Losing the battle

Washington DC - In the words of "Monty Python and The Holy Grail" - it's a very silly place. Bad news though, is through their "silliness" lies the continuing erosion of our personal freedoms. Consider the timeline of some relatively recent events.

The Infamous Do Not Call legislation:
Out of overwhelming concern for average Americans having their dinners interrupted by the bastion of evil - The Dreaded Telemarketers - Congress and The White House played upon the emotions of Americans by passing regulations restricting legitimate trade practices. Initially, the effort was defeated on Constitutional grounds but the 'where there's a will, there's a way' stick-to-itiveness of our protectors in Washington finally won out.

Usurping State Rights:
The current events surrounding the Shiavo case and the apparent mad rush of lawmakers to inject their 'superior' judgment over legal rulings within the State Constitution of Florida. More mad rants about activist judges and about doing "what's right" are enough to have one's head spinning. I fear we are throwing out the baby with the bath water.

And this brings:
I received an email from the President of Godaddy.com, Bob Parsons, today. I have several dozen domains registered for some of my business activities. This is from his blog Hot Points.

The challenge will be to get everyone to understand our current "loss of privacy" issue.
It’s a challenging time for me because I’ve simply got to get the message through everybody’s head that the NTIA’s* decision to deep six our right to privacy on .US domain names is a very big deal. Many of you simply do not know that this wrongheaded decision by the NTIA can literally put you in danger. Those of you who are taking advantage of unlisted telephone numbers and private domain name registrations already know how important privacy is to your daily lives. However there’s a significant group of visitors to this Blog, who indicate by their posts, that they just don’t understand the rights they are forfeiting. I’m afraid that many of these people are more concerned about the fate of a rabbit, that may or may not be fictitious, than they are with their first amendment right to privacy. Quite frankly, I find this amazing.

Read this post but I was particularly interested in some of the comments from readers. One was most fascinating and telling of what seems to be the mainstream of contemporary political thought.

We really need to stop our whining about freedom of speech issues. The government, at times, has to intervene on issues like this for the greater good. Most folks seem to not have the capacity to understand the dilemma Americans face daily with "freedom of speech" issues. There are consequences to free speech when, and unfortunately, that freedom is abused by some. Until it becomes an intolerable burden and creates an atmosphere of oppression of sorts, we should be grateful we have the government we have, appreciate the privilege to live in the US and not anywhere else. Perception fellas, perception. Nothing will EVER be perfect. We have it as close to perfect as it can get. Let's stop whining.

That doesn't quite square with what the framers of the Constitution thought or the Declaration of Independence. Those guys who wore wigs are rolling over in their graves no doubt.

Privilege my ass.