Second Shoe Drops. The Bush Administration's aspirations to "protect" us by watching us all extremely carefully, à la George Orwell's Big Brother, have become unmistakable. Not content to "protect" us from "terrorists" by listening in to our fone calls, they are now intent on "protecting" children from "pornography" by tracking what everyone (not just children) looks at on the Internet. What excuses will the Radical Right make for this? Or will even they wake up to the plain fact that powerful forces are trying to control us in every particular of our lives, like the busybodies of our Puritan precursors in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and even here in New Jersey? (My city, Newark, was founded in 1666 by Puritans from Connecticut.)
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A line has been drawn in the sand by Google, which refuses to turn over to Government snoops, records of what Americans — and others?, in the interconnected world of the Internet — look for thru Google's search engine. All Americans (and outsiders who might also be tracked) need to tell the Government to stop this slow, steady movement toward mind control.
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Government is supposed to be our servant, not our master.
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It is supposed to keep the information superhighway in good repair and free of litter (spam) and hazards (viruses, worms, Trojans) so the Information Society can roll right along. The Government of a free society is not to erect barriers nor shut down stretches of the Information Superhighway that go places that dried-up old prudes don't want us to see.
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The first thing we need to see is that this Administration doesn't trust us, any of us, and doesn't accept that we have the right to live as we want, not as they want us to live. If they won't take the hint from public-opinion polls or lawsuits, then maybe it's necessary for us to make the point with a few carefully targeted assassinations. Violence is so very effective. If the citizenry had killed the judges in the witch trials, Salem would not have disgraced American pre-history with its witch-hunt. But the citizens of Salem did not kill the insane judges. Instead, they killed 20 innocents in a single small town.
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In checking for what year the witch trials occurred, I discovered a chronology of events which shows, serendipitously, that the whole problem started on this date, January 20th, in 1692. Altho there was no United States then, and the various colonies other than Massachusetts that later became States do not really share any guilt in the misdeeds of Britain's Massachusetts colony, the Nation at large has adopted that pre-history as American history. The Salem witch trials shame us 314 years on, and that's good. The point of history is to learn from the past in order not to make the same mistakes.

After 20 people had been executed in the Salem witch hunt, Thomas Brattle wrote a letter criticizing the witchcraft trials. This letter had great impact on Governor Phips, who ordered that reliance on spectral and intangible evidence no longer be allowed in trials.

Who was this courageous gentleman who dared to speak out against the witch-hunt?

Thomas Brattle we know well. "He was," wrote President Leverett of Harvard at his death, "a gentleman by his birth and education of the first order in this country." Born at Boston, in 1658, of wealthy parentage, a graduate and a master of arts of Harvard, then a traveller and a student abroad, he won such distinction as a mathematician, and notably as an astronomer, as to be made a member of the Royal Society, and was in close touch with the world of scholars; but his career was that of an opulent and cultivated Boston merchant, and for twenty years, from 1693 to his death in 1713, he was treasurer of Harvard College. "In the Church," said of him the Boston News-Letter, "he was known and valued for his Catholick Charity to all of the reformed Religion, but more especially his great Veneration for the Church of England, although his general and more constant communion was with the Nonconformists." In other words, he was of the liberal party in religion and politics, an eminent opponent of the Puritan theocracy, and he did not escape the epithets "apostate" and "infidel."

The letter here printed did not see print in his own day; but that the present copy exists suggests that it may have been meant to circulate in manuscript, and it is not impossible that it was even written for that purpose. Yet if so, we may be sure it was used with discretion.

Google may prove our Brattle, rallying us to stop the creeping totalitarianism the Bush Administration is trying to pull off. But it might pay a price for its courage. Today Google stock saw its largest one-day drop ever. The Bushite would-be tyrants must be delited to be driving down the stock of its enemy — and make no mistake: the Bushies do regard Google and everyone else who resists them as enemies — but the price to Google of complying with Government's demands is likely to be far higher, because Americans worried about their privacy can find and use a foreign-based search engine to avoid Government snooping. So Google stands to lose whether it resists or complies with this outrageous Government powergrab over the lives of Americans. Its real choice is to distinguish itself in bravery or cowardice. Not a hard choice.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,222.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:40 PM