Browsed by
Tag: security

Banning Refugees Is Cowardice, Not Vigilance – Article by Sean J. Rosenthal

Banning Refugees Is Cowardice, Not Vigilance – Article by Sean J. Rosenthal

Comments 2 comments
The New Renaissance HatSean J. Rosenthal
******************************

Donald Trump’s ban on people of certain nationalities entering the United States – now buffeted about by court orders, clarifications, and defiance – is a systematic rejection of the principle of Freedom of Movement with no impetus other than unacceptable, widespread cowardice.

The September 11 terrorist attacks cannot excuse such a grievous violation of rights. Terrorism is domestically a statistically trivial threat. The countries banned by Trump had little relation to 9/11, and the people denied entry to the United States are just as harmless (if not more so) than the average American. Neither reasons nor sudden trauma justify Trump’s actions – only cowardice.

In opposition to courageous principles like Freedom of Movement, discretion is courage’s institutional nemesis. Fear-induced discretion splits principles like scientists split atoms, producing explosively dangerous results.

Except to the extent courts stop him, Trump has undermined Freedom of Movement through an order to keep out people from Middle Eastern countries designated as countries of concern by the Obama administration.

Refugees already thoroughly vetted as safe, including business owners and participants in the Iraq war who have lived for years in the United States – all denied entry, all forced to beg for the government to wisely exercise its discretion in the face of an arbitrary burden.

Trump’s immigration policies are unwise and unjust. More tellingly, Trump’s restrictions on movement suffer more fully from another sin – a lack of courage.

Individual or Systemic Courage

At an individual level, it’s true that courage tends to be an overrated virtue. The image of “courageous” people often looks like warriors courting danger guns-blazing because they lacked the patience and ingenuity to find better solutions. Thus, courage is for the warrior fighting to the death.

Among non-violent “courageous” acts, contrarians who “stand up for what they believe in” often get courage points for being edgy or brutalist, as if people deserve praise for offering unconvincing evidence against social pressure. Generally, courage tends to be praised relative to the inactions of other people, forgetting that people often avoid doing certain things because they should not be done.

Moreover, fear is often unreasonable in ways immune to argument, making courage a weak appeal. For instance, traveling by planes is much safer than traveling by cars, but planes paralyze people in ways that statistics cannot cure because the fear of flying is a feeling, not a fact.

Similarly, terrorism is a statistically trivial cause of death in the United States, even including 9/11 and especially excluding that outlier, but terrorism causes widespread fears orders of magnitudes more crippling than the actual violence. To give a personal example, I have a totally unreasonable aversion to walking over storm drains and similar parts of sidewalks that leads me to walk around them.

Condemning fear rarely assuages it, and demanding courage rarely emboldens, because personality, ingrained perceptions and idiosyncrasies matter more than reasons for explaining fear and courage.

The Courage to be Free

Nevertheless, good institutions require courage.

For example, Freedom of Speech is a courageous principle. Freedom of Speech allows people to profess the wise and unwise, just and unjust, beautiful and vulgar. The dangers of the government deciding which speech falls into which categories justifies overriding particularized fears because of the courageous belief that free people can generally promote a better, more beautiful world through discourse. The courage required to permit others to speak, not knowing what they may say, far exceeds the courage of merely saying something unpopular.

Historically, fear commonly led to censorship. The Athenians sinned against philosophy by executing Socrates for corrupting the young, a fear of the influence of discourse. Similarly, the Pope compiled an Index of banned books and sought to censor them, fearful of the influential power of written words. Fear governed the world’s old order.

After weighing the liberating potential and corrupting dangers of pamphlets, America rejected the old order and institutionalized courage as common sense. Freedom of speech is the courage of a brave new world.

(To digress briefly into unimportant news stories, you should not punch Nazis merely for expressing their views. Only cowards without such faith in discourse and alternative peaceful methods would do so – and the cowardly types who have forgotten Ruby Ridge.)

Similarly, the Bill of Rights institutionalizes one courageous principle after another. The Bill of Rights trusts people with guns, protects potential criminals through warrants and other procedures, and generally imposes substantial burdens on the government before it can override individual freedoms, all because of the courageous general faith in free people.

The Freedom of Movement

Along with the above principles, the United States has a long history of embracing the courageous principle of Freedom of Movement.

America was formed by immigrants who courageously journeyed thousands of miles to leave European persecution and seek wealth and freedom. Without passports or other border restrictions, America promoted friendship and growth across state boundaries by allowing Freedom of Movement. Though the Constitution does not explicitly include such a right, the Supreme Court has correctly recognized that people have the right to travel freely between states.

Freedom of Movement between states is such a strong principle that nobody even considers imposing border restrictions. People from St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, and other American cities that rank among the world’s most dangerous can freely traverse anywhere else in America without legal barriers, even as national borders prevent the impoverished immigrants of safer foreign cities from doing the same.

Internationally, America also used to embrace such a broad principle. From the late 1700s until the late 1800s, though citizenship was unconscionably selective, the federal government allowed all foreigners to enter the United States – and, with the understanding that the naturalization clause only gave Congress control over citizenship, had no choice but to do so. To celebrate a century of such Freedom of Movement, France gifted America the statue of liberty with a famous poem dedicated to such American courage.

Unfortunately, around the same time, the federal government’s fear of the Chinese led it to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the Supreme Court mistakenly upheld it. Thus, Freedom of Movement split from a courageous principle to a discretionary privilege, literally allowing fear to determine the borders of freedom.

Outside the context of the Chinese, such discretion remained largely unexercised for decades. Unencumbered by national borders, by World War I, two million Jews successfully fled Russia’s pogroms to freedom and safety in America.

However, by the 1920s, the dangers of discretionary power took hold, and the United States severely reduced legal immigration with its national origin quota systems. By World War II, the United States and the whole world had rejected immigrants.

The greatest victims of Freedom of Movement’s demise were the Jews that the world rejected at the Evian Conference and thereafter. Americans widely opposed Jewish refugees out of fear that some of them may secretly be communists or Nazis.

