A good friend of mine wrote me an email chastising me for my
remarks against President Obama yesterday.
(If you missed them, check yesterday’s blog: Stop Spying On Us.)
In his email, my buddy called me to task for not supporting
the President and taking sides with the political right. (Both of us often find
ourselves standing left of center on many social issues.) I thought long and
hard about his critique and decided to answer him in this blog today. I decided to make it public, for there may be
others who are having the same feelings of abandoning the President they so
believed in at this crucial moment in his presidency. Perhaps this will act as
a salve for them.
Yesterday, The New York Times reported in a major headline
that Obama felt that the NSA moves were both legal and necessary for our
national defense. I reject both notions.
I replied to the White House that if that were true, they
should remember that slavery was once legal in this country, too. That didn’t
make it morally right. It also sat off square of the intent and affirmations of
the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
Slavery was wrong. Period. Even though it was legal, it was wrong. Today, this invasion of Americans privacy is
just as wrong, regardless of how legal the President (and the secret courts who
support it) say it is.
Besides, I expected more from this President. His goals and
his vows of making a more transparent government and society are now clouded by
scandal after scandal that revolve around spying on Americans.
And since it is an affront to the freedoms we as Americans
hold so dear, — freedom of speech, privacy and press, as well as the freedom to
due process without unlawful search and seizures, then every liberal,
conservative and libertarian should stand up and denounce these moves. Everybody.
This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This is about
the Patriot Act, which is wholly un-American being used to sweep up and contain
our liberties under the façade of National Security. That is a sham. It is a
lie. And it has been since Chaney and Bush put into affect after 9-11. (It is
the main reason I so vehemently decried the act of SMU placing that man’s library
on their campus. He has done more to harm America than any president. And just
because he is a Texan doesn’t make me like him any more than a West Texas rattlesnake.)
The Patriot Act is anything but patriotic. It is an attack on the foundations
of the freedoms we share as Americans.
When we eschew these freedoms, these liberties we own, when
we give them up in the name of security, we are diminishing every life ever
lost on a battlefield for liberty and justice. We are diminishing our very
society and its rule of law and order. We are diminishing our promise to each
other that we will be a land of the free and the home of the brave. Instead we
will be come the land of the coward and suppressed.
The constitution guarantees us the freedom of speech, freedom
of gathering and freedom of fear from unwanted governmental intervention in our
lives such as unlawful searches and confinement— in short the freedom of
privacy. This administration (and the one before it) has done everything in its
power to ride rough shod over those inherited freedoms.
I supported this President. Not once, but twice. I have
donated to his re-election. I have worked tirelessly for his causes. Many of
you have suffered undue eyestrain reading by blistering attacks of the
stupidity from the other side when they spun lies against his good work and
vision. So I have a clear conscious when I write this. I write it as a
supporter of the man I thought I was
sending to Washington: Mr. President
you are way, way off base.
And to my friend who castigated me in the email. You and I
hold the Bill of Rights to be sacred. We hold the individuals’ rights above the
government’s and above corporations. We fought against stupidity like Citizens
Untied, because we could see the very fabric of our democracy slipping away.
But now the same threat arises from the very man we worked so tirelessly to
elect. Barrack Obama has fallen to the same ideology that so many who rise to
the residency of the White House do: That he is the undisputed leader of America.
He is not. He is a hired servant
that is there to carry out the will of the people. And We
The People think being spied on by the NSA, FBI, CIA and IRS is wrong. Dead wrong.
You are wrong Mr. President. And to my friend, Phillip, so
are you. Get back on the right side of the argument. Get on the side of freedom
and democracy and quit making this about Republicans and Democrats. This is
about the American way of life, versus a subversive, secret police state. Which
do you want?
I choose the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And the
Patriot Act and its subsequent actions are a violation of the moral and
constitutional laws of our land. So to insure our privacy and our Constitutional rights, we're watching, Mr. President. We're watching you.
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