Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the surveillance state that is being built, is no more or less than a prison, where everyone is a criminal, except the elite. While the government implements systems that are able to see through the walls of our homes, monitors the speed we are traveling ticketing us if we exceed the speed limit by a single mile an hour, listen in on our phone conversations, record our text messages, use license plate readers and facial recognition to keep track of where we go and when, etc… We have lost our fourth amendment Right… “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.” Government has overstepped it’s authority granted by our Constitution in a big way. But why is there so little outcry?
We have been groomed to fear our fellows. Every news story is about how some person was abused by another. The pages of our newspapers are filled with stories of random violence. This or that person was robbed, someone broke into a house and beat the owners, we are treated to videos of the “Knockout Game,” drive by shootings are described in vivid detail… and college rape is the latest bogyman the media shills. All of these stories have one thing in common, the underlying message is that our fellow human beings are vile, violent and vicious. But reality tells a different story, the incidence of random violent crime has been going down for decades! We are actually less likely to be targeted for a robbery today than in the 1970s. Not because of the constant monitoring, no, the trend has been going down long before the surveillance state came along.
We have been trained to trust government. At the same time as we are told what reprobates our neighbors are, we are shown how virtuous our government is. Government only wants us to be safe, well fed, equal, and empowered. The media constantly tells us that unless this or that law or regulation is passed we will starve, be beaten up in our own homes, we might have to work for our money, some big corporation is going to steal from us, etc… it is only through the benevolence of government that we survive! History however teaches a far different story. The greatest atrocities ever inflicted on humanity has always, and will always be, by governments. Sometimes against it’s own people, a hated minority, foreigners who have something government covets… or political dissidents.
In 1755 Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” He was basically saying that if power is given to government, to keep us safe, that power will be abused, and those who are so foolish not to see that, are too foolish to have liberty or safety. He was a student of history, but since then, we have many more examples of governments doing far worse things than had occurred before his time. The bloody history of the 20th Century is as horrifying as it is illustrative of the diabolical evil those with arbitrary power are capable of.
Governments always want more power, that is the nature of government, moreover, those that seek political office have as their stated, or unstated goal, to use that political power. If someone doesn’t want to wield political power over the people, they don’t seek political office. Human beings are incapable of having enough good while a little bad is more than enough. So, it is self evident, that those who seek power over the people always want more power. Since our Constitution limits their power, it must be circumvented. To that end the political elite have enacted the bureaucracy. An unelected, unoverseen and unanswerable government entity, that regulates our every action, requires us to get permission for any economic activity, passes laws in the form of regulation outside the system laid down by our Constitution, and enforces those regulations outside the judicial system. In short a shadow government within government.
Confucius said “People follow their leaders…” what he meant is that we follow our leaders into virtue or into vice. Since our leaders are unwilling to give up their vices they must monitor us to the nth degree to keep us from following them into decadence. Our leaders are human beings, with all the foibles of human beings. They are, lustful, covetous, prideful, quick to anger, lazy, envious and most of all, greedy. They understand however that if we followed them, the system they abuse to their own ends would collapse, and they cannot allow that to happen, so they regulate and monitor our every action. The Elite regulate us to the point where no one, even the very best trained lawyer could ever know the laws, regulations and ordinances. So we cannot possibly follow them.
Human beings are not, and cannot be, perfect. Where our every action is categorized, scrutinized and memorized, everyone is a criminal. Especially when no one knows all the laws, regulations and ordinances. Where everyone is a criminal, and government has record of it, anyone can be blackmailed by government. No one can stand up to the government, because the elite have dirt on everyone, except a saint, and there is always an available open elevator shaft for that rarest of human beings. If you or I argue against a usurpation, the government need merely scrutinize our lives to find some misstep, and ruin us for it. Even to the point of jailing us, ostensibly for a violation of law, even as the real reason is for dissension. There is only one place that road can lead… arbitrary rule, or in other words, tyranny.
Our modern technology has allowed government to become a leviathan in the truest sense of the word. The tentacles of government monitoring reach to every corner of our lives. We are forced by the threat of violence, to divulge our economic situation, donate to political causes we find detestable, accept governments intrusions, give up our personal papers, have our communications monitored, etc… even as the actions of government become ever more opaque to us. While our leaders are above their own law, we are below the very basic protections that our Constitution reserves for us. The power of government over us, our actions and our lives, has become total and complete. In fact, what our government has become, is 1984 George Orwell in all but name. We have been blindly led into the Dystopian future so many have warned us of… and many of us have no concept of it.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
