Seventeen years ago today (9/11/01), an Islamic terrorist group attacked liberty in America when they hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed two of them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in NYC and one into the Pentagon. The fourth jet — believed to be heading for the US Capital — crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers and regain control.
Today we remember those tragic events: the thousands who died, the first responders who risked their lives to save others along with the many who died trying, and the heroism of the Flight 93 passengers on the fourth plane.
Following that horrendous day, Americans vowed to never forget this tragedy and to do all they could to make sure that the terrorists would never win. While such sentiments are noble and inspiring, they have proven over the years to be little more than political rhetoric used by big-government Democrats AND Republicans to chip away at liberty and freedom in the name of safety and security.
In short, liberty also died on 9/11.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The Patriot Act. The Patriot Act II. Spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA). Fake cell towers to tap your cell phone. These are just a few of the ways Big Brother government has destroyed our God-given right to liberty since 9/11.
Most of this attack on liberty obviously began under George W. Bush — one of the many evidences that “compassionate conservative” was really code for “progressive” — and grew under Barack Obama. Unfortunately, the trend toward tyranny has continued under Donald Trump.
In a piece I wrote last year commemorating 9/11, I documented the host of ways that Trump — who claimed in 2011 that he predicted 9/11 in his book The America We Deserve — was keeping Bush’s and Obama’s terrorism policies in place.
Since that piece, Trump and the GOP have taken the assault on liberty to new heights.
After being given control of Washington, they created the US Cyber Command within the NSA, an idea originally proposed by Obama, giving the agency greater power to spy on Americans. Trump and Co. have also reauthorized FISA-702 to give the NSA authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on Americans.
Cyber security and electronic surveillance are becoming code words to disguise policies designed to destroy liberty. For example, though not yet law, the Department of Homeland Security Reauthorization Act sitting in Congress will include amendments giving DHS power to monitor our elections.
Who could have imagined that the rationale used to justify the government’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks would be the same rationale used to justify the creation of an army of armed federal agents to “monitor” polling places? Talk about unintended consequences. Then again, maybe they aren’t unintended after all.
Liberty died on 9/11, not at the hands of Islamic terrorists but at the hands of our own government.
David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative. His politically incorrect and always “right” columns are also featured on NOQReport.com.
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