The Forseeable Future of
Freedom From Government

by Reviewer Rob

Someone remarked recently that he wondered what Barak Obama’s views on The Patriot Act are. Although Obama is a very smart lawyer, he’s an even more than smart politician. My guess is he will do little about changing it in the next four years. I’ll tell you why.

By naming it The Patriot Act the current administration made it pretty hard for any politician seeking reelection to try and overturn it. The best we can hope for is that they will add more civil liberties to it and restore more checks and balances to the way the government implements its use.

The real reason for it was to make it easier for our surveillance society to be legitimized. In the days before The Patriot Act there were always occurrences like warrantless wiretapping and break-in thefts (think Watergate) either by heads of state that were drunk with power (think Richard Nixon stating in his interview to David Frost that “when the president does it that means that it is not illegal”…) or by law enforcement that didn’t want to leave a paper trail because it might slow down an investigation or because they wanted to cover their tracks due to their own illegal activity. Thing is, before The Patriot Act the doers of these dirty deeds knew they committed such acts at their own peril, and if they got caught they’d be in trouble. Then a few Muslim extremists with box cutters were allowed to fly passenger jets into buildings and a lot of people died. So…

The Patriot Act made it magically OK to commit those crimes against the citizenry previously forbidden by The Constitution for over 200 years. If Watergate happened today The Patriot Act would allow the burglers get away with it. See? It’s all about consolidating power and taking it away from the voters, not patriotism. It would’ve been more accurate to name it The FASCIST Act, probably would’ve sounded cooler in the history books too…

~RR

Leave a Reply