A Face Fit for a Ouija Board -- 2016

"Obama to step up military support of Syrian rebels"

Remember these?

Obama to step up military support of Syrian rebels...

More Notes on the Right to be Left Alone

The idea that there exists a "right to privacy" that permits the taking of an innocent life is the apex of sophistry -- the absolute nadir of philosophy.  The right to be left alone is inherent in the dignity of the individual. So inherent, it was understood to be so in the times of the Founders and perhaps for that reason there was seen no need to enumerate it. However, in a day which is properly said to have embraced a "Culture of Death" -- that is, a culture which is anti-life -- such inherent dignity can no longer be assumed to be understood, nor to be present in the interpretation of its laws, any more than can be expected the same understanding of the "Creator" from which flow inalienable rights as understood by the Founders.

Jerome F. Smith, in Understanding Runaway Inflation, 1979 Edition, observed:

Any listing of human rights becomes less complete and more prone to error in proportion to how specific it is...The prime right is one's right to life, one's own life and no one else's.  All other rights, and the delineation of what belongs to whom, derive from this beginning.Thus, that which is pro-life is a right and is moral and that which is anti-life is a usurpation and immoral.  All human rights -- and which actions are right (moral) and which are wrong -- can be logically derived from the prime right, the right to life.

The way in which the three traditionally listed rights are logically bound together was well expressed by Justice Sutherland as follows:

The individual has three rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference (from government): the right to life, the right to his liberty, the right to his property.  The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right.  To give a man his life, but to deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes life worth living.  To give him his liberty, but to take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is still to leave him a slave.

In 1890 Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren wrote an article for the Harvard Law Review urging the creating of a legal right of privacy.  New technological methods of snooping have made privacy an even more cherished value. Brandeis was on the Supreme Court in 1928 when it decided that police wire-tapping was not a "search" subject to constitutional restrictions, and in a great dissent he reiterated a passage from his 1890 article:

"The makers of the Constitution...sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions, and their sensations.  They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the most valued by all civilized men."

(Justice Louis D. Brandeis, in Olmstead vs. U.S., 1928)

The Supreme Court since then has adopted Brandeis dissent as the law on wire-tapping and, in general, declared privacy a value respected by the Constitution.

--Jerome F. Smith, Understanding Runaway Inflation, 1979.

Train of Thoughts on the NSA "Whistleblower"

• The Patriot Act authorized nearly limitless collection of communications data in 2001. Is this "story" really "breaking?"
• If you are entrusted with a security clearance and then disseminate classified information, you have opened yourself up to charges of espionage.
• The Obama administration, used to having public opinion in its favor and malleable in its deft hands, is in big trouble. It's not used to being unable to turn public outrage to its favor, and it doesn't just yet appear that there is any hope of doing that now. How will it react, with docility? Or will its mission of maintaining control over the public debate force it to shift from persuasion to coercion? From coercion to force? 
• Let's be honest: we all knew we were going to see universal surveillance when we embraced the "Information Age" because doing so required us to embrace the "Information Superhighway", an historically unparalleled mechanism of concentration and permanent recording of all digital communication. Let's not be disingenuous by pretending to be too surprised. The youngsters whose feelings are hurt most by it seem to be the most unrealistically idealistic -- the ones who think all information should be free and nations should not need borders. Employing such people in the Intelligence field is asking for trouble. "Imagine no possessions" all you want -- but be careful what you wish for.
• The outrage isn't that the government conducts surveillance operations, it is who the government considers its enemies to be (i.e. under the Obama administration, Catholics have been labelled as "terrorists").
• The answer to government abuse of power is going to be what, more laws, more committees, more government power?
• Spilling national secrets to the worldwide media because you are disillusioned with your government or the world or your own life is still traitorous.  You're not a "whistle-blower" just because you disagree with the government, nor are you necessarily a "hero". 
• If you want to "blow the whistle", there are channels for doing so. If the "system" fails you, you can always offer the story to a British tabloid then.
• Everyone also "knew" that Google and other big information harvesters were doing exactly that: "harvesting" information.  Isn't anyone outraged that they are behaving merely as appendages of a very politically motivated presidential administration?
• There should be no doubt now, if any were remaining, that there is "Us", and there is "Them".
• Finally, does the government know anything about you that you haven't already posted on your Facebook page?

How Kennedy Catholics Nationalized Healthcare in the USA.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus on the (Catholic) Campaign for Human Development:

Ten years ago, CHD was exposed as using the Catholic Church as a milk cow to fund organizations that frequently were actively working against the Church’s mission, especially in their support of pro-abortion activities and politicians. Now it turns out that CHD has long been a major funder of ACORN, a national community agitation organization in support of leftist causes, including the abortion license. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is under criminal investigation in several states. In the last decade CHD gave ACORN well over seven million dollars, including more than a million in the past year. It is acknowledged that ACORN, with which Sen. Obama had a close connection over the years, was a major player in his presidential campaign.

First Things, November 7, 2008.

And this is how the Kennedy Catholics finally nationalized the healthcare industry in the United States of America.

Pope Paul VI was not kidding when he said, "The smoke of Satan has entered the Church."

Get Used To It.

The stories that have broken about absolute surveillance of everyone, everywhere, at the whim of  the government, abetted by corporations who handed over customers' private information, is causing quite a stir, and rightly so.

But we have all suspected it all along, anyway.

In the end, what this exercise in media-moderated-debate will do is simply this: it will legitimize the ubiquity of government surveillance in the public mind.  It will be the watershed that society has experienced which makes acceptance of an absolute police state not merely possible, but inevitable.

When all the promises have been made, all the outrage has been vented, committees convened and bills proposed, the net effect will be this: The Digital State -- the Government/Corporate Complex -- with all its perils for individual liberty, will have arrived.  This new reality will shape all social institutions going forward, in an official way.

Make no mistake: the Digital State is the enemy of the individual.  How we adapt will be the topic du jour.

Having said this, I'm not so sure that idealistic, post-adolescent males betraying their security pledges because they get the idea that they can save the world is really a good thing.

Sounds like the boy has watched a few too many "Bourne" movies.

And after all, we all knew that communications were subject to surveillance 10 years ago.

The only thing different now is, of course, that Obama sees political opponents as "terrorists."