When I was born, in the 1940’s my country worried about the Nazi’s and the Japanese, so we chased them and set laws into place to supposedly prevent them from taking us over. We also fought with them to protect our land at home, this I have understood but now we have a different war to fight…it is ourselves.
We as a people have allowed the following things to occur:
- The Patriot Act limited our rights in the name of Home Land Security
- We remained unconcerned about the police being allowed to put a GPS’s on a person’s private vehicle, even though it was on their private property, without a warrant.
- We are unconcerned that our current President may try to put in place a system whereby our government agencies can access our internet without a warrant.
- Today our government is considering putting in place radar vans with X-Ray ability to spy on us without a warrant.
- Now we are even being told we are not safe in Europe, what have we done!
In the early 1970’s one of our Presidents was forced into resigning for wiretapping. It was a horrible crime to us at the time. What has happened? Are we so desensitized that we do not see that we are no longer even close to being free?
Who is profiting from the spread of paranoia? Someone profited from the wars created during my life time? Was our military keeping us free or freeing the way for companies like Chevron, Enron, Exxon, and other energy companies to mine for products in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan without paying these countries for their raw materials? Are we still behaving as the first settlers who stole Manhattan for beads from the natives in the area then pretending that it is not so. We have behaved with our foreign policy in a manner that may make us appear as terrorists to other countries. Have we behaved in such a way that it became a natural reaction to assume others would attack us? Is this the source of our fears, the fear that has led us to where we now are willing to give our basic rights away?
We feared the Nazi’s then the Communists, now the Muslims, when we need to fear ourselves and our lack of foresight much as Rome had no fore site.
Has our greed led us to this point where we must spy on ourselves and tell our military they keep us free? Can we change, or are we afraid of change as well?
©Janet Ball-Reed, CEO
Advocacy-now.org