Preaching to the choir
While I realize everyone here needs no convincing of the current perils to civil liberties we are facing, I found this quote to be one of of those good, red v. blue quotes that should appeal to the better instincts of everyone, regardless of political affiliation*
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberties by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
~Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928
*Does not apply to the approx. 15% of Americans who live in "Dumbfuckistan"
posted by The Sum of All Monkeys at 8:24 PM
3 Comments:
Word. I hope we can regain the lost ground.
How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.
-Bruce Schneier
In my anecdotal observation of college students, the new generation of Americans, young adults and teenagers, already exhibit strong signs of being more controlled, more deferential to authority, more careful of what they say. I suspect this is partly due to being raised in a culture of paranoia over crime (not that crime isn't serious, but by all measures it's far less prevalent than in the past). They became used to, and therefore tend to expect, constant close supervision.
This would naturally extend to their emotional expectations of political authority.
Regardless of the eavesdropping environment, we have a duty to regain our culture by acting as if we are free, and re-teaching the independence of individual choices as a culture value.
I realized the final bit doesn't entirely fit GW:
"...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
2 out of 3 ain't bad...
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