The Wellspring of Government Control

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

— Thomas Paine, Common Sense

When we fail in our financial and social responsibility, we give power and control to someone else, whether we realize it or not. We don’t notice when we get what we want as a result of that control. While both sides are to blame, people only notice the problem in the opposing side. When that control stands in the way, then there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. We end up with things like the Patriot Act, SOPA, and secret facilities designed to read all of your email no matter who is in office.

If you watch, the government and meta-government organizations egg on groups like Anonymous, Occupy Wall Street, and the Tea Party. It is as though they are hoping for an excuse to sink their tentacles further into the last open forums of free speech, public assembly and the internet. Already OWS has elicited a legislative power grab, and I look for the Anonymous movement to draw down fire on the interwebs next.

As we struggle against this growing control, lets remember the nature of the thing that we are up against. It grows and thrives in periods of disquiet and confusion. It encourages inane and useless controversies. It feeds on apathy and irresponsibility. In that light, let us stand for our rights firmly, embodying personal responsibility and self control. Make them openly steal our freedoms, rather than passively give them up in our time of confusion and inattention.

OWS and the Loathsome Anti-Protest Bill

While perusing blogs after my last post, I came across this interesting piece. It was a fairly good commentary on the positive aspects of the Anonymous movement, but buried in it was a link to an article on a left-wing website about an egregious anti-protest bill that had just passed congress which makes it a felony to enter any area the Secret Service declares “restricted”. I was surprised I had not seen it elsewhere on the web, but it soon turned up here on a right-wing website as a warning from a former Secret Service agent. How could a bill such as this one – odious to both sides of the recognized political spectrum – sail through both the house and senate with only three dissenting votes?

I would suggest the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is not that the Occupy movement was seen as a threat to the government, but that it was seen as an opportunity. They had no unified message, and their methods were such as to not garner them any sympathy. I remember listening to Dave Ramsey as he took their calls on his financial counselling show. He listened to each caller as they explained why they supported Occupy Wall Street. Each had a different reason, and none of the reasons matched up with the statement on the OWS website. They were a disorganized mob of protesters, thrown together and encouraged by the government to ease the passage of legislation to take away our freedom of speech and to assemble.

So now we are put into a bind. According to the loathsome Eric Holder, we have no reasonable expectation of privacy for our emails and cell phones, and the government can kill us without trial (or even consulting a court) as long as we are not in the country. The Defence Authorization Act allows the government to indefinitely detain citizens who are inside the country. SOPA and PIPA were the first, faltering steps toward control of the internet. It is starting to appear that the government – in an admirable bi-partisan effort – is cobbling together the low-level components of a police state, with OWS and Anonymous as the impetus.

So, what is to be done? In our current state, we have been carefully divided into opposing camps. Our goals and methods for achieving them have been purposefully scattered and debased to ensure that there is nothing to rally behind. We are scattered and harassed from all directions. From our enemy’s methods, we know what he fears. He fears that when people come together from the right and left, they will find common ground in defending the freedoms that are being taken from us. He fears that we will put aside the meaningless controversies that are designed to incite racial and religious bigotry, and come together peacefully and firmly in opposition to this power-grab. The government must take us on piecemeal. If they cannot, then we win. Go team!