Patriot Games

January 20, 2006

I’m going to have to stop reading Katherine Koble’s blog. I’ve made a point to try and curtail politically oriented posts because I can’t see that it does any good. The people that agree will say “right on!” and those that don’t will say “you’re an idiot”. And what was really accomplished? Oh well I’m posting this anyway. It all started as a comment I was going to make in response to this post…

I find the apathy towards the government spying on it’s citizenry interesting. There are plenty of folks that don’t seem to care, and the thinking is usually, hey I’m not doing anything wrong, nothing to hide, snoop around all you want. Seems reasonable. But then I wonder, what if our government tried different means, but achieving the same ends…

…let’s says roving government officials were allowed by law to peer into your windows? Perhaps with an innocuous sounding name like, oh, The SS The Patriot Patrol… or PP for short. Would the same people still feel the same apathy? I’m sure some would.

Perhaps the PP might eventually be allowed to expand their activities in the name of patriotism. Maybe they could conduct random searches of you, your property, your past for any potential unpatriotic terrorist activity? There is already a precedent of sorts if you liken it to a tax audit. Doesn’t seem such much of a stretch to me. They’d probably give this process a name like Patriot Audit. Not quite so innocuous, but the word Patriot is in there so it would be tough to beat.

Oh! You know what would be really good. Perhaps if we educated the nations youth to report any suspicious unpatriotic behavior to the nice PP. We can reward the kids with little Happy Meal like toys call ’em, I dunno, Patriot Prizes. Maybe a “My kid put a terrorist in Gitmo” bumper sticker for the grown ups? Mister PP, my daddy said the President is a derfwad! What’s a derfwad mister? This program sounds great and I bet it would keep us all ever so safe. And who could oppose an idea with a catchy name like the Patriot Kids? It’s patriotic and it’s about kids?! No politician would dare oppose it!

Yeah so I’m taking this too extremes. Lord knows the government is loathe to expand or abuse it’s authority. Me, I’m kinda partial to the Fourth Amendment, It’s a shame the guys that came up with that didn’t have the foresight to give it a catchy patriotic name so it would appeal to the masses.