Is America becoming the world’s bad example?

Is he serious? you ask yourself.  Well, yes and no.  The governmental structure of communist USSR was terrible, both for the citizens of the nation and for the threat it posed to the free world.  People were the innocent victims of political oppression; those seen as potential enemies of the government were murdered or exiled.  You were basically slaves of the state, they owned you, your income, and your freedom.  Every citizen was treated as a “suspect”, no one was trusted.

The USSR served as the world’s bad example.  You could always point to the Soviet government and say, “at least we aren’t doing that”.  But now that the USSR is long gone, we have no bad example to keep our own governments on the straight and narrow.  The federal, state, and local governments have taken it upon themselves to redefine freedom, which has been aided by the no longer present Red bad example.

Over the course of a mere couple of months we have found out that the federal government has been cataloging the entire nation’s cell phone records: who you called and who called you and for how long you talked.  They have accessed your internet searches and web history.  They have tapped members of the press and even the U.S. Congressional cloakroom.  The IRS has been caught targeting groups perceived to be ideologically opposed to the current presidential administration.  Our Attorney General Eric Holder and DNI Chief General James Clapper have been caught lying to Congress.  Federal and state governments are attempting to pass legislation making it so difficult and cumbersome to own and carry fire arms that it makes you contemplate whether it’s worth owning a gun in the first place.

I think what it boils down to is we as Americans don’t want to believe our government is becoming something to fear. As much as we all grumble over what we see as an overreaching government, we really want to think we’re complaining about nothing.

We’re things we are seeing are right out of a movie, right out of a suspense novel. The government’s recent actions are very troubling. We think to ourselves, if it’s all true, then I’m one of those tinfoil hat-wearing Bilderberg conspiracy theorists. I get it, I hate conspiracy theories because they are usually so far out of reality that it’s laughable that anyone would believe them to be true.

This is different, this administration has made the conspiracy a reality and we are doing our best to avoid it. What’s worse is it’s not even a theory, it’s out there, it’s being reported even by the left. We’re in trouble.

My point is not to decry authority, or measures intended to keep we-the-people safe, but rather that the methods and venues chosen by the government has become increasingly intrusive.  When the world had the Soviet Union to look to for setting the bad example, we had a perspective.  We knew what freedom was.  It’s not that I wish to see a regime such as the Soviet Union rise to power again, but we, America, is becoming the bad example.  And it is we-the-people who are allowing it, and dare I say, demanding it in the name of national security.  We are demanding our government seize control over our lives.  With every bit of freedom we relinquish we set a dangerous precedent.  The restrictions and surveillance are eased in, under the cover of safety and necessity.  Before we know it we will be  ”telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free”.