Thursday, March 08, 2007
the myth of gov
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” Ayn Rand
We have little approved national history of saying no to power. Unions and anti war organizations are routinely repressed.
There is no excuse for a once-free people to permit the conversion of their government to one of tyranny. The most powerful weapon of a state determined to enslave its people is ignorance. A close second to that weapon is the myth of government authority. And last, is the myth of government goodness and decency, which the people assume exists naturally within the state as it does within them. This last myth and belief makes it impossible for citizens to believe that their own government would plan and carry out crimes against them.
No American president in my memory has shown more contempt for the Constitution and its limits on power than bush. He claims that his “signing statements” can modify the laws passed by Congress. The outrageous claims by his attorney general that the U.S. could conduct warrantless wiretaps and that the Constitution does not guarantee the right of habeas corpus are a bare warning that freedom is in grave danger. The shrub has politicized science and intelligence and taken this country to war based on lies. He has ignored international law by using secret prisons where people are tortured and denied the most basic rights. The federal authorities can break into your home and plant surveillance devices without notifying you. It’s all done in the name of protecting us. That is the standard excuse that has been used since the earliest empires. We're only trying to make sure you're safe, they claim. Well, one should remember that there were no safer streets than Moscow under Stalin or Berlin under Hitler. Few resisted when the secret police came to get them because they were innocent. They had done nothing wrong, they were loyal, and they expected their government to realize that their arrest was a mistake. The government didn't, of course, because they were victims of paranoia.
We’re so afraid that we’re willing to trade our freedoms for this false sense of security the government is offering. If there’s dissent, we even want uniformity in dissent.
We have little approved national history of saying no to power. Unions and anti war organizations are routinely repressed.
There is no excuse for a once-free people to permit the conversion of their government to one of tyranny. The most powerful weapon of a state determined to enslave its people is ignorance. A close second to that weapon is the myth of government authority. And last, is the myth of government goodness and decency, which the people assume exists naturally within the state as it does within them. This last myth and belief makes it impossible for citizens to believe that their own government would plan and carry out crimes against them.
No American president in my memory has shown more contempt for the Constitution and its limits on power than bush. He claims that his “signing statements” can modify the laws passed by Congress. The outrageous claims by his attorney general that the U.S. could conduct warrantless wiretaps and that the Constitution does not guarantee the right of habeas corpus are a bare warning that freedom is in grave danger. The shrub has politicized science and intelligence and taken this country to war based on lies. He has ignored international law by using secret prisons where people are tortured and denied the most basic rights. The federal authorities can break into your home and plant surveillance devices without notifying you. It’s all done in the name of protecting us. That is the standard excuse that has been used since the earliest empires. We're only trying to make sure you're safe, they claim. Well, one should remember that there were no safer streets than Moscow under Stalin or Berlin under Hitler. Few resisted when the secret police came to get them because they were innocent. They had done nothing wrong, they were loyal, and they expected their government to realize that their arrest was a mistake. The government didn't, of course, because they were victims of paranoia.
We’re so afraid that we’re willing to trade our freedoms for this false sense of security the government is offering. If there’s dissent, we even want uniformity in dissent.
