Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Good night and good luck

In a nice perversion of Patrick Henry's famous line, Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, defended renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act saying, "Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead."

It's the Constitution, stupid.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who is ready to die for freedom?

Claudia said...

Well there are obviously too many people the world over ready to die (and kill) for something, whether it is freedom people are dying for is an open question. I think there are people that believe they are ready to die for freedom, including in our military. Although, I don't think that that is what the US service people are dying for, at least in Iraq.

The point of the post was, of course that presenting the choice to the voter of either civil liberties or death is a false and manipulative one, undermining the democracy that many figures in early United States that many people now make much of, supported in strong and passionate language. Essentially what the Congressman is saying is, "With liberty, comes death." Which is fucked up.

By the way, who are you? If I could beg the consideration of signing a name, any name. It doesn't have to be your real one.