Senator Rand Paul Teaches PATRIOT ACT 101 to Congress, and Americans

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.     

--Benjamin Franklin

The controversy over the USA PATRIOT ACT is not about whether to stop terrorists.  It is about how much power, arbitrary and unregulated power, the Government should have, and the legal limits the Constitution places on the government as the supreme law of the land in the 4th amendment.  Senator Paul makes the argument that Americans ought to be as free in the hunt for terrorists as we are (or should be) in the hunt for criminals, where the 4th amendment regularly restrains with mostly understanding approval from the public.  It is really not "terrorists" that are being put under surveillance, being screened, searched, and even seized at airports, and having their personal information data-mined on an ongoing basis by the Leviathan called the Dept. of Homeland Security as well as local and state governments since Sept. 11th.  It is "free Americans" in their daily lives.  Ironic, is it not?

So it's about time that someone taught a lesson on the PATRIOT ACT, and on the occasion of its coming up for renewal Senator Paul took it up.  It is not just the Congress that is ignorant on just how bad the so-called USA PATRIOT ACT is.  It is the ignorant, easily manipulated, flag-waving electorate that sent them there.  It's time for a hard look at this dangerous legislation to dispel the inexcusable ignorance that is leading to the killing of our freedoms while claiming to "defend" them from terrorists.  Senator Paul's arguments in this are clear and convincing.  Unless you believe that the U.S. government should have unlimited totalitarian powers, contrary to the Constitution, you should reconsider your view about the PATRIOT ACT and just how "necessary" it is, and what its ramifications are to freedom in America.  This is not a partisan issue.  It is a Constitutional and 4th amendment issue.  This is also why the late Senator Byrd changed his votes and withdrew his support on it, whenever provisional renewals came up. 

But since Congress stupidly voted to extend it, everything said will explain the freedom from government intrusion (and identity thieves) that you lost with that vote, under phony pretense of its patriotic sir-name!  Americans are foolishly encaging themselves to a rogue government that has grabbed the most unprecedented powers for itself, since the one we opposed in 1776, which Senator Paul alludes to also.  (Well, on second thought, the greatest power seized since Lincoln in 1861, which most Americans today are just as ignorant of, and ignorance is not bliss).