The House voted to extend a few of the most invasive measures of the Patriot Act today, which among other things that give bitchy liberals like me a brain boo-boo, means that unfortunately you're going to have to postpone that moody photography series about the creepy beauty of the undersides of your city's bridges yet again. Bad news for your Flickr page views I guess, but good news for liberty.
Whether or not you agree that the government law enforcement agencies should be able to decide without cause that American citizens deserve to be spied on without having to go through, you know, a judge, is up for reasonable people to debate, although I'm still sort of waiting for one of those reasonable people to appear. (It's gonna happen some day!)
Either way, I think everyone can come together and say this guy here is full of shit. Cognitively dissonate us in the face, congressman.
Before the vote, Representative Lamar Smith, R-Texas, called on his fellow congressmen to pass the "common-sense provisions that prevent terrorist attacks, protect the American people and preserve civil liberties." CNN
I hesitate to make another Doublethink reference in regards to the these comic book villains, because first of all, durrrr, and secondly, I've read a book since high school English, so it seems trite. But fuck it, it's probably been a while since any of you have actually read the Orwell passage in question anyway.
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?
"This law has not trampled on anybody's civil rights," said Representative James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin as quoted in the CNN piece. "'I'm getting a little irritated at the scare-mongering going on about this law' when no provision has been declared illegal by the courts." He later added, "Look, over there, a death panel is coming to turn your sick grandmother into a Communist and make you pay for a Mexican's abortion."
Then again, maybe it's the ability to simultaneously hold contradicting views that marks humanity as distinctively beautiful. Dostoevsky's underground man thought so. Sure, he was a raving prick, but let's ignore that for now. "I admit that two times two makes four is an excellent thing," the character says. "But if we are to give everything its due, two times two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too."
Sometimes. I don't know, what do all my FBI fans think? Leave a comment below.
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4 comments:
I think we can all agree that the fear-mongering from the lefties has become tiresome. Quit scaring us into thinking that terrorism might not happen even if we don't demand a birth certificate upon entry to Wal-Mart!
Go back to Russia, buddy.
Terrorism might happen. Big deal. Erosion of civil liberties will, has and is happening. People die, the foundation of the country's principles shouldn't.
Hello my traitorous little writer. I'd like to pencil you in for a light torture session tomorrow. It'll be followed by a sentence of more than 10 but less than 25 years at our premier holding facility in Clovis, N.M. Is noonish good for you? Super!
Homeland Security
crap.
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