Sunday, February 18, 2007

My goodness, a rant

You know, Googie likes to think of herself as a non-judgmental sort. I don’t troll the internet looking for fights. I try to keep an open mind and live and let live. But check out this web site.



Ok, what the fuck is wrong with these people’s brains? Do you want your civil liberties threatened?

Do people have any understanding of how dangerous governments can be? Googie is sensitive to the fact that people are afraid after 9/11. She has even been persuaded for the need for a strong defense. Criminals and terrorist are a threat in any society. However, the most egregious criminal agents throughout history have been governments with unlimited power. Don’t believe me? Put down your bible for a moment and read the history of the 20th century. Terrorists are not capable of the slaughter that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union inflicted on its own people. Government power must be limited for a country to be free.

So what keeps us safe? Here’s some hints:
Its not preemptive wars against sovereign nations
Its not warrantless wire taps
Its not prisoners in secret prisons
Its not nuclear weapons
Its not tanks, soldiers or guns

What keeps us free? It’s the Bill of Rights and our collective respect for it. But the Bill of Rights is really just a piece of paper unless its principles are aggressively fought for in courts of law. Thus, the need for the American Civil Liberties Union.

A couple of asides: Don’t you think Googie is going to make a rockin’ lawyer? I can’t wait for law school.

Ironically, though I now worship at the church of liberalism, many of my ideas about government come from the philosophies of Ayn Rand and the political writings of Barry Goldwater. Like I have mentioned, I was raised in a Red State in a Republican family. By the time I was 18, I had read the entire Objectivist canon.
What really gets my goat is that if these people simply read their own literature, they would realize this administration’s disregard for civil liberties is a very bad thing. But my guess is that the people who run this web site and its readers are not conservatives at all, but Christian extremists. I believe what irks them about the ACLU is that the organization has halted their wholesale attempt to take over American public life.

2 comments:

Jessica Gottlieb said...

I've seen the site and I think it would make most obervant X-tians that I know blanch.

My family died when the US closed it's borders during WW2, their ships were turned around and they returned to Nazi Germany for the "final solution".

We live in a country with a long history of racism.

That horrible group of hateful people who cloak themselves in religion have nothing to do with religion.

And, yes, they do want their civil liberties threatened... until they are the minority, then they will change their mind. If it's not too late.

Rosie said...

There is a whole bunch of people who hate the ACLU. And I've never gotten it. I just don't understand. I think there is a skinhead/racist slant to it, but the civil liberties are for everyone.