Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives had the opportunity to reign in the National Security Agency’s power to spy on us.
The amendment was narrowly defeated.
In a country that’s supposed to be the “land of the free,” one might think such a motion would have succeeded by a landslide. It’s clear that we’re not free as in “freedom.”
No longer are freedoms being destroyed in secrecy. Now they are openly rejected without much objection from the public. If asked privately, many will say we’re better off without these measures, but what are the odds that anything will be done about them? It looks like we’re shaping up to do what we’ve always done and vote for the same parties that got us here in the first place, lumbering like drunks from one party to the other.
There is one question that seems to pervade the public mentality about the whole matter, and perhaps you have asked it, too: Why bother? Why even bother with the frustration and effort to become informed and vote if it makes no difference, anyway? Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, but at least you’ll get a moment’s peace if you don’t.
We’ll state it as clearly as possible: It is no less than the moral duty of every citizen to make the effort. Here’s why.
There have been many atrocities committed throughout the course of human history. Hitler was one of the most awful of us; there’s hardly any doubt, but he didn’t accomplish what he did single-handedly. People voted for Hitler. People did as Hitler said. People saw the atrocities and turned the other way. Some didn’t even care to find out what he was up to, placing blind faith in their leader. And that’s all it takes.
Perhaps this is what many of us figure — that we can put our faith in the “experts,” outsourcing our moral duties to some bureaucracy or public figure.
If history had damned the German people as much as it damns Hitler, perhaps we’d have taken home a different lesson, and perhaps we’d be living in a very different county and indeed a different world.
It would be naive to think something that atrocious would never happen again while the public remains blithely uninformed. We are already sowing the seeds for history to damn us.
It was recently revealed that in the country of Pakistan alone, our supposed ally, we — we — have killed at least 147 civilians — 94 of which were children — in drone strikes between the years of 2006 and 2009. And that barely scratches the surface of the issue of drone killings.
Really take a moment to ask yourself what you think about that.
The decisions we make here, on our beloved land, are affecting the entire world. The default position should not be to wonder why anyone would bother informing themselves. It should, of course, be the opposite. This feeling of powerlessness is a trick, and it’s exactly contrary to reality.
Just ask George III.
