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A Voice from Fly-Over Country
July 29, 2013
Abolishing Privacy and Securing Tyranny
by Robert L. Hale
fitzgerald griffin foundation
MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA — America's elected representatives no longer represent the people who elected them. Instead, America is led by a rogue government. Elected officials see themselves as superior to the common people; they believe they must dictate and rule, rather than provide basic services and represent our legitimate interests.
Congress, as well as state and local government bodies, no longer serves a once-sovereign people. The sweeping transition of our representative government into true tyranny is effectively complete. At every level of government, the rise of agencies and bureaus employing more than 20 million people is accepted without question.
Virtually any endeavor that citizens wish to pursue is fraught with government rules, regulations, restrictions, and prior consent requirements. Then, as a condition of continued permission to pursue our endeavors, we are required to report what was and is being done, and then to pay fees to support those to whom we must report.
As a condition of being permitted to run our lives and businesses, government agents swarm over us and snoop into every aspect of our lives.
With very few exceptions, these endless and generally mindless reports to government agencies serve no legitimate or useful purpose. As a condition of being permitted to run our lives and businesses, government agents swarm over us and snoop into every aspect of our lives. This intrusion is, we are told, necessary to ensure that we harm no one, that we honor the environment, and that we comply with government mandates. Of course, it is also necessary to ensure that we pay permit fees, tax assessments, and other exactions as demanded.
What does all this have to do with privacy and tyranny? Everything. The only way our privacy can be invaded is if we permit it. The biggest transgressor of our privacy is the very government that is supposed to be our servant. One of government's fundamental functions as a servant in a free society is to assist in securing that privacy. That function includes ensuring that we can live our lives with the absolute minimum of interference from others, particularly the government.
The biggest transgressor of our privacy is the very government that is supposed to be our servant.
For example, the Internal Revenue Service, coupled with the Patriot Act, strips every citizen, regardless of age, of financial privacy protections. The misnamed Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) not only removes any privacy protections regarding our health, but it puts the government in charge of what care we may have and from whom we may obtain it.
The Environmental Protection Agency, it argues, protects the "environment," not citizens. In so doing, it has photographed every square inch of property from satellites. Armed with this electronic invasion, it routinely harasses property owners, demanding that they prove they have not improperly or without permit done anything to their property that this unaccountable agency has not approved.
Under the hate speech laws and regulations, which violate our right to free speech, that have erupted in our legal system, the government proclaims it can read our minds -- the ultimate invasion of privacy. Those accused of hate crimes face the burden of proving that what they said was not motivated by hate. Of course, the definition of what constitutes hate does not exist, leaving these accused persons facing the impossible task of defending themselves. The outcome of hate crime prosecutions involves the accused persons agreeing to bureaucratically imposed reporting; this includes agreements to regularly report their future actions so these agencies can ensure that no further hate crime is being considered or committed.
When the government has unrestricted access to every aspect of our finances (it does); to every aspect of our medical histories (it does); when our physicians are required to report every visit and the details of that visit to the government (they do); when the government photographs every inch of our property and uses that information to direct our freedom to use it (it does); when the government records every phone call and every email we send, and photographs the front and back of every letter we send (it does); when the government claims it can read our minds and thus the intent of every utterance, thus accusing us of hate crimes (it does), there is no freedom.
Finally, all of the above are undertaken by the government after it has confiscated our hard-earned dollars through taxation, so it can use our money to fund these invasive activities.
When you next hear well-dressed, aggressive individuals tell you, "We're with the government, and we're here to help you" -- one thing is true. You need help, but not theirs. Once privacy is extinguished, tyranny is secured.
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A Voice from Fly-Over Country is copyright © 2013 by Robert L. Hale and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. All rights reserved.
Robert L. Hale received his J.D. in law from Gonzaga University Law School in Spokane, Washington. He is founder and director of a non-profit public interest law firm. For more than three decades he has been involved in drafting proposed laws and counseling elected officials in ways to remove burdensome and unnecessary rules and regulations.
See a complete biographical sketch.
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