Most Americans Welcome the Police State

September 11, 2001, marks the turning point in American history when more than half of the nation’s citizens decided that their irrational fear of terrorists outweighed their love of liberty.

That’s the day Osama bin Laden won the war on terror – Americans are terrified.

A comfortable majority of Americans today have become more like a frightened herd of domesticated farm animals than the brave citizens of earlier generations who demanded freedom and independence.  These folks are vaguely aware of the ever expanding and overbearing abuses of their corrupt government; they understand that we are now living in a police state, but simply don’t give a damn.

Americans are scared of phantom terrorists and are consequently willing to give up their precious constitutional protections of liberty in return for the false sense of security that they can trust their government to protect their lives.

So it should come as no surprise that, after all the scandalous revelations over the last few months about government criminality, corruption, lying, perjury, and blatant violations of our constitutional rights, most Americans are not the least bit alarmed. In fact they welcome it. They want even more of it.

I predict that things will get worse in the future. The situation will not get better in my lifetime. Libertarianism will remain a tiny minority of the American Political spectrum. We will continue speaking out but our voices will be drowned out by the incessant drumbeat of statism.

A new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll finds that most Americans approve of the government's recently revealed spying efforts. Americans, since 9/11/01 are fine with their government spying on them.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said the NSA's tracking of millions of Americans' phone records was an "acceptable" way for the government to monitor terrorism. Almost two-thirds said it was more important for the government to investigate terrorism than to refrain from violating Americans' personal privacy. Forty-five percent believe that the government should have the authority to monitor everyone's emails.

Among the government political parasite class there is a clear consensus that all the intelligence operations which have come to light recently are both legal and necessary to protect the nation from terrorists. There is simply no political pressure, either from inside the government or from the public, to curb its counterterrorism efforts and order the NSA to rein in its massive surveillance of all Americans.

The American people have apparently come to believe that Congress can make laws such as the Patriot Act and others which supersede the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, our founding document which, before 9/11/01, was the supreme law of the land. Laws which viewed in the light of day are unconstitutional are now deemed constitutional by fiat.

Congress can now create secret courts staffed with secret judges who conduct hearings in secret in which they secretly override the provisions of the Fourth Amendment, thereby adversely affecting the lives of all Americans.

Who can challenge them? It’s all a secret. It’s classified. The government goons can do anything they want now and there is nothing we can do about it. We’re not even supposed to know about it. And the majority of Americans don’t give a damn.

Think about it!

“If they want to get you, in time they will,” reveals Edward Snowden, the recent NSA whistleblower. "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.”

"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector; Anywhere," said Snowden. "I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal e-mail."

The National Security Agency of the United States government now has access to your computer as though it were an open book. It can read your emails; examine your internet searches; review every web site you have ever visited. It has your medical records. It now knows everything it wants to know about you and can track your every electronic move.

With a few key strokes it can tap your telephone, listen in on your private conversations, read your internet chats, and view your video chats. Your credit card and bank accounts are all accessible. They have cracked all your passwords. If a rogue agent wanted to steal your money or freeze your account, or cause you all sorts of trouble, that could be done, and you would never know who did it.

There is nothing to stop the NSA right now from targeting presidential administrations political opponents in exactly the same fashion as the IRS agents have been doing it and those victims would never know what hit them.  

"[T]he the NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America,” According to Snowden. And I know he is telling the truth because I saw with my own eyes Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, commit perjury in congressional testimony when he flat out denied under oath facts about this same government surveillance program which he later had to admit were true.  

"You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place," said Snowden. "They [NSA] are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them… What they're doing poses an existential threat to democracy."

As I write this, I note that Journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian says there is a lot more of the story to come from NSA whistle-blower, Edward Snowden. "There are extremely invasive spying programs that the public still does not know about that the NSA regularly engages in or other capabilities that they're developing."

I for one will be following this story with great interest, as I believe, will most libertarians.

The reaction of most other Americans: “Yawn,”