They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin
Today America marks the 10-year anniversary of the Islamic attack on our country on 9/11. It was an insidious act of terrorism and cowardice from our enemies in the Middle East. It has forever changed this county in the most despicable ways imaginable. That one terrorist act has brought down the most free and wealthy country the world has ever known. Despite the disgusting and wasteful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I do not think for a minute this country has won a motherfucking thing.
Our government has turned a war against Islamic terrorists into a war on their own citizens. 9/11 will forever be marked as the singular event that undermined the freedoms and liberties Americans had always enjoyed. In the name of "patriotism" these ideals have been destroyed. Fuck the Patriot Act nine ways to Sunday.
We are now strip searched without warrant at our airports. Our finances are now meticulously scrutinized by the feds...Want to pay someone $10K? Oops there goes a red flag. We have no idea what the National Security Agency is doing daily via the phone system and Internet. You can damn sure bet every single message or phone call is screened for anything that they deem unreasonable. Have a look around at your communities and tell me what the hell is going on with the militaristic jackboot law enforcement.
Sure we may have gone to the Middle East and slung our missiles over the desert and let our SpecOps folks kill the bad guys, but how exactly has that benefited you? Keeping the terrorist horde over there? Great but it cost us $1.2 Trillion and counting. We are dead broke. $14 trillion in the hole...and counting. Wasn't there a way to safeguard the U.S. without getting in two wars and spending this country into oblivion as well as not reverting to an Orwellian nightmare?
Islamists hate our freedom and liberties. So what did we do after 9/11? We gave them up. Just like they had hoped. Osama achieved everything that he had hoped he would. We let that bastard win by doing exactly what he wanted us to.
Following the attacks Bush over-reached in the powers he desired and took away Americans freedoms. Americans succumbed to false patriotism and unknowingly allowed our leaders to take down the country.
So Benjamin Franklin was right, we deserve neither liberty or freedom. We gave it up for temporary safety. Now we are paying for it with a government that dismisses the Constitution daily. A government that gets bigger and stronger each day. A government that neither fears or responds to the will of the people.
We are all endowed with the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that the only function of government was to insure those rights. Apparently we were happy enough to give that up and live under government rule.
We lost fuckers.
[...] Americans Gave Up Their Essential Liberty Ten Years Ago (lostballinhighweeds.com) [...]
ReplyDelete[...] Americans Gave Up Their Essential Liberty Ten Years Ago (lostballinhighweeds.com) [...]
ReplyDelete[...] Americans Gave Up Their Essential Liberty Ten Years Ago (lostballinhighweeds.com) [...]
ReplyDeleteHere! Here!
ReplyDeleteI thought it was quite pathetic at the time that our Texan president couldn't abide with arming the pilots.
controversial but fucking brilliant
ReplyDeleteyeap. It's over. This is what happens when you become a nation of self indulged cowards.
ReplyDeleteWell said Splork. I pretty much agree with everything you said.
ReplyDeleteThere is a problem with "they hate us because we are free" claptrap though. What a bunch of B.S.
I was watching TV yesterday and heard it proudly stated that the USA has troops in 175 countries around the world. If anyone hates the US, I am pretty sure that that is the reason.
Can you imagine if any other country had bases and troops in the US patrolling our streets? Would the American people hate them because "they are free", and "have lots of liberty"?
Wow... it really pisses me off when people fall for that shit.
Richard Maybury got it right when he said, " if you poke a sharp stick at a rattlesnake for a long enough time he eventually is going to strike back".
Seems to be a perfect tactic to keep the war machine running and the big money flowing to those who support it.
Jack
I was going to write a blog on this very subject, but I couldn't say it any better than you just did. Bravo.
ReplyDeleteI'm concerned about what other freedoms Americans will give up when the next terror event happens here. Although, like you, I'm not sure we really have much freedom left after the "Don't Disagree with the Passing of This Patriot Act Or You're Not a Patriot" crap.
ReplyDeleteFor me it was all over post 9/11 when it was revealed that when people were spending over $200 at department stores like Macy's and Saks in New York that these transactions were quietly being reported in the background -- to those shadowy "authorities"-- just like bank transactions over $10,000 have to be reported. Apparently, it became "unlawful" or "unpatriotic" to have money of any kind or to buy things that weren't $4 cups of Starbucks coffee.
In a similar vein, if I spend "too much" on my credit cards -- (like when you are travelling and end up using your card a lot for things like meals, car rental, and hotel bills) my banks are quick to freeze my credit cards. Then I have to call them and lick their balls so I can use my own damned credit cards.
You have to hack into your own life right now and constantly PROVE that you're not a terrorist. Fun.
@Everybody - Thanks for the comments.
ReplyDeleteAllow me to reiterate a few points. I believe this country has been envied the world over for its freedoms and wealth. I believe we are hated because we have an empire that we have intended to expand over the globe.
And I agree we will lose more freedoms when the next attack hits. I believe that the feds will lock this fucking country down. Your finances, your travel, communications...all of it will be scrutinized and curtailed. The Constitution will be a federal after-thought. And there will be a large contingent of people that will fight back.
