Farm Animals

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.~Benjamin Franklin

Don't discount Ole Ben, perhaps the most brilliant American who ever traveled the fruited plain.

In recent history, at the forefront of this discussion is the Patriot Act, passed in bipartisan fashion in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001.

Regrettably, I was one who was not initially significantly alarmed by this, for it appeared to me winning the Global War on Terror was critical, with the catastrophic possibility of nuclear weapons being unleashed at or in America. Efforts to combat our enemies, both foreign and domestic, seemingly would require steps beyond historical avenues of attack. I was all in.

Central among the additional avenues of intercept would be traffic utilizing the new world horizon of the Internet. The ability to institute keen surveillance over this forum would allow our military to be preemptive to attacks through monitoring the global terrorists. The advantages sounded great, but with the collapsed buildings in lower Manhattan still simmering, we forgot the keen insight of Benjamin Franklin.

In a sensible effort to obtain temporary safety, we relinquished some level of liberty. Even so, is this as bad as it may seem?

In the spirit of Ole Ben, let us recall some rather recent files in our memory bank. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky will clue you in. Take a listen:



Written in 1949, George Orwell's novel 1984 chronicled what expansive big government control over the masses might look like in a dreary sort of way.  Like most who have read the book, it seemed outlandish, something really not possible in America, home of the free and the brave.

Among the tenants highlighted in the novel were public mind control, government surveillance, collectivism persecuting individualism and perpetual war. Don't look now, but 2012 looks quite like 1984.

Regrettably, many Americans who have read the book fail to recognize what is right in front of them; a presidential administration aiming to create a culture of dependency among the society allowing entry levels of tyranny to be implemented. Under this implementation, advertised with a complicit media, the complacent public is being hoodwinked as the erosion of liberty escalates.

The Patriot Act, if memory serves me correctly, was to be a temporary measure to be re-visited annually by the Senate.  Although President Obama has declared the war on terror over, erroneously I might add, the Patriot Act continues. It is worth noting that a majority warrants issued under the Patriot Act have little or no association with terrorism.

Unfortunately, the Patriot Act is far from the only thing our citizenry must be concerned with respect to big government surveillance. As Judge Andrew Napolitano points out, the Senate is currently considering further and stunning invasions of our privacy.  Major private companies and government agencies track each and every key stroke while you are on their dime, but for the government to seeking intrusive measures on the American people.  As the Judge noted, this would be an attack against Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

Obviously, we are not in "1984", but sadly, our American time capsule is traveling in this direction at increasing speed, by design, driven by governmental elites who in their arrogance think they make superior collective decisions than the individual and independent thought.  Tyranny over liberty.

Sadly, the lemmings re-elected President Obama, buying his false narratives and hearing his words rather than taking the time to evaluate his actions and noting the deception.  History is re-writing itself, and although we thought many of our citizens had recognized Obama and his big government collective policies were wrong for America, we were wrong.

It is imperative now, more than ever, we present the facts and illustrative real world case studies on what is happening under this oppressive regime.  Orwell's 1984 provides us a snapshot into that world, which represents most everything the founders of our country fought against.  If we fail, we will all be living in 1984, and we will be unable to summon Crockett and Tubbs for help.