While the death of one pioneer of liberty (see below) cannot take away our liberties, one law can. And it has. The USA PATRIOT Act was renewed by the senate by a huge vote. Suffice it to say, I recommend voting against any senator who voted for this piece of legislation when his term comes up.
The act's name actually stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism." The "appropriate tools" refer to (still) illegal wire taps, surveillance, record gathering, etc, that goes against the principles of the US Constitution. Hitler could not have come up with a better law to quickly turn a country into a police state. Actually, he did come up with the Reichstag Fire Decree, which does very similar things to the Patriot Act.
Anyway, there are two schools of thought.
Some believe that this is a good act because it allows us to go after terrorists, who cares if we lose civil liberties and our national identity as long as we are alive. To those people, I say: Go to New Zealand, they are very neutral, very safe, you will be welcomed there, get the fuck out of my country because I DO NOT WANT YOU HERE.
The other school of thought can be represented by those who feel that "those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither" which was a principle of our Founding Fathers (particularly the man on the $100 bill, and believe me, he knew about terrorism and security).
2 comments:
I agree that illegal wiretapping is wrong. The only way it should be done is if that person is a well-known terrorist. Then it should be done. Also, record gathering can be done without anyone's permission. It's been going on for years. I'm not saying I'm for it/against it, but if the authorities want to know info on me, I'll give certain info to them to get them off my back, otherwise that's it. Maybe the Bush Administration will come up with something better if this idea gets shot down.
but even before the patriot act, didn't the govt. already wire tap?
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