Jefferson had it right when he said:
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
This country is lazy and has allowed the government control over our liberties.
We have to return to this:
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. " - Jefferson
Sadly this will be what is required:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Jefferson
I believe it will come to this. I'm concerned that the revolution won't be so much in response to retaking liberty but of a leftist faction bent on anarchy and ultimately Marxism. It will be a civil war for liberty, tyranny or anarchy/Marxism. The anarchists and liberty fighters may join to defeat the government but ultimately turn on each other for ultimate control. Do we return to a republic or become a banana republic?
Things are the same in the UK now. Our prime minister moans about civil rights in China, then jails a man for internet trolling.
ReplyDeleteCan't have it both ways folks.
Splork, have you been turned on to http://infowars.com ? You bet your ass we lost. The difference between the right and left is negligible. Ever see the building 7 being blown to shit? Things are not as they seem. The real terrorist are those assholes in suits running this country and Federal Reserve. Osama dead? How convenient that he was buried at sea. Maybe Santa Claus is really going to show up this year!
ReplyDeleteYou're wrong about the rest of the world hating Americans because you have freedom and wealth. Plenty of other countries have that too and enjoy it. The US does not have the monopoly on it.
ReplyDeleteThe hate comes, as Jack rightly said, because of your arrogance in thinking you have the god-given fucking right to send troops into other countries and impress your values on people who have their own values, thereby suppressing or trying to take away their own freedom, such as it is. Iraq was the last straw for many. There were no weapons of mass destruction, only oil to be plundered and oh boy, your Bush baby fuckers plundered it alright.
Try getting out of your fucking cubicle once in a while and look in from the outside, where we see it from. You might get a nasty shock.
PS: That last comment wasn't meant as a personal attack. Its just the way it really is. If the US really cared about humanitarian issues, they would have sent their troops to Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe's henchmen have been doing unspeakably terrible things to his own people. Instead, they went to Iraq. Why? Zimbabwe has no oil!
ReplyDeleteIts a reality that isn't part of government propaganda that brainwashes your people via the TV. In many respects, we in Europe enjoy far greater freedoms than do Americans.
We can legally drink in bars at 18. Girls can legally have sex at 16 and people can get married at that age too. I can already see the moralistically brainwashed faces contorting in horror masks at the very thought. Grow up, its life! We don't think "toilet" is a dirty word, a bathroom is where you have a bath or a shower, which most of us do every day, even the French, contrary to the stereotype.
We're free to travel between member EC countries, we can live, work and retire in any one of those countries we please without having to ask anyone. We can earn any amount of money and as long as we pay our taxes, we're left alone to do so without the spectre of an "IRS audit" looming over us for the slightest thing.
There are no gestapo controls on every border or city limit to demand "show your papers" or secret police whisking people off in the dead of the night if they dare to utter unsavoury political views. Maybe that still happens in Russia, but they're not technically part of Europe anyway.
We are a lot freer that the American vision of Europeans would have us portrayed. So we don't envy what you have, because we have it too. Every bit of it and more.
We do pity you for losing what you had. But you're right in that you willingly gave it away, probably because your televisions told you to.
@Mark - yea infowars is an interesting site. Damn scary though.
ReplyDelete@Terry - Well I still say we are a lightening rod for envy. But it's true that our proclivity for empire building spells the end of this great republic. Just like England pre-WW2...we can't afford it. And most of the countries do not care for us being there.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. I suppose we can argue about freedoms on either side of the pond. It would take some research on my part but whatever freedoms you enjoy over there I'm pretty sure we enjoy them here, if not more. I'm not sure freedom to knock up a 16 year old or drink at 18 is a grand thing but whatever. Granted the Patriot Act fucked up America more than any terrorist attack. As long as I pay my taxes the IRS doesn't bother me. I'm free to travel anywhere I want. Sure I have to have a passport to go outside the country but so does the rest of the world. The EU...yea it's a convenience for travel but ask the Germans if they are happy about bailing out all the defaulting PIIGS.
This country is waking up. The vilified Tea Party saw to that. Obama's administration tried as best it could...doing a good job I might add...to bring European Socialism to this country. The people here don't want that fucking shit. Our empire may be in decline..which is good...but the seeds of a republic are growing again.
"A neutron star is a type of stellar remnant that can result from the gravitational collapse of a massive star during a supernova event.
ReplyDeleteNeutron stars are very hot and are supported against further collapse by quantum degeneracy pressure due to the Pauli exclusion principle. This principle states that no two neutrons (or any other fermionic particles) can occupy the same place and quantum state simultaneously." -Wikipedia
There's always solace in science... somewhere.
"There's always solace in science."
ReplyDeleteActually, science is a man made invention. As is the word science as well as all of the words I am using to 'invent' this metaphysical and very concise rant.
Science only exists so long as you believe in it. Science is humans using human thought turned into human words to describe human observations.