It’s been nearly six years since the Bush Administration initiated their politics of fear and you aren’t really any safer than you were in 2001. They’ve used this fear tactic to persuade us that we ought to surrender basic freedoms that Americans have traditionally enjoyed. The Patriot Act, like most of the legislation that has been enacted during this period is anything but patriotic. It is instead for the most part an attack on our liberty. Earlier this week this was brought home to me while reading an entry on one of the RSS feeds I regularly read. I did some googling tonight and I’ve found one of the sources.
Fear…that powerful motivator that drives so many behaviors. Do you know people who seem to do everything, make every decision, because of some root fear? Since 9-11 some $100 billion dollars has been pumped into security measures aimed at averting “another tragedy,” and another $300+ billion into the war to “Make America Safer” in Iraq. But was 9-11 really the terrible thing we have made it out to be? Of course, for any who died, and for their surviving families, it was. For the nation, it certainly served as the source of much turmoil. Every plane in America’s skies was grounded, the stock markets were closed, even baseball stopped. In the meantime, letters with ANTHRAX were quietly dropped into the mail to keep the adrenaline pumping. Yet the actual death toll was miniscule compared to other major problems facing Americans each year. Statistics will show that you have a greater chance of being struck by a meteor than you do of being killed next year in a terrorist attack. In fact the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the meteor!
I can’t vouch for the veracity of this writing, but it seems to be true if you reflect on it. It’s a lot more plausible than the daily assault on our sensibilities. For more of this click here.