The Decline and Fall of Freedom In America

Here was an interesting read from MSNBC.com regarding the U.S. military and it's efforts to gather domestic intelligence on U.S. citizens, who in most cases are doing nothing more than practicing their civil rights. The original story can be found here: Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?

To begin with, I am a veteran of the U.S. Army and served with the 1st Ranger Battalion and 25th Infantry Division as a grunt, so you'd be hard pressed to call me a bleeding heart liberal and don't you dare. I consider myself to be a moderate who is willing to hear both sides and then I make an informed decision before committing myself to an issue.

We are a supposed to be a free society, I mean, when we go into foreign countries to liberate them it is always under the guise of bringing freedom and democracy. Am I wrong? I will concede that in any society, you cannot always allow the population to have absolute freedom, it must be tempered so that the society as a whole is not endangered by any radical minority. But when you read this article you can see that the governments efforts to spy on U.S. citizens has not merit. They are not tracking radicals or subversives. No, they are making blanket investigations under the guise of national security. My friends, I have no desire to burn the flag or march on Washington, but one of the reasons I volunteered to serve my country was to protect those rights so that my fellow citizens could, if they chose, exercise their rights to assemble and if need be, speak out against certain government policies and activities. Just because I don't agree with something doesn't make it bad or anti-American.

There are those in the government and military, who have become so full of themselves that they start to believe that they know what is best for everyone. In their deviant thought processes they begin to develop all manners of excuses and reasons for why it is right and necessary to impede upon our civil rights. And then there are those who know full well that what they are doing is wrong, but for them, the goal is power. Acquiring and holding on to power and control and for these individuals they don't need justification or excuses. And at any given time, there is generally a mix of both these types of individuals who hold positions of power and authority, it is human nature I suppose. We are an aggressive species.

What I fear is that the general population is becoming more and more complacent, and in doing so it encourages those who would gladly strip away our rights and freedom in order to retain a firm grasp on their positions of control and power. On any given day if I were to ask someone in passing if they feel that there is any danger in the U.S. becoming a fascist state, most folks would look at me like I was a crazy person. Too many people choose to go through life ignorant of the real possibility that one day, none of us will be free to voice an opinion or show opposition to our leaders. I know that realistically, at this moment in time we are still a free society and I do not believe that I am going to wake up tomorrow in a full on police state but until more people wake up, show some outrage and actually stand up and tell the leadership that some of their policies and practices are way out of line, then we are definitely moving towards a future where none of us will be living in a free America.