Unlike the millions saved by a courageous embrace of Freedom of Movement through World War I, fear undermined this principle and led to the death of millions during the Holocaust in World War II.

Refugees and Skittles

Without the courageous principle of Freedom of Movement, people’s fears determine and limit how many refugees can escape despotism and warfare. Just as fear trapped Jewish refugees during World War II, such fear traps Syrian refugees now.

Emphasizing the underlying fear, a thought experiment that opponents of Syrian refugees commonly ask goes something like: imagine you have a bowl of 1,000 skittles, only ten of which are poisonous. Would you eat the skittles? If not, then you understand why Syrian refugees must be so carefully restricted. Most alleged refugees might not be dangerous, but the government cannot know which ones are harmless and must prevent them all from entering to stop poison from seeping over our borders.

In reply to this thought experiment, most defenders of refugees argue over the numbers. Statistically, as mentioned above, refugees are vetted carefully and virtually all harmless, and almost none have been murderers or terrorists. Moreover, basically all studies on immigrants (legal, illegal, refugees, etc.) show that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than typical Americans. So, if you increase the bowl size to like 3,200,000 skittles with 20 poisonous, then yeah, the chance is justified.

In contrast to this response, I do not think the exact proportion matters much because of the agreement that almost all the refugees should ideally be allowed to enter. The skittles thought experiment is the coward’s game for people lacking the courage to accept Freedom of Movement as a principle.

Courageous principles sometimes allow bad outcomes. Freedom of speech allows for some noxious ideas to spread. Gun rights allow for some bad people to more easily engage in violence. Requirements for warrants allow for some criminals to hide their crimes. And freedom of movement allows for some bad people to travel where they can do harm.

Such courageous principles do not create perfect worlds. They create structures in which people have the freedom to shape the world, for better or worse – with better usually winning. Depriving the vast majority of people’s freedom to prevent a small minority from spreading evil impoverishes and threatens everybody.

Courageous Americans who embrace the existing dangers of speech, guns, and warrants should also similarly embrace the dangers of movement. Fear-induced discretionary restrictions on freedom of movement mean 99 ash-ridden Syrian children suffering from poverty, warfare, and death for the chance of maybe keeping out one bad person.

In sum, to paraphrase Shakespeare, cowards kill many times before their deaths; the valiant’s tastes let others live.

Thus, cowards ask how many poisonous skittles might sneak in with a broad rainbow and fear the tiny shadows that enter with the radiant light. In contrast, the valiant ask how many Anne Franks will die if we fear these tiny shadows and instead courageously opens the golden door for the rainbow, realizing today’s Anne Franks are in Syria.

Sean J. Rosenthal is attorney in New York.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author. Read the original article.

If You Want Security, Pursue Liberty – Article by Ron Paul

If You Want Security, Pursue Liberty – Article by Ron Paul

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
******************************
Judging by his prime-time speech in early December 2015, the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency will be marked by increased militarism abroad and authoritarianism at home. The centerpiece of the president’s speech was his demand for a new law forbidding anyone on the federal government’s terrorist watch list from purchasing a firearm. There has never been a mass shooter who was on the terrorist watch list, so this proposal will not increase security. However, it will decrease liberty.

Federal officials can have an American citizen placed on the terrorist watch list based solely on their suspicions that the individual might be involved in terrorist activity. Individuals placed on the list are not informed that they have been labeled as suspected terrorists, much less given an opportunity to challenge that designation, until a Transportation Security Administration agent stops them from boarding a plane.

Individuals can be placed on the list if their Facebook or Twitter posts seem “suspicious” to a federal agent. You can also be placed on the list if your behavior somehow suggests that you are a “representative” of a terrorist group (even if you have no associations with any terrorist organizations). Individuals can even be put on the list because the FBI wants to interview them about friends or family members!

Thousands of Americans, including several members of Congress and many employees of the Department of Homeland Security, have been mistakenly placed on the terrorist watch list. Some Americans are placed on the list because they happen to have the same names as terrorist suspects. Those mistakenly placed on the terrorist watch list must go through a lengthy “redress” process to clear their names.

It is likely that some Americans are on the list solely because of their political views and activities. Anyone who doubts this should consider the long history of federal agencies, such as the IRS and the FBI, using their power to harass political movements that challenge the status quo. Are the American people really so desperate for the illusion of security that they will support a law that results in some Americans losing their Second Amendment rights because of a bureaucratic error or because of their political beliefs?

President Obama is also preparing an executive order expanding the federal background check system. Expanding background checks will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals or terrorists. However, it will make obtaining a firearm more difficult for those needing, for example, to defend themselves against abusive spouses.

Sadly, many who understand that new gun-control laws will leave us less free and less safe support expanding the surveillance state. Like those promoting gun control, people calling for expanded surveillance do not let facts deter their efforts to take more of our liberties. There is no evidence that mass surveillance has prevented even one terrorist attack.

France’s mass-surveillance system is much more widespread and intrusive than ours. Yet it failed to prevent the recent attacks. France’s gun-control laws, which are much more restrictive than ours, not only failed to keep guns out of the hands of their attackers, they left victims defenseless. It is thus amazing that many American politicians want to make us more like France by taking away our Second and Fourth Amendment rights.

Expanding the federal government’s power will not increase our safety; it will only diminish our freedom. Americans will have neither liberty nor security until they abandon the fantasy that the US government can provide economic security, personal security, and global security.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

A Multifaceted Strategy to Defeat ISIS – Article by G. Stolyarov II

A Multifaceted Strategy to Defeat ISIS – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Comments 1 comment
The New Renaissance HatG. Stolyarov II
November 15, 2015
******************************

The recent slaughters of hundreds of innocent civilians in Paris, in Ankara, in Beirut, and aboard the Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 illustrate without a shadow of doubt that the threat from the barbaric sect known as ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, and the Islamic State cannot be contained within the Middle East. ISIS is an enemy of humanity, decency, and Western civilization. It will continue killing completely peaceful civilians of Western nations, both in their home countries and abroad, in gruesome ways. ISIS is a cancer upon humanity, and it will continue to metastasize and inflict damage until it is either eradicated or until it completely kills its host. Like cancer, ISIS cannot coexist with a healthy humankind. This cancerous “Islamic State” should be eradicated using the resources of any willing parties.

