Quote:
Originally posted by James
I have yet to see anyone complain about going after terrorists, people just don't like the idea that tactics developed for terrorists are implied indiscriminately to American Citizens. Privacy issues are central to our nation.
I keep hearing the argument over and over again that most people will never feel the direct of effects of covert Big Brother, and that is true. Even in fully developed police states the average citizen got to live their life, work their job, eat their food, and fuck their significant other without direct governmental intrusion, but the atmosphere was oppressive.
Freedom is as much a state of mind as anything else, and when you start passing laws where every aspect of our lives are monitored on the off chance that it will protect us, it begin to erode the idea of freedom.
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Bingo! Well said, James. FDR once said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
I happen to be one who is a World War II history buff, especially in the subject of the Third Reich. (Don't anyone get ANY ideas that I am a closet Nazi - besides, I don't meet their definition of 'Aryan' and my membership in Freemasonry would have been a guaranteed one way ticket to Dachau or Auschwitz.)
Sure, you got full employment, a decent cost of living and modern high-speed autobahns - but at what price? Subjugating and later exterminating Jews, eliminating any and all opposition to the Party? Being monitored by the block warden to see if you made your contribution to Winter Relief and attended the latest Party rally? Reading, listening and watching only what the government tells you to? Getting into a world war because you needed more living space?
For all intents and purposes, freedom as we knew it expired on the ashes of the WTC and the Pentagon, and in a field near Shanksville, PA. We now live in a world that preaches 'national security' and 'defense of our homeland' against the shadowy enemy called international terrorism. Living in fear of the next catastrophic terrorist attack won't help - all that will do is play our fears into al-Qaeda's hands.