DO NOT CONFUSE DISSENT WITH DISLOYALTY

DO NOT CONFUSE DISSENT WITH DISLOYALTY

The War on Terror is this generations Communist Threat. In the late 40s and early ‘50s McCarthyism used the treat of Communism to suppress dissent (remember, during that same period, the Korean War took place). So during this first decade of the 21^st century, the so-called War on Terror has been used in the same way. When regular citizens, scholars, and even members of the United States Congress ask why our military is entrenched in Iraq, they are labeled as subversives and un-American. An example is the current Administration’s use of the War on Terror as a means to conduct invasions of our privacy with its domestic surveillance program. Any time that a program’s existence is questioned, the response from the Administration is the catch-all phrase, “National Security.”

Wasn’t there a similar idea in George Orwell’s book 1984? The story takes place in a nightmarish dystopia where the omnipresent State enforces perfect conformity among members of a totalitarian Party through indoctrination, propaganda, fear, and ruthless punishment. The novel introduced the concepts of the ever-present, all-seeing Big Brother. Doesn’t Big Brother sound a lot like the NSA domestic surveillance program?

A definition of McCarthyism includes the practice of publicizing accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence and the use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition. That sounds a lot like what is going on today against those people that question our involvement in Iraq, the existence of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and the NSA domestic surveillance program. 9/11 was the pretext for the current political climate.

Just something to think about………………..

Rob