Now is the time to put aside petty rivalries, animosities, and power politics among advanced nations. All of Western civilization – indeed, the entire world – needs to stand with the people of France and recoil at the atrocities perpetrated against the victims of the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015. There can be no excuses and no apologies for the perpetrators. Anti-modern fundamentalist savagery must be condemned, and the innocent should be mourned. Western civilization needs to send a unified signal that it will have no tolerance for murderous intolerance.

eiffel-tower-303341_1280A concerted, multifaceted strategy is needed to eliminate ISIS while preserving the Enlightenment values which ISIS threatens: liberty, humanism, secularism, tolerance, and progress. No single measure will succeed in solving this dire problem, but a combination of approaches can dramatically reverse the current predicament of Western civilization suffering setback after setback due to the rampages of a relatively small group of barbarians. The representatives of Western civilization should mount a decisive, unapologetic response that not only physically destroys ISIS but also eliminates the societal, economic, and cultural preconditions for its emergence.

If I had the ability to set the United States’ policy for eliminating the ISIS menace, I would institute the measures described below as expeditiously as possible. I estimate that, within approximately one year of the implementation of these measures, ISIS would be completely destroyed, and the probability of any successor organizations emerging would be rendered negligible through the continued application of these approaches.

(1) Setting Aside Foreign-Policy Differences: ISIS threatens everyone – citizens of France, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and the United States, to name just a few. Now is the time to pursue complete cooperation among the governments of countries which have a compelling interest to eradicate ISIS. To achieve such cooperation, the United States government should send a strong signal that all other foreign-policy differences are relatively unimportant and will be overlooked. For instance, with regard to Russia, the United States should openly renounce all strategic ambitions in Ukraine and all intentions to depose the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. The cessation of the demonization of Russia over the Ukrainian civil war (where there is truly no good side) would serve as a major sign to Vladimir Putin of the United States’ goodwill and desire to collaborate on a true existential threat to Western civilization. As for Assad, he – for all of his despicably dictatorial behavior – is an enemy of ISIS, and ISIS would not have emerged had the United States not previously funneled weapons and training to anti-Assad rebels, who either were quickly overwhelmed by the more ruthless ISIS or themselves joined ISIS. For ISIS to be eradicated, Syria’s civil war must end, and peace and order must be restored. Assad may be a dictator, but he does not instigate hostage-takings and mass murders in European cities. Likewise, the United States government should welcome support from Iran in combating the ISIS presence within Iraq. ISIS is a fanatically intolerant Sunni Muslim sect that poses as much of a threat to the Shiite Muslim theocracy of Iran as it does to non-Muslim “infidel” Westerners. A collaborative effort to defeat ISIS would also help to defuse tensions between the United States and Iran by demonstrating to the Iranian regime that the United States does not have imminent intentions to “preemptively” attack Iran out of the (largely unfounded) fear of the continued development of Iran’s nuclear program.

2000px-France_Flag_Map.svg(2) Targeted Multinational Expeditionary Force: It is possible that France will invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which pledges other members of NATO to come to its defense as a result of the attack by ISIS against French civilians on French soil. While I question the wisdom of the continuation of the NATO arrangement generally, it may be useful for achieving a coordinated response to the ISIS threat in particular. Furthermore, all willing non-NATO powers, including Russia and China, should be invited to take part in the response. ISIS has murdered citizens of the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Turkey, Russia, and many other countries. Every country can claim with some justification that ISIS is waging war upon its people.

The key for a successful international response against ISIS is to target the response against the actual, known members of ISIS and to minimize damage to innocent civilians. Instead of indiscriminate aerial bombing campaigns or conventional military offensives, a far superior tactic would be to assemble multinational teams of highly trained commandos who would infiltrate key ISIS bases and assassinate the leaders of ISIS, while also sabotaging ISIS’s logistical systems and preventing ISIS from obtaining weaponry and other materiel required for continuing military operations. No civilians should be caught in the crossfire. Instead, the multinational commando teams should actively recruit local residents, who are suffering under the yoke of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, into auxiliary roles. The support of locals could assist with obtaining more reliable on-the-ground intelligence and also in building goodwill for the ouster of ISIS from the communities it currently terrorizes.

While this expeditionary force should be completely friendly to local civilians, it should be completely merciless toward any ISIS fighters. Anyone who has fought and killed on ISIS’s behalf has renounced his right to life by depriving others of their lives in horrific ways. The expeditionary force should be authorized to execute confirmed ISIS fighters, but not to torture or humiliate them. This restraint from savage behavior would illustrate the stark moral contrast between the West and ISIS. ISIS has engaged in outrageous acts of perversion – essentially committing every type of violation of human beings imaginable. The West needs to show that its representatives will only use deadly violence in retaliation and only against those who initiated its use – and even then in a surgical, professional manner necessary to eliminate the threat but to go no further. Moreover, anyone who provides physical support to ISIS but does not directly perpetrate violence, should be arrested and subjected to an on-the-ground military tribunal aimed at procuring a swift determination of guilt or innocence and a proportional punishment in the event of guilt – instead of the prolonged limbo that has characterized American detention facilities of terrorism suspects in the past.

(3) Replacing Bombs with Information: The drone killings perpetrated by the Obama administration during this decade have inflamed the ire of anti-Western militants and have radicalized large segments of the Middle East in reaction to indiscriminate killings of civilians via “signature strikes” that presuppose that any men in their prime are terrorist militants. The problem is not with the drone technology, but rather with the payload that it carries. If bombs and missiles are replaced with informational leaflets, USB drives, and small samples of the material abundance of Western civilization, then this more benevolent use of drones can help convince Middle Eastern residents that ISIS is the path toward suffering, whereas embracing modernity and Western values would be the path toward universal prosperity and happiness. The more Middle Eastern residents find out about Western technologies, philosophies, and opportunities made available within a free, tolerant, hyper-pluralistic society, the less inclined they will be to embrace a Dark-Age mentality of brutally enforced homogeneity.

