Tyranny's friend 'necessity' ~ By Phil Elmore

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

By Phil Elmore Posted: December 17, 2009 ~ 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 "Necessity," said William Pitt, "is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." There is no call for control of your life by government, no demand for you to relinquish your civil rights made from behind the barrels of guns held by jackbooted government thugs, that does not begin as an appeal to the necessary. It is through pleas to supposed necessity that liberals, "progressives" and leftists of every stripe advance their desires to manage every facet of your waking life. It is through arguments built on alleged necessity that statists justify and rationalize every attempt to force you to toe their ideological line from the cradle to the grave. To those on the left side of the political aisle, modern technology is a gold mine of these mandates of the necessary. When they are not touting the benefits of invasive technologies that enable them to monitor, manipulate and mind the citizens of an increasingly less free nation – the proliferation of surveillance cameras, advanced security scanning and screening devices, RFID tags in our identifications, passports and credit cards, and government oversight of social networking sites to identify and root out anti-government heresy are just a few such examples – they are telling us that technology is evil. The engines of industry, they tell us, must be shut down, lest the pollution generated by our prosperity chokes us all to death on its fumes. Your neighbors should be pawing through your trash, prepared to report you for violating recycling guidelines. The car you drive is too big and comfortable; you should be forced, by government restrictions and punitive taxes, to buy a smaller one. Why, you shouldn't even be allowed to send a text message because, frankly, text messaging is popular, and any technology that is popular must be bad. The excuse used in each and every case of government meddling – in industry, in business and especially in your individual life as an American citizen, most if not all of these dictates far overreaching the powers granted the government by the Constitution – is necessity. Why, if we do not pass this law, people might be hurt or killed. If we don't "reign in" this dangerous technology, the environment will be damaged. If we don't stop this dangerous, popular trend by banning this or regulating that, dire portents will become bad omens that will evolve into doom and destruction, or something. Hurry, do something! Do it now! And by "something," we mean pass a law that takes away your natural rights as a free citizen of a sovereign nation. READ FULL STORY >