Americans -- Courage is in our DNA.
Our ancestors would laugh at our NSA for justifying its massive surveillance including its collection of our metadata by the dangers we face.
In a great speech on the freedom of the press and his own disinclination to meddle with it (in contrast to Obama who is trying to force Risen to give up his sources on a story that Obama claims comprised our national security) claimed that the time in which he served -- the 1960s -- was the most dangerous in history.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHA-025-001.aspx
I was born during WWII. Since I can remember, the leaders of America have either asserted or acted as though the time in which they were lived was the MOST DANGEROUS in our nation's history. Their awe at the task of protecting our country is understandable, even admirable and explains their hyperbole. But they are wrong.
My ancestors came to this country when it was very, very young. They faced dangers that we cannot imagine now. When they later entered Kentucky and Indiana and moved on West, at each watering hole, at each campground, at each settlement, in every home they built on the prairie or in the wilderness, they faced dangers to themselves and our country far greater than any we can imagine today.
They had no internet, no telephones, no electricity or gas. They chopped trees for kindling wood so that they could cook and heat. They lived in log cabins or houses constructed without cranes and bulldozers. They tilled virgin soil. They hammered horseshoes over blazing fires. They created America in the face of dangers we cannot and do not bother to imagine.
They were fearless.
But they valued freedom and eventually fought for the independence of our country and for a new government, a constitutional government that would pioneer a new relationship between the ordinary man and his civil life. It wasn't just a change of the chief of state. It was a change in the relationship between the farmer (we were mostly farmers back then) or the working man and the government. No longer would we have a king, a sovereign, a master. We would be our own king, our own sovereign, our own master. (I'm talking about Yankees who moved from the East to the West, not Southern slaveholders.)
Today, our government, purchased and owned not by us so much any more but by the very, very wealthy (some of whom serve in Congress) and corporations, is seeking to govern us as a master. The first attack is on our right to know the truth about the dangers and opportunities that confront and greet us.
The first attack is on the media including the internet.
Had my grandfather many times removed, who first came to this country when there was little civilization here, enjoyed the capacity we now have to live safely and tranquilly, had he been able to sit in the evening and watch canned TV shows, old movies or interact with others on the internet, he would have felt incredibly safe, maybe even claustrophobic. He would have believed he had a life of ease.
I think he would have felt very generous toward people in other countries whom we now perceive as enemies. Instead of wasting his time in fear, I think he would have set out to learn more about them. I think he would have tried to figure them out, outsmart them. And I think he could have done that without quivering in fear just as he learned to catch and hunt enough game to feed his family until his crops were in.
I think that if my grandfather many times removed were living today, he would want our government to be truly honest with him. And I think he would have been very cautious before he bought a cow from a stranger off the street or the propaganda that now passes for news.
To survive you have to be smart, but you don't have to lie. You can keep secrets, but they had better be your own, not the public's.
And now to the point: Our government keeps too many secrets from us. It doesn't trust us. And I ask myself, what has happened to the dream of my ancestors, the dream they had for this country. Where is the country that is governed by the people, not by a king, or a sovereign or a master? Where is it when the very government that is supposed to be under our control is placing us under surveillance?
Where is it when that government tells us that we live in the most dangerous times imaginable?
Our ancestors faced dangers far greater than any dangers we could even imagine, save one. And that one danger that is greater than any danger we have faced so far is the danger that the warming oceans and the rising seas and the melting icebergs pose to our grandchildren and their children. (And we don't hear nearly enough about that real danger.)
The idea that we should allow our government to hide so many secrets that are not specifically combat-related from us because of the dire dangers we face is absurd.
We Americans are the most courageous people on earth. At least we used to be. Every one of us. It's in our DNA.
Very few Americans can boast that they have no ancestors who ventured to this country distancing themselves from the comforts of family and childhood memories to face a mysterious wilderness or at least an unknown future. Even today, although the dangers are less obvious, most immigrants leave behind not just family but very often a career and opportunities in order to allow their children to have a better, freer life.
Ironically, the glory of America, the dream of a better, freer life is now being endangered not by foreign enemies but by our own corporate-owned government snooping on our private lives, negotiating trade agreements that will curtail our rights in secret, keeping all kinds of secrets from us and punishing our press, our media when it tries to inform us (I originally wrote this in response to an OP about James Risen and the Obama administration's attacks on the press).
As I write this, I hope the NSA agent who may now or in the future read my post will realize that what he is doing is downright wrong. We have a right to be a free people. That means free of surveillance. Law enforcement is supposed to punish illegal actions. It should not concern itself at all with our political expression, our political speech or our personal law-abiding lives.
My ancestors did not want a country in which the government placed the people under surveillance. How do I know? It's in my DNA and the DNA of all Americans: the love of freedom and the courage to accept the risks that accompany it.
If terrorists endanger our country, don't let them come in. Placing Americans under surveillance is not necessary to keep them out. Otherwise, place criminals under surveillance after they have committed criminal acts. But don't place law-abiding citizens under surveillance.
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