At this writing, the saga of Edward Snowden still dominates the news. There may have never been a more poignant example of how easily our media and our elected representatives can take their eyes off the ball and begin to major on minors. Snowden may be a traitor, or he may be a hero, but he is not the real story here. Chasing after the story of Snowden’s plight is like trying to swat a gnat when there is a lion charging you.
No doubt Snowden revealed secret information illegally. That makes him a criminal, but how could we be so consumed with that in light of what he exposed? There has never been a more expansive and intrusive spying on its own citizens by any government in history as ours is now doing to us. Our government is guilty of far worse than anything Snowden did. There has never been a more blatant and dangerous violation of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, or a more far-reaching abuse of power in our history. Pursuing Snowden may be appropriate, but we should have ten thousand agents going after the ones who did this to the American people for every one that is chasing Snowden.
“The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions”
This is a popular saying because it has so often proved true. Our government is claiming that it only had the best of intentions for gathering almost unlimited private information on the American people. They claim that it was done to protect us from terrorist attacks and criminals. Some have reasoned that if we are not terrorists or criminals, we should have nothing to worry about. Really? This is the same rationale that every police state in history used to set up totalitarian control over its people.
We are naïve to trust anyone with such power, the power of surveillance and control that far eclipses what any government has ever had before, and there is a growing mountain of evidence that this power is already being used for other sinister purposes, like suppressing political opposition and destroying the businesses and wealth of those who support causes counter to the Administration’s. This is totalitarian control at its most basic level and the foundation of every police state. If we buy into the good intentions excuse, we would have to be the most naïve people to succumb to such tyranny.
This evidence has been almost constantly in the news. Also, books have been written by reputable authorities to sound the alarm. However, in case you have missed this, we will devote a coming Bulletin to just the highlights. They all reveal a pattern of slowly implementing tactics to establish a police state in America. What is worse (and it does get worse) is what Snowden brought to light. Our government has built an apparatus for the most terrifying police state there has ever been. They not only have the power to see me typing these words right now, but they also have the power to watch you reading them. That is not paranoia; it is has been acknowledged. This is Orwellian prophecy fulfilled.
Why Is America Going So Meekly?
The whole world is outraged by what has come to light by our NSA domestic spying network. They became even more alarmed when they found out that it was not just American citizens whose communications and movements were being monitored, but they are being spied on too. It was disclosed that soon the NSA will have the capability of doing the same with almost everyone on the planet. The question most of the world is now asking is what will the American government do with this power, and why are American citizens being so passive about this?
Why did our media and elected officials suddenly become preoccupied with Snowden and stop protesting the NSA’s domestic spying? Did the NSA have something on them that they were able to hold over their heads? The fact that information obtained by the NSA is already being used in this way has to be suspected by the meekness of those who should be challenging this with everything in their means. What else could have gotten the media and our elected representatives off of an issue this big to focus everything on Snowden?
Consider what this knowledge will now do to the integrity of government. Granted, the Republican opposition leadership has been timid even before this unprecedented surveillance apparatus was revealed, but now we cannot help but to suspect that their meekness is the result of the government holding something over them. Just as problematic, every time the Administration muscles its way to the passing of legislation, it will be suspected of using private information to corral opposition.
Even the left leaning Politico carried a story lamenting that Snowden’s greatest fear was coming to pass—that possibly the greatest threat to our freedom ever could be revealed and nothing would be done about it. Is this too big to see, too big to believe?
Crime and Punishment
Snowden broke his oath as an intelligence officer, and he broke the law by exposing classified information. This does make him a criminal. Even so, Snowden may be the most noble, courageous criminal in U.S. history. He may well have done this to keep an even more sacred oath—to defend the Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic. Regardless of his motives, what Snowden did was to give us a chance to save our Republic.
There is probably much more evidence to come out and be considered in this, but to date the evidence points to Snowden having an awakening to what he and many others were being used by the government to do. Right now it appears his conscience got to him and he did what had to be done while there was still time to stop this most frightening potential tool of tyranny yet devised by men. Even so, the reason he did this is not the main issue here. The issue is what the NSA is doing to all of us, and soon the whole world.
Our government spying on Americans like this is appalling. When you combine it with the other cascading revelations about the use of the IRS, the FBI, the ATF, and the DOJ to undermine or destroy political opponents, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that not only is the apparatus of the most terrible police state now in place, but the tactics of a police state are already being used.
The ACLU Joins Conservatives
This may be almost as shocking as what the NSA is doing to us, but it is true. The ACLU stood up boldly and quickly to declare that what the NSA is doing is possibly the biggest violation of our Constitution ever, and they filed a suit against the government.
