Sometimes the Horror just washes over you.
Just had a thought wash over me.
Nothing new here, no new info or sudden insight.
Just a dawning awareness of the magnitude of a thing.
Isn't it funny,
after decades of dire warnings,
from both sides of the political spectrum,
about the threat and horror of Big Brother Watching You...
Isn't it funny,
that when Snowden SHOWED US that HE ALREADY WAS(!)...
that our collective response was - a yawn.
Even amongst our own.
John Stossel - one of my favorites - was concerned but not overly so. It didn't even make his list of "100 Things I Hate About Government"
(Yesss, Stossel is a Libertarian not an OBJ, but he's still a proponent of AR and a voice for Freedom. And the closest we have to a voice in the Mainstream)
And I'd bet a dollar that several folks here in the Gulch, perhaps even self-professed OBJ's, do not believe in an inalienable right to privacy.
A right on a par with the right to bear arms or the right to freely associate.
The right of an honest person to be left alone.
It just kinda hit me.
The Big Brother scare is over.
We'll never hear the warning again.
It came and went.
And we didn't care.
Because it was for our own good.
Nothing new here, no new info or sudden insight.
Just a dawning awareness of the magnitude of a thing.
Isn't it funny,
after decades of dire warnings,
from both sides of the political spectrum,
about the threat and horror of Big Brother Watching You...
Isn't it funny,
that when Snowden SHOWED US that HE ALREADY WAS(!)...
that our collective response was - a yawn.
Even amongst our own.
John Stossel - one of my favorites - was concerned but not overly so. It didn't even make his list of "100 Things I Hate About Government"
(Yesss, Stossel is a Libertarian not an OBJ, but he's still a proponent of AR and a voice for Freedom. And the closest we have to a voice in the Mainstream)
And I'd bet a dollar that several folks here in the Gulch, perhaps even self-professed OBJ's, do not believe in an inalienable right to privacy.
A right on a par with the right to bear arms or the right to freely associate.
The right of an honest person to be left alone.
It just kinda hit me.
The Big Brother scare is over.
We'll never hear the warning again.
It came and went.
And we didn't care.
Because it was for our own good.
I like an article on fee.org called "the America we lost" and I read it every year with my students.
To your point, you are correct, it's horrifying and we need a revolution. I'm serious about that but I'm sitting in my backyard, with glass of wine and a raices cubanas. So no revolutions for the next 60 minutes please.
Fee art at http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/th...
Aloha, have fun
"Your" backyard? Try not paying the royal rent (property tax) and you'll find out whose backyard it really is, serf. ;-)
That is freedom. To be able to run wild, with no one watching.
This NSA BS is not for our own good, it is the government's way of keeping us scared, so we don't all ban together, and revolt against them. It is called Fascism.
The terrorists are coming in our southern borders now; if Obama cared about the good of the American people, he would not have opened the borders, and keep lying to us that they are secure.
The threats we face today - the EXTERNAL threats - are so minor as to be almost beneath concern.
I grew up learning "duck and cover" drills in grade school, back when you didn't have to be a nut case to build a bomb shelter. Every science fiction movie was an end-of-the-world movie and Concerned Scientists kept moving a minute-hand back and forth two or three minutes from oblivion.
The generation before fought Nazi's who destroyed a continent and murdered by the million. The generation after fought the rise of Communism that killed even more and, at it's height, enslaved half the world.
What do we fear today? The weather!
Today we fear isolated acts of violence that pose no real threat to our nation. Our fears are fanned by 24 hour media coverage and politicians that pander to the whine of every Nervous Nellie.
And for protection from these "threats" we have ceded nothing less than our most basic liberty, and allowed our government to ignore every constitutional restraint.
What times we live in!
I believe that you will soon have a new big source of fear: Muslim jihad. Just a thought.
Jan
He said it 235 years ago and he was spot on then as he is now.
And just as a solid hypothesis will predict the experiment, so too will a sound philosophy foretell the future.
A loyal follower of Big Brother will report you for thinking negatively about Big Brother. :O
Been made into movies a few times too.
Why am I not surprised it's been dropped from high school reading lists?!
Google is your friend.
No, I value my privacy and work to remain as private as possible, but I'm sure I'm on somebody's list somewhere.
Jan
I agree, if we're excluding some TV reporters I heard talking about it.
I was on vacation when it was in the news lat last year, and I was aghast at how the MSM handled it. On the TV I could hear commentators uncritically repeating what gov't officially said. They weren't even trying to appear like they had any impartiality. They were just repeating what officials told them as if they fully agreed, not just as if they wanted continued access to a source.
word -- when I put it on here. I do not do texting,
but do talk on the cellphone. I say "Hi!" to the NSA
and the FBI as I talk.
if I want privacy, I keep quiet, electronically. -- j
p.s. or I call across the living room to a friend,
my wife, or the dog.
GOMF