A DIRE WARNING AS THE VOTER CHARACTER TEST LOOMS IN 39 DAYS . . .

According to the Daily Caller, “The White House is close to completing the text of an cybersecurity executive order, continuing its pursuit of expanding executive branch authority over the Internet.” The executive order would serve stated “government needs” after conservatives stopped a bipartisan effort (Senators Lieberman and McCain for example) in Congress to legislate “cybersecurity.” The unspoken and under reported consequences of this high handed and near tyrannical action is government intrusion into free expression on the Internet and to keep detailed records on every facet of each citizens life.  The implication clearly is we are all prospective terrorists or enemies of the state.

Government heavy-handedness exists worldwide. China is a notable example of government regulation and censorship. The explanation for the impending executive action is potential terrorist threats against America’s utility grids and networks. But a barn door is being opened that is likely to prove near impossible to close against expanding and frightening government cyber-snooping. The danger of massive government abuse of your privacy has been around a long time. In the Preface of his new best selling thriller, Black List Brad Thor wrote:

On August 17, 1975, Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to discuss the results of his full-scale investigation into America’s burgeoning intelligence capabilities. Senator Church revealed startling information and closed with a dire warning to every citizen of the United States:

[America’s intelligence gathering] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that [the NSA} and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

We can and do expect that a Romney win/Republican majority will, with hard work, restore America’s economy, repeal and replace Obamacare, and reform much that is broken in the bloated federal government. We can and do expect that a Romney win/Republican majority will restore America’s military and refocus foreign policy. But, when we cross Senator Church’s bridge into an abyss “from which there is no return,” the tyrants and jihadists can have their way.