Dear Editor:
I was dismayed to learn that several of our local Congressmen including Brad Wenstrup and John Boehner recently voted against the Constitution by refusing to support the Amash Amendment. This amendment, if passed, would have killed the NSA’s unconstitutional program of spying on the telephone and email conversations of all Americans.
Rather than standing up for the rights and privacy of American citizens, they chose to stand with the Administration and the NSA in their continuing quest to spy on millions of innocent Americans.
House Republicans claim that they want an open discussion on the issue of government surveillance, but nothing could be further from the truth. What they really want is to keep the average citizen in the dark about exactly how vast the surveillance program really is.
Our government is becoming increasingly out of touch and out of control. They are using 9/11 and the war on terror as an excuse to slowly but surely eliminate many of our basic rights and freedoms. Warrantless wiretaps, secret courts, indefinite detention of American citizens without due process, secret drone kill lists. How are any of these things consistent with our Constitution? How are any of these things consistent with the American way of life that you and I know?
As one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, once said, “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one”.
It’s time for Americans everywhere to stand up and demand that our elected politicians place our interests above those of the federal government. If we don’t change the direction this country is headed, there will be soon be very little left that resembles the America we all grew up in.
Shaun House,
Batavia