(4) Elimination of Indiscriminate Surveillance; Escalation of Targeted Surveillance: The indiscriminate electronic surveillance perpetrated by Western governments – particularly those of the United States and the United Kingdom – against their own populations, has clearly not helped to prevent murderous terrorist attacks. Instead, surveilling everyone not only grossly violates individual liberty, but also dissipates the limited resources that could more effectively be prioritized toward known troublemakers. All mass surveillance should cease, but efforts at sophisticated, targeted surveillance of individual terrorism suspects should be escalated. The surveillance itself can be sufficiently surgical as to be non-intrusive to the daily lives of those being surveilled, as long as no imminent threat exists, but should enable a swift response if any plans to do harm are discovered. Surveillance should be focused exclusively on the following categories of individuals: (1) those known to have organizational ties with ISIS, al-Qaeda, or other Islamist terrorist groups; (2) those who, in any medium, espouse militant Islamic fundamentalist views, including anyone who asserts that it is acceptable to kill in the name of Islam; and/or (3) those who originate from majority-Muslim countries and have violent criminal records. This targeted surveillance would not constitute racial or religious profiling, since all peaceful and respectable Muslims (those whose views are compatible with modern Western civilization), as well as peaceful non-Muslim emigrants from majority-Muslim countries, would be spared any surveillance. However, any Islamic fundamentalist who believes in the acceptability of religiously motivated killings, as well as any person connected to the terrorist organizations or known to have committed violent crime that might have any relation to Islamist convictions or influences, should be subjected to additional scrutiny to enable the development of an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the sources of risk facing the Western world. Most importantly, it is time to jettison the political correctness that subjects any non-Muslims to this preemptive surveillance. The threat is one of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Non-Muslims are not part of the threat by definition and could not possibly be allies or associates of ISIS. Emphatically, this is not to say that all Muslims are part of the threat; rather, it is simply to recognize that surveilling non-Muslims is a waste of resources as well as a hyper-intrusive violation of the liberties of completely innocent people. The following diagram illustrates the simple insight that could channel limited surveillance capabilities toward detecting actual threats.

Diagram of Possible Sources of Threats of Islamist Terrorism

Surveillance_Threat_Diagram(5) Technological and Economic Transformation of the Middle East through Innovation and Freedom of Exchange: Organizations like ISIS are only able to emerge in a deeply backward cultural, societal, and economic environment, where the embrace of violent, totalitarian seventh-century dogmas could appear even remotely attractive to an uneducated populace with miserable future prospects. Only by a fundamental modernizing, Westernizing transformation can the Middle East escape its current status as a fertile breeding ground for violent fundamentalist criminals. Only by seeing the West as a source of enlightenment and economic prosperity can the populations of the Middle East cease viewing ISIS and similar groups as bulwarks against a perceived Western threat. Therefore, Western governments should lift all political barriers to the free flow of goods and ideas between Western and Middle Eastern countries. All sanctions, embargoes, tariffs, and quotas should be abolished, and the way cleared for the import of technologies and products, as well as the establishment of major branches of Western companies in Middle Eastern countries. In particular, emerging technologies that have the potential to vastly alleviate material scarcity should be encouraged. Biotechnology, including genetic modification, is particularly promising in this respect. As futurist B.J. Murphy pointed out, in response to my analogy between ISIS and cancer, “Like cancer, [which] lately we’ve been using gene editing techniques to finally start punching holes into its existence, maybe we’ll begin using those same techniques to effectively combat against ISIS – genetically modified soldiers to fight, genetically modified crops to combat hunger and malnutrition, and a genetically modified ecosystem to combat poverty.” In a strategy that would constitute the opposite of erecting trade barriers, Western governments should become agents of economic liberalization. They should actively pressure Middle Eastern regimes to accept the importation of genetically modified crops and to amend local laws to permit cutting-edge biotechnological research and experimentation. As a pathway toward economic prosperity, majority-Muslim Middle Eastern nations should emulate an outlier in their region – Israel. Despite its relatively tiny size and the near-constant hostilities in its vicinity, Israel has prospered through the tremendous innovativeness and technological capital of its people. It is an example of how to thrive by cultivating an advanced, technologically oriented economy.

(6) Preserving Individual Liberty at Home: The multifaceted efforts to eradicate ISIS should have absolutely no effect on the freedoms and opportunities available to Americans and other residents of Western nations. It is necessary to decisively illustrate just how unlike the totalitarian ideal of ISIS the Western world is. If those who claim that the Islamist fanatics “hate us for our freedoms” have a grain of truth to their statement, then it is all the more imperative to proudly assert those freedoms, instead of suppressing them in the name of “security” or avoiding offense. Western governments should explicitly reaffirm the protection of free speech and the absolute freedom of individuals to engage in anti-religious expression. The US Congress should pass a resolution strongly supporting the right of any individual to “blaspheme” against any religion, for any reason – justified or not. All blasphemy laws in all Western countries should be repealed, and all politicians should take an explicit stand in favor of tolerance for “blasphemous” speech, no matter whom it might offend. As with the shift from mass to targeted surveillance, all screenings at airports, border crossings, and other mass-transit locations should focus away from the general population and toward Islamist fundamentalist fanatics and likely terror suspects. As a result of this refocusing of resources, for every single suspected Islamist plot, a team of police and intelligence experts should be constantly aware of the status of the threat and prepared to launch a sophisticated response with minimal or no disruption to the general public. Everyone else should be enabled to lead peaceful, dignified lives where the government does not violate the physical bodies or private information of the innocent – similar to the situation for most people in Western countries during the late 1990s.

