to surrender their liberties in exchange for a sense of safety deserve neither safety nor liberty. Those who support Bush deserve to have their liberties taken because they do not appreciate them. James Madison warned of this very situation when he said that war is the greatest of all enemies to public liberty because it gives the president more power to (seduce) the minds and (subdue) the force of the people. The Bush Junta is using war on terrorism as justification of denying the public their liberties. Madison, the father of the Constitution, was telling future generations that the government will inevitably abuse its power and subjugate the many under the few.
In 1949, just after World War 2, a novel was written by George Orwell titled 1984. In his novel the government takes the role of Big Brother. The government, in the name of safety of the American public, introduces a new language and phases out the old language in order to diminish thought. There are other restraints placed on the public to protect them from imminent and dangerous foreign threats. Their liberty is taken for their own good, basically. Those who read this book were shocked and denied that this could ever happen to the American people. But Big Brother is becoming a reality and people are not doing anything to resist it because they are afraid. The American people have always been eager to feel safe from them. Those evil people who threaten our safety. The Cold War was a forty year period of fear of the commies. They were coming and they had powerful weapons and they were gonna wipe us all out so it was in our best interest to have a bomb shelter and give the government a lot of money so they could build bigger and better bombs. After all, the communists were coming. CIA and the National Security council were created to protect us and to flush out communists who lived amongst us. These agencies, which do not report its budget to the Congress as the Constitution says all must do, were actually used to spy on hundreds of thousands of Americans. Martin Luther King Jr was among those who were spied on. We were perpetually at war with the Communists and the government was keeping us safe with their agents, like Ronald Reagan who reported actors who he suspected of communist ties. But it was the fear that the government created that caused the American public to willingly surrender their liberties. In 1991 the Soviet Union imploded and the Americans saw that they were not actually as evil as portrayed. The people were starved and diseased and the government was spending most of its budget on military build-up, and spending virtually nothing on their people, because they were afraid of an American attack. My point, not to lecture on history, is to show how the government manipulates the American public, so afraid of their own shadow, into giving up their liberty and allowing the government to do whatever they want in the name of protecting the nation.
The USAPA is just another example of the government taking away our liberty so they could wage war for their own imperialistic benefit. The public needs to wake up and demand their liberty back. The threat of terrorists (commies/Japanese agents) is just a facade, a means of creating a vague enemy that threatens our existence. Whether they exist or not, we as a public should not defer to the government because we would like to feel safe. How many more rights will the Bush Junta take away before we can really feel safe? Wake up America; three thousand Americans died on 9/11 and there are 200 million of you. There is a near zero chance that you will be harmed by a terrorist-- ever. I do not know about you, but I do not feel safe wondering if Big Brother has been in my home or is listening to my telephone conversations. In times of crisis, when our liberties are under attack, is the time when we need to defend our liberties, not surrender them out of fear. In doing that now, we dishonor those who were killed on September 11, 2001.