The Bush Administration’s arrogance concerning eavesdropping on citizens without even a momentary thought given to warrants or any kind of civil liberties reminded me of another arrogant dictator (besides Big Brother):

And you thought it was just your library books they were looking at!
Update:
I also caught this choice quote from an incredible essay with the title: Fear destroys what bin Laden could not by Robert Steinback of the Miami Herald:
President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he’ll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president — or is that king? — has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.
Is that America’s highest goal — preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, “What’s wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?”
There’s much more in this, and some of it is what I’ve been nearly screaming for the past 4 years, that America is not the same country that I knew. Steinback also says earlier:
…I would have expected such actions to provoke — speaking metaphorically now — mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we’d follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.
Never would I have expected this nation — which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty — would cower behind anyone just for promising to “protect us”.
It’s a call to arms. Is it too late for anyone to hear it?
PS: I noticed that this is my 100th posting in this blog. Guess I made it to triple digits by the end of the year!
David,
This is the biggest problem I have with bushco … And the thought that the US public is not storming the gates over his spying on them is just beyond me.
Get us out of here!!
Hi Bob,
The damage that Bush and his minions have inflicted often seems to fall into 4 categories:
1) Handing over Public Policy creation to multinational corporations under the guise of ‘free enterprise’ and ‘privatization’ (Cheney and his secretive meetings with Enron and others for ‘Energy Policy’ was just the beginning)
2) Following a Fascist Model for all governmental activities, particularly anything involving dealing with terrorism. When your enemy is ‘the boogieman’ or a concept, you can get away with anything. Wiretaps and secret dossiers on citizens like you and me are the way that fascists have always (and still) operated. Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Il will tell you that.
3) Looting the treasury. Just as Banana Republic (the metaphor, not the clothiers) Dictators raid the coffers of their tax collections to feed their insatiable appetites, so has Bush and the Republican party. The result is a Deficit (and worse, National Debt) that looms on the horizon like a coming storm. I have to say that this is above all, what led us to get out of Dodge. Sure, you can be mad about the other stuff, but this financial disaster? You run, as far as you can when you see that coming.
4) Removing the wall between Church and State. Allowing religious zealots to take key positions and control decisions regarding health care, government’s role in the lives of citizenry, and education. Even the Grand Canyon isn’t allowed to say how old it is in its tourist literature because of the administration’s wholesale adoption of far-right lunacy that doesn’t believe in Science. This has a chilling effect on scientists or learned people staying or doing anything good in the country in the long term. Another reason to leave, albeit not as much a call-to-action as the previous one.
Any one of these four things is enough to get me going (and notice that I didn’t even once mention the war in Iraq!), but all four taken together add up to a nightmarish combination of stupidity, greed, and arrogance. It’s one thing to be criminal, and other to be incompetent, and still another to be a Fascist. Bushco manages to be all three, while smirking like a Fraternity Boy.