Thank you, National Security Agency surveillance controversy, which has the whole planet talking about massive, suffocating spying and our liberty, our rights to privacy.
Politically, this has been the most interesting – and confusing – week of my life.
Players are not lining up on their regular sides. Conservatives and liberals are standing hip-to-hip, both for and against what the government stealthily is doing, with few persons in on the truth.
Is it reasonable that a conservative can listen to the wackiest left-winger in the U.S. Senate, Al Franken (D-MN), who routinely conflates his comedic and political careers, defend the sneaky-hush NSA and agree with him?
Once again this morning, the liberal Los Angeles Titanic, on page 2, helpfully instructed us on a rudimentary philosophical difference between the Left and the Right.
Or did they?
Fortunately, President Obama, as usual, has contributed nothing to the buzzing dialogue. So we don’t have to worry about his loud anvil chorus of uninformed sycophants lockstepping with him over the cliff, into a steaming h pot of non-kosher chicken soup.
I recoiled instinctively this morning when reading left-wing wannabe commentator Robin Abcarian’s predictably emotionally thought-through essay: Typically, she opened in an anguished state of mind, impatiently dismissing screwball Eddie Snowden, the rookie spy, as a crumb in this mysterious, confusing cake, unworthy of study.
“The issue,” asserts Ms. Abcarian, “is whether his claims are true” – “whether we think allowing government access to our phone calls, emails, video and voice chats, photo and file transfers is the price we must pay for security in the post-9/11 world.”
I believe – though I am not yet ready to lay down my life for this principle – that the Rookie Spy must be found, interrogated and prosecuted.
I believe in individual rights ahead of the collective.
There will be time later to thoroughly examine the government’s suspected, and likely, wrongdoing.
Proven bad people must be punished. Suspected bad people should be immediately detained and then prosecuted to a determination.
One of The People’s most sacred rights is to be protected, in this case from the likes of the Rookie Spy, who smells perilously odious from this distance.
