The End of Privacy

www.patricksamuels.com | 12/15/08 | Patrick Samuels

[Mikey76]

Privacy is an issue on many minds these days. We worry about the security of our most important information because identity theft is so prevalent, Joe the Plumber had his life laid bare before all because he asked a question of a presidential candidate, Sarah Palin had her e-mail hacked into. We are concerned about warrantless wiretaps and the powers of the Patriot Act. Perhaps in the back of our mind runs the movie “Enemy of the State” where the NSA easily pries into the life, and then tries to destroy, Will Smith’s character. The fact is, Big Brother is watching and there is almost nothing we do that is not known, or could be known, about our lives. Every transaction we make is or can be public knowledge. If you buy gas with a credit card, BB can find out where you travel. When you rent or buy a house, BB knows where. BB knows how much you make and if he chooses, can find out what you spend it on. And it is our spending that tells anyone who’s looking who we are from the foods we like to the books we read to the movies we watch to where we go on vacation. Such information is already available to marketing companies so BB can easily access it. Even your dropping in at the local quick mart to buy a candy bar with cash is recorded on video. Outside of drug deals and yard sale purchases, private transactions are gone and with it, our liberty. Today, knowledge is power and the more people that have knowledge of our business and lives, the less power we have as individuals.

How did we get here? We can answer with two names-Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. The income tax instituted under Wilson enabled the government to know everything it wanted about how we earned a living and established the idea that our money belonged to the government first and we were only allowed to keep the leftovers. FDR gave us Social Security and the Social Security Number without which you can get nothing in this society. That number and a credit score are the passports to the standard of living associated with the middle and upper class in this country and it is just such people of initiative and individualism that are a potential threat to the powers that be.

Before you assume that I am writing from a bunker while hiding from the black helicopters, bear with me a moment. In 1984 George Orwell correctly pointed out that collectivism is the only secure basis from which to establish and maintain an oligarchy. Since long before 1984, it has been the desire of the liberal Democrat party to establish such an oligarchy and their willingness to pervert the democratic process, pack the unelected courts and bureaucracies with their own and their willingness to do anything to seize and maintain power demonstrate that desire. Collectivism is the opposite of capitalism and the foundation of capitalism is individualism and the privacy that goes with it. Now you may be thinking that Democrats and liberals are the champions of privacy. They support a women’s right to choose and gay rights and they complain about the Patriot Act. Sure, one can be “serviced” in the Oval Office, run a gay prostitution ring out of one’s home or have innumerable affairs and if you are a Democrat, that is “private”. Play footsies in a public bathroom or send some suggestive e-mails, however, and that is “public”. If you are part of the opposition, the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media have no problem making what most of us consider private, public. Forget the army of lawyers and investigators that descended like vultures on Wassila looking for anything on Sarah Palin. Forget Rathergate, the FBI files found in the Clinton White House, RFK’s wiretaps, Wilson’s jailing of dissidents. Look at what the Ohio democrat officials did to a private citizen who just happened to be playing football with his son when a democrat presidential candidate happened by. If that does not demonstrate the Democrat party’s total disregard for our privacy, I don’t know what does. It is obvious that to a liberal democrat, the “right to privacy” only exists as long as an individual poses no threat. If such relativism doesn’t make us a “Banana Republic”, how are such things defined?

How have we fallen so far down this slope? How could we let this happen? Several reasons but they come down to two; convenience and a forfeiture of personal responsibility. Privacy requires responsibility. If we are responsible for our own physical and financial well being and accept the risks and rewards of such responsibility then why do we need the government? Look at Wall Street. Once upon a time investing in stocks and other financial intsruments was the purview of experts and sorcerers who knew the risks and accepted the consequences, good and bad. Most people saved their money, put it into their small business or land or even gold and silver. Banks weren’t even entirely trustworthy. Since 1929, however, we have accepted the idea that the government should eliminate risk to our savings. It began with the FDIC and Social Security and has ended with a Wall Street bailout. The government has eliminated the downside of foolish or risky investing and by doing so has created crises and then stepped into to “save us”, only requiring more regulation, or now, nationalization, and with it our responsibility to know and understand our investments and risks, and our privacy. The end result of this may be the elimination of personal retirement accounts as all the 401K and IRA monies are rolled into Social security. All because we have willingly given up our freedom and responsibility over our finances and with it, our right to the privacy of our transactions.

One more example. We have given up responsibility for our personal safety. I was recently listening to a debate over what to do to protect students in school from individuals that come in with guns to kill people. (There is a section on school violence in “Memoirs of Former American”) Living in Maryland, I hear the local news from Baltimore, a city with a high murder rate that has experienced a killing spree this fall. Of course there was recently the terrorist attack in India that makes us wonder if such things may soon happen here. When the threat of violence increases, we have two choices. We can take steps to protect ourselves or place that burden on government. If we place it on government, we need to move to towards a police state because with its current resources, government has shown itself to be woefully inadequate at protecting us from muggers, rapists, Mexican gangs and middle eastern terrorists. Except for the last one, law enforcement is often unable, or even worse in the cases of illegal immigrants, unwilling, to prosecute the perpetrators and put them behind bars. Do we really want to make Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama and all the failed mayors of crime ridden cities responsible for our safety by giving them more money and power? I don’t think so. We need to be allowed to legally protect ourselves. That includes liberal concealed carry laws and self defense laws that don’t prosecute people who do defend themselves against thugs. Don’t you wonder why you never hear about rampant crime in places like the Mid-west or Alaska? Places where people are, or can be, armed whereas in place like Washington DC, Baltimore or Philadelphia, places with very restrictive gun laws run by liberal Democrat mayors, are shooting galleries? Most criminals are lazy cowards and if they think someone’s armed they will go to greener pastures. In a society where everyone may be armed everyone is polite because no one wants to escalate stupid disagreements. The point is, by giving up responsibility for our personal safety we give the government the right to take a lot more money and freedom and privacy from us in an attempt to make us safe that is doomed to fail because in the end, who is going to keep us safe from them?

The Founders of this country were smart men. They gave the government very limited power and gave the liberty and responsibility to the people. As long as the people were moral and self-reliant, the system would work. As our moral fiber and rugged individualism become things of the past, government grows and with it, the problems with big, totalitarian governments. It is only by taking responsibility for our own success and failure that we will be able to live free and recover our privacy and in so doing, take power back from government.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”Living in Maryland, I hear the local news from Baltimore”

Me too. They put that OMalley/BGE control on your thermostat yet? Did he promise that in 2006 ? Think not, he promised free electric, then raised the price for the suckers, and offer a few bucks back for Orwell controls. Call it Marxism light,take your money and give you a few bucks back for loss of control. You have to buy your freedom, or sell it.

[El Gato]

Privacy only applies if you are a Democrat wanting to keep “embarrassing” details of your early life from the public of whom you are begging for a “position”.

[Tallguy]

Even more than that. The Democrats effectively subsidize perversion for their own; criminalize it for others. Gay prostitution? Hunky-Dory for Congressman Frank. Sexual Harassment? OK for Bill Clinton.