The land of the no longer free

As terrorists struck New York on September 11th, the United States vowed to fight back and protect their country, their people and their freedom. But 10 years on, it seems that freedom is just an illusion, and the US is becoming an Orwellian state.

When George W Bush spoke about the necessity of “protecting the homeland of our country”, he probably thought that the homeland was literally just that – a land that one calls home. And while most people focused on the fact that the then US president had once again made a grammatical blunder, many saw a hidden danger in his statement – not only because of the Big Brother-type security changes ahead, but also because of the very nature of the word “homeland”.

Read on…the rest of this piece makes more sense than just about anything you can find in the US media for some time:

Merriam-Webster defines “homeland” as “a state or area set aside to be a state for a people of a particular national, cultural, or racial origin.” Now, that really doesn’t apply to one of the youngest countries in the world, which has no shared cultural or racial origin. Dig a little deeper and many linguists will tell you of the word’s decidedly Teutonic origin. A blend of two proto-Germanic words “kham” (home) and “landan” (land), a homeland does not unite people by ideas or beliefs. It ties them firmly to the land. It is a concept that has little to do with patriotism – despite the fact the words do share common Greek roots – and, ironically, it was used ad nauseam by the US government in the post-9/11 world. Ironic because it’s patriotism that is more applicable to the concept of the United States as a nation – one where people of all cultures and backgrounds come together for shared ideas, opportunities and beliefs. And one of the key ideas that most people chose to make the US their home was one much propagated by President Ronald Reagan. The idea of freedom.

Reagan once said that “above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.” But 20 years after Reagan was sworn in, the terrorist attacks of September 11th happened – and George W Bush decided that there are weapons more appropriate than freedom.

Because freedom – that greatly advertised American concept – was effectively taken away from the people, with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Under the new Patriot Act, The Federal Bureau of Investigation began probing almost every second of every life in the country and when people wanted to leave the country, the Transport Security Administration probed them. The Big German-sounding Brother was fully established, the people living in the ‘land of the free’ under surveillance at all times.

This makes so much sense it’s scary.

It’s a sad commentary when one realizes that RUSSIA finds itself in a position to point out the corrosive erosion of our Constitutional system.