Ever since the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, it seems as if we were losing more and more civil liberties by the day. As a result, there were more beefed up security. But that was a good thing as security needed to be beefed up in the first place. However, as a result the Patriot Act was created and signed into law allowing the government to wiretap your phones. If they hear something they don’t like, they can arrest you and so forth. Our rights to privacy has dwindled down quite a lot within the years.
Then they had the terror threat level which didn’t make any sense at all. My US History professor explained that it didn’t mean squad to the average everyday American such as myself. It was just a way to get people paranoid to a point where they trust the government completely. It seemed to work. My uncle found it kind of funny whenever Bush’s approval ratings went down, then the threat level went up. In turn, Bush’s approval rating went up. My professor who is one of the foremost accurate and accredited historians within the state of Florida also explained whenever one party has control of at least two of the three branches of government, it becomes a tyranny.
We allowed the United States to become a tyranny until just recently. The Republican party that’s mostly made up of White-Conservative let alone White-Conservative Christians had taken over both the Executive and Legislative Branches of the government. He explained that the Legislative Branch comes up with the bills, Executive Branch signs them into law, and the Judicial Branch interprets what the laws mean. They had the law making and law signing arms of the government and were trying to take over the Judicial Branch by saying they need to put more "Conservative" judges on in those seats saying they’re right and "Liberals" are wrong.
At the same time, nobody had really investiated what really happened regarding the events of 9/11. I don’t like beating a dead horse over and over again, but I always felt I have to use this as an example. There are people that say that 9/11 is a ligitimate terrorist attack. But conclusive evidence collected by all sorts of experts in their respective fields said otherwise. It’s possible that this was a conspiracy of the sort. But the thing is, those experts haven’t gone together yet. All efforts to thoroughly investigate 9/11 were shot down.
Ever since this tragic event, our liberties have slowly been taken away one by one. There’s more racial profiling out of paranoia of the sort. New laws have been passed to hurt the everyday American and so forth. At the same time, shady politicians seem to be held less accountable for their actions.
Everybody that spoke out against Iraq was considered to be a threat. One of those listed was a Quaker group. From my experience, Quakers are extremely peaceful people. Of all those listed on a watch list, they put a Quaker group in Florida as one of them. That’s pretty paranoid in my opinion. All groups that oppose the Iraq War and War in Iraq were placed on that list. In a sense, they’re expected everybody to blindly support the government. The fanatic supporters had made things much worse.
This government really has become a tyranny. George W. Bush was deemed to be harmless which I have to agree. The main ones we had to worry about were Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld. Dick Cheney was the more intelligent and cunning one. Rumsfeld was the war monger which a lot of people in this country can seem to agree.
But this country seems to have gotten tired of empty promises. Iraq was a disaster and is still is a disaster today. The Hurricane Katrina recovery effort was a complete disaster as well. People were frustrated about the unemployment and so forth. Medicare was also an issue.
Guess what, people have become more aware of what’s going on. Most of the Republicans got voted out of office. The Democratic Party has control of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and most of the state govenorships. Bush is now a lame duck president. The Republican Party has turned its back on Bush. The Democratic candidates are running strong for the Presidential campaigns.
On another note, Washington DC now has voting rights and representation in the House of Representatives. In the past, they didn’t consider DC voting rights as an issue. The neoconservatives that make up the base of the GOP have a lot to fear. Mainly because DC is highly Democratic due to the demographics.
In the future if the course remains steady, we could possibly reclaim our civil liberties one by one. The biggest opponents of civil liberties are people who care about themselves and want to remain in power.