Should I be afraid to voice my view ?


Knowledge about government spying and the processes involved in deceiving
 the American public is an excellent weapon in the war on terror.

Informed and free Americans, living without fear of our own government,
 are the best deterrent to radicalism of any kind.



The willingness to give the government unchecked power
 to snoop into the lives of the innocent Americans,
dishonors the thousands of service members who have
given their lives to keep this country free.


The federal government had tremendous surveillance authority
even prior to 9/11; since then Congress granted the intelligence
 and law enforcement "communities" significantly more power.




The President's primary responsibility
 is to protect principle above property,
not the other way around. And that's why
America has always been so special!

 According to Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution,
 the job of the President is to "PRESERVE, PROTECT, and
 DEFEND the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES."

The job of the President is not to 'protect the United States',
 by reading a persons e-mail, listening to phone, and other
surveillance methods with out a warrant, with the thought that
your are all guilty until proven innocent.



History has taught us again and again
that giving law enforcement more powers
invariably leads not to more effective crime-fighting,
 but to bigger miscarriages of justice.


The CIA and FBI do their jobs and do them pretty damn well
 without warrant-less spying on US citizens.





 September 11 happened not because the CIA and FBI failed us,
 it happened because the Bush administration failed us.

 The rest has been a grand cover-up and Americans have bought it
 hook, line and sinker for political and other inexplicable reasons.





Too bad many of our citizens see this
as the "If I did nothing wrong,
what do I have to fear?" approach.

 Maybe, they need to speak to Holocaust survivors
 of the Nazi regime to see that many who were
 arrested and died during that period also did nothing,
except be Jews, non Germanic Eastern Europeans,
 mentally retarded persons, political opponents
to the Nazis, or other factors of non-wrongdoing.

Similar situations existed in the communist states
 of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
 especially during the Stalinist era.

 How many were sent to the Gulag who did "nothing wrong"
 except that someone reported them as "suspicious."

 Don't we have our own gulag at Guantanamo?






At  issue is the possibility that enforcement agencies
 might use this information not only to track people
 who might be connected to terrorists, but to try
 and determine who might be a nascent terrorist.

What scares me is that if I watch the wrong movies on the Internet,
 check out the wrong library books, study under the wrong professor,
and post the wrong ideas on my blog I might have my door busted in
 by the FBI some morning.




What we are looking at here is not
only the loss of personal privacy,
but the loss of personal opinion.

This could easily turn, and, inferring from the incredibly high walls
of secrecy the executive branch has thrown up, probably already has
 turned into a search for thought criminals.



Can I be prosecuted for disagreeing with the actions of my government?
If I oppose the war, sympathize with or at least seek to understand the
 motivations of the "enemy", or suspect particular government institutions
 of egregious violations of rights and untold violence should I be afraid
 to voice my view?



 Can I be punished for speaking out against what I view
as injustice if that injustice is in power over me?





Sadly, many Americans just don't care.

 They live life without a clue until
their identity is stolen costing them
their financial security and untold problems.

 We can trust our government only when the government
is accountable to the people for its actions, not the other way.



 This terminology of "War on Terror" is in error.

 You don't have a war on a concept.

It is used incorrectly to give this administration
the latitude to conduct itself in ways our founding fathers
would not accept when we are not at war.


Will all of this "data mining" end up being used to deny one
the right to vote at some time in the future?




 With "paperless" voting machines, what is to prevent the government
from not recording my vote because I am on a "list?"


What is to prevent the government from targeting my tax return
for harassing tax audits because I am on a "list?"


 What is to prevent the government from denying me a
government college loan because I am on a "list?"


 What is to prevent the government from drafting me into
the armed forces for combat duty because I am on a "list?"





We can't return to the world of pre-9/11, our society has changed forever.

 We must instead insure that as our Government and world changes,
 that we continue to question our Government and their decisions
 in order to insure our Freedoms are not compromised.



No one, including the government, should have the right
to spy on the private lives of the American people.


Land of the free and home of the brave? Sometimes I wonder...
It should be a warning to all freedom-loving citizens.


It is our duty as Americans to protect these rights as did our forefathers,
 many of whom died in the preservation of these sacrosanct tenets of government.


When a powerful entity gathers unlimited
 info on people as if all are guilty,
 then comes the laws against certain
type people or political opponents,
 they are easily rounded up and taken
 on trains to the special camps.


Some of you say oh come on get a grip,
 but history has shown us just what
 power hungry people do once they have
 the tools to take care of the competition.


How many people in this country could even
tell you what the Fourth Amendment is,
 let alone why they should care about it?

 I am willing to bet that even George Bush
had never read the constitution before taking office.
 If he did, he surely didn't comprehend a word.



When any leader tells the people that
they know best and the laws do not apply to them
( TRUST ME ) that is the time to dig deep into what they are doing
 because with out a doubt it will be awful.


The United States was founded on the idea of personal liberty.
 This concept gave rise to the Constitution and to the Bill of Rights.
Additionally,  not knowing them and doing all that we can to enforce them,
could very well lead to not having them.