Trading Freedoms for Security
The other day the Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr had a great editorial about the topic of exchanging one's freedoms for security. If your paper does not carry Mr Pitts' column you are missing a good one.
There was a great quote by Benjamin Franklin included: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". And isn't that exactly what we've been doing ever since 911?
I don't generally agree with the ACLU but they have a point in their ad that appears in the latest issue of the magazine Mother Jones. Curious? Check out the March/April 2006 issue. The ad is on page 12. Makes you think which is undoubtedly the whole point.
Back to Mr. Pitts' editorial. He recounts a scene that happened on Feb 9th in Bethesda MD (not all that far from Washington when you think about it). Apparently two men in uniform "stride into the main reading room (of the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public Library) and call for attention. Then they make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library's computers to view Internet pornography." Oh it gets better!
"one of the men challenges a patron about a Web site he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At this point a librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside." Well it goes on and the police are called and come to find out these two guys are from Homeland Security and had WAY overstepped their authority.
This happened in the United States of America! Think about it. As Mr. Pitts points out, "an agent of the government literally read over a man's shoulder, Big Brother like, and tried to prevent him from seeing what he had chosen to see".
I don't know about you but Canada is looking better and better all the time.
There was a great quote by Benjamin Franklin included: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". And isn't that exactly what we've been doing ever since 911?
I don't generally agree with the ACLU but they have a point in their ad that appears in the latest issue of the magazine Mother Jones. Curious? Check out the March/April 2006 issue. The ad is on page 12. Makes you think which is undoubtedly the whole point.
Back to Mr. Pitts' editorial. He recounts a scene that happened on Feb 9th in Bethesda MD (not all that far from Washington when you think about it). Apparently two men in uniform "stride into the main reading room (of the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public Library) and call for attention. Then they make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library's computers to view Internet pornography." Oh it gets better!
"one of the men challenges a patron about a Web site he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At this point a librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside." Well it goes on and the police are called and come to find out these two guys are from Homeland Security and had WAY overstepped their authority.
This happened in the United States of America! Think about it. As Mr. Pitts points out, "an agent of the government literally read over a man's shoulder, Big Brother like, and tried to prevent him from seeing what he had chosen to see".
I don't know about you but Canada is looking better and better all the time.
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