A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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Have you noticed your friends speaking a bit lower and standing a bit closer as they speak to each other recently? Have you observed, or thought you observed, whispered exchanges between people you know to be friends or even fellow employees? And have you noticed these exchanges in what is sometimes referred to as neutral locations -- ie -- not the work place or the home?
I'll bet you have. I have. Yeah, most of us have IF we take a moment and think back over the past few days.
So, why do I bring this up? What's the point?
My point is, dear reader, America is changing -- and changing big time -- and it is all happening right before our eyes and we don't seem to recognize the metamorphosis.
Why? What's happened?
America is no longer a free country. Yeah, I know that is a strong statement. I intended it to be strong. I want to shake you up, to get your attention, to pry your eyes away from the TV screen, the computer screen, the cell phone screen, and every other type of electronic device we have today ... long enough to point out that the very thing you are holding in your hand, or sitting in front of and staring at -- has sold you out.
Every time I sit down at the keyboard to write a commentary, I am conscious that I have a captive audience. I know for certain the US government is interested in every word I say, or type, or transmit. I am conscious that every time I use certain key words or phrases, little metaphorical red flags go up where ever the heck my commentary is being received by the government. I must tell you it is more than a little chilling. Of course, that is one of the side effects of living in a "surveillance society" such as the United States of America. Our privacy is gone, zip, kaput! Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all, every single one of us, is now under close observation by the US government.
"Oh," you might say, "Longstreet, you're being paranoid!" EXACTLY! That's my point -- EXACTLY!
The entire country is becoming paranoid. Americans are now carbon copies of the people who used to be citizens of the old Soviet Union. We're even beginning to LOOK like them. Their mannerisms have been adopted and then adapted to fit 21st century Americans.
No, we don't have Gulags. But some SWEAR we DO have FEMA Camps! (Actually, there are two, uh, camps on the FEMA Camp controversy. Personally, I'll hold my opinion on that until I can see a camp for myself.)
Peggy Noonan, in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, said our loss of privacy will likely change Americans. She said: "The end of the expectation that citizens' communications are and will remain private will probably change us as a people, and a country." SOURCE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323639704579015101857760922.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion
In her article, Ms. Noonan relates how 88 year old Nat Hentoff, a renown journalist and civil libertarian, spoke to a group of students at Harvard. She said: "About a year ago he went up to Harvard to speak to a class. He asked, he recalled: "How many of you realize the connection between what's happening with the Fourth Amendment with the First Amendment?" He told the students that if citizens don't have basic privacies—firm protections against the search and seizure of your private communications, for instance—they will be left feeling "threatened." This will make citizens increasingly concerned "about what they say, and they do, and they think." It will have the effect of constricting freedom of expression. Americans will become careful about what they say that can be misunderstood or misinterpreted, and then too careful about what they say that can be understood. The inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship." SOURCE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323639704579015101857760922.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion
Please pay careful attention to the last line above: "The inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship." I can tell you, as a conservative writer myself, Mr. Hentoff is "spot on." All conservative writers, commentators, and such, writing today with a progressive Marxist/communist administration looking over our shoulders 24 hours a day and eavesdropping on everything we say, or write, would be a fool not to be concerned. Regardless of what we may say publicly, it DOES have a chilling effect upon our writing. That, dear reader, is NOT an unwelcome effect so far as the current administration is concerned.
Until fairly recently, Americans were a breed apart. We were a free people who governed themselves. We constructed and then we lived in a free republic. That has now changed.
The republic that we once had is now unworkable. It has crashed and burned. Why? Because the government is no longer answerable to the people. The constitution no longer constrains the government.
The US government now has only one branch functioning. Originally designed for three coequal branches, the Legislative, the Judicial and the Executive, the powerful Obama Executive Branch has either shuttered or co-opted the other two. What we have today is not constitutional, but it doesn't matter as the constitution itself no longer applies.
There is an expression: "When someone is out to get you, paranoia is just damned good thinking!" While it IS true, the political left in America seeks to use our paranoia against us by insisting it is a weakness. It is they, of course, aiding and betting the usurpers in our nation's capital in the soft despotism that has so quickly stripped America of her freedom and liberty and set her on the road to imminent destruction as a Marxist/communist society.
But then, you shouldn't pay too much attention to my ranting. I'm paranoid, you know.
© J. D. Longstreet
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