by Zach Bigalke

Created on: October 28, 2007

The extension of NSA wiretap capabilities and increased surveillance potential has been declared a masterstroke in taking the fight to the terrorists who would otherwise end up obliterating our infrastructure with flaming bombs and airplanes. But the problem with any argument stating that reducing our Constitutionally-protected rights and privileges as American citizens does no harm to these citizens is preposterous. The terrorist cells - Al-Qaeda et. al. - have the goal in mind to harm the American way of life. Buildings such as the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers are the architectural personification of those rights and privileges; but the only tangible damage their attack and destruction can bring is reflected in clean-up bills and urban cosmetic blight. Allowing our own government to strip at our liberties, however, does greater damage than any Boeing can ever imagine to cause...

The attack is three-pronged, leaving out no point of the triangular design of our governance. The legislative branch, until last November in the control of the Republican Party, has systematically voted in legislation which gives greater power to the President and the executive structure... by systematically stripping the power from individuals. The executive, in turn, has taken an ultra-secretive stance as they commit injustices from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo and from sea to shining sea. And the judiciary, granted their life-terms by that paranoid executive, have consistently turned their backs on the very people who most need the reassurance that the courts provide in stemming the tide of a corrupt government.

Eco-conscious protestors are arrested and labeled "terrorists" under new legislation and judicial interpretation of the laws... and then turn around and promote, through dubious interpretation, the blatant illegalities of their bread-winner - the President of the United States and his cronies. Lost in the shuffle are the millions of Americans who were much safer BEFORE the government started slashing their liberties. Because, as Benjamin Franklin penned all those years ago, when this experiment in representative democracy was still incubating in its nascent form, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." As we fail to rise up, united in our discontent, we as a society watch passive and apathetic as both liberty and security deteriorate in a Hellish scene we certainly deserve...

Terrorism is certainly serious. Americans saw on 11 September 2001

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>