A successful campaign to defeat ISIS would need to achieve a short-term goal and a long-term goal. The short-term goal – the physical eradication of ISIS – can be accomplished within a year if major world powers set aside their foreign-policy differences and deploy a merciless but scrupulously moral expeditionary force, combined with a powerful informational campaign that transforms tools of destruction into vehicles of Enlightenment. The long-term goal is the modernization and Westernization of the Middle East – the emergence of widespread economic prosperity and major technologically driven uplifting of living standards. The secularization of Middle Eastern governments and the development of more tolerant, enlightened variants of Islamic theology – akin to the transformation of Christianity during the 18th-century Enlightenment in the West – should also be encouraged. To achieve this long-term goal, Western civilization must stand proud once more and cease apologizing for its technological, economic, and cultural superiority to the contemporary Middle East. As beneficial side effects of the struggle against ISIS, the Western world might rediscover the values of the Enlightenment that have been so vital to its progress to date – and reapply and disseminate these universally desirable values in a more potent, assertive form. Furthermore, standing united against ISIS will help avoid needless hostilities among the United States, Russia, China, and Iran and thereby strengthen the prospect for peaceful coexistence among all who value it.

This essay may be freely reproduced using the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike International 4.0 License, which requires that credit be given to the author, G. Stolyarov II. Find out about Mr. Stolyarov here.

Politicians Exploit School Shooting While Ignoring Bombing Victims – Article by Ron Paul

Politicians Exploit School Shooting While Ignoring Bombing Victims – Article by Ron Paul

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
October 14, 2015
******************************
Following the recent Oregon school shooting, many politicians rushed to the microphones to call for new gun-control laws. President Obama even called on gun-control supporters to “politicize” the shooting, while some members of Congress worked to establish a special commission on gun violence.

The reaction to the shooting stands in stark contrast to the reaction to the US military’s bombing of an Afghanistan hospital run by the international humanitarian (and Nobel Peace Prize winning) group Doctors Without Borders.

Our Nobel Peace Prize winning president did apologize to his fellow Nobel laureate for the bombing. However, President Obama has not “politicized” this tragedy by using it to justify ending military involvement in Afghanistan. No one in Congress is pushing for a special commission to examine the human costs of US militarism, and the mainstream media has largely ignored Doctors Without Borders’ accusation that the bombing constitutes a war crime.

The reason for the different reactions to these two events is that politicians prefer to focus on events they can “politicize” to increase the federal government’s power. In contrast, politicians ignore incidents that raise uncomfortable questions about US foreign policy.

If the political and media elites were really interested in preventing future mass shootings, they would repeal the federal “gun-free” schools law, for example. By letting shooters know that their intended victims are defenseless, the gun-free schools law turns schoolchildren into easy targets.

Even some who oppose gun control are using the shooting to justify expanding federal power instead of trying to repeal unconstitutional laws. Some opponents of new gun control laws say Congress should expand the federal role in identifying, tracking, and treating those with “mental health problems.” This ignores the fact that many shooters were using psychotropic drugs prescribed by a mental health professional when they committed the horrible acts. Furthermore, creating a system to identify and track anyone with a “mental health problem” could deny respect for individuals’ Second Amendment and other rights because they perhaps once sought counseling for depression while going through a divorce or coping with a loved one’s passing.

While our political and media elites are eager to debate how much liberty people must sacrifice for safety, they are desperate to avoid debating the morality of our foreign policy. To admit that the US military sometimes commits immoral acts is to admit that the US government is not an unalloyed force for good. Even many proponents of our recent wars support using the US military for “humanitarian” purposes. Thus they are as reluctant as the neoconservatives to question the fundamental goodness of US foreign policy.

Anyone who raises constitutional or moral objections to the US use of drones, bombs, indefinite detention, and torture risks being attacked as anti-American and soft on terrorism. The smear of “terrorist apologist” is also hurled at those who dare suggest that it is our interventionist foreign policy, not a hatred of freedom, that causes people in other countries to dislike the United States. Which is a more logical explanation for why someone would resent America — a family member killed in a drone attack launched by the US military or rage over our abundance of liberty?

The disparate reactions to the Oregon school shooting and the Afghanistan hospital bombing shows the political class is unwilling and unable to acknowledge that the US government cannot run the world, run our lives, or run the economy. Clearly, politicians will never stop expanding the federal government and give us back our lost liberties unless and until the people demand it.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

A House Divided Over NSA Spying on Americans – Article by Ron Paul

A House Divided Over NSA Spying on Americans – Article by Ron Paul

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
August 10, 2013
******************************

In late July 2013, the House debate on the Defense Appropriations bill for 2014 produced a bit more drama than usual. After hearing that House leadership would do away with the traditional “open rule” allowing for debate on any funding limitation amendment, it was surprising to see that Rep. Justin Amash’s (R-MI) amendment was allowed on the Floor. In the wake of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent of US government spying on American citizens, Amash’s amendment sought to remove funding in the bill for some of the NSA programs.

Had Amash’s amendment passed, it would have been a significant symbolic victory over the administration’s massive violations of our Fourth Amendment protections. But we should be careful about believing that even if it had somehow miraculously survived the Senate vote and the President’s veto, it would have resulted in any significant change in how the Intelligence Community would behave toward Americans. The US government has built the largest and most sophisticated spying apparatus in the history of the world.

The NSA has been massively increasing the size its facilities, both at its Maryland headquarters and in its newly built (and way over-budget) enormous data center in Utah. Taken together, these two facilities will be seven times larger than the Pentagon! And we know now that much of the NSA’s capacity to intercept information has been turned inward, to spy on us.

As NSA expert James Bamford wrote earlier this year about the new Utah facility:

“The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.”

But it happened anyway.

In late July we have seen two significant prison-breaks, one in Iraq, where some 500 al-Qaeda members broke out of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, which the US built, and another 1,000 escaped in a huge break in Benghazi, Libya – the city where the US Ambassador was killed by the rebels that the US government helped put in power. Did the US intelligence community, focused on listening to our phone calls, not see this real threat coming?

