How Can We Get Our Freedom Back?

The ACLU has a page up showcasing how the Bush administration has nibbled away at the freedoms guaranteed to us by the U.S.Constitution. (Link provided by Massive Braincase) and the ACLU site also has a scorecard on the freedoms that have been eroded since 9-11-01.

I note that, as appellate review and the legislative process continue to make the sausage of freedom, some of these erosions, such as the TIPS program, have themselves been eroded. I also note that, as the democratic process has protected us from some of the more egregious violations that the Ashcrofts of the world have attempted to promulgate, the ACLU's scorecard refuses to add to the score realized by the people. They have it as 24 to 0, while I have it as 19 to 5, based on their own data.

Zero Base Thinkers do not take sides. Single interest groups, however, are not thinkers, they are advocates. The politics of power are in effect equally for Lyndon LaRouche as the ACLU, the Sierra Club as well as the Nazi Party, the ACLU vs. the Republican National Committee. We thinkers can decry the erosion of our freedoms at the same time that we note that the system is working, in some small measure, to protect us. We can love Bush when he does something right, and hate him when he acts as the power mad pol that he is as well.

As Shakespeare put it, it is easier to whisper words of advice from cover, than to risk all at the point of attack. Bush is doing the best that he can, and I submit to you that that isn't half-bad. I cringe when I consider what would have taken place if Gore had been president on 9-11. No doubt more speeches about "cowardly criminals" instead of moral clarity referring to "an act of war," would have been in evidence, but I challenge Bush to take what political capital he has left and strike a blow for freedom before the nay-sayers and the diversity-weenies win the day. It seems that Bush, by unremitting delay and confusion, has lost the momentum needed to commence a pre-emptive war against Iraq. We shall see what he can accomplish before his lack of direction loses him the Congress in the mid-term elections, now only a little over a month away. Nice words can get one only so far, now is the time for action. And if action will not ensure that we are all safer from the Islamofascists, how can we get our freedoms back? Or was Ben Franklin right, when he said that those who will give up their freedoms for safety, deserve neither freedom nor safety?