We have long discussed the erosion of civil liberties in the United States, including the attacks on privacy and other rights by the Obama Administration. It appears that we are not alone in those concerns. A new Gallup poll shows a record drop in the satisfaction of Americans over their freedoms. The massive drop is matched in such countries as Egypt, Pakistan, and Venezuela.
Seventy-nine percent of US residents are satisfied with their level of freedom. That is down from 91 percent in 2006 — a 12 point drop. We were once the highest country in the world on such polls. We have now dropped to 36th place.
That mirrors other studies showing the United States dropping to the same low levels on press freedoms, Internet speech, and other rights.
The White House has been adept in deflecting such criticism with a host of commentators and bloggers who deflect criticism with references to Republicans and the “red menace” or “things could be worse” spin or simply change the subject. However, the expansion of the internal security network in the United States and police powers is obviously having an impact on how Americans now view their rights. Years ago, I wrote a column entitled “10 Reasons Why The United States Is No Longer The Land of The Free.” Things have only grown worse since that column ran. The Obama Administration’s recent effort to strip citizens of privacy protections over their cellphones and records illustrates the extremism of some of these positions. That argument failed to secure a single vote on the Supreme Court for the Administration’s effort to blow a hole in American privacy protections.
The poll on the eve of the Fourth of July captures the dire condition of American civil liberties today. As I wrote years ago, Obama has been a disaster for the American civil liberties movement and the damage done under his tenure will be felt for decades. What is most distressing is that citizens see the decline but feel virtually powerless to do anything about it due to the duopoly of power in this country. Even with universal calls for change, the two parties are again recycling many of the same figures and same policies as prior years. Polls of this kind show a deep sense of dissatisfaction among Americans but also a complete lack of expression of those views through political channels. That is a dangerous situation for any political system when such widespread feelings are left unexpressed and unvented in politics. The political system seems to be operating in an increasingly unconnected and unresponsive fashion vis-a-vis the public at large. There is a sense among many that I speak to that there is a ruling elite and a vast body of the ruled — a modern equivalent to the helot class of ancient Sparta.
I am still amazed that we have come to this point of rapidly declining feelings of freedom and widespread dissociation with our political system. It is not the failure of our constitutional system and only partially the failure of our leaders. It is largely a failure in ourselves that we have become such grumbling drones — powerless, passive, and frankly a bit pathetic. Our government is openly trying to strip away core privacy protections and increase police powers at every level. Yet, we have fallen victim to the “blue state” and “red state” mentality — allowing politicians to constantly deflect criticism by referring to the other side as the greater evil. The result is predictable and, as with this poll, incredibly depressing.
I agree with much of Turley’s column, but I have to take exception that we have lost our freedoms recently. Any student of history knows that the US was a police state for most of our history. The Bill of Rights was a dead letter throughout the US for much of that time.. Within my personal memory and experience, we and I have more freedom now than when I was growing up in the McCarthy era. Prof Turley forgets US history as corporate capitalism took over most of our government at the turn of the 20th Century and especially during WWI. Labor organizers were routinely murdered, framed up and sent to prison by the government. The status of black and minority Americans was one of outright dictatorship for them in which their lives and property had no value or rights. Now THAT time was truly a police state and zero liberty, yet most Americans at the time would have said that the US is a free country. We cannot forget the FACT that the Socialist Party candidate for President, Gene Debs, ran for office from Federal prison for a speech that denounced capitalism and the war. Was the US a “free” country back then? Thousands of people were in prison for criticism of the government. In Texas it was a CRIME to speak German in public, even though it was the second language there. I could go on with tens of thousands of examples, so many in fact, it would take a full LIBRARY to list them all.
My paternal grandfather had a German name and a business in Boston during the war. Because of that a mob came and burned down his contracting business and his home. He could not speak a word of German, yet he was targeted. Obviously, he survived thankfully for me.
I think that most people have an appreciation that some surveillance is a legitimate function of the government. Every time I come back into the US, I am asked about my business and a host of questions concerning my travels. I have no problem with that at all. Virtually ALL of the measures Turley decries have been on going for most of the 20th century, only sometimes with and without the cover of law. Then we have the explosion of technology which makes such things even more pervasive.
