Yesterday I wrote, "Privacy and the NSA wouldn't be a problem if the Right Wing had some common sense". This, after avoiding the issue since it began. Today, John Fund has a column that opens with:
“It’s time to ask tough questions about the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities — even for conservatives who have given the NSA the benefit of every doubt up until now.”
You can read the rest for yourself, because I'm interested in telling you what I object to - though I wouldn't say I give this government anything - even after reading John Fund:
From Day One, there's been a kind of hysterical shock and anger that a program even exists, which has struck me as so immature I'm not surprised anyone involved would be reluctant to deal with the accusers.
The issue of the NSA has appeared to be a continuation of the election year "battle", with various groups still trying to score political points irregardless of substance, and to our detriment as a nation.
It's been conducted in the same unhelpful "gotcha" conspiracy theory-style U.F.O. hunters use - always built on the accusation, not only that something's hidden, but there's something to hide. That people, or agencies, make mistakes - though they complain about that fact daily - is swept aside.
While I understand why those who've set their own hair on fire don't see it this way, most of what they've "discovered" looks pretty routine, hardly what I'd expect from a huge agency working in the shadows with an increasing amount of data for the first time.
There's what - 300+ million people in the United States? And in 2012 they found 2,776 violations of privacy rules. Yawn. What kind of violations aren't mentioned, fueling the conspiracy theorists, who will gladly trade on what isn't known as though it has the same weight as truth. Like the characters you find at Roswell, N.M., the idea they could be mistaken in their framing of issues, innocently or otherwise, is a subject they haven't devoted equal attention to, before or after this event, and they wouldn't welcome it. Whether it's Satan-worshipping Day Care centers, or the government is out to get you, these Americans do love their hysterias.
What they hate is anybody should burst their bubble - or ruin their "fun",...
As a conservative it is offensive on it's face that spying at large on the American public is even allowed to happen. I'm a conservative that has never like this loss of liberty. Ever. I will say that I defended the Patriot Act because I actually read it and legally speaking I believe it targeted, at the time foreign nationals and their cohorts that were trying to operate domestically against the US. Now I see that I was somewhat naive in the fact that it was merely a stepping stone to something like this and I can't see a way for any administration to back peddle on it.
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