Pitting Americans against their neighbors

Divide and conquer. It’s a strategy as old as human conflict. When one party can cause other parties to quarrel among themselves, victory is all but assured. President Obama is employing this strategy.

The White House has opened what can only be described as a snitch line. Americans who receive e-mail messages opposing healthcare “reform” should forward that message to the administration at once. What can the intent be other than to attain the email accounts, and subsequently the identities, of Americans who aren’t getting with the program?

There’s so much wrong here that it’s hard to know where to begin.

Stalin often referred to “useful idiots.” A useful idiot was someone easily manipulated into promoting the party line. Such a person became a tool of the state, functional for promoting an agenda and forcing the incompliant to accept the continued erosion of their liberty.

“Useful idiots” were useful because they were too scared, ignorant, or just plain stupid to realize how their actions trampled not only their liberty but that of their neighbors. When the “idiots” were no longer useful, they were either tossed aside or eliminated.

The Obama administration is asking you to become its “useful idiot.”

What happened to candidate Obama’s pledge to unite the country? It vanished, right along with the promise to end deficit spending and take the country in a new direction. The only “change” we’ve experienced is the increased proliferation of the collectivist state we’ve been inching toward for the better part of 75 years.

Asking Americans to spy on White House opponents is divisive to the core. Friends, we’re not talking about calling the authorities when a Muslim of Middle Eastern descent rushes through the airport carrying a keg of gunpowder and shouting “Allah be praised.” This is asking Americans to turn in their neighbors for disagreeing with government policy.

Obama’s snitch line legitimizes propaganda. Through the simple act of establishing an email account and encouraging tattling we’re being told that the government line is the only acceptable position. There’s no room for debate. When concerns are raised about the healthcare bill’s text the White House merely declares the fears unrealistic and moves on, never having addressed the public’s concerns at all.

Enlisting public assistance in compiling an enemies list based on opposition to policy has no place in a free society. Government is here to serve us. We are neither subject nor slave, but free citizens.

Such a request on the part of the White House, even if it’s never utilized, inhibits the free exchange of ideas. It is an assault on the First Amendment, in spirit if not in letter. How can anyone feel at ease airing opinions that oppose government actions if there exists the means for the State to use those opinions for political purposes?

“Well,” you counter, “what about the war protesters?”

What about them? Their right to oppose the war was never silenced. Their anger was misplaced, their actions misguided and their attitudes contrary to the preservation of our republic. But the Bush administration didn’t launch a “spy line” so Americans could tattle on their neighbor’s activities.

The Obama White House’s “domestic spying” program doesn’t enlist the people’s help in stopping the local Al-Qaeda cell from making bombs in a basement down the street. It’s not interested in intercepting phone calls between foreign nationals in the United States and caves in Tora Bora. The White House is blatantly encouraging its “useful idiots” to spy on their neighbors, and to turn in anyone who opposes the party line on “healthcare reform.”

It’s frightening to consider how many Americans will use this email link to do just that. Scarier still is how many will consider it the patriotic thing to do.