He’s quite freaked out by whatever it is he sees:
What if the federal government captures in real time the contents of every telephone call, email and text message and all the fiber-optic data generated by every person and entity in the United States 24/7/365? What if this mass surveillance was never authorized by any federal law?…
What if President George W. Bush told the NSA that since it is part of the Defense Department and he was the commander in chief of the military, NSA agents could spy on anyone, notwithstanding any court orders or statutes that prohibited it? What if Bush believed that his orders to the military were not constrained by the laws Congress had written or the interpretations of those laws by federal courts or even by the Constitution?…
What if the Constitution requires warrants based on probable cause of criminal behavior before surveillance can be conducted but Congress has written laws reducing that standard to probable cause of communicating with someone who has communicated with a foreign national? What if a basic principle of constitutional law is that Congress is subject to the Constitution and therefore cannot change its terms or their meanings?…
What if when the feds know enough about us to harm us, it will be too late? What if it is already too late? What do we do about it?
My guess is he is saying this despite knowing he will be receiving pushback on it from the machine.
I was so sure at the time Bush II was a great guy with a very high intellect and a deep, emotional love of freedom. It makes me question every other assumption I operate on today, and question the very foundation of my intellectual ability. Was he this clueless and trusting of the elites, or was he that evil and disdainful of freedom, and I never saw it because he fooled me? Could I spot it today?
Back then I felt so incredibly lucky to have been born in the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Now, I envy those who live in nations without the resources to target millions of their own citizens for no reason at all, where freedom is forced by the fact they can’t afford to encroach on it.
The practical reality about the surveillance state is that it will never reign itself in. Which is unfortunate, because one reality I see everywhere is that extremes of Yang always turn into extremes of Yin when allowed to progress uninhibited. That really seems some greater law of the universe, designed to drive the instability and cycles which you see all throughout nature.
If the surveillance state never advanced and bothered normal citizens, normal citizens would never have any reason to oppose it. But for some reason, they target people who otherwise might have been supporters, and as a result, they are pushing the whole thing toward the Yang into Yin moment. When conservative federal judges like Judge Napolitano, and patriotic reporters like Sharyll Atkisson are horrified by a tool of national security, something is wrong.
On the opposite side, there is little anyone can do to stop it now. Even if you wanted to get involved, it would simply get on you, and from that moment you would have zero ability to gain any element of surprise. I suspect this is why President Trump has no interest in it. Right now, it is a high-cost battle you probably cannot win.
For now, they are firmly in the yang moment and heading more yang, but eventually things will turn, and as it does, the public will turn K. My assumption is when the economic collapse hits, the machine will have a massive problem, because it will have evolved to spend the billions or trillions of dollars it spends, and that money will just not be there to support the machine or its operations. That disorderly downsize is when I expect bits and pieces will begin to come out in front of a freshly K-populace, and then is when individual freedom will re-emerge.
Once that happens, I would not expect a wing of the George W Bush Library to devote itself to explaining his role in the entire thing.
[…] Judge Andrew Napolitano Asks What If? […]
There really is a significant difference between what Bush put in place and what we have today. I, more than most can say this with certainty.
He’s the left’s favorite punching bag (till 2017 anyways) so we’ve come to believe all the lies the left has made about him. There is so much we now take as fact which is so thoroughly twisted and outright wrong it is staggering the mass delusion.
It was the Obama administration which took the, now relatively tame, applications put in place by Bush and ballooned them to the now obscene mess they are today. Specifically in his first few years in office, when the democrats had the run of the government when those programs were expanded and the ‘meta-data’ collection at NSA started (at least publically acknowledged I can’t speak to any illegal actions taken behind the backs of leadership).
Perhaps, on a gut level- I never liked the reflex reaction on the left to blame Bush for every problem. But the Bushes have a history of saying outright dumb things, which are very difficult to defend. That coupled with their grip on GOP was not good. How many Presidents was this one family going to produce? 3 Presidents? 4? And I couldn’t stand W’s friendly demeanor with Hillary, was it just spite for Jeb’s inability to compete? George W. Bush’s unwillingness to publicly chastise the Obama administration or Hillary’s behavior is what drives the criticism. As per usual, the Bushes just stand there, lose, almost as if on purpose and normal conservatives pay the price. It has set America on an entirely different course since Reagan.
This speech always creeped me out. Especially the “and we will” part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7i0wCFf8g
Takking of surveillance http://amp.timeinc.net/thedrive/the-war-zone/13154/this-mysterious-military-spy-plane-has-been-flying-circles-over-seattle-for-days?source=dam
Interesante!
You know AC, this world is not the real one. The real one is what comes after. Remember your CS Lewis, the end of the narnia chronicles when they find out they dont have to come back to this world, but to live woth all the friends and family they love forever. Thats actually how it is. We leave this place, we get our judgement, some of us get purgatory for a bit of time until we get corrected. OK, thats bad, really bad, worse than anything the human mind can imagine. But its necessary to prepare us for the everlasting good. And to be honest, I think deep down inside we all need to see justice done even to ourselves. And then a world of truth, with God. Not like here, where we are barely aware of God, and its so hard to see His hand and feel His love. In that place, its absolute. And it will be forever. If the punishment of the afterlife is more terrible than we can imagine, then obviously the Love we will experience must also be beyond anything, any joy, any happiness that we can imagine, and unlike here, it will never end.
But even then, we dont know how God will decide to play it out in here. Its His world, His reality. Hes the one calling the shots. Sure, it looks like it has to go down hard, but its really His call.
And if He decides we need a hard lesson, then how long will it last? And even if we have to suffer, at least we’ll know that one day, someone wont. This is likely the last time anyone will have to go through something like this. So many prophecies point to this generation as being the one of redemption.
Anyway, Im only writing this because I felt some pain in what you wrote and I thought some encouragement might be welcome. You write from the heart and I think you are a comfort to a great many people.
I appreciate it, but actually, I am very Zen about it all, in part because I have felt the warm glow of God. I know, twelve years or so ago I would have seen that statement as delusion, but then I felt it, oddly right when I was beginning the process of taking r/K public. I see it now as part of the plan – a reminder he does see and know all, I guess.
So I know what you say is true, and as a result have a very Kamikaze attitude in this life. My only real stress is in not being sure exactly what He wants me to do in some areas. However I am sad to see this country’s freedom go to shit, but I also know it will come back.
I would like to see this turn of the cycle through to completion from this side, though.