All that our country was founded and built upon is at stake, and our fate could be decided over the next few months. We are now facing something much bigger than any political party or liberal vs. conservative issue. If this is allowed to stand, then the door has been opened to the most oppressive totalitarian state in history, made possible by technology.
Another Revolution?
The American Revolution was not a tax revolt as those who twist history would have us believe. The stifling and increasing taxation was number seventeen on their list of grievances. Far worse for the colonists were things like having their children kidnapped and made to serve on British ships, having their property abused and even confiscated, and being treated like an occupied people rather than British subjects. The things our own government is doing to us now could be even worse.
The American Revolution is unique in history because it was begun and led by the wealthiest in the land, not the disenfranchised. This has not happened before or since. Those who signed the Declaration of Independence were the one percent. If you think they did this out of greed, just not wanting to pay more taxes, there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They really did risk their fortunes when they had something to risk, and they did it in the face of almost impossible odds. Two of the signers of the Declaration of Independence knew that the moment they signed it they had lost everything they had because British forces were camped right next to their estates. They signed anyway.
All who signed the Declaration of Independence knew that if they did not win the war they were starting, they would all be hung as traitors. They did this knowing they had to defeat the most powerful army in the world, and they did not even yet have an army, and for years they would stand alone because no other government in the world gave them a chance. They signed anyway. They endured five years of almost constant defeats, each year looking more hopeless than the last. They fought on.
We are in desperate need of such noble, resolute souls to stand against the present tyranny. We cannot let what our Founders, and so many others who have sacrificed so much for us to have this freedom, be lost on our watch. It is now going to take the same kind of courage and fortitude to save the Republic as it took to found it. It is our time. Will we measure up?
The zeal with which our government is going after Snowden should cause even the most trusting of the government to be suspicious. Forcing the planes of other Heads of State to be grounded out of fear Snowden may be on them is not only extreme—it’s unprecedented. Snowden has obviously done all the harm that he can do, so why this obsession? Obviously, it is to make him an example to any others who might be considering blowing the whistle.
If it is proven that Snowden is a traitor, or that he did this as an agent of a foreign government, then he should be tracked down and prosecuted. If he did it for the reasons he claims, and at this writing this seems to be the case, then he deserves the Medal of Freedom, not prosecution.
Are We The “Useful Idiots?”
Marx detested liberals, calling them “useful idiots.” He didn’t like them, but he knew they were so naïve and easily manipulated that they could be used until absolute power had been seized. Then the liberals and the intelligentsia would be the first to be snuffed out.
Remember Einstein’s definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results? How is it that those who are supposed to be the smartest get so fooled every time, helping regimes gain power that will wipe them out as soon as they do? We should be encouraged that the ACLU woke up so fast to this unprecedented threat. Liberals are actually the most at risk from totalitarian control, but like the Jews in the Holocaust going to the showers thinking they were actually going to get a shower, the same tragedy is repeated over and over.
Idealism is a drug that makes you feel good while it is killing you. There is no political party, group, or single American that is not at risk from what we now have hanging over us. Everything America was born for and stands for is now threatened. We have all been duped, but now we must all wake up or we may not wake up at all. Even if our government officials did have good intentions in setting up this all-powerful, all-seeing domestic spying apparatus, who is to guarantee that those who succeed them will have the same good intentions? This cannot be allowed to stand.
Even if this was done with the best of intentions, good intentions are no excuse for violating the Constitution. Every officer and elected official takes an oath to defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic. Those who authorized and constructed the NSA spy apparatus have violated this oath. Those who continue to defend this most blatant of all violations of the 4th Amendment against unlawful search and seizure are obvious enemies of all that America was built upon and has stood for. However, this is bigger than us. Those responsible for this are not just enemies of the American people—this is a crime against humanity.
This being said, those who do what Snowden did, and work to undo this unprecedented domestic spying apparatus, should be given a pass.
Our Loving Enemies
The Russian newspaper Pravda has published a number of articles warning America of the tyranny that was encroaching upon us. Last year they published an article on the evidence that proved that freedom of the press no longer exists in America. Sometimes your enemies will tell you things your friends won’t but you need to hear. Pravda may have been gloating, but they were right.
It has been obvious for a long time that the mainstream media in America is, at the very least, inhibited, if not controlled. Even so, there is reason for hope. Their bias has been so obvious that now only about 35% of Americans get their news from the mainstream media. Blogs and alternative news sources are now where Americans are getting their information.
The majority of Americans are smarter, more knowledgeable, and more resourceful than the present Administration or the mainstream media gives them credit for. Even so, alternative news sources are also under threat by our government now as it moves to tax internet use, which would bring it under potential IRS control.
