Is the pursuit of safety worth relinquishing essential liberty? Civil liberties are being eroded at an alarmingly fast rate. Newspapers have been filled with examples of human rights being trampled in the name of protection and security.
Wikipedia, Reddit, and approximately 7,000 smaller websites recently coordinated service blackouts to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) which were being voted on in the US Congress. The bills would have given law enforcement the ability to protect digital private property rights by blocking web content which might violate US law. The legislation would have threatened the 1st Amendment right of free speech and allowed the federal government to censor certain websites without due process of law.
America’s government has lulled its citizens into a false sense of security. Flying is no longer merely about traveling from one city to another, but involves queuing for what feels like ages, placing all liquids of three ounces or less into quart sized bags, and stripping shoes, coats, and belts, along with all other loose objects, into a tray for scanning. This is followed next by the preverbal walk through the metal detector and/or body-scanner, and for the ‘lucky’ few – full body pat down by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer. For those refusing, they get the Rand Paul treatment. Flying in the ‘free world’ has become an expo of liberty in derogation.
Al-Qaeda has single-handedly eroded our essential liberty by giving governments a tool to prey on citizens - FEAR. In the name of security and safety, our government has chosen the means by which to protect us, the people, from terrorists. Fear has led to a proliferation of the “security industrial complex”.
The rise of the military [security] industrial complex: A recent report out of the UK put the Homeland Security Industry at a global market valuation of nearly $200 billion per annum. Despite the killing of al-Qaeda CEO, Osama bin Laden, economic woes and growing national debts, aren’t holding governments back on funding counter-terror activities. People have begrudgingly said government knows best and accepted a world with security checks, surveillance systems, and restrictions on travel and personal effects.
In spite of our government’s efforts, are we safer today than we were prior to September 11, 2001? The Department of Homeland Security can cite numerous cases of would be terrorists who have been disrupted in their plot to harm Americans. The Justice Department has deported, extradited, or tried dozens of terrorists. Yet, through all these interventions and billions of dollars spent both at home and abroad, America is as much at risk today as it was eleven years ago. The 9-11 Commission Report points out measures were in place to impede such attacks; however, an ‘infallible’ bureaucracy failed to react timely to overt indications of threats.
The most important change since 9-11 has been the securing of the cockpit door to prevent turning a plane into a ‘guided missile’. Studies have shown if terrorists cannot enter the cockpit and take control of the plane, then the worst damage they can inflict is bodily harm to passengers or blowing up the plane. People who become victims have a right of self-defence and tend to react if life and limb are in imminent threat. The best example is United Airlines flight 93, where the passengers reacted to the suicide hijacking by rushing the cockpit. The most lethal weapons in the war on terror is individual people, everyday heroes, not a government willing to use fear to erode personal freedoms and liberties.
The only way to stop the proliferation of the ‘security industrial complex’ is to stop feeding it! I want a leader who isn’t afraid to admit our government has lulled us into a false sense of security. I’d rather accept the risks of freedom, and have more freedom than the protection of an overreaching, ineffective and ever centralized bureaucracy.
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