My one major disagreement is with his criticism of drone strikes. They are most certainly legal as is being done since they are carried out against ARMED combatants or those assisting such activities. They are not subject to normal law enforcement measures since they are carried out in places that have NO government at all who the US can ask for assistance. So far no person who has objected to these strikes has answered my question as to whether or not FDR would have been wrong to order the 8th Air Force to bomb Ezra Pounds villa in Italy during WWII. Or if the Brits had drones available, to kill Lord Haw Haw during that war. Think that would have been a crime? I most certainly don’t, nor do most Americans. This is exactly the same situation with Obama’s supposed abuse of his powers as CiC. I will object when he kills a person in some country where we DO have legal means of redress and using the drones instead of the law. This is no more a violation of law than issuing wanted posters saying Wanted, Dead or Alive, or cops using their guns to shoot a wanted fugitive who is not willing to surrender. As for the drone strikes, they are perfectly legal under international law and US law. it is no different than the UN bombing a Nazi rally in Berlin where Hitler is to speak. He is a legal target and the US would have been justified in bombing that rally even though it would kill thousands of civilians. So please, let use some common sense.
randyjet – I am not sure how old you are, but I was in high school during the McCarthy era. I had plenty of freedom as I am sure you did. Eugene Debs was convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917.
Unlike Obama or LBJ, Roosevelt did not micromanage WWII so he would not have ordered the attacks on anyone. However, Churchill would have. And there were a couple of assassination teams sent to kill Hitler. BTW, the UN does not exist until after WWII. Still, we did kill lots of civilians, as did the Germans and Japanese.
Jim22 wrote “There are ways to escape Target, but you can’t escape the govt”
Try flying on an airplane, staying in a hotel, or renting a car without using a credit/debit card. Many businesses, e.g. cell phone providers and private toll roads, make it difficult to make payment using other than credit/debit cards. Try buying a motor vehicle, house, or property without submitting to a credit check with the big-three agencies. Try controlling your personal data.
This is a perfect example of why I was nasty to you before. Target is merely the most colorful example, yet you pounce on it in an attempt to demonstrate that I am deluded, when in fact I am far ahead of the discussion.
P.S. I have never seen a libertarian decry the usurping of our personal data by corporations, probably because the only way to stop it is via government regulation.
Mespo, Randyjet makes your point too. His focus on freedoms of speech back in the day as compared to now.
It’s funny that we always see the problems and not the progress. Gay marriage was as taboo as it got in the 70s. Murder rates and drug use were skyhigh. Treatment programs for drug abusers were ridiculed and mistreatment of women by boyfriends and spouses was de rigueur in some households and seen as private matters by the cops. Smoking was seen as healthy or cool and few cared about the nation’s homeless. Child abuse was the dirty little secret. Civil rights for African Americans was met with scorn or outright violence. Things are better and freer in some areas especially in regards to civil rights for for some groups including the young, female and homosexual. Big Tobacco, Big Pharm, Big Chem and many other businesses polluted at will (I speak from experience here as a Kepone survivor) or debased the public’s health with impunity. The air was bad; the water worse. Cartels -foreign and domestic – ruled the markets and few had access to the stock market or investment vehicles. A lot of that has changed and for the better.
So maybe we need the perspective of time to decide if we were freer then or now.
nick:
“There are good and bad in every group of people. Hell, there are some good liberals!”
*****************
Let’s not get too crazy there, nick. 😀
The four justices appointed by democratic presidents voted against Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. The justices appointed by the republicans voted favorably, and they nearly always for for the corporations. So, yes, the court is partisan, and the republican justices have become corporate tools.
Nick wrote “I again wonder where you get your disinformation about libertarians”
From other libertarians.
Ron Paul was the Libertarian candidate in 1988 so he must have views close to the libertarian mainstream. In the past eight years, he has advocated for the gold in Fort Knox and New York to be sold to reduce the debt. And he has advocated for the U.S. to return to the gold standard. Not to mention that he has often called for an audit of the country’s gold which would cost $15 million. These stories can be found in five minutes via your favorite search engine. One cannot have a gold standard if one does not possess gold.