As we have been finding out lately, the KGB was right when it was disclosed that they never thought of the CIA as their counterpart, but rather the IRS. They could see better than we could that the government’s real power to control its citizens was the IRS. The abuses just revealed that the IRS was used to target this Administration’s political opponents confirm this.
With our health care set to be managed by the IRS (that is correct), it will put all of our records, health and financial, in their hands and in their control, with the authority to draw from our accounts without our permission. Might that explain why the head of the IRS visited the White House over 160 times in this Administration, three times more than even the most frequently visiting Cabinet member?
I have never liked conspiracy theories, or the paranoia of those who promote them. However, the recent scandals and revelations of the way our government agencies have been used, and then add the NSA revelations on top of them, makes the paranoids look like they are the ones who really understand what is happening.
We must resist paranoia. We can’t let the knowledge that we’re being watched inhibit us, but even if it takes more courage than ever to stand up now, we must resolve not to be controlled by fear. We must not begin overreacting because of speculation. The well-established and admitted facts clearly establish what is happening. Granted, it is unprecedented and extreme to the point of seeming unbelievable, so let’s not muddy the waters anymore with speculation.
Egypt—The New Leaders of The Free World?
Without visible leadership, Egyptians have thrown off their yoke a second time in two years. Granted they are just entering a long and hard struggle for their freedom. It is likely that the struggle in Egypt will get worse before it gets better. However, they are demonstrating the one crucial ingredient that is essential to gain and maintain freedom—courage.
It is a tell-tale revelation that the U.S. Administration is only grudgingly backing the new freedom movement (which is really the first one reawakened). Our government is lamenting the overthrow of President Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood because he was duly elected. However, Morsi abdicated his legitimacy as a constitutional President when he started unilaterally changing the Constitution, suspending the Egyptian Supreme Court, and starting to unilaterally implement Sharia in their place.
Morsi put allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood mission of implementing Sharia above the Egyptian Constitution. So the people again did what our American Founding Fathers said every American citizen has the right and responsibility to do if our government starts violating the Constitution. That was the stated reason for the Second Amendment—that the right of American citizens to bear arms must not be infringed—so the American people would keep in their hands the power to throw off the tyranny if our government went awry.
I am not advocating forceful resistance, but our government has gone awry and has built the most threatening instruments of tyranny ever devised. Can we trust anyone with that power, especially when they have already been proven to abuse it, and to disregard our Constitution to the degree it has been doing lately?
The checks and balances placed in our government were put there to protect us from what it is now starting to do to us. It proves once again that you can have the best form of government but still have bad government if you have weak or bad people in it. At least one reason we are in this jeopardy is because those have the authority to bring the checks and balances have proven too weak or timid to use it. Why?
At the end of the Book of Revelation, the cowardly are the first to be thrown into the lake of fire, even before murderers, sorcerers, deceivers, and those who have done all other manner of abominable acts. The Republican leadership in Congress has been so impotent and cowardly in standing against what is being done to us that it could very well be the cause of the end of the Republican Party, even if we are able to preserve the Republic.
Because of our present lack of principled, courageous, and resolute leadership, it may take the same kind of public uprising in America that we are seeing in Egypt to throw off the yoke we are now being shackled with. If we are to recover our government that is “of the people, for the people, and by the people,” it just may be the best thing for the people to have to do it.
SOLUTION
The cascading scandals and revelations of overreach by our own government have been overwhelming to the point of not seeming real. They are real. We are in real jeopardy of succumbing to a tyranny far worse than what the colonists faced in 1776. We must take our stand now. We are in need of a second American Revolution to recover the principles and freedoms won by the first. It does not have to be violent, but the longer we wait to take action the more costly it will likely be.
We must also realize that in times such as these, some of the greatest patriots will be branded traitors, and some of the worst traitors can be branded patriots. We must resolve now that we will not be swayed by how we are portrayed by our government, by our media, or even by our fellow Americans. We must resolve to just do the right thing with the conviction that liberty is worth paying any price to preserve.
If we go down in history as traitors while trying to do the right thing, we can be comforted that it will all be straightened out at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Regardless of what men may think of us now, we must take a stand for what is right for the sake of what is right, and for our children. We must not be the generation that lost what so many paid such a high price to give us.
If our Founding Fathers had lost The Revolutionary War, they would have been counted among history’s worst villains, and they would have been hung as traitors. That was the risk they took, and throughout most of the war it looked like that was how it would end up. They stood for what they did because they knew it was right, not because they thought they would win. For five years it looked like they had little chance of winning, but they fought on. That is the kind of courage that eternal values stand on.
