Cross-posted to Random Fate.
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Here is the result of almost six years of fear-mongering:
“It had a very sinister appearance,” Coakley told reporters. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.”
We’re now panicked by Lite-Brites that have “batteries and wires” behind them.
This is what we’ve come to.
It’s not Iraq that we have to worry about when it comes to the “terrorists winning”; it’s right here at home when we allow fear to make our decisions and guide our lawmaking.
Question posed at the end of the Constitutional Convention of 1787: Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?
Benjamin Franklin: A Republic, if you can keep it.
Can we keep it?
-warrantless wiretaps
-the attorney general asserting that the government can open and read private mail, an institution previously kept sacred for the 200+ years of our Republic
-declaring US citizens “enemy combatants” and making then disappear into a system that tortures them to near insanity
-holding non-citizens in an extra-legal prison that also conducts torture and has no established method of appeal
The list goes on…
Can we keep it when fear has become the coin of the political realm and saying “the terrorists will win” the trump card in any attempt at discussion or dissent?
After all the distortions of the recent years, should we keep it?
God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
–Thomas Jefferson