I’m not as pessimistic as our host in this regard. Freedom surely is different than when I grew up in the 60s and 70s and due in large measure to more efficiencies in law enforcement and the sheer number of LEOs. There is a potential threat to our freedoms from the ever increasing surveillance state but I see few instances of people being denied their rights without any recourse. The heinous examples of police overreaction pale in comparison to the actual number of uneventful encounters with police who, by and large, do a pretty good job of protecting ourselves and our rights. Likewise I don’t see anyone cowled into accepting what they don’t want by government intervention. We can point to the excesses of the fight against terrorists but that involves a relative few individuals who seem hellbent on denying the rest of us our freedoms. The NSA is a problem but whistle-blowers have brought that issue to the public and there is a push to push back which is encouraging. Surely there are threats to freedom but those dire predictions of elections being cancelled or citizens being herded off to some gulag without trial via the NDAA of 2012 were simply way off base. The Republic may not be as free as it once was but the number of those satisfied (79%) seems to say something. It’s also worth remembering that things are never static on the freedom vs. security battlefront. We can change that paradigm with the next election. If we want to, that is. And if we don’t want to, isn’t that what democracy is all about? We are free as we want to be so long as we can elect.
Diane Feinstein is an 80 year old senile human who would not know a lie from a bow tie.
Govt. can break up a corporate monopoly but who breaks up a govt. monopoly?
Sauce, There are ways to escape Target, but you can’t escape the govt.
Nick, I have already done that. There is content based monitoring/censoring on this blog. The Snowden documents talk about it!
Nick Spinelli
No rights were taken away in Hobby Lobby. Religious rights, based in OUR most fundamental of rights, the First Amendment …
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If you are not a corporation “OUR” does not apply to you.
Corporations are generally created by state law, and none existed when the First Amendment was penned.
They are a ‘legal fiction’ that slowly evolved into imaginary friends over time.
“Imaginary friends or imaginary companions are a psychological and social phenomenon where a friendship or other interpersonal relationship takes place in the imagination rather than external physical reality. Imaginary friends are fictional characters created for improvisational role-playing. They often have elaborate personalities and behaviors. Although they may seem very real to their creators, children usually understand that their imaginary friends are not real. The first studies focusing on imaginary friends are believed to have been conducted during the 1890s.” (Wikipedia, ‘Imaginary Friend’).
Saucy, You miss the point. Big Government and Big Business have merged!! To say one is “better” is ludicrous.
Jill, I have had similar problems on a thread. Go to another thread and comment. Then come back and try here again. That sometimes works.
Nick wrote “I had a radical philosophy professor in college”
He sounds rather foresighted to me.
Nick wrote “He made the case that both govt. and business wanted a convenient way to track what you bought and what you did … Big Brother”
I believe that corporations are a far more dangerous threat to our freedom than the usual libertarian devil, government.
Target uses its customer data to send coupons for baby products to women before they start announcing their pregnancy to their friends. To be facetious, Target does this by noticing that these women buy pickles and ice cream together (actually, read Forbes: “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did”). Libertarians would say that this is just smart business practice.
Imagine that in a few years a Republican president is elected, one who campaigned on repealing Obamacare. He does so in his first week of office, along with eliminating that anti-business program, COBRA. So insurance companies once again deny coverage based on preexisting conditions as they did in the past. You have disease X. You read that herbs K, D, and R lessen the symptoms, so you start buying them at Target using your credit/debit card. Target notices your purchases and sells your customer data to employers and insurance companies. You lose your job because your employer is outsourcing your facility to India. You cannot obtain medical insurance because they all know of your disease X. Your medical bills pile up and eventually you lose everything.
See the problem?
Jim, DC recently became the wealthiest city in the US. Back in the 70’s, 4% of politicians leaving Congress became lobbyists. Now the figure is approaching 50%! It’s both Dem and Republican, in a duopoly, it doesn’t matter the party, they both feed off the plentiful trough provided by the hard earned money of taxpayers. Read the book, This Town. It will disgust you, but should be required reading to understand the DC culture.
Jim, I made a good living but am not rich. I worked very hard, 80 hour weeks w/ my own business. And, the envy analysis is spot on. My biz was PI and I made my money because all people have, to varying degrees, been consumed by the seven deadly sins, envy being one of the worst.
Being raised in a blue collar family w/ union factory workers and small business owners, we knew good and bad rich. There are good and bad in every group of people. Hell, there are some good liberals!
So, I just added a few things and tried to post again. No Luck! There appears to be content monitoring on this blog, IMO.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014_Page4.html#.U7VnPqhSJz9