I am writing in response to the article by Sam Deluca regarding wiretapping and surveillance hurting the civil liberties of citizens. It is important that one not assume that the Democratic party will always serve to protect Americans from an authoritative executive branch. The myth presented by mainstream media is that there are definite left and right wings in politics. It is obvious, however, that both Democrats and Republicans receive enormous campaign funds from lobbyists hired by large businesses. A book entitled Do As I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy points out how some heralded Democrats, such as Ted Kennedy, claim to support alternative energy, but oppose the construction of wind turbines in Cape Cod because they would be built near the Kennedy compound in Hyannis, a favorite area for yachting and sailing.
The person I hear most Democrats cite, personal moral issues aside, is Bill Clinton as a great President. Under Clinton, government spending increased in health care and welfare while the budget deficit declined. This was possible because money was being taken from Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, taxpayers, and small business owners. Clinton advocated the restriction of guns by ordinary citizens while allowing federal agents to use force in the form of martial law in Waco. The Branch Davidians were not tried by jury for allegedly stockpiling weapons and child abuse. The main point I am stressing is that the use of our great military within our borders leads to poor decisions because the military is trained for defending the country against foreign enemies without constitutional rights, not its own citizens.
This case is just like every time large secretive organizations conduct matters of national security: They refuse to disclose information to the people they are protecting, and it follows the law of problem-reaction-solution.
A problem occurs such as Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, or the WTC bombings in 1993. The result is a vow to defend our freedom against terrorists by restricting gun rights, instituting identification checks by thumb scanning in states with high illegal immigration like Texas, and taking away the very same liberties of freedom of speech against corrupt administrations that our founding fathers fought to prevent. We are told that questioning a man who instant messages a negative remark about the president, questioning a kid who researches the Chesapeake Bay because it could be a bomb target, and holding immigrants and even U.S. citizens in custody without probable cause because of connections to the Middle East is just for our safety and protection from the “bad-guys” and “evil-doers.”
Call these conspiracy theories if you like, because we have been conditioned to think of those presenting theories as “nutters” because of decades of Communist fear. People laugh at those who believe in conspiracies because they think they can not be true and because corporate media does not discuss them as originating from credible sources. The only way we can really maintain our liberties is if the citizens take action in numbers to demand government make the information public.
Politics are boring to most engineers and I find that disappointing, because at RPI they condition us with the idea that we will either work for a corporation, the military, or enter graduate school. Large universities are affected by politics in terms of federal grants and corporations receive no-bid contracts in times of war or crisis, so does that not affect us all? I encourage students to, instead of watching some Hollywood movie late after partying one night, watch a film that may not be conclusive but does present good ideas such as Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State and see if it does not inspire you to get involved in politics in your hometown. But alas, I forget, we live in the “me” generation where we have been raised in a consumer world to only care if it directly affects us. We are trained to do lots of work so that when we enter the business world, we will have significant income. Maybe I should get back to being a nobody engineering student who will probably end up as a corporate drone at Exxon-Mobil.
Peter Adams
CHME ‘07
