It may not seem like it, but we are living in revolutionary times: our liberties are under assault by the federal government, and while there may not be a call to arms, the urgency is just as real.
Tapping the phones of millions of Americans under clandestine surveillance methods cannot be ignored, and it most certainly cannot be forgotten. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently added his name to the Defend the Fourth movement, intending to join in a lawsuit against President Obama, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, FBI Director James Corney, and NSA Director Keith Alexander. Senator Paul recently released a video defending the Fourth Amendment, arguing that “Our founders never intended for Americans to trust their government, our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil to be restrained and minimized as much as possible.”
Collecting records without probable cause or suspicion is a serious breach of the public trust that is being worsened by the federal government. It is the modern day equivalent of the British going door to door and searching houses without warrant or justification. It is easy not to be angered or deeply disturbed by the government’s actions because none of us actually see that the government is prying into our private affairs. The digital secrecy of the new age though is a perfect gateway for intelligence programs to infiltrate our homes, phones, and computers.
Unfortunately, we have let a necessary evil grow to unnecessary proportions. An increasing number of Americans have submitted open record requests under the Freedom of Information Act, all of which have been completely denied by the NSA as of late. The agency claims that fulfilling these requests would pose “grave danger to the national security.” Our national agencies have myopically focused so much of their efforts on so called “national security measures” that everything else including our liberties have been pushed to the wayside. They do not realize that they have become the very danger they were sworn to protect us from.
There is something fundamentally wrong when the people of a nation are fearful of its government’s power and influence. The Supreme Court needs to be brought in to uphold our Constitutional rights and ensure that America remains the land of the free.
John Plucenik | Penn State | @JPlucenik
“Our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil to be restrained and minimized as much as possible.”
Yeah, and apparently the white men who agreed to our original Constitution thought allowing human slavery was as much as they could minimize evil. It’s too bad we never rewrote the document with a group of people enlightened enough to realize government should prohibit slavery.
Now that your 2014 comfortable persona is done prissily criticizing men who never had running water, air conditioning, nice roads that are traversable in all weather, proper sanitation, never had access to a banana and other perishable fruits, routinely bled themselves of quarts of blood to cure sickness, routinely partook of straight mercury to cure illness cause heavy metal dementia…then, we can recognize that three people did refuse to sign the Constitution on the last day of the Convention and that in 5 of the State Ratifying Conventions the percent of dissent was over 40%…with people in those State Ratifying Conventions scorching George Washington saying his allowing slavery to exist completely negated his service in the Revolutionary War.
The fight for that which is good marches on.
Uhh, did you forget the 13th Amendment?
I believe that it was a bunch of “white men” that passed it, and if I’m not mistaken, they were Republicans.
Look at what I wrote- I explicitly referred to the men who wrote our original Constitution- which was back in the 18th century.
There was no Republican party at the time, and the drafters of the original Constitution did not include the 13th amendment- that came after our country fought a civil war over slavery many decades later.
We’ve never been free to rewrite the Constitution (within the system of government we now have) from scratch. We’ve had to live by the strict requirements for amending that document- which are extremely difficult to overcome and heavily favor the status quo created by rich white men who didn’t think slavery should be outlawed.
We only passed a 13th amendment after fighting a devastating civil war, and by excluding the southern states. And even then, those amendments did little to stop Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, and the campaign of terror against blacks in the post-Civil War era.
When black citizens and women entered into the “democracy” created by white men, we didn’t start from scratch.They had to live within the system built for and by white men. Our Senate heavily favors rural areas, and totally undermines the basic idea of “one person, one vote”. And the Constitution doesn’t even protect voting as a fundamental right. This is why Washington DC, which has a large minority population and has more people than Wyoming, has no voting members in Congress. We’re a still constrained by the document pro-slavery white men built, and we should create a new document where everyone has an equal voice in shaping it.
Good God are you stupid, Greg. Had tribal American aborignes or tribal Africans or even aristocratic Europeans been at the Federal Convention of 1787 do you think we would have a Republic? No, they would have designed a government exactly as they had in the past.
Study the life of Simon Bolivar who freed a large portion of South America from Spanish dominion circa 1810-1830. He DID free the slaves but DID NOT create a Republic because the long time under Spanish and Catholic rule had left the people extremely ignorant and superstitious…their inability at self-government…even to the point of any government at all that could sustain itself…was so bad Bolivar gave up and was in the process of leaving when he died. So what has changed since 1830?
Nothing, the reason the Constitution was written by rich white men was because they are the ones who wanted to do it. No other group would have bothered.
And in your polly-anna perspective of history and looking down on the rich, let’s consider pewter cups, plates, and utensils…they have lead in them…and only the rich could afford to buy them. So while you snivel about the rich people of 1780’s they were poisoning themselves with pewter. While the poor people could not afford pewter and were safe. From your sniveling perspective you would dole out pewter to the poor people so they could appear rich.
Again, the smack hard facts of life are so unbelievingly hard people have a hard time grasping them.
Another example, since you want to snivel about the rich white men, during the War Between The States, after battles in the South, whole fields of wounded would be collected around Medical stations…the rich Officers would have their wounds bound by clothe…but since penicillin had not been invented a very high percentage died from infection…while the vast number of common soldiers had their wounds bound with…are you ready for this?…BREAD…they had their wounds bound with Bread…which became moldy while on their wounds an a wild version of penicillin self-deinfected the private soldiers wounds. So what the hell good was being a rich Officer who was wounded in the South? From your polly-anna perspective it would be a crying shame all the soldiers did not have clothe bandages…Oh the Horror of rich people…they have had it so good in the past.
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.
(and yes, this applies to both parties, since, for the most part, they are two sides of the same coin)