First off, welcome to all the new readers. This is basically a stripped-down news aggregation site, from the point of view of someone very worried about a point hidden somewhere in our future when total surveillance becomes the norm, and syncs with other government-controlled technologies to become an almost-perfect digital prison for all of society. I sincerely hope the trend can be reversed before its too late. I still believe, like many of those involved with the Ron Paul campaigns, that this republic can truly be reborn, that total surveillance is not our fate to be quietly accepted, but only one possible future that must be actively, and peacefully, resisted. We choose liberty, privacy, and peace, and work to realize that goal, if not for our sake, then for our children, and their children. I, for one, don’t wish to see my children grow up to meet a Leviathan armed with the most all-encompassing surveillance bureaucracy the world has ever seen. I prefer to see my children live their lives as free individuals, not tagged and monitored cattle, being led toward a kill pen. I also prefer that they didn’t turn to me in some distant time and ask why I did nothing to prevent this mess.
No, I resist. In my own small way. Life is too short, and too beautiful, to allow such small, bureaucratic vermin spend our money to build the means of our lifelong bondage. The value of our money is stripped, the lives of thousands of foreigners are snuffed out, and an ancient, evil creature wraps itself in our flag, propagandizing in the name of those who gave their lives in eternal opposition to that abomination, blaspheming the ideals of our Declaration, making a mockery of the spirit of its creation, when, as Lord Acton said, “ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden from Latin folios–burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man.”
There is no fate but what we make. We have it within our power to begin the world again. We see total, all-ecompassing surveillance on the horizon, accompanied by total war and the yet unborn centuries of death and destruction that will inevitably follow, and we make a choice. Passivity and acceptance, or resistance. This is a haven for those who choose to resist. It would be easy to ignore the news and settle in to an easy slavery. And slavery is what it will be, for us in our old age, and our children. The gift of liberty is the rarest in history, but where in those small windows of time where it has been given life, civilization has arisen and flourished.
I write this also because the one writer most responsible for my making any attempt at writing at all, Justin Raimondo, has late-stage cancer. It’s strange to think that the greatest libertarian essayist of my generation, in my opinion, one who I’ve studied for several years, and never fail to read, could leave us at any moment. A void would be left that could never be filled by anyone else. And the sudden question of his mortality mas made me contemplate our duty to give our voice, to make our outrage known. If we see the coming catastrophe, a galloping totalitarian State with virtually omnipotent technological power, it is our duty to say something. To do nothing, yet knowing something must be done, is to become a deserter in the peaceful, intellectual war for liberty. Which brings me to a quote from Ludwig von Mises that I try to remind myself of every day:
“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. No one can stand aside with unconcern: the interests of everyone hang on the result.”
I, for one, am going to say quite a lot in this space. Read if you will.
And now just a small comment on the latest “scandal” sweeping DC, the “Nunes Memo”. The brouhaha over the memo is very likely to end up being a giant slice of nothing, and I base that purely on the observation that Congress has never once cared about surveillance overreaches on the part of the intelligence community. Ever. How short do they think our memories are? They voted to extend and expand Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act for another six years just last month, allowing the NSA and god knows who else free rein to conduct the type of mass surveillance that Edward Snowden risked his life and liberty to expose.
It’s a storm in a teacup, a sideshow of a sideshow. The real war against total surveillance is being fought on a different front.
I welcome all manner of correspondence, which can be sent to digitalsunset86@gmail.com
