Neither liberty nor safety

Neither liberty nor safety
by Roger Hedgecock
01/27/2012

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," said Benjamin Franklin in 1759.

Liberals everywhere were in full-throat roar protesting George Bush's Patriot Act and his War on Terror in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11. What price in liberty to be safe from terrorism? Barack Obama himself decried the loss of liberty, the loss of personal freedoms, declaring in 2005 that the Patriot Act "puts our own Justice Department above the law."

Today only crickets from the Left as Obama assaults liberty and freedom of choice on a nearly daily basis.

Consider the list of Obama's assaults on liberty. Any one of these done by a Republican President would bring down the wrath of the Left. Done by Obama, the action is noted in the Obama reelect media for a single news cycle and then dropped

Obama's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is more arrogantly intrusive than ever. The Fourth Amendment protection against "unreasonable" searches and seizures has been repealed at your local airport. Rep. John Mica, who authored the TSA legislation, observes that the unionized TSA now strip-searching grannies and detaining Senators bears little resemblance to his original idea.

Doctor-patient confidentiality? ObamaCare is requiring doctors and hospitals to make records of every aspect of your personal health, and health history, for use by Obama's Department of Health and Human Services. For use by the "death panels"?

ObamaCare tramples First Amendment religious freedom by ordering Catholic hospitals to cover free contraceptives, requiring Catholic adoption agencies to adopt kids to gay couples (resulting in the adoption agencies closing), and requiring Catholic taxpayers to fund federal abortion grants.

"No Child Left Behind" has been expanded to collect not only student test scores and grades, but the government now keeps permanent records on students' disciplinary actions, economic status, and even pregnancies. Worse, the feds discourage the states from allowing parents to access these "permanent records." What police state has ever done without such record keeping? Old East Germany's Stasi would be proud.

The federalization of K-12 education continues under Obama. A group of Bay Shore, Long Island, high school students will soon be wearing electronic monitors to allow school officials to track their physical activity around the clock to fight obesity. Is any excuse sufficient to ban all privacy?

The Obama EEOC has ruled that a private employer's requirement for a high school diploma to qualify for a job might violate the Americans With Disabilities Act. The act does not cover this issue, but Obama's EEOC thinks it should.

Obama wants restrictions on guns sold to Americans in violation of the Second Amendment even as his Justice Department runs the Fast and Furious program to allow the same guns to walk across the border into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.

EPIC(Electronic Privacy Information Center), a privacy advocacy group, sued Obama's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discover through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that DHS is monitoring political dissent. EPIC has more than 300 pages of contracts and memos detailing work done by General Dynamics for DHS. One "tracking report" titled "Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI" summarizes dissent on blogs and social networking sites, quoting commenters by name.

Angry that FOIA requests and lawsuits were revealing the extent of Obama's liberty-shredding actions, Obama's "Justice Department" issued new rules allowing federal agencies to deny the existence of requested documents even when the agency knows they in fact do exist. The Right to Lie to protect the public from knowing about the loss of their liberties is now the official policy of the Obama administration.

Obama's FBI has obtained a court order against an American woman accused of mortgage fraud to force her to decrypt her PGP-scrambled hard drive so that the FBI can fish around without a warrant in her personal computer for incriminating evidence. The judge said the Fifth Amendment did not apply. For Obama, the Constitution (that "list of negative rights") does not apply whenever it acts to restrain his objectives.

The State of the Union? Slipping into dictatorship. Where's the ACLU?
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To read another article by Roger Hedgecock, click here.