Rep. Amash’s amendment was an important move to at least bring attention to what the US intelligence community has become: an incredibly powerful conglomeration of secret government agencies that seem to view Americans as the real threat. It is interesting that the votes on Amash’s amendment divided the House not on party lines. Instead, we saw the votes divided between those who follow their oath to the Constitution, versus those who seem to believe that any violation of the Constitution is justified in the name of the elusive “security” of the police state at the expense of liberty. The leadership – not to my surprise — of both parties in the House voted for the police state.

It is encouraging to see the large number of votes crossing party lines in favor of the Amash amendment. Let us hope that this will be a growing trend in the House – perhaps the promise that Congress may once again begin to take its duties and obligations seriously. We should not forget, however, that in the meantime another Defense Appropriations bill passing really means another “military spending” bill. The Administration is planning for a US invasion of Syria, more military assistance to the military dictatorship in Egypt, and more drones and interventionism. We have much work yet to do.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Internet Fascism and the Surveillance State – Article by Ben O’Neill

Internet Fascism and the Surveillance State – Article by Ben O’Neill

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance Hat
Ben O’Neill
July 16, 2013
******************************

What is the purpose of telecommunication and internet surveillance?

The NSA presents its surveillance operations as being directed toward security issues, claiming that the programs are needed to counter terrorist attacks. Bald assertions of plots foiled are intended to bolster this claim.[1] However, secret NSA documents reveal that their surveillance is used to gather intelligence to achieve political goals for the US government. Agency documents show extensive surveillance of communications from allied governments, including the targeting of embassies and missions.[2] Reports from an NSA whistleblower also allege that the agency has targeted and intercepted communications from a range of high-level political and judicial officials, anti-war groups, US banking firms and other major companies and non-government organizations.[3] This suggests that the goal of surveillance is the further political empowerment of the NSA and the US government.

Ostensibly, the goal of the NSA surveillance is to prevent terrorist acts that would harm or kill people in the United States. But in reality, the primary goal is to enable greater control of that population (and others) by the US government. When questioned about this issue, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake was unequivocal about the goal of the NSA: “to own the internet and find out what everybody is doing.”[4]

“To own the internet” — Public-private partnerships in mass surveillance

The internet is, by its very nature, a decentralized arrangement, created by the interaction of many private and government servers operating on telecommunications networks throughout the world. This has always been a major bugbear of advocates for government control, who have denigrated this decentralized arrangement as being “lawless.” Since it began to expand as a tool of mass communication for ordinary people, advocates for greater government power have fought a long battle to bring the internet “under control” — i.e., under their control.

The goal of government “ownership of the internet” entails accessing the facilities that route traffic through the network. This is gradually being done through government control of the network infrastructure and the gradual domination of the primary telecommunications and internet companies that provide the facilities for routing traffic through the network. Indeed, one noteworthy aspect of the mass surveillance system of the NSA is that it has allegedly involved extensive cooperation with many “private” firms operating under US law. This has allegedly included major security, telecommunications and internet companies, as well as producers of network software and hardware.

Examples of such “public-private partnerships” are set out in leaked documents of the NSA. An unnamed US telecommunications company is reported to provide the NSA with mass surveillance data on the communications of non-US people under its FAIRVIEW program.[5] Several major computing and internet companies have also been explicitly named in top secret internal NSA material as being current providers for the agency under its PRISM program.[6] Several of these companies have issued denials disavowing any participation in, or prior knowledge of the program, but this has been met with some scepticism.[7] (Indeed, given that the NSA did not anticipate public release of its own internal training material, it is unlikely that the agency would have any cause to lie about the companies they work with in this material. This suggests that the material may be accurate.)

Many of these companies have supplied the NSA with data from their own customers, or created systems which allow the agency access to the information flowing through telecommunications networks. They have done so without disclosure to their own customers of the surveillance that has occurred, by using the blanket advisement that they “comply with lawful requests for information.” By virtue of being subject to the jurisdiction of US statutes, all of these companies have been legally prohibited from discussing any of their dealings with the NSA and they have been well placed for retaliatory action by the many regulatory agencies of the US government if they do not cooperate. In any case, it appears from present reports that many companies have been active partners of the agency, assisting the NSA with illegal surveillance activities by supplying data under programs with no legitimate legal basis.

This has been a common historical pattern in the rise of totalitarian States, which have often sought to incorporate large business concerns into their network of power. Indeed, the very notion of “public-private partnerships” in this sector readily brings to mind the worst aspects of fascist economic systems that have historically existed. The actions of US companies that have cooperated in the NSA’s mass surveillance operations calls into question the “private” status of these companies. In many ways these companies have acted as an extension of the US government, providing information illegally, in exchange for privileges and intelligence. According to media reports, “Such cooperation is an extremely delicate issue for the companies involved. Many have promised their customers data confidentiality in their terms and conditions. Furthermore, they are obliged to follow the laws of the countries in which they do business. As such, their cooperation deals with the NSA are top secret. Even in internal NSA documents, they are only referred to by the use of code names.”[8]

We began this discussion by asking the purpose of telecommunication and internet surveillance. The answer lies in the uses to which those surveillance powers are being put, and will inevitably be put, as the capacity of the NSA expands. The true purpose of the NSA is not to keep us safe. Its goal is to own the internet, to own our communications, to own our private thoughts — to own us.

Ben O’Neill is a lecturer in statistics at the University of New South Wales (ADFA) in Canberra, Australia. He has formerly practiced as a lawyer and as a political adviser in Canberra. He is a Templeton Fellow at the Independent Institute, where he won first prize in the 2009 Sir John Templeton Fellowship essay contest. Send him mail. See Ben O’Neill’s article archives.

This article was published on Mises.org and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

Notes

[1] Mathes, M. (2013) At least 50 spy programs foiled by terror plots: NSA . The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 2013.

