One Nation, Under Surveillance

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic
nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest
means to accomplish it
--Alexis de Tocqueville

I always feel that somebody's watchin' me
And I have no privacy
--Somebody's Watching Me, Rockwell

That's o.k., I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway
--bumper sticker
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The philosopher Baruch Spinoza wrote in his Tractatus Politicus (1677),

It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret. . . But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead. . . .Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

So it is in our newly-minted democracy designed to protect you from yourself that detainees are warehoused in secret prisons and tried in secret courts, and everything relating to national security is deemed a secret (to protect you from those secrets, which you now, thankfully, are not even aware.) Freedom = ignorance of issues; wasn't that one of FDR's Four?

The National Security Agency may tap into our conversations without warrants, but we are denied access to their budgets. The intelligence agencies have huge secret budgets the U.S. citizens aren't even allowed to know about.

Good relationships require transparency and accountability. The plutocracy of the new imperial America doesn't desire a relationship with its paeans. Many citizens are feeling increasingly alienated from their government. I guess secret work demands secret budgets.