Well kids its finally here. The day we all knew would come has arrived. The US government is finally going over to Big Brother. This was no one day revelation, rather a slow build up that we all watched happen. We have finally reached the point where I can honestly say, I hate what has happened to our country. We have finally and irreversibly succumbed to the terrorists. We have done what Benjamin Franklin said we should never do. We have given up privacy and freedom for the sake of security.
The great fore-father's actual quote was " Any man willing to give up privacy for security deserves neither". Think about that. What does that mean to us today? To me it means that we should never let our government get to decide that we are all liars. When you give up your ability to say no to an airport screener then the fear-mongers have won.
A world where security is more important than privacy assumes that we are all liars. It assumes that we are all criminals. It assumes we are all guilty. If thats the case then lets go ahead and toss out the judicial system and get rid of the Supreme Court. If we are all guilty then we should be able to save some tax money on court costs. Hey, while we are at it lets just say the cops can now decide our sentences on the street. "That guy looks like a murder suspect, put him in jail. He must have done something wrong." This kind of "the world is out to get us" mentality is just like the witch-hunting mentality of the McCarthy era fear-mongers. Not only that, but an attitude like that is a self fulfilling prophecy that will invariably come true.
A case for thought; in a college town in the mid-west, every year there was a big street party that, on occasion had a tendency to get out of hand. When one year the police sent out a bunch of cops in uniform and laid down a bunch of new rules, it wasn't long before a riot broke out. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property damage and lots of arrests later the police where at a loss. So, the next year the sent out a bunch of UCs, (under-covers for those of you who have never seen an episode of Law & Order) convinced the bar owners to serve in only plastic cups, and didn't use great shows of force. The result, no riot. If there is no one to fight then, there can't be a fight.
I understand that there are people in this world that want to do others harm. And I know that protecting the public is the responsibility of the government, but not at the expense of our privacy.
I think it would be a a tragic and ironic state of affairs if we continue down this road to Big Brother, and we become the exact kind of state that McCarthy and his cronies fought so hard to stave off. Get ready for bio-chips and scanners... Or maybe we can find a nice tattoo artist to give us all numbers on our forearms...
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