The Annoyed Man wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 11:25 am
Anybody here old enough to remember what life was like before the Patriot Act?
Was it rescinded when Al Qaeda was defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan? How about after ISIS was defeated? Will it
EVER be rescinded? Will gov’t
EVER stop finding reasons to implement its provisions/restrictions? Will there ever NOT be an ongoing justification for the existence of the DHS; for the NSA spying on ALL Americans; etc., etc.?
There are some important principles at work here.....
1. Once liberty has been curtailed in the name of safety, it is never regained without violence.
2. The justifications for curtailing liberty in the name of safety
ALWAYS arise out of a crisis made worse by the social autism of people who refuse to
self-modify their behaviors in order to mitigate the crisis at hand.
3. By individually agreeing to modify certain of our behaviors in socially responsible ways for a
temporary period of time until the crisis passes—thereby removing the opportunity for statism to override liberty—liberty can be protected from state-imposed "safety" measures that, one enacted, will become permanent impositions.
4. The degree to which the federal and various state and local gov’ts are imposing on individual liberty is directly proportional to the percentage of the population who are socially autistic and therefore unable (or more likely unwilling, from a lack of humility) to temporarily modify their own behaviors according to the crisis at hand.
5. Defend your liberty by any and all means. Sometimes, that means the exercise of two things: wisdom, and the long term view.
That’s my 5¢.
. so far in our neck of the woods we are still a small normal. with exception of TP and bread.