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We're becoming a nation of sheep
"Our contemporary Tories prefer the term 'ordered liberty' to 'freedom.' The word freedom scares them; it has too much of a wild, Paleolithic ring to it."
- Edward Abbey
Our Founding Fathers would be ashamed of what we have become.
A recent ABC News poll indicated that an overwhelming majority of Americans, some 71 percent, support the increased use of surveillance cameras to fight crime and deter potential terrorism.
The 25 percent that oppose the idea of increased government surveillance fret about privacy and the further erosion of our remaining civil liberties.
The sheep that make up the majority of the populace don't seem to mind turning their back on the Constitution or the ideals our country was founded upon and that is just plain sad. That they would voluntarily pervert our democracy into some sort of quasi-police state is beyond belief.
The British have long since given up on the idea of freedom and have wholeheartedly embraced their police state. London's infamous "Ring of Steel" legion of cameras (4 million and counting) may have helped track down the suspects following two attempted car bombings last month, but at what cost? What other nefarious purposes have the cameras been used for?
Here in America, where it's already possible that the government is reading your mail, listening to your phone conversations and intercepting you Internet communications, all without a warrant; where it's possible to be declared an "enemy combatant" and deprived of due process indefinitely; and where the president has assumed the power to declare martial law and use the military as a domestic police force when and if he sees fit, the addition of a wide array of surveillance cameras is just one more insult to the Founding Fathers' ideal of America and to the America that so many have fought and died for throughout our history.
So unless the few patriots that remain in America act quickly - and they lie exclusively among the 25 percent who oppose this camera scheme - we can say goodbye to democracy and hello to totalitarianism.
New York City already has 4,000 cameras and plans 3,000 more by 2010. Chicago and Baltimore also plan to beef up their surveillance plans as well.
The argument for cameras is seductive: it will make us safer and deter crime. But will it? London's "Ring of Steel" may have aided in the capture of the would-be car bombers, but it by no means prevented them from planting the bombs in the first place, bombs that were only discovered by sheer luck.
My America, the America we should all strive for, is not about being glared at and tracked by our nanny overlords at the federal government. I want to go where I want, see who I want, do what I want, when I want and I don't want the government to know about it. It's none of its business, now or ever.
If we reach the Orwellian low this is all headed for, just imagine censoring your own actions, flinching constantly to wonder if anything you just did might have offended the powers that be. It's chilling.
And that we believe the government when it tells us this is for our own good may be the worst of all, because it indicates the death of the independent American, the American conceived by Washington, Jefferson and Adams to populate a country with free-thinking, self reliant, strong-willed folks who weren't going to cede their sovereignty to a king an ocean away. Now, a majority of us seem willing to cede our very freedom to a blinking black box and the empty promise of security.
(Jonathan Maziarz is the editor of the Tribune & Georgian and a regular Friday columnist.)
- Edward Abbey
Our Founding Fathers would be ashamed of what we have become.
A recent ABC News poll indicated that an overwhelming majority of Americans, some 71 percent, support the increased use of surveillance cameras to fight crime and deter potential terrorism.
The 25 percent that oppose the idea of increased government surveillance fret about privacy and the further erosion of our remaining civil liberties.
The sheep that make up the majority of the populace don't seem to mind turning their back on the Constitution or the ideals our country was founded upon and that is just plain sad. That they would voluntarily pervert our democracy into some sort of quasi-police state is beyond belief.
The British have long since given up on the idea of freedom and have wholeheartedly embraced their police state. London's infamous "Ring of Steel" legion of cameras (4 million and counting) may have helped track down the suspects following two attempted car bombings last month, but at what cost? What other nefarious purposes have the cameras been used for?
Here in America, where it's already possible that the government is reading your mail, listening to your phone conversations and intercepting you Internet communications, all without a warrant; where it's possible to be declared an "enemy combatant" and deprived of due process indefinitely; and where the president has assumed the power to declare martial law and use the military as a domestic police force when and if he sees fit, the addition of a wide array of surveillance cameras is just one more insult to the Founding Fathers' ideal of America and to the America that so many have fought and died for throughout our history.
So unless the few patriots that remain in America act quickly - and they lie exclusively among the 25 percent who oppose this camera scheme - we can say goodbye to democracy and hello to totalitarianism.
New York City already has 4,000 cameras and plans 3,000 more by 2010. Chicago and Baltimore also plan to beef up their surveillance plans as well.
The argument for cameras is seductive: it will make us safer and deter crime. But will it? London's "Ring of Steel" may have aided in the capture of the would-be car bombers, but it by no means prevented them from planting the bombs in the first place, bombs that were only discovered by sheer luck.
My America, the America we should all strive for, is not about being glared at and tracked by our nanny overlords at the federal government. I want to go where I want, see who I want, do what I want, when I want and I don't want the government to know about it. It's none of its business, now or ever.
If we reach the Orwellian low this is all headed for, just imagine censoring your own actions, flinching constantly to wonder if anything you just did might have offended the powers that be. It's chilling.
And that we believe the government when it tells us this is for our own good may be the worst of all, because it indicates the death of the independent American, the American conceived by Washington, Jefferson and Adams to populate a country with free-thinking, self reliant, strong-willed folks who weren't going to cede their sovereignty to a king an ocean away. Now, a majority of us seem willing to cede our very freedom to a blinking black box and the empty promise of security.
(Jonathan Maziarz is the editor of the Tribune & Georgian and a regular Friday columnist.)
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