Subject: Privacy and the Morning Glory Democracy

              PRIVACY AND THE MORNING GLORY DEMOCRACY.
 
             Copyright May 17, 2002 Homer Wilson Smith
      Redistribution rights granted for non commercial purposes.
 
     The feeling is that people of good heart will always speak up
publically, anyone who wants to have a *PRIVATE* communication is up to
no good.  You know, only bad people have secrets, if you aren't doing
anything bad, you won't mind everyone knowing about it.

     OK, well on the face of it that sounds good, but there ARE bad
people in the world, and it is from THEM that you might want to have a
few secrets lest they use what they find out about you against you as a
good person.

     Remember there are two uses for the communication lines of the
world, we use them for the market and we use them for the body politic.
 
     We use the comm lines as the market to do our business with each
other, but we use the comm lines as the body politic to design the way
society and the markets are going to work in the first place.

     Both the market and political comm lines are the SAME PHYSICAL COMM
LINES, speech, phone, mail, e-mail, radio, books, TV etc.
 
     It might be quite all right to allow a benign government to have
access to all our market based communications as an objective
disinterested referee to keep the playing field fair and square amongst
all players.
 
     But do you really want the government to know who you are going to
vote for before you vote for them?
 
     If you don't mind existing or competing governments knowing where
your allegiances lie, then of course you won't mind them reading your
e-mail in the name of catching the bad guys who won't be using e-mail
anyhow.

     If however you feel that people in government might be worried
what the people think of them and are planning to do about them, and
you would like to discuss this stuff in e-mail with your friends
PRIVATELY, to keep you and yours safe from retribution from that
government, then you certainly don't want the government to be reading
your e-mail or listening in on any of your other communications.

     Unfortunately there is no way to tell the government "Hey you can
listen in on my market communications, but my political ones are
private!"

     Now in times of great stress where the desire for safety surpasses
the desire for freedom, many will be willing to give up the freedoms to
have the safety.
 
     We suffer searches at airports, we suffer the government to tap our
phones, and perhaps we suffer them also to tap our e-mail, all in the
name of catching the bad guys.

     During acute moments of panic and trouble, this could be seen to be
a good idea.
 
     But never to sunset it?

     Democracy, if it is to mean anything, must stand on its own two
feet, it must stand on its own principles, particularly during times of
stress, otherwise it's just another has been.

     People like to claim how proud they are to be an American and they
like to spout all the great things that America stands for, but then
they fold up like a morning glory when touched by the darkness of
terror.
 
     The morning glory democracy attracts another kind of person, they
aren't the terrorists themselves who commit all these horrific acts, but
they will sell you a subscription for a pretty penny that tells you how
bad it all is and how it will continue to be so, particularly IF YOU
CONTINUE TO BE WHAT YOU ACTUALLY STAND FOR.
 
     We call these people the Merchants of Fear, as they profit from
violating the Constitution in order to protect the Constitution.

     They profit from the morning glory closing up and staying closed.
 
     So you end up in this hypocrisy where America is the greatest
country on Earth and we stand for all these wonderful things, but we are
always at war, so we can't enjoy any of them!
 
     If people know that a democracy will fold up at the slightest hint
of trouble, then they will go out of their way to make trouble to make
sure the democracy folds up.  If on the other hand they know the
democracy will stand its ground no matter what, there will be less
incentive to cause trouble on the part of those who would see the
democracy not survive.
 
     Then one has to ask what happens when the government BECOMES the
bad guys?

     One has to have a certain level of trust in the government, the
police and the military to allow a cop in every bedroom, and a spy in
every computer to verify the 'goodness' of our every desire, thought and
action.

     Surely if the government were a Divine Oligarchy made of perfect
people, assigned directly by God, then perhaps all that oversight would
be a good thing.

     Do you trust your government to act divinely?
 
     Do you even trust your own parents to act that way?
 
     Yourself?

     There is a problem with too much trust in a government.

     When law makers outlaw criminals, criminals become law makers.
 
     When a bad guy knows he can't "get away with murder" amongst the
people, he will get himself elected into power where he will then
legislate his kind of "murder" into law.

     Thus any hierarchy of power is a place where bad people bubble up
into positions of power as they are cornered out of the lower ranks of
the civilian masses by the laws against criminality.

     It is much easier to skim off the top of society as a Senator or
Chief of Police than it is as a civilian, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE THE LAW
BEHIND YOU.
 
     Pretty soon the police state that people elected into power to
protect themselves from bad people is itself made of bad people making
sure the masses stay imprisoned in their cell of protection.

     And that prison cell of protection is paid for by your taxes!

     Talk about Justice.

     Remember when a good person builds a cell of protection that NO bad
person can get into, not even good people can get into it to let him
out.
 
     This is why certain things that look awfully tempting during times
of stress, like giving government oversight over all communications,
i.e.  eradication of privacy, is generally a bad idea because it opens
the doors for the criminals, who have bubbled up into positions of
power, to consolidate their power and do more bad things to the people
they were elected to protect.

     When the criminal knows your every thought and your every friend
ahead of time, what chance do you have?
 
     One of the first things criminals do when using power to
consolidate power, is to let more criminals into positions of power!
 
     So the more power you give a criminal, the more criminals in power
there will be.
 
     Now I am not into conspiracy theories, but it has to be said that
once the government and the people get into the idea that its OK to
trade freedoms for security, the door is opened for the government to
either engage in Merchant of Fearism itself, or even covertly CREATE
threats to security in order to further justify taking away freedoms, in
order to further consolidate their own power and personal wealth.

     Yeah I know, maybe this is the way somebody in some foreign
sleazeball government 'over there' might act, but surely no one standing
under the American Flag would ever do such a thing.

     Basically once the majority of people are NO LONGER ABLE to take
out the government should it ever become corrupt, you have, by
definition, a police state.

     Thus the protections written into the constitution are there to
guarantee that such a state of affairs can never happen, and that power
will always belong to the majority of people once they wake up, and not
to the government that might have slithered its way into power during
the dream time.

     Homer

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Homer Wilson Smith     I would rather die poor    Lightlink Internet
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF  than suffer the patronage  Ithaca, NY
homer@lightlink.com    of bigots and pinheads.    www.lightlink.com