Eroding liberties
There are times when I'm so pissed off at the whole world that I can't see straight. I can't even put into words how frustrated I feel, partially because of my own powerlessness to do more, partly because of the collective complacency in which we all wallow. Take a look at this.
I will readily admit that I've had trouble verifying the truth of this article. I haven't found anything about it on any major news sites.. YET. Or maybe it won't ever show up. Maybe it's an overblown conspiracy theory cooked up by left-wing pot-smoking hippy liberals. But I will tell you my honest gut reaction to this story. It seems like the next logical step in the US government's steady methodical process to erode the civil liberties of their citizens. As soon as I saw the headline about the US Government effectively putting anyone wishing to fly in or out of the US on what amounts to a No-Fly list, I thought, "Gee, that sounds exactly like the Soviet Union." If the Dept. of Homeland Security has their way, no one will be able to fly in or out of the US without their permission. You want to talk about Red States and Blue states; it sounds like the government would like the entire country to be a Red state, if you're catching what I'm throwing.
One thing I've believed for a long time, and what I've heard echoed by friends of mine: Whatever happens to the US, will happen to us. For better or worse, sooner or later, we share their fate. Lately, I've been working my way through Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." If you're at all familiar with it, don't be too impressed. I've got the condensed, watered-down Reader's Digest version, so it's not that difficult to get through when I sit down and concentrate on it. If you're not familiar, It's a book, or series of books I guess. I think there's about 6 in all, and it's about 12 million pages in total. My version is one volume, and it's about 300 pages. It was written in the 1700's by a guy named Gibbon. It talks about how things were going so well in the Roman Empire for a long time, and then instantly after peaking, it started a slow, excruciating slide downhill. And it's really eerie how the descriptions of the Roman Empire in it's decline sound exactly like modern Western Civilization. It's supposed to be the greatest history book ever written. If I ever have kids, I think I'll tie them down and force them to read this book. And then write a report about it.
One thing that really pisses me off, is that I'm fully aware that I can't tell for sure what's true and what's baloney, from what I read in the news. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Not everything the US government does is wrong. It'd take an awful lot of effort for them to do that. So how am I supposed to sort out the fact from fiction? How can I tell what's a product of media bias, and what's truth? I really can't despite my best efforts, and that pisses me off even more.
Here's a classic example of government intrusion in our lives. Recently, the US government signed a bill making most forms of online gambling illegal. Looky. That's probably not the best place to read about the whole issue, but it's a start. If you know a lot about me, and what I do for a living, you know that my career (if you want to call it that) is actually quite closely related to online gambling. So this new law could have far-reaching implications for my job, and the jobs of my co-workers. I'm trying not to make any assumptions before I actually see what will happen, though. But one has to ask oneself, why does the government need to pass a law like this? Shouldn't people be allowed to waste their money on whatever useless crap they want? That's sort of the foundation of free enterprise. As long as it's not harmful to anyone else, then it should be fine. Please understand that I'm not personally a fan of online gambling. I think it's a waste of time and money, and I've seen a lot of people get into serious trouble because of it. But I also believe that they would find something else equally useless to waste their money on if it wasn't online poker. Do you think the government should outlaw everything that's a waste of money? There goes most of my cd collection, and a lot of my computer games, and maybe half of everything I own. I think one thing that people have forgotten, both the voters and the politicians, is that they're not supposed to tell us what's right and wrong. God knows they're horribly underqualified to do that. We're supposed to be our own morality police, WE are supposed to tell them what's right and wrong. And they're supposed to listen to us.
In 1775, Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" I wonder what he would think if he saw us today.
3 Comments:
You've made five points:
1. Reduced freedoms, first, your link is wrong, it should be http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/04/1353204, secondly it is only a proposal by a department with no real authority in the area. Something like this would have to pass constitutional muster, which I hope it wouldn't, violates freedom of travel.
2.Fact from fiction isn't that hard to discern on the web. Verify the source, apply common sense against it. If you can't, it's rumor.
3. The fall of Rome: Empires collapse when they fail to adjust to falling levels of their key resources. Rome and the US aren't much different, except the US still has a chance, Rome doesn't.
4. The gambling law is stupid, but it kinda of make sense. Their rationale is they want people to stop sending money out of the country to foreign businesses. I guess oil companies don't count.
5. I think Mr. Henry would look at us and say: "So, you've made your choice. Idiots"
I honestly find it really hard to believe that any member of congress in their right mind would ever pass a law/bill forcing americans to get their permission to fly for two reasons.
Reason one: You have to rememeber that americans are all about how much money they can make. If something like this actually happened do you realize what kind of a negative blow that would have on their economy? Can you imagine how many jobs would be lost? It would be to much of a pain in the ass to go through all the red tape just to be able to fly out of the country, that people may not travel at all.
Reason two: I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone that would agree to pass this bill, unless they do what they did with the online gambling, tack it on to another bill that they know will get passed and presto! everyone is on a no-fly-list.
Unless this is all a well thought out plan to keep american money in america. Think about it this way, if you take away the american people's right to travel outside of the country, it would force more in country travel, thus the money that they would spend in another country stays within the U.S.A. However the only way that I could see them capitalizing on this, is if they don't do anything to change how hard it is for others to travel into the country, that way they have the best of both worlds. They get to keep thier money as well as the money of people from other countries. How will they ever fool the american people into believe it is just as hard to get into the counrty as it is to get out hmm.....well they elected Bush into office for two terms so I guess it wouldn't be that hard.
As for the online gambling bill, like you and I have talked about it is just uncle sam being a greedy bastard.
"Give me liberty, or give me death" Henry's response to what is going on "Thank god I'm dead"
Thanks for the input. And thank you for correcting the link, Kasper.
I should have been a little clearer. Or a lot clearer. I realized that the proposal is just that at this stage: a proposal. And hopefully, if there are enough people with enough presence of mind to at least do what they need to do to keep their jobs, they'll shoot this idea down right away. But we should be concerned by the fact that someone in a position of authority actually thought, "hey, this would be a good idea."
I understand the wish to protect your economic interests, but I also believe in free enterprise, and competition. If foreigners are offering what Americans want, Americans should be able to buy it. American companies should start offering these products themselves in order to become more competitive. I honestly thought Republicans were more in favour of the open market. Except when it hurts them.
I actually think Patrick Henry would word it a little more eloquently, but essentially, you're right.
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