Permission To Think

Crime of the Century is a term you don’t hear very often. These days, the most sensational news is in reference to murder and political/celebrity scandal. Gone are the days of breaking into a bank vault, hijacking a train, or stealing the Mona Lisa.

No, the times have changed. While policies are put into place that reduce our rights to privacy even further, those in power do all they can to ensure that their crimes never see the light of day. There’s just one problem:

The Crime of the Century is occurring as we speak, and in plain view.

The Bush Administration has, for years, taken steps necessary to begin closing down our free society. And the truth is they are very, very close to doing it. Closer than most people would ever imagine.

I’ll start with the USA PATRIOT Act. No, those letters aren’t capitalized because I’m trying to make them stand out. They are capitlized because the name is an acronym. Yes, someone took the time to make sure they could name this act in such a way that it would spell out USA PATRIOT. This is what the act is called: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. Catchy, huh?

This is an Act that can appear to have good intentions, but is extremely dangerous under the wrong control. Any Act that can be used improperly becomes useless. Gone, too, are the days when we trusted our political leaders. I will not go into details about what this Act does and does not do. There is plenty of explanation, discussion, criticism and praise of this document available on the Internet that there’s nothing about it I can say that hasn’t already been said. What I will emphasize is this: Policy that restricts liberty can not also protect it.

However, here we are 6 years later, and life goes on. It is my belief that the American people have not woken up to what is going on because, for most of us, our day to day life has not siginificantly changed. Sure, gas prices are the highest they’ve been, and for some reason you can’t bring a water bottle on an airplane unless it’s purchased after you get through security, where they can charge you a 3 dollar premium. But all in all, life has gone on. There haven’t been anymore attacks on American soil, so slowly we can begin to melt into the pop culture obsessed nation that we were on 9/10. The only problem is that our lives will change, and by the time they do, it may be too late to go back. How do I know this, you ask? Simple: S. 1959.

S. 1959 is the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007компютри втора употреба. Once again, the name sounds good, right? Who wouln’t want to prevent radical violence and homegrown terror? The only problem is that it violates the First Amendment. What you can not tell from the title alone is what counts as homegrown terror, and what counts as violence. You see, if I spoke negatively about, say, the President of the United States of America, I could be labeled a terrorist for my unpatriotic views. Aren’t we fighting a war right this second in a country whose former dictator was so evil that he murdered citizens who did not approve of him? Is this how that begins? And violence, as defined by this document, refers to ideological violence, otherwise known as bad thoughts.

This act is designed to punish thought and speech based on a subjective definition. Still think this is making us safer?

Surprisingly, this Act has already passed the House of Representatives, and is in the Senate right now. This is the beginning of the end of our free society.

If you’ve made it this far, perhaps you’ve already heard of Naomi Wolf. If you haven’t, you should check out this post by her documenting 10 Steps To Close Down an Open Society. Believe it or not, S. 1959 is step 9.

It is late in the game, but that does not mean too late. If we want change, we are going to need to do more than just read about the decline of our liberty. It is time to be involved. It is time to remind the government that they are in place to serve the people, not the other way around.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the Crime of the Century is the theft of the freedom of every U.S. Citizen. We have the opportunity to catch the crime in action. We have the opportunity to stop it. We have the opportunity to be a truly free society.

BE STRONG. BE INVOLVED. TAKE BACK YOUR COUNTRY.

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