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.

It’s the Silence of the Left when government tracks American citizens

I can’t understand why the so-called champions of privacy have been silent for the last month. Wasn’t it just a year ago that their howls of protest over “domestic eavesdropping” echoed from dorm halls and student activity centers from sea to shining sea? Yet they are silent about a District 4 Court of Appeals ruling in Madison, Wisconsin.

Actually, it is quite understandable. There isn’t a Republican in the White House. So, the threat to our liberty and Constitution doesn’t exist even though it does, and to a far greater degree than any other time in recent history.

The court ruled that police can attach a GPS device to an American citizen’s automobile—and thus track their movements—without a warrant, without reasonable suspicion and without probable cause.

Is this a bid deal? Certainly government has better things to do than monitor a mother of three as she drives to the tanning bed or the grocery store. But, if that mother or her husband run afoul of political correctness--perhaps by home-schooling their children, joining the NRA, or voting third party—they could become a target of politically-motivated surveillance.

Such snooping is nothing new. Major American cities are full of street cameras that monitor daily activities. Our bank accounts have been open to government scrutiny since the early 1970s, when Washington passed legislation requiring banks to report single deposits above $10,000.

Red-light and speeding cameras observe traffic and mail citations to an offending automobile’s owner. This occurs without regard to who is actually driving the car at the time of the infraction. Government can condemn private property via imminent domain in the pursuit of increased tax revenues (thank you Kelo decision). And now government can track our automobiles without any reason whatsoever.

As stated, police have better things to do than track every Tom, Dick and Harry who drives down the street. But it’s still a troubling concept. Police states aren’t unprecedented in human history. In fact, they’re the norm. It is freedom that is the exception.

While the appellate court’s ruling is disturbing, the reaction from Leftists is even worse. They’ve said nothing about how such monitoring of US citizens violates individual liberty. I could find no mention of this case on Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, or MoveOn.org.

It would appear that the Left considers government surveillance intrusive and threatening only when exercised on foreign terrorists. Perhaps they believe that constitutional principles apply more to al-Qaeda members than to US citizens.

Warrants must be obtained to eavesdrop on some Muslim extremist, likely here on a student or work visa, who’s conveying the evils of the “Great Satan” to his uncle Amir in Waziristan. Otherwise the rights of all Americans are in jeopardy. There’s nary a word when the targets of government surveillance are American citizens to whom constitutional protections truly apply, like someone sporting a Ron Paul bumper sticker.

If government has domestic monitoring authority it should be used to target foreigners who are, or could be, members of a hostile international operation. Yet, somehow, American rights are endangered when government performs its prime function of defending the nation against unfriendly entities. But the Left apparently sees no problem whatsoever with having police watching our every move via street and traffic cameras or GPS devises.

It doesn’t bother me when government monitors the actions and movements of foreigners, whether they’re here legally or illegally. That’s part of defending the nation against external threats. But I care a great deal if government monitors an American citizen’s daily movement without warrant or probable cause.

American Leftist’s have proved once more that they care nothing for liberty, privacy, the Constitution, or the idea that government is our servant, not our master. They care only about politicizing issues, regardless of what the outcome may be.