We're a fearful people.
Americans have lived through decades of fear. We sailed to this land hundreds of years ago, partly out of fear. We fought a revolution, we fought a civil war...we crossed the big pond and fought the two big wars. We went to the jungle in Asia and the desert in the east. Out of fear.
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For the last 10 years, millions of Americans have lived in an Age of Fear.
Beginning at the millennium, many people cocooned themselves in fear...our leadership was in question, and we knew it. In September 2001 that fear went to a deeper, darker, scarier place. Our physical safety had been damaged-- we had yet to see what was to come.
Americans have long been aware Big Brother is Watching. We knew that even before Orwell published 1984 in 1949. Orwell was not shy in setting forth his fears of an intrusively bureaucratized state of the future. It took a littler longer than the writer thought, but we now live in a nation where cameras and computers spy on everything we do!
In the minds of many Americans, the Bush Administration used 1984 as a how-to guide, rather than the warning about despotism it was meant to be.
The U.S. Patriot Act, referred to by Congress as legislation to "Protect Life and Liberty," gave government agencies and law enforcement agencies the right to track, intercept and obstruct terrorism. Yet, it impacts beyond terrorism. It touches any American citizen. Under this Act, telephone conversations, e-mail, medical, financial and other records are no longer personal or private. What I check out of the public library can be put under scrutiny! The checks and balances guaranteed by our Constitution have been reduced. Big Brother is truly watching!
Many Americans feel this act is contradictory to protections of life and liberty. Instead, it has eroded our basic civil rights. For a people who believe in democracy and who have been proud of a 221-year-old Constitution pledging justice, tranquility, and liberty, the absolutism of government today is cause to shed tears.
1 comment:
It's a violation of our rights to have the government watching and monitoring what we do. Their excuse for the Patriot Act is total crap because even before the Patriot Act, NSA had the capabilities to wire tap, check e-mails, etc.. and even then they did nothing but sit and watch as the 9/11 terrorists moved from San Diego (if I recall correctly) to D.C.
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