Right now our government seems to be holding all the cards and all the power. However, we have divinely powerful weapons, such as truth, honor, integrity, and love—even love for those who may misunderstand what we are doing and for those who are trying to oppress us. Above all, we must have such love for our King that we will never compromise His truth, nor surrender or retreat before the enemies of His truth.
Almost all of our present representatives in government are proving that they are what the Lord called “hirelings.” The system has gone so awry that it promotes people of the lowest character into some of the highest positions. There are some true and noble souls still in government, both as elected officials and bureaucrats, but they are rare. If we are to preserve our Republic, there must be a revolution in the way we choose our leaders and representatives.
For those who are in the government who are of a different spirit, some will have to do what Snowden did—be a whistleblower. They will have to sound the alarm and then be willing to take the heat. There will be heat because one cannot stand in the way of totalitarian control without repercussions.
For our part, let us not be so quick to judge the whistleblowers, but look at what they are exposing. The only thing that makes sense out of the Administration’s over-the-top pursuit of Snowden, who has likely already done all the damage he can do, is now to make an example of him to keep others in line who may be considering doing something similar. The present Administration has become known for being the most brutal in its treatment of whistleblowers, so it will take uncommon courage to be one. We should know enough already not to pile on them just because our government and the media do.
This is not to prematurely justify Snowden, as we do not yet know what his real motives were. However, what we do know is that a government that starts looking at its own citizens as the greatest threat has itself become the greatest threat to its citizens. That is precisely what our Department of Homeland Security did when it put out the memo that the greatest terrorist threats to America come from Evangelical Christians who believe in the end-time prophecies of The Bible, Veterans, and Second Amendment groups. The group they left off of this threat list is the one that has been responsible for almost every terrorist attack in the last half century—Islamic extremists! That should be a clear enough revelation of their real intent.
It appears there may not be anyone in government that we can look to at this time for leadership. However, that does not mean we do not have the kind of leadership available in America that we will need for the times to come. We must all take the leadership we can within our own circles and be ready to link up with others when the trumpet call is heard.
The Tipping Point
President Obama said that we would need to have the discussion about trading freedom for security. America is right now choosing between the security of a prison and freedom, and if we are going to remain a free people we need to resolutely choose freedom.
We can count on 30% of Americans to choose security. These will side with the government and believe government to be the answer to every problem. The majority of those in conventional media are in this 30%, so they can make it look like the majority. However, they are in fact a minority.
We can likewise count on 30% doubting everything the government says or does and will, without even thinking, choose freedom over government intrusion. Everything the government or the Obama Administration is doing is not wrong, but as the founders of our government warned, we must always be skeptical of government if we are going to remain free from tyranny.
About 40% of Americans are between the two camps described above, and can go either way. This was the same breakdown of Americans in 1776 between the patriots and the loyalists, and it has remained about the same since. For now we must throw off the yoke of thinking in terms of getting the magical 51% majority needed to pass a bill or win an election. We don’t need a majority to save our country as much as we need courage. We need the courage to stand even if we are a tiny minority, and even if we must stand alone.
This crisis could be settled by a very small minority. Marx has been proven true when he said that a small minority of the passionate will rule the majority who are indifferent. The great tipping points in history that have brought profound cultural change have consistently come from less than the square root of 1% of the population affected. That means that less than one hundred people can profoundly impact and determine the course of one million.
Maybe that is why the Lord made Gideon send away tens of thousands who wanted to fight with him, until he got down to just three hundred men. With God, three hundred were enough even in the face the massive army arrayed against them. The longer the odds, the better the Lord seems to like it.
Tolkien portrayed his vision of these times in The Lord of the Rings.
In his prophecy, the evil coming out of the bowels of the earth was worse than the world had ever faced before. Those who stood against the hordes from hell were few in number, but they resolved to fight in the face of almost certain death because it was the right thing to do. They fought well, but it took just two persevering hobbits to undo all of the power of the evil one and bring the victory.
You might be one of those hobbits. The smallest and seemingly most insignificant of our neighbors might be one. Therefore, let us treat everyone in the fight with honor. As the last battle unfolded, the heroes were equally as shocked by those who turned out to be in the enemy’s camp as they were by some who turned out to be on their side. Be discerning, not suspicious, and stay open to a great unity that will come to many diverse groups.
We must keep it simple and just do the right thing. Even if we fail we will be able to stand before our King without shame. It will be much better to take our stand and fail than not to have stood. We already know the end of the story; it is written in our Book. We win. The King is going to come, and His will is going to be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is time for boldness and courage. It is time for the righteous to arise.
