More News from the Former United States of America

Thomas Sowell asks some important questions in an article on Townhall.com today entitled Dismantling America. To get to the heart of the matter:

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

Well, no actually, no it doesn't, or at least it didn't. Hillary Clinton famously said that criticizing this (speaking Bush) or any other administration was patriotic. Now suddenly it's not? Is this how Obama plans to shut everyone up, by holding their parents and loved ones hostage?

This sounds like Saddam Hussein, or Mussolini, or Stalin, or ... It sounds a lot like what we hear from dissidents of tyrannous regimes who have escaped to America. What it doesn't sound like is America itself.

In a similar vein is Frisked and Questioned when moving from the cell to the yard by Sofa at Coordinated Illumination. Unfortunately the blog has no permalink so you will have to scroll down the page, or look in the archives as time progresses.

But Sofa is correct, by installing fascists "police" to search everyone, their luggage, and scrutinize their identities, we have done the terrorists work for them. They have already won. Look folks, liberty is a risky business. You may be offended at times. You may fail in an undertaking. You may be attacked by criminals. But Benjamin Franklin was right that those would would give up essential liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security. Perhaps we can have everyone declare which side they are on now, and then the security minded can be herded into a compound where they can be sheltered, protected, and coddled, while the rest of us can get on with living in freedom. Of course, those inside the compound lose all Constitution protections, including the right to vote. But then they shouldn't mind as long as they get absolute security.