The Slide Toward Authoritarianism
Are we witnessing the final curtain being drawn on the American Experiment in Democracy? Here is the 4th amendment to the Constitution:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It couldn’t be any clearer that warrantless spying on Americans is illegal, yet when no branch of the government stands up for the Constitution that they swore an oath to protect and defend; it becomes reduced to just a “meaningless piece of paper.” The New England Patriots get punished for spying on other football teams but Bush and Cheney go completely scot-free for warrantless spying on Americans. I find it revealing of a skewed sense of values that the die-hard 30 percent get all worked up over amnesty for brown-skinned undocumented workers but embrace complete amnesty for those in the administration that have repeatedly violated our Constitution.
Freedom is almost never taken away all at once; instead, it's eroded gradually, bit by bit. There always seems to be a good reason to remove the freedom: "to keep you safe", "to stop terrorists", "to fight drugs", but notice the freedoms are always taken away and they are almost never given back, making the slow one-way slide toward a police state almost inevitable. We now have a massive government apparatus that analyses your electronic communications, keeps track of what you read, what you buy, where you travel and who you associate with. Protesters are now locked away in “free speech zones”; it wasn’t long ago that America was a free speech zone. As they take away our freedoms bit by bit, the authoritarians like to reassure us: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to be afraid of.” Well, if the administration hasn’t done anything wrong, why do they hide everything they have done – even from congressional oversight?
Having grown up as a conservative Goldwater Republican, I developed a great deal of respect for our Constitution and individual liberties. I thought the threat to our liberties would some day come from the left. I would never have believed that the Republicans would have been the ones to have done so much damage to our liberties while the gutless Democrats stand by fearful of being called unpatriotic.
Colin Powell recently came to the realization (belatedly) that the greatest threat this country faces is the derailing of our Constitutional system from within, he said: "What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?"
