The Question of Liberty – Part Two

The Question of Liberty – Part Two

Previously, in an advisory headlined “The Question of Liberty,” I asked members of the Patriot Privacy and Security Society to answer five questions. The questions were:

  1. On a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being no freedom and 10 being absolute freedom, how do you ran the amount of freedom in the U.S. today?
  2. Does Obamacare increase or decrease the freedom of Americans?
  3. Is America moving toward or away from being a police state?
  4. Does the Department of Homeland Security make you feel more or less secure?
  5. Should the federal government be more or less involved in your life?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about members of the Patriot Privacy and Security Society, it’s that you respond when I ask for your opinion.

I love that about this group!!

{By the way, while I’m mentioning the great response to last week’s advisory, to get this month’s free Patriot Privacy & Security Society / Self-Reliance Institute Newsletter containing all of the advisories from October, click –> HERE.}

Within minutes of the moment when I hit the “send” button on last week’s advisory, I was receiving your answers to the five questions. In fact, I received more responses to “The Question of Liberty” advisory than any other advisory so far.

Almost unanimously, your responses indicated the following:

  1. You believe the U.S. rates about a 4 when it comes to freedom. In other words, you believe we are below the midpoint between “no freedom” and “absolute freedom.”
  2. You believe Obamacare is decreasing the freedom of Americans.
  3. You believe America is moving toward being a police state.
  4. The Department of Homeland Security is making you feel less secure.
  5. You want the federal government to be less involved in your life.

In keeping with your responses – which I agree with – I want to share two items I came across this week.

The first is headlined, “Americans’ Personal Data Shared with CIA, IRS, Others in Security Probe.”

Here are the opening two paragraphs of the article as published by McClatchyDC:

“U.S. agencies collected and shared the personal information of thousands of Americans in an attempt to root out untrustworthy federal workers that ended up scrutinizing people who had no direct ties to the U.S. government and simply had purchased certain books.

“Federal officials gathered the information from the customer records of two men who were under criminal investigation for purportedly teaching people how to pass lie detector tests. The officials then distributed a list of 4,904 people – along with many of their Social Security numbers, addresses and professions – to nearly 30 federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.”

Friends, when I read articles like this about our government – and stories like these can easily be found several times a week – I wonder if I am still living in the “Land of the Free.” When did it become acceptable for the federal government to scrutinize Americans and place them on a watch list simply because they “had purchased certain books?”

The answer is never.

It has never been acceptable for our government to monitor and scrutinize Americans based on what books they purchase or read.

So the question is, why does it happen?

That leads me to the second article I’d like you to read. It’s a commentary I came across on a website, ZeroHedge.com, which I check several times a day. The commentary, by Brandon Smith of the Alt-Market blog is headlined, “Is It Wrong To Be Anti-Government?”

While I really hope you’ll read the entire piece, here are the opening five paragraphs. I’ve highlighted in bold the same sections Smith highlighted:

“It is natural for a society to search for explanations and motivations in the wake of a man-made tragedy. It is also somewhat natural for people to be driven by their personal biases when looking for someone or something to blame. In recent years, however, our country has been carefully conditioned to view almost every criminal event from an ideological perspective.

“The mainstream media now places far more emphasis on the political affiliations and philosophies of “madmen” than it does on their personal disorders and psychosis.The media’s goal, or mission, if you will, is to associate every dark deed whether real or engineered to the political enemies of the establishment, and to make the actions of each individual the collective shame of an entire group of people.

“I could sift through a long list of terror attacks and mass shootings in which the establishment media jumped to the conclusion that the perpetrators were inspired by the beliefs of Constitutional conservatives, “conspiracy theorists”, patriots, etc. It is clear to anyone paying attention that the system is going out of its way to demonize those who question the officially sanctioned story, or the officially sanctioned world view. The circus surrounding the latest shooting of multiple TSA agents at Los Angeles International Airport is a perfect example.

“Paul Ciancia, the primary suspect in the shooting, was immediately tied to the Liberty Movement by media outlets and the Southern Poverty Law Center, by notes (which we still have yet to see proof of) that law enforcement claims to have found on his person. The notes allegedly use terms such as “New World Order” and “fiat money”, commonly covered by those of us in the alternative media. The assertion is, of course, that Paul Ciancia is just the beginning, and that most if not all of us involved in the exposure of the globalist agenda are powder kegs just waiting to “go off.” The label often used by the MSM to profile people like Ciancia and marginalize the organizational efforts of liberty based culture is “anti-government.”

“The establishment desires to acclimate Americans to the idea that being anti-government is wrong; that it is a despicable philosophy embracing social deviance, aimless violence, isolation and zealotry. Looking beyond the mainstream position, my question is, is it really such a bad thing to be anti-government today?”

Friends, for the most part, I agree with Smith. Significantly, I believe Smith has hit on the major reason why the federal government carries out what I believe to be unconstitutional acts – like those revealed in the McClatchyDC article linked above – with little outcry from the majority of Americans. Americans are being conditioned to believe that anyone who raises legitimate questions about the legal and constitutional authority of the government is anti-government and therefore dangerous.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the only fair conclusion from an objective reading of the founding documents of this nation is that, as citizens, we should always be questioning and challenging our government.

So let me close this week with the following thought:

As Americans, it is our birthright to question and challenge the constitutional and legal authority of our government whenever it encroaches on the liberty of our fellow Americans. To do so is not anti-government – it is pro-America.

Be safe and secure,

Rob Douglas

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