Fourth Amendment Follies

From TownHall:

Our nation was built on the principle of the rule of law; the notion that people are most free if they cede only a minimum of their natural rights to government, limited by a written Constitution, in order to secure liberty.

Yet now we are witnessing a government unbridled by the rule of law, which has become subservient to the whims of its leaders; and based not on the goal of ensuring liberty and justice, but on constructing arbitrary conditions of "security."

In this paradigm, the Fourth Amendment no longer carries any real significance for we are asked to accede to the principle that a president and his administration posses “inherent power” -- superseding any other authority or limitation -- to secretly gather, store, and analyze an infinite amount of information gathered from the private communications of millions of law-abiding citizens.

Distressingly, the failsafe on such unbridled power, supposed to be exercised by the Congress through its oversight responsibilities, has been sorely lacking. Instead, we have the spectacle of senior Senators like Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) defending actions by the NSA as beneficent because -- as we are asked to accept on faith -- they have "kept us safe." We are admonished to resist the urge to limit such extreme power because, in their Orwellian worldview, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

This is the childish solipsism to which our cherished, constitutionally guaranteed rights have been reduced.

http://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2013/06/12/even-if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-something-to-fear-n1618353/page/full