Posted on 01/12/2025 5:20:05 AM PST by MtnClimber
There is nothing reconcilable about American Liberty when contrast with a looming surveillance state. There is no facet of American values, the essential core of what we define as Americanism, that can exist without true liberty. While the Declaration of Independence is long regarded as the greatest written declaration of purpose, the latter created Bill of Rights, the first Ten original amendments to the U.S. Constitution, is just as important. The first declared our intent; the second defined how our founders intended to retain the intent during our collective assembly. Together they outline what set the course to make America great.
We have allowed the foundational intent of both sets of documents to be compromised, because, well, simply we were lazy and complacent. Now we are engaged in a time of great consequence that will determine whether or not the purpose of our assembly can continue.
We are, in factual reality, now deep inside a debate carried out in the world of politics. The stakes have never been higher.
In nine days, President Donald J Trump is scheduled to be sworn in as President of the United States. In my non-pretending world, this is likely to be the last time in our lifetime to drag the conversation of how we define liberty into the American psyche. All of my research in the past two decades indicates this likelihood is not hyperbole. We have one shot at this, and our time is now.
Liberty, the fundamental decision to retain it or lose it, is the context for all other contexts that have preceded it. The principles of liberty that we have defined for generations cannot exist in an American surveillance state. Thus, the secretive courts, the unlawful usurpation of the 4th Amendment, the short-sighted ramifications of the Patriot Act, the weaponization of our federal law enforcement and police agencies, all of it, must be reviewed through this fundamental core issue, Liberty.
I have traveled throughout the East and West to gain perspective on what makes us different, and what I can assert with clarity is that if we lose the Liberty argument, then the ideological representatives behind Barack Obama will have succeeded, the fundamental transformation will be irreversible.
This frames the cornerstone of my viewpoints on all of the characters in politics. It is not a matter of debate that on these core issues of Liberty and the stopping of the Surveillance State, everything else is a downstream consequence. The tiered system of constitutional protections for particular categories of personage must be rebuked. On this matter there cannot be compromise, because every outcome that impedes our way of life is a derivative of this value.
I will oppose all interests who refuse to confront the Surveillance State. I will draw bold attention to those who are willingly creating it, and I promise you I will call out every operational interest that is willfully blind to its creation.
This is my hill.
Love to all,
Sundance
How does being watched rob a person of their liberty?
The principles of liberty that we have defined for generations cannot exist in an American surveillance state.
Is that a test question or do you seriously not know?
4th amendment, first part: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...
Surveillance is a search of sorts - especially when surveilled in normally private settings. With electronic media, including cell phones, the state now has the ability to infiltrate nearly aspect of a citizen’s life.
Look at how surveillance fits into the Chinese Social Credit System. They watch and listen to everything 24/7. If you do or say something that the authorities don’t like then they turn off your ability to buy anything, to travel, to walk down the sidewalk.
It is used in Britain to monitor how much people drive.
Being “watched” is an intrusion of my freedom...especially being watched by the “state”. Oppositely, the state (and its employees) should be “watched” so as to ensure they are doing what they are supposed to do. Right now the employees of the state are sancrosanct...watching them is deemed as insurrection.
Just ponder how many employees of the state are slackers, goof-offs, malingerers and “independent operators” who do what they want when they want without concern for boundaries of the law.
Many of them call themselves “public servants” when actually they are arrogant agents of destruction, perversion and perversion of law.
TOTAL surveillance should be conducted on every “representative”. They have lost the trust of honest citizens. They are not open, transparent and truthful. What have honest “representatives” got to hide? Unfortunately, I do not have that capability. If we the people could do that surveillance state for 5-10 years, our republic would be much improved.
How does being watched rob a person of their liberty?
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Depends on the reason we’re being watched. If you’re a movie actress and your being watched on screen or in a social or public setting, that’s different than if your that person being watch doing things of a personal nature in a bathroom or in a bedroom with your significant other! The essence of liberty is the right to privacy, the right to be left alone. Being watched is an invasion of those rights.
You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, so the constitutional protections against that surveillance really only protect a citizen from having that surveillance used in a criminal court.
Sundance and another one of his “look at me” articles. Of course we are all aware of the surveillance state. What I wanna know is who this Sundance person is. He/she should come from the shadows and stop hiding behind the pseudonym.
To start with the DoI and BoR misses two important points. The Preambles to both the Constitution and the BoR are equally essential toward a comprehensive defining purpose to include the social contract (Preamble to the Constitution) and its purpose (limited government in the Preamble to the BoR). Sadly, neither has been properly used before the SCOTUS.
Allow me to provide an example: Most people think that adherents to Islam are provided free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. Yet Islam violates completely the Preamble to the Constitution, refusing to participate in the social contract that is the Constitution itself by allowing neither equal treatment nor free exercise to those of other religions, subjugating them and the Constitution itself to the Quran, using the protections offered under the Constitution to violate it. Said adherents are therefore not participants in the social contract that is the Preamble to the Constitution and are therefore not due its legal protections.
So although I admire Sundance for his evidentiarly thoroughness, I think he's missing an important point about the legal architecture comprised by these founding documents, but then, so has been the legal community charged with protecting them.
Is that a test question or do you seriously not know?
Thanks for the thoughtful replies.
Should we not make a distinction between being watched and taking action on the basis of what is seen?
To be born among civilization and live in it peacefully requires a certain amount of mutual observation. The example of Communist China making life difficult for people indulging in “wrongthink” would not be possible without massive surveillance, but it is not the surveillance per set that robs the citizens of liberty.
I do not have a problem with live video surveillance of property for the purpose of securing the blessings. I also do not fear that if I had a publicly available video cam in my bathroom or bedroom my neighbors would spend their hours watching it and tittering over my behaviors there. They’d probably pay me to leave it turned off.
Anyway, I want to hear definitions before we move ahead on public policy. Rand Paul is good at catching “the law of unintended consequences” when knee-jerk policies are put forward.
Just because you call yourself a defender of liberty does not mean you know what the word means in the context of our founding documents. Frankly I’m not sure I do.
The texts regarding “unreasonable search,” etc. is great, but is it unreasonable for businesses to observe my buying habits in an effort to advance their own interests? The author here is concerned about actions the state would take on the basis of normal, law-abiding behavior. We all should be. Likewise, a parent should not live in fear of physical intervention for letting their child walk three blocks from home, or three miles from home.
Well these are just random thoughts on it. I am open to reasonable debate over the nature and extent of this clash between liberty and surveillance.
Unfortunately the Constitution is not up to date and weaker than in the 19th century.
I meant to give a conjunctive answer.
If they get in trouble for the action seen . . .?
The essence of liberty is the right to privacy . . .
Liberty, freedom, in whatever form they are manifest, have their boundaries. They are always qualified, usually by attendant laws and ordinances. This may seem self-evident, but many subscribe to the notion these are defined by the *absence* of boundaries, so that their rights are infringed by any prohibitions whatsoever.
So, when it comes to privacy there are limits. Therefore it ought not be called a “right” in the strictest sense. It is not fundamentally granted at all times, but is subject to limits. The only way to have privacy in its purest form is to be an anonymous hermit. You might call that a good life to have, but we’ll never know, and we’ll never know who or how many there are. The census necessarily omits them, and they don’t pay taxes.
So, we have the privilege to enjoy *some* privacy and must peacefully determine among ourselves how much to grant one another and when. That we can do this is because we have that liberty. If an outside entity not having proper authority were to force a manner and degree of privacy upon all of us, that would be a violation of liberty. That’s where we need to avoid complacency, and that’s what the author here is, I hope, sounding an alarm for.
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