KING GEORGE SPYING ON THE PATRIOTS

This story brings back memories.

What is it with Republican administrations and their paranoia, anyway? Back in my student protest days during the Nixon years it always struck me as ludicrous that the government should be so terrified of honest, peaceful dissent. Do they really think terrorists would be as open and transparent as citizen dissidents? To the contrary, I imagine them trying to identify with average citizens to disguise their intentions and remain under the radar of law enforcement authorities.

And anyway, it's the American way to stand up and speak one's mind. "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." I remember reading in a Leon Uris novel (Armageddon) one time where an American was debating post-WWII a German who accused the U.S. of harboring the same kind of conformist tendencies as Nazi Germany saying something like, "If the president of the United States stood before the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July to read the Declaration of Independence, there would be someone in America to protest."

After all, our country was founded by patriotic protestors. The Declaration of Independence even insists upon the right of continual revolution: "Whenever any form of government is found destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to order or abolish it, and to institute new governments." The framers made provision for peaceful revolution, impeachment, in the U.S. Constitution.

On second thought, maybe THAT'S the administration's problem. They're identifying with the king and not the colonial rebels.

Tags: Bush administration, protestors, American revolution