In the past few months our government has passed laws along the following lines
Warrant-less Wiretapping
Arrest without due process
State laws making talking about specific topic on the internet a felony
My issue is not with any one individual law but with an idea.
You remember ideas?
We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I’ve witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I’ve seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them…
There was an idea in the founding of this country that
“One is innocent until proven guilty”
Personally, we as a nation have given leave to our govenment to say,
“We no longer trust innocence.”
Our litiginous society is now eager to find and prove guilt. So much so, that we will pick away at the only wholes some people have to prove said innocence.
Everyday, I see pop up windows that ask the question, “Do you trust Bush?”… I have to be honest… because of our society.. I don’t trust government. We have allowed our government to become a self-supporting beast that does one and only one thing.. it protects itself.
The bipartisan system has evolved to a state where it is impossible for a third party to grow an interact. By having two parties, there is always that feeling of “Us” (the good guys) and “Them” the bad guys. There’s always someone who’s fault it is that is making life bad for us and we just need to believe in “our team”
But everytime something passes in govenment that you personally don’t like… be assured that someone from your party defecteed to allow it to pass. See that’s the hard part because how can you voice your discontent… You can throw them out of office by voting for someone on the other team.
Now all your like minded, politically aligned friends, think you’re missing the big picture
Well, I’m here to remind you what the big picture is:
Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.
Most of us (and let me say that is about 80+%) of us. Want to live a life, have people around us we care about, do things with them, and have the basic necessities of life.
Food, shelter, clothing. That’s it.
The US Government currently believes that the poverty line for 2006 is $6,400 per household and $3400 per person. What this translates to is that a household is expected to need no more than $533 per month for rent and utilities and $283 per month for food, clothes, and personal necessities.
Less that Ironically the neighborhoods that have the lowest cost housing also have the least amount of taxes to pay for local law enforcement. No cops? Anyone will do anything to get by.
Because, returning the the government… if the government can’t take a financial piece of it… it must be illegal. (once again, you are a criminal). One of the current major group of laws we deal with every day is as follows:
vice based laws (prostitution, drugs, gambling, sexuality)
A note of interest here: vice is defined in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary as:
an immoral or evil habit or practice
Well, you know me.. it’s all about the words.
Same source “immoral“: violating moral principles; not conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics.
sigh… immoral = not being moral… some definition. But it adds the word ethics in.
Ethics are moral principals, being moral is acting ethically. Call Yosarian we have a vicious loop with no definition, let’s let the government decide for us.
An example of all this. The idea behind temperance was that Alcohol was the way of the Devil. Now overlooking the entire part of this where we are basing our legal direction on a religious belief… Oh, I guess we can’t. Because of religious and then governmental scare tactics… we went so far as to change the US constitution to tell us what we couldn’t do. As pointed out in a letter to notmy congressperson, “The constitution is designed to explain how government is limited, not the people”
But here we are… a nation of victims being scurried around like animals… afraid of our own shadows, willing to stand by and let each freedom be taken away from us. Little rules that tell us when the liberties of free speech and expression are not permitted.
The (TSA) supervisor told Bird he had the right to express his opinions “out there” — pointing outside the screening area — but did not have the right “in here,” Bird said.
For those who haven’t been to an airport recently, I have a link here to a 20 second clip I put together of how going through TSA screening feels. Of course, by making this clip, I open myself to cease and desist action.
How did this happen? How did we let things get out of control. Do we care… Well, obviously, not enough of us do care. Nobody wants to be the squeaky wheel. Well for the most part. Because we’re taught to disrespect the noise maker.
This is nothing new, and at the same time it is nothing old. What it is, i one step closer to being impossible to do anything about it when you feel that it’s happening to you.
(To be continued)