Uncle Sam is watching You!

I don’t delve much into politics these days here at LTG.  It’s not that I don’t care or that I don’t often think about how everything is seemingly spinning out of control.  I’m just in a state of despair I suppose because I don’t see any viable fix on the horizon.  The Democrats are worthless scoundrels, and the Republicans are two-faced bastards.  Neither party seems interested in moving beyond meaningless platitudes and red meat rhetoric offered for consumption of each side’s political base.  The ineptitude and corruption of our political class provides little hope that there will ever be a serious discussion about the critical issues facing our nation.

Having said that, I’m prompted to write about the NSA spying scandal by this article in Slate.  The authors make a case that it was Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings rather than Orwell’s 1984 that better predicted our modern surveillance state.  Their basic premise being that the Eye of Sauron “saw” everything, yet missed what was in plain sight.  Having spent a career watching how the federal government makes it’s sausage, I can attest that having absolute power over the lives of us proles citizens does not necessarily breed competence.  It is telling that despite the fact that the NSA was invading the privacy of millions of Americans (and with a warning from the Russian government as well) our security agencies were unable to stop the Boston bombers.

Am I prepared to accept that our government overseers have the same evil intent as the Dark Lord?  I don’t want to believe it.  I’m most troubled by the fact that the NSA blatantly lied to it’s Congressional oversight committee about its activities.  When the bureaucracy flaunts the law and ignores the checks and balances the Constitution provides for our protection with impunity, our liberty is in peril.  The politically motivated shenanigans at the IRS amply demonstrates just how far down that slippery slope we’ve traveled.

And while I agree that freedom can easily be sacrificed on the alter of national security, I’m not prepared to accept a terrorist nuclear attack on a major U.S. city in exchange for a less intrusive government monitoring program.  On the one hand, you have to believe in the good intentions of your government.  On the other, nothing in the news these days inspires much confidence that our government can or should be trusted.  How bad is it?  I started to write my Congressman asking him to intercede with USCIS to speed up the processing of Jee Yeun’s green card.  I decided against it because I feared that I would be subjected to retaliation if I rocked the boat.  Maybe I’m just paranoid, but then again, maybe I should be.

It’s a thought provoking article.  Give it a read.

 When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny. – Thomas Paine