[2] MacAskill, E. (2013) New NSA leaks show how US is bugging its European allies . The Guardian, 1 June 2013.

[3] Burghardt, T. (2013) NSA spying and intelligence collection: a giant blackmail machine and “warrantless wiretapping program.” Global Research , 24 June 2013. Reports are from NSA whistleblower Russ Tice, who is a former intelligence analyst at the NSA.

[4] Wolverton, J. (2012) Classified drips and leaks. The New American, 6 August 2012. Emphasis added. Capitalization of “Internet” removed.

[5] Greenwald, G. (2013) The NSA’s mass and indiscriminate spying on Brazilians . The Guardian, 7 July 2013.

[6] Gelman, B. and Poitras, L. (2013) US, British intelligence mining data from nine US internet companies in broad secret program . The Washington Post, 7 June 2013. See also NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collecting program . The Washington Post, 6 June 2013.

[7] McGarry, C. (2013) Page and Zuckerberg say NSA surveillance program is news to them . TechHive, 7 June 2013.

[8] Ibid Poitras, p. 3.

Illiberal Belief #24: The World is a Scary Place – Article by Bradley Doucet

Illiberal Belief #24: The World is a Scary Place – Article by Bradley Doucet

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
June 9, 2013
******************************
Will the world end with a bang or with a whimper? Will terrorists shake the very foundations of civilization by setting off suitcase nukes in major world cities, or will the continuing contamination of the environment with toxic man-made chemicals give everyone on the planet terminal cancer? One way or another, the apocalypse, it seems, is just around the corner. Or is it?
***
In fact, neither of these fears is anywhere near as threatening as many people believe them to be. Dan Gardner, columnist and senior writer for the Ottawa Citizen, has written a book called Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, published last year and newly available in paperback, in which he tries to put such fears in perspective. According to Gardner, even factoring in the 3000 deaths from the unprecedented destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, Americans are more likely in any given year to be unintentionally electrocuted than to be killed in a terrorist attack. Of course, the real fear is that terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weapons. But while this risk does exist, there are also very substantial obstacles that make such a scenario extremely unlikely. Even if, against all odds, a terrorist organization managed to detonate a nuclear bomb in a major American city, killing on the order of 100,000 people, this would be roughly equivalent to the number of Americans killed each year by diabetes, or by accidents, or by infections contracted in hospitals.As for the fear that toxic man-made chemicals are responsible for increasing incidences of cancer, it hides several misconceptions. For one, it implies that the natural is good and that the man-made is bad. In fact, most pesticides, for instance, are not man-made but occur naturally in the foods we eat. Our fear of toxic chemicals also tends to ignore any consideration of dose, since we tend to panic over insignificant parts per billion that are far below the thresholds found to kill lab rats. As toxicologists are fond of repeating, even water is poisonous in large enough quantities. The fear of environmental chemicals, natural or man-made, is also misplaced in that the American Cancer Society estimates they are responsible for only 2 percent of all cancers, as compared to lifestyle factors (smoking, drinking, diet, obesity, and exercise) that account for a whopping 65 percent. Finally, when adjusted for age and improved screening procedures, incidence rates for all cancers except lung cancer are actually declining, not increasing.
***

The Great Riddle

Why are we so much more afraid of terrorism than diabetes? Why do we pay so much attention to minuscule environmental hazards while essentially ignoring much larger lifestyle risks? Contrasting Europeans’ blasé smoking habits with their outsized fear of genetically modified organisms, Gardner writes, “Surely one of the great riddles to be answered by science is how the same person who doesn’t think twice about lighting a Gauloise will march in the streets demanding a ban on products that have never been proven to have caused so much as a single case of indigestion.” To take just one more example, we fear statistically non-existent threats like child abduction and therefore keep our kids indoors, depriving them of exercise and contributing to sedentary lifestyles that have a very real chance of cutting years off of their lives.

The answers to this “great riddle” are partly to be found in human nature. We have gut reactions to dangers that are more dramatic, like terrorist attacks and plane crashes. These rare events also are more likely to make the news, both because of their drama and because of their rarity. Another thousand people died today from heart disease? Ho-hum. Fifty people died in a plane crash? That hasn’t happened in months or years, and the visuals are exciting, so that’s news!

Be Afraid… Be Very Afraid

Irrational fears not only lead us to make bad choices, like driving instead of flying, which place us in greater danger. They also allow government officials to manipulate us more effectively and insinuate themselves more deeply into more and more areas of our lives. The disproportionate fear of terrorism has been nurtured and used to justify a protocol of time-consuming security checks at airports, the warrantless wiretapping of phone calls, the tightening of international borders, and of course, two ongoing wars with huge costs both in terms of lives and money. The exaggerated fear of environmental dangers, for its part, has led to increased taxation and regulation of production, empowering bureaucrats and lobbyists while acting as a drag on innovations and economic growth that could be of even greater benefit to human life and flourishing. (See Gennady Stolyarov II’s “Eden Is an Illusion”.)

We are prone to fear all kinds of things we really shouldn’t, fears that can be and are reinforced by the media out to tell an entertaining story; by companies out to sell us an alarm system or a new drug; by activists or non-governmental organizations out to elicit donations and support; and by politicians out to win elections and accumulate power. The only way to counteract this is to inform ourselves about relative risks and becoming comfortable dealing with numbers and statistics in general.

There is no such thing as a risk-free world, but despite the real dangers that exist, we in the developed world in the twenty-first century are better off than any other people who have ever lived. We have our human ingenuity to thank for the startling advances in fighting diseases and increasing lifespans that characterize our time. We shouldn’t let our equally human irrational fears get the better of us and push us into giving up our freedom in exchange for ersatz safety.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness.

Government Spying: Should We Be Shocked? – Article by Ron Paul

Government Spying: Should We Be Shocked? – Article by Ron Paul

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
June 9, 2013
******************************

Last week we saw dramatic new evidence of illegal government surveillance of our telephone calls, and of the National Security Agency’s deep penetration into American companies such as Facebook and Microsoft to spy on us. The media seemed shocked.

