America's next president had better believe in restoring liberty

[damnedifIknow]

As the 2016 presidential election comes slowly into focus, my most fervent wish is for a prominent candidate to give the following speech, or one like it:

Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your busy schedules to listen to me. I want you to do more than listen, though; I want you to hear me because nothing I talk about in this campaign is more important than what I'm going to discuss today.

The topic is liberty.

We are losing our liberty. In some cases, it's being taken away. In others, we are giving it away. If we don't reverse course, and soon, we will lose it entirely. And if that happens, we will lose our republic.

Liberty is our civic lifeblood. Our founders had their flaws, and huge moral blind spots. But on liberty, as it has come to be understood, they were way ahead of their time. Every American – everyone – should know by heart a quotation from before the American Revolution. It is widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and it goes like this: "Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

*Soon, if we don't change course, everything will be captured and stored. Everything we do and say will be visible to government, and it will be available retrospectively when someone wants to know what we were saying or doing in the past. Even though the vast majority of people who enter public service are good and honorable, we know from history that the ones who are not will abuse their positions – and that power inevitably corrupts.

Surveillance of everyone, all the time, may – may – lessen the risk of one kind of disaster. But it guarantees another kind. We know from all kinds of research that pervasive surveillance is bad for society. It fuels distrust. It chills free speech, the foundation of liberty. Massive surveillance isn't just un-American as a civic matter. By turning people who would be innovators into timid conformists, it is economically damaging as well."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/29/2016-presidential-race-surveillance-liberty

[Tx4obama]

1. Glenn Beck yaks about 'liberty' and 'founding fathers' ALL THE TIME.

I think Democratic candidates should stay away from those two words as much as possible and them very rarely.

[spin]

4. I disagree. If we don"t value our liberty and our rights we may lose them. ...

If we continue down the path George W Bush started us on, we will end up living in a police state.

I have heard it said that the best form of government is a benign dictatorship. Unfortunately there are few examples of good dictators.

[Tx4obama]

5. I did NOT say that we should not value 'our rights' or speak up for them...

What I said is that 'candidates' should try to stay away from using the words 'liberty' and 'founding fathers'.

Those two words are used constantly in republican talking points.

There are other words that can be used just as effectively.

[spin]

6. That's fair. The important thing is that a candidate supports the basic concepts of freedom ...

in our nation while both campaigning and while in office. The words he uses may vary.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Except that is total wimp bullshit to yeild basic words of our culture to the right wing. To say

that 'liberty' is a bad, bad word and belongs to the right wing is to reject basic components of our history and of the documents that frame or political nation.
Tx4 thinks these words were ruined by some shouting nutbag, I do not.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Liberty is the name of the Lady in NY Harbor for a reason. Fuck Beck and the Republicans they do not own our America.

[polichick]

10. Yes, the nutjobs have really tainted these words...

imo Dems should focus on the word "democracy" in a big way - because we don't have one.

[gopiscrap]

2. I'm with you but I don't think it will happen

Last edited Sun Sep 1, 2013, 10:24 AM - Edit history (1)

the fucking corporations have us right where they want us, education is now not to teach you to think but to be a lab rat, and newspapers are now whores for their corporate masters only putting out what their corporate overlords want them to write. Doesn't bode well.

[damnedifIknow]

3. I agree with this and the rest of the article also

"Surveillance of everyone, all the time, may – may – lessen the risk of one kind of disaster. But it guarantees another kind. We know from all kinds of research that pervasive surveillance is bad for society. It fuels distrust. It chills free speech, the foundation of liberty. Massive surveillance isn't just un-American as a civic matter. By turning people who would be innovators into timid conformists, it is economically damaging as well."

[seabeckind]

8. Agree

I had hoped it was this president who said in his first address to the people after his election and before his inauguration:

We have had a lot of activites in this country which made a mockery of our constitution and have seriously diminished human dignity and our quality of life.

That shit ends NOW!

Instead...SSDD

And looking over my card for the next race...

[otohara]

9. Guns, Guns, Guns

Freedumb and liberty to the right is all about them gunz

[blkmusclmachine]

11. The POLICE STATE is here to stay.

30,000 Drones to keep an eye on you. And that's just the beginning

of the end.