“It is therefore, because of ‘the deep deprivation’ of man’s nature due to original sin, most wholesome for magistrates and officers in church and commonwealth never to affect more liberty and authority than will do them good: for whatever transcendent power is given will certainly overrun those that give it and those that receive it. There is a strain in a man’s heart that will sometime or other run out to excess, unless, the Lord restrain it; but it is not good to venture it. It is necessary, therefore, that all power that is on earth be limited, church-power or other.”
John Cotton (1584-1652)
“Limitation on Government”
Quoted in “The Journal of Christian Reconstruction” Vol.III No.1
In light of Obama’s speech yesterday wherein he defended NSA mega spying and compared the NSA spying on Americans, per the collection of some 200 million text messages per day, to Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty lads spying on British troop movements we need to remember the words of John Cotton. Obama, in essence, insisted that Americans should calm down over NSA spying since, after all, “NSA Agents Are ‘Our Neighbors and Friends’…” John Cotton on the other hand reminds us, in his own words, ‘that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Americans and Obama together need to keep in mind that once upon a time the men who comprised spy organizations like the NKVD, Gestapo, the Stasi, GRU and the Cheka were also just neighbors and friends to those that they spied upon. Police States are started by neighbors and friends spying on one another as sanctioned by despots, usurpers, and tyrannical heads of State.
The fourth amendment is supposed to mean something,
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Obama’s proposals continue to allow surveillance of Americans without requiring a Fourth Amendment determination of probable cause. As such, Obama continues to act in a high handed and unconstitutional manner. Obama promises he will implement safeguards against potential abuses but such promises are akin to Messr. Fox promising to implement safeguards to make sure the Hen-house will be safe. The Founders, in the 4th amendment, created the only safeguard we need. It would be nice if our current Tyrant in chief would be ruled by it.
With Obama’s Speech on the Police State you can write it down that we now live in a archipelago of oppression. The FEDS now effectively have a choke point on individual citizens whenever they desire to access it. What we are living through is a soft oppression whereby we are suffocated into silence by a Federal tyrannical apparatus that can turn on any citizen whenever it has need to do so.
According to former NSA official Bill Binney, who served 32 years as a spook,
“All of the information gained by the NSA through spying is then shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges.”
We should listen to John Cotton and rise up and constrain the transcendent Federal power for it certainly has overrun those who gave it, its power.
