Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (best e reader for epub TXT) 📗

the same, except that it can never be lawful or moral, since it is even prohibited after or as a result of due process. Yet, it seems that throughout history, we continue to restrict the rights of those who scare us. Bush administration personnel believed they were above the law and did horrible things in the name of “protecting our country.” After the atrocities of September 11th, some people actually agreed with the Bush administration and believed that the terrorists, or even potential terrorists, or even people the President thinks wanted to be terrorists, somehow deserve this treatment. Dick Cheney believes that “enhanced interrogations” were “essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.”

Nevertheless, we are country of laws, and not of men. No one in the government can disregard the law because we’re living under special circumstances. Depriving people of due process is against the law. Torture is against federal and state law, and it violates the Natural Law and the Constitution. We must recognize this fact, and prevent the government from doing this again. We must be skeptical of the government, especially during times of national crisis or fabricated national crisis.

Lie #16

“The Right of the People to Be

Secure in Their Persons, Houses,

Papers, and Effects, Shall Not Be

Violated”

Imagine living in a world where the police can search your home without your knowledge at any time day or night; where the government listens to your telephone calls, and your mail is customarily opened and read; where even the Internet does not provide a safe haven for you to speak out, because every Web site you visit and e-mail you write and keystroke you press is filed away for the police to reference, as is a record of every book you ever buy or borrow from the library; where even your most private records, like your medical or financial or legal records, are subject to prying eyes.

Now imagine that you could be arrested and held indefinitely based on what you wrote or said, or even on the mere suspicion that you were not wholeheartedly supportive of the current regime. Sounds terrifying? Well, do not breathe a sigh of relief that you are lucky enough to have avoided such fate, because what you are imagining is the United States of America circa 2010. These imaginings, which invoke memories of Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany or Orwell’s 1984, are all permitted by provisions in the USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush and enforced by President Barack Obama.

The United States of America is the country that most people around the world associate with freedom. The American Dream is the dream of those in the farthest corners of the world, where countries are run by despots and people fear to speak. The Land of the Free calls to those who dream of a country where freedom still reigns. It is the dream of those who are scared that they might at any moment disappear because they said the wrong thing, because they put forth an opinion that might not have pleased those in power.

As we discussed in Lie #13, unbelievable as it may seem, the benignly titled Patriot Act has very little to do with patriotism and protection from terrorism and much to do with the grasp for power that the federal government is so fond of. It is perhaps not surprising that the government would miss the irony of entitling this atrocity, which the ultimate patriots, our Founding Fathers, would have revolted against. The American Revolution, after all, was caused by the high rate of taxation imposed on the colonies by England. If taxes incited the Founding Fathers to tarring and feathering, I can only imagine what the agents of the government would be subjected to if they had proposed such a thing as the Patriot Act.

Well, the America of today is quite different than the Founding Fathers would have ever imagined. And it is quite different than what the citizens of this country imagine today. Benjamin Franklin once said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And if he were to take a look at the America of today, he would say that we deserve none of the liberties, which we so easily surrendered in fear, through deception, in the stated purposes of a search for national security.

The government found it so easy to deceive us, found that when we were scared, we would throw ourselves at its mercy, in order to feel safe. National security, they claimed, was attainable and the Patriot Act, which of course would require our patriotism and sacrifice, would help them attain it, never explaining that it would be at the cost of individual fundamental liberties that once made America the dream of the oppressed.

All We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself

(and, of Course, Those Scheming Frenchmen)

Many assume that the power grab and ensuing denials of people’s rights brought by the Patriot Act have no precedents in American history. Sadly, that is not the case. The federal government has used fear to grasp our rights since the dawn of this country, and even John Adams, a Founding Father, used that fear after he became president and signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 into law. The fear was caused by what is now known as the XYZ affair, a French-American diplomatic incident.

“Fear is the Foundation of Most Governments.”

—President John Adams

The United States government has developed a rich tradition of restricting the freedoms of groups of people that it believes or wants the public to believe pose a security threat, especially during times of war and national crisis. In 1798, the United States was nearing war with France. The Federalists (Washington, Adams, Hamilton, to name a few) controlled the executive and legislative branches of government, but felt threatened by the ideas emanating from the French