The Slow Deliberate March

Time seems to move a lot faster these days. I don’t know if it’s the amount of chaos going on in my life these days, or if it’s the run-up to summer (oh wait, you mean it’s here already!). But the fact is, the last few months have flown by for me, and I hardly had time to sleep, much less stop to think clearly enough to write a coherent post. Speaking of sleep, wouldn’t it be much better if it weren’t necessary? I could gain an extra 6 hours a day to accomplish the things I want to do. (Yes, I’ve already stolen 2 or so hours from that naggingly necessary third of my life). So I’d like to thank my friend Leerz for keeping OnTheSoapbox active with her postings. She’s an excellent writer, and sees things from a slightly different perspective than most of us, and if you haven’t read her writings I encourage you to do so at Insight, Inspiration and Indignation.

But no matter how fast time is moving for me these days, it doesn’t seem fast enough to get us to 2008. (Yes, this is a political post ladies and gentlemen)

So as it turns out, not only is the bush Administration spying on our phone calls, they are collecting our phone records, and as revealed last Friday, also collecting our bank records. I guarantee you that it doesn’t stop there. I’d like to throw out as well, that your Credit Card purchases, medical records, emails, web surfing habits, probably even location via cell phone, OnStar, even those convenient little devices you use for EZPass, or FastLane or whatever they call it in your area, are all being collected archived and data-mined.

It just hasn’t become public yet.

I was discussing this with an acquaintance who tends to lean slightly to the left, when he came out with the tired old argument of “well, if you’ve got nothing to hide, what does it matter?” He went on to say that the government wasn’t interested in him, his data was just collateral noise in the mining for specific parameters related to terrorism. For all we know, that may be true, for the moment.

But it’s not about whether a person has something to hide. It’s not about supporting the war on terror. It’s about the law. It’s about the erosion of our civil liberties. The Bush Administration has consistently an unapologetically trampled on our Constitution’s 4^th Amendment. They have no legal right to collect this information on ANYONE, terrorist or not, without probable cause and without a court ordered search warrant.

If you think this is a minor inconvenience, and it won’t affect you, think about this. How much of a stretch is it from collecting your private and personal records without a warrant, to bashing down your door and entering your home, without probable cause, without a warrant. The Supreme Court just recently ruled that police do not have to knock and announce themselves.

If you think this all isn’t a slow and deliberate march to an authoritarian, police state, think again.

I’m not one for conspiracy theories. I think that the dolts who proclaim that 9/11 was orchestrated by our own government, are plainly insane. But there is clearly an agenda. It’s the agenda of a small minority of powerful and wealthy cronies to make them and their friends more powerful and more wealthy, all at the expense of the American Citizen. They do this by spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). With the help of certain popular media outlets, they demonize those who are actually looking to protect the future and freedom of Americans, while slowly eroding the very virtues that has made America great, all while claiming to protect those very virtues with this invented “War on Terror”. Does anyone still think there were terrorist ties in Iraq?