AN ORWELLIAN TRIFECTA OF OPPRESSION
The government lied to us.
The government targeted its political opponents and people who taught about the Constitution.
The government secretly scoured the phone records of America’s biggest news agency.
Is that the change you were hoping for?
Is that the country you want to live in?
Without regard to party or philosophy, this is not acceptable. Put more pointedly, this is not America.
In the past week, we have seen conclusive evidence that the federal government purposely deceived the American public about the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. We have also learned that a secret subpoena let the federal government rummage through the phone records of the Associated Press, the biggest single piece of America’s supposedly free and independent press. We have also seen that for some two years the Internal Revenue Service harassed conservative, Christian and patriotic organizations and then leaked their private information to Pro Publica, a liberal advocacy press.
Those things are unacceptable in a free society. Those things are criminal and treasonous oppressions.
It doesn’t matter whether you are Republican or Democrat. If you are honest, that Orwellian trifecta horrifies you. It enrages you and shakes you. It reminds you of Russia, China and Cuba, or any other place where people are nothing and the state is everything.
It reminds you how far down the road we have gone.
It reminds you why our parents were revolted by the word “Watergate.”
Some will see this upset as something ginned up by the Republicans. Some liberal voters, accustomed to scapegoating Republicans for all of society’s ills, accustomed to listening not to the truth but to their own partisan bigotries, will rally to the administration.
Some will see any criticism as racism, or some noxious expression by people they call “haters.”
Some will gather around the president and declare him a victim in this. Bloggers and bloviaters will attack John Boehner or George W. Bush, and find in them pretense for blame.
But the facts are the facts.
And it might require people to lay aside their partisan impulse to truly take this in.
Because for all of our disagreements, our shared commitment to freedom should not be one of them. Liberals and conservatives alike should be able to see in the events of recent days a tendency of government that must be challenged and punished.
Martin Luther King said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and the assaults against liberty perpetrated by the IRS and against the AP are injustices that threaten justice across the American Republic.
Last election cycle, the government used its power to harass conservatives. Liberals who look the other way on that can sadly only expect roles to be reversed in a future regime. If we abandon rule of law and constitutional decency today, what can we expect tomorrow? If the government is free to secretly surveil the private communications of AP reporters in the name of finding a security leak, what will their excuse be next time and what other part of society will be the victim of their scrutiny?
This reeks of the Soviet Union.
It drips tin-horn dictator.
It smells like Nixon.
And it cannot stand.
I’m not saying Obama should be impeached. I don’t want to tick off people who voted for him because of the color of his father’s skin. I don’t want to gain political advantage over the people who elected the current regime.
I just want the chain jerked real hard.
I want the pit bull of imperious government brought to heel.
I want enough people to get a bloody nose out of this that we go another 40 years without another incident like this.
There must be accountability.
There must be integrity.
There must be liberty, equality and due process.
And the government must stop being evil toward us. Actions like these, coupled with the massive purchases of ammunition that can only be used for domestic law enforcement, leave some wondering just how far the government is willing to go to silence dissent.
They have violated our nation’s largest news organization. They have deceived us about the deaths of Americans. They have maliciously harassed groups of Jews and patriots, Evangelicals and constitutionalists. They have given secret information gathered under color of law to their allies in the liberal press.
And it’s hard to get anybody to care.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2013
