The end of freedom occurs when the government starts intimidating whistleblowers.
Hitler took power in January 1933. By October 1933, he had enacted laws that imposed the death penalty on anyone writing “treasonous” material. Guess who defined treason? Any journalist wanting a license to practice had to belong to an approved association, and anyone with just one Jewish grandparent did not qualify for that license.
When a state uses its power to shut up journalists, or civilians, with a story to tell, that state has crossed the line and has started to take away freedom.
I laugh at the slogan militarists like to trumpet when they call the noise of jet engines the sound of freedom. The sound of freedom is really the keyboard of a writer, the voice of a whistleblower.
However, we have given our government the Patriot Act, and now it has the legal right to shut us all up. People like Snowden, who know facts that I certainly want to know, are now demonized as traitors by our government. Congressmen are trumpeting treason, when they obviously don’t even understand the term treason.
Article Three of the United States Constitution defines treason:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
Shame on those congressmen who call Snowden a traitor. You cannot commit treason unless the country is at war, and the traitor is adhering to the country’s enemies or giving them aid and comfort.
When our government prosecutes its own citizens for treason for telling someone something as simple as showing that the government is systematically spying on all its people without disclosure or permission, we have reached the end of freedom.
When our government is so threatened by the fact that we simply know this is all going on that it makes a case out of prosecuting the whistleblower, we have reached the end of freedom.
Obama can no longer call himself the leader of the free world. We are no longer free!
With every day this goes on, with every day the Patriot Act remains in place to give the government the right to imprison us simply for offering our opinions about its actions, we’re slipping down the slimy slide of the end of freedom.