What I Do Not Understand

I understand the interest and the outrage being expressed by some quarters over some people in the State Department snooping, whether for partisan research or for simple curiosity, in the passport files of the three presidential candidates.

What I do not understand is the lack of outrage by some quarters of of the snooping that was done illegally by two of the three telecommunications companies at the behest of the Bush Administration and without any warrant or other legal processes.

Our forefathers rose up in rebellion against what then was the most powerful nation, indeed, the most powerful empire that the world had ever known. They had the strongest army and the best navy in the world. While the numbers of Americans killed in the Revolutionary War may look slight compared to the toll exacted by later wars, keep in mind that in 1776, there were less than three million inhabitants in the Colonies. Yes, our forefathers likely would have lost without their military alliance with France and the co-belligerency of other nations in Europe, who saw a chance to get their licks in against England. Despite the help of France to the Rebellion, the British Army marched across much of the Colonies and though they won most of the battles, they didn't win all of them and our ancestors prevailed.

Now we have a population of a hundred times that of the Colonies. We are wealthy and powerful far beyond the imaginations of those who sat in the Continental Congress or the Constitutional Convention. But all it took was one coordinated attack by a handful of men, carrying out suicidal attacks with commandeered airliners, and we are quivering in our boots. One political party has become the party of fear and terror, promising that death and destruction will again rain down upon us if we do not surrender our freedoms and liberties to the Executive. The other political party largely seems to be too spineless to object.

How far we have fallen. If King George III had declared to himself the right to intercept and read the correspondence of every subject in the Colonies, to search through the records in their local banks, to inquire of the merchants what goods people had purchased, our forefathers would have no trouble seeing that for the outrage that it truly would have been to them.

But no longer. The King President said "do it" and two of the three telecommunications companies unquestioningly, and without any heed to the Constitution, gave his agents unfettered access to the telecommunications of all Americans, and yes, this was done prior to 9/11. It was done, for in some measure, we have given up on being a nation of laws. That which our forefathers held most dear, that which they fought and bled and died for, that they would no longer be subject to the whims of an unaccountable sovereign, is something we have given up without a whimper.

Those who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to the cause of liberty and freedom would be appalled.

I do not understand how we have become so fearful, so spineless, that we would willingly surrender our liberties for the mere promise of security. Have we become so fearful that we will eagerly proceed down the road of tyranny just for the promise of safety?

I fear for the future of our nation. I do not fear a bunch of jihadists in caves in Afghanistan, for while they may be able to stage an attack from time to time, they cannot raise an army, equip a navy, sail across the ocean and burn our homes and cities to the ground. Imperial Japan could not do it, Nazi Germany could not do it. They cannot do it.

What I fear are those who would eagerly destroy American freedom and liberty in the cause of saving it. I fear those who would destroy those liberties that, in 1776, were regarded as self-evident, all in the name of making us "safe."

What, after all, is life without freedom, without liberty? Our forefathers understood that. The Chinese students in Tianamin Square in 1989 understood that. The Tibetans understand that.

It is a pity and a sad commentary on our own dedication to the principles upon which this nation was founded that the Republican party, and yes, a number of Democrats, do not understand that.