Many of us are not so surprised.

Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with the introduction of the so-called PATRIOT Act that it would pave the way for massive US government surveillance—not targeting terrorists but rather aimed against American citizens. We were told we must accept this temporary measure to provide government the tools to catch those responsible for 9/11. That was nearly twelve years and at least four wars ago.

We should know by now that when it comes to government power-grabs, we never go back to the status quo even when the “crisis” has passed. That part of our freedom and civil liberties once lost is never regained. How many times did the PATRIOT Act need renewed? How many times did FISA authority need expanding? Why did we have to pass a law to grant immunity to companies who hand over our personal information to the government?

It was all a build-up of the government’s capacity to monitor us.

The reaction of some in Congress and the Administration to last week’s leak was predictable. Knee-jerk defenders of the police state such as Senator Lindsey Graham declared that he was “glad” the government was collecting Verizon phone records—including his own—because the government needs to know what the enemy is up to. Those who take an oath to defend the Constitution from its enemies both foreign and domestic should worry about such statements.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers tells us of the tremendous benefits of this Big Brother-like program. He promises us that domestic terrorism plots were thwarted, but he cannot tell us about them because they are classified. I am a bit skeptical, however. In April, the New York Times reported that most of these domestic plots were actually elaborate sting operations developed and pushed by the FBI. According to the Times report, “of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations.”

Even if Chairman Rogers is right, though, and the program caught someone up to no good, we have to ask ourselves whether even such a result justifies trashing the Constitution. Here is what I said on the floor of the House when the PATRIOT Act was up for renewal back in 2011:

“If you want to be perfectly safe from child abuse and wife beating, the government could put a camera in every one of our houses and our bedrooms, and maybe there would be somebody made safer this way, but what would you be giving up? Perfect safety is not the purpose of government. What we want from government is to enforce the law to protect our liberties.”

What most undermines the claims of the Administration and its defenders about this surveillance program is the process itself. First the government listens in on all of our telephone calls without a warrant and then if it finds something it goes to a FISA court and get an illegal approval for what it has already done! This turns the rule of law and due process on its head.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police and on the government, not the other way around. We should be thankful for writers like Glenn Greenwald, who broke last week’s story, for taking risks to let us know what the government is doing. There are calls for the persecution of Greenwald and the other whistle-blowers and reporters. They should be defended, as their work defends our freedom.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston – Article by Ron Paul

Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston – Article by Ron Paul

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
April 28, 2013
******************************

Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.

What has been sadly forgotten in all the celebration of the capture of one suspect and the killing of his older brother is that the police state tactics in Boston did absolutely nothing to catch them. While the media crowed that the apprehension of the suspects was a triumph of the new surveillance state – and, predictably, many talking heads and Members of Congress called for even more government cameras pointed at the rest of us – the fact is none of this caught the suspect. Actually, it very nearly gave the suspect a chance to make a getaway.

The “shelter in place” command imposed by the governor of Massachusetts was lifted before the suspect was caught. Only after this police state move was ended did the owner of the boat go outside to check on his property, and in so doing discover the suspect.

No, the suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public. He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police.

As journalist Tim Carney wrote last week:

“Law enforcement in Boston used cameras to ID the bombing suspects, but not police cameras. Instead, authorities asked the public to submit all photos and videos of the finish-line area to the FBI, just in case any of them had relevant images. The surveillance videos the FBI posted online of the suspects came from private businesses that use surveillance to punish and deter crime on their property.”

Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston.

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

This is unprecedented and is very dangerous. We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Congress Exploits Our Fears to Take Our Liberty – Article by Ron Paul

Congress Exploits Our Fears to Take Our Liberty – Article by Ron Paul

Comments 0 Comment
The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
April 24, 2013
******************************

This week, as Americans were horrified by the attacks in Boston, both houses of Congress considered legislation undermining our liberty in the name of “safety.” Gun control continued to be the focus of the Senate, where an amendment expanding federal “background checks” to gun show sales and other private transfers dominated the debate. While the background check amendment failed to pass, proponents of gun control have made it clear they will continue their efforts to enact new restrictions on gun ownership into law.

While it did not receive nearly as much attention as the debate on gun control, the House of Representatives passed legislation with significant implications for individual liberty: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA proponents claim that the legislation is necessary to protect Americans from foreign “cyber terrorists,” but the real effect of this bill will be to further erode Americans’ online privacy.

Under CISPA, Internet corporations are authorized to hand over the private information of American citizens to federal agents, as long as they can justify the violation of your privacy in the name of protecting “cyber security”. Among the items that may be shared are your e-mails, browsing history, and online transactions.

Like the PATRIOT Act, CISPA violates the fourth amendment by allowing federal agencies to obtain private information without first seeking a warrant from a federal judge. The law also allows federal agencies to pass your information along to other federal bureaucrats — again without obtaining a warrant. And the bill provides private companies with immunity from lawsuits regardless of the damage done to anyone whose personal information is shared with the federal government.

CISPA represents a troubling form of corporatism, where large companies cede their responsibility to protect their property to the federal government, at the expense of their customers’ privacy and liberty. In this respect, CISPA can be thought of as an electronic version of the Transportation Security Administration, which has usurped the authority over airline security from private airlines. However, CISPA will prove to be far more invasive than even the most robust TSA screening.

CISPA and the gun control bill are only the most recent examples of politicians manipulating fear to con the people into giving up their liberties. Of course, the people are told the legislation is for “limited purposes,” but authority granted to the federal government is rarely, if ever, used solely for the purpose for which it is granted. For example, the American people were promised that the extraordinary powers granted the federal government by the PATRIOT Act would only be used against terrorism. Yet soon after the bill became law, reports surfaced that it was being used for non-terrorism purposes. In fact, according to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union, 76 percent of the uses of the controversial “sneak-and-peak” warrants where related to the war on drugs!

Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”

I would not be surprised if the Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events. The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to take their liberties.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.