Dear Department of Homeland Security,

I am a threat to the security of America. I am writing to you to request that, for the safety of America and its citizens, you add to me to your No-Fly List.

I am a terrorist you see. I believe in America.

I believe in freedom. I believe in individual liberty. I believe in privacy. I believe that the government that governs least, governs best. I believe that the government should leave its citizens alone.

On all these counts I am clearly a threat to the security of America. Only the unthinking automaton, the great unwashed and brainwashed, the cud-chewing herd are not a threat. Those of us who think and write are a threat to the established order, because we question. We want to know why.

Why is America spying on its citizens? Why is America listening to its citizens’ phone calls, collecting every email ever sent in gigantic databases at a huge facility just outside of Washington DC.?. Why are there massive phone taps on every undersea cable leading into and out of America? Why does America require that cell phone operators be able to triangulate 95% of their customers, or face heavy fines?

Why is the government watching us?

Because of terrorism, we are told. Terrorists want to destroy our freedom.

But it is not terrorists who are taking away our freedom. It is the government of the United States of America.

A people that give up essential liberty for temporary safety, said Benjamin Franklin, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

I am guilty, and for the safety of my fellow Americans I therefore must insist on my immediate inclusion on your no-fly list. I am clearly a threat to the ongoing security of America.

Thank you, and I look forward to being denied boarding at the earliest opportunity.

Kind Regards

Jens Porup

America is rapidly descending into the straitjacket of fascism. Telephone calls are monitored; emails recorded; web traffic analyzed. The government is watching you, and it is not a friendly gaze. We live in a time of fear.

Historically, one of the few practical checks on tyranny in America has been greed. Greed is the carrot that spurs innovation. Quite simply, insufficient liberty is bad for the bottom line.

So the question is: has the swelling chorus of fascism begun to dampen innovation in America? When will Big Business push back?

Or will they? Perhaps the time of innovation is at an end. An increasing array of frivolous patents are granted each year by the US Patent Office; lawsuits threaten the inventor, engineer and software developer at every turn. Many foreign inventors and engineers find it so hard to get a US visa they simply go somewhere else.

There is another possibility. The Western world view may have already spent itself entirely, its mojo gone, its creative juices spent. There may, in fact, remain only tyranny and stasis. Without the greed that fuels innovation, there will remain no one and nothing to defend the rudimentary vestiges of liberty in America, and the world will fall into the black pit of lock-step, mindless uniformity, critics ruthlessly silenced, creative people crushed under heel as deviants.

As a writer, I like copyright. Copyright means I get paid for my work. But like the ancient Greeks used to say, “nothing too much”.

Lawrence Lessig and his students make the point brilliantly, here.

America’s long and painful decline into fascism is masked by a spirit of hypocrisy: Orwellian terms enter our lexicon, where “freedom” means “obedience” and “defence” means “war of aggression” and truth has become so muddled that rather than try to untwist all the lies we merely take sides with people who look like us, or who live near us, or who fall roughly into the same socio-economic background as us.

So it is that this little piece of bald-faced news escaped most people’s attention last October: Congress has given the President the right to deploy troops on American soil and to commandeer control of the National Guard from the various states’ governors. There is a word for this: it is martial law.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) wrote at the time:

“We certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law. Invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military for law enforcement activities goes against some of the central tenets of our democracy. One can easily envision governors and mayors in charge of an emergency having to constantly look over their shoulders while someone who has never visited their communities gives the orders.”

He wrote further:

“The implications of changing the (Posse Comitatus) Act are enormous… There is good reason,” he said, “for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we make it easier for the President to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty.”

And so both Liberty and Justice, like frogs in the slowly boiling pot of proverb, are cooked alive, leaving behind nothing but a fascist dictatorship, oh-so-thinly disguised as democracy.

See the full article here.

Have you seen this?

According to a High Court ruling in the UK,

“It is illegal to send indecent or grossly offensive material to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient.”

What planet are these guys on? Does no one remember Oliver Wendell Holmes and “your rights end at the end of my nose”? Whatever happened to “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me”?

This is a dangerous slippery slope into the unreal fog of touchy feely land. What’s next? The thought police are going to arrest five year olds for calling each other names?

“You’re a jerky stupidhead!”

“No, you’re a jerky stupidhead!”

“No, you are!”

“No, you are!”

“Johnny-poo, Davey-bear, you are both under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. In fact, if you don’t I’m going to spank you. You have the right to suck your thumb. If you ignore this right a pacifier will be superglued to your lips. Alright people, there’s nothing to see here, the playground is now safe for everyone’s feelings with these two dangerous loose cannons out of the way!”

“Oh thank god Marge, I’m so glad they came.”

“Yeah, they were causing me a great deal of distress and and anxiety.”

“Well let’s hope they learn their lesson.”

“Doubt it. Those are two pretty tough nuts. They’re going away for life, if you ask me.”

According to the venerable Christian Science Monitor, the Supremes will not be taking up the case of a Utah polygamist.

Most striking, however, was the argument of the lawyer for the defendant, which cuts to the bone of the matter:

“Widespread popular departure from traditional marriage practices has made the anti-polygamy laws, like laws against cohabitation, adultery, and fornication, anachronistic,” Parker wrote. “These laws are not enforced against those practicing contemporary lifestyles, but are asserted as weapons, as in this case, against those living a traditional, family-grounded, religious-based life.”

He added, “In gross absurdity…, one can behave in the same way in two circumstances but in one (polygamy) the action is illegal, and in the other (promiscuity) the action is ignored by the law. One can do legally the same act with immoral or amoral intent and have it be legal. Yet the same act with religious intent is deemed illegal.”

If a man were living with three women in an unmarried lifestyle, making babies with all of them, would he be considered criminal under the law? Well, no. It remains only to see when the laws against polygamy will buckle under the weight of their own absurdity.