Last week we received a few heckles for posting a Facebook meme of George Bush signing the Patriot Act. We stand by our intent – Republicans and Democrats, George Bush and Barack Obama – are sell-outs and equally culpable for the security-surveillance industrial complex of whose scary details were leaked to the press last week.
If you are the sporting type and keeping score, the Democrat-Republican Party is beating the Constitution by six touchdowns going into the fourth quarter. These dudes are on the same team, even if it took you half the game to figure it out. Behind the inexorable expansion of the state, the Right and the Left often stand as one.
Take, for instance, Rich Galen, a neo-con who blogs at Townhall.com, writing today about NSA-whistle blower Edward Snowden:
As a taxpayer, I’m not paying you to look out after my Fourth Amendment rights. I’m paying you to do whatever job you were hired to do, and if you find that job too ethically distasteful, then you should quit.
But keep your mouth shut.
Galen suggests a long federal prison sentence would be just deserts for Snowden for exposing a creepy, out-of-control national government sifting warrantlessly through our personal emails and internet searches. After all, Galen declares, he is a 66-year-old guy with nothing to hide.
What’s not to like about that constitutional theory? If it doesn’t directly affect me, then, hey, national government, have at it. This, I remind you, is on Townhall.com, which rose from obscurity by documenting the President’s many constitutional transgressions.
And then there’s blustery warmonger U.S. Representative Pete King who angrily denounced Snowden as a traitor. But who is the traitor that routinely votes to fund these massive Fourth Amendment violations? Hint: he is a Republican and his name rhymes with Feet Sing.
In the meanwhile, U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham calmly reassured us he was glad the NSA is spying on Americans and that “we don’t have anything to worry about.” That’s right, citizen, nothing to see here. Just keeping sending us two-fifths of your weekly paycheck and we got you covered.
But there is another viewpoint, neither Right or Left, Democrat or Republican. It is the view that Edward Snowden ruined his career and possibly risked his life to courageously nullify an out-of-control government by daring to draw back the curtains to reveal that our liberty is in grave danger.
- Con Law: A Law School Con - November 25, 2013
- Preserving Liberty: What Actually Can be Done - August 21, 2013
- Nullification Flames Spreading - July 1, 2013