If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky
I know the U.S. Sees itself as being under attack and, all things considered, there are a few very strong arguments supporting that belief. First off there is the destruction of the twin towers in New York and the attack on the Pentagon. That these are tragedies of mammoth proportions cannot be denied and were no doubt designed to drive a sense of fear into the very hearts of all Americans. It worked.
It has also brought about a government consisting of people who would, under normal circumstance, be seen as serious threats to the freedoms and rights Americans hold dear. Now the nation that prides itself as the birthplace of democracy is on the verge of making itself into a police state.
Now we could argue where democracy really got its start; what about Athens, Greece where, for a short period of time, the citizens (male) voted for their dictators…And then there was the Republic of Rome where citizens participated in public life – if they were in possesion of property and/or money. And, of course, the English Parliament which has staggered and slowly pulled itself up from a group of toadying lords to a free-for-all of publicly elected citizen representatives.
It could even be argued that no state until the early 20th Century was truly democratic in allowing all its citizens to vote. And there is the little detail that Asians and aboriginals have been denied the right to vote, right up to the 1960’s in the case of Canadian natives.
But I’m moving off the point here. Or maybe not. Americans are no more guilty of selective memory than any other cultural group but these days, they do seem to be unaware of the irony in drafting a Patriot Act that flies in the face of their founding fathers’ desire for freedom to the common man (and by that they really did mean white, christian males).
Using defence of freedom as the justification, their freedoms are being impinged upon more and more each day. And the part that really gets to me is that there are people here in Canada who think we should be doing the same thing…People who should know better, people with political power.
That’s enough for now. I’ll probably be back with a rant on Republicans vs Democrats.