Powerful Guardian Op-Ed: Jeff Jarvis: ‘As A Democrat, I am Disgusted With President Obama’

Here’s another former Obama supporter:

“Change you can believe in?”
“More like bullshit you can take a bath in, if you ask me.”
– Prof. Dr. David Michael Green (Dec.19, 2009)

– Powerful Op-Ed: “As a Democrat, I am Disgusted with President Obama” (Liberty Blitzkrieg, Aug 24, 2013):

What are you thinking, Mr President?Is this really the legacy you want for yourself: the chief executive who trampled rights, destroyed privacy, heightened secrecy, ruined trust, and worst of all, did not defend but instead detoured around so many of the fundamental principles on which this country is founded?

And I voted for you. I’ll confess you were a second choice. I supported Hillary Clinton first. I said at the time that your rhetoric about change was empty and that I feared you would be another Jimmy Carter: aggressively ineffectual.

Never did I imagine that you would instead become another Richard Nixon: imperial, secretive, vindictive, untrustworthy, inexplicable.

– Jeff Jarvis in the Guardian

Jeff Jarvis is a journalist, a professor and a self-proclaimed Democrat. While my readers know all too well what I think about these fraudulent political mafias, I mean parties, the older generation still has an archaic attachment to them. I suspect this emanates from some long forgotten time when there was actually a meaningful difference between the two.

Personally, I am quite pleased that pretty much nobody I know from my generation or below identifies with such silly notions as being a “Republican” or “Democrat.” However, I recognize that it does still retain meaning to a majority within the older generations, so when one of of them who identifies with a particular party becomes so disgusted that they turn on their tribal affiliation’s leadership, it can present a significant moment. I believe that Jeff Jarvis has created one of those moments and I strongly suggest you read his op-ed.

From The Guardian:

What are you thinking, Mr President?

Is this really the legacy you want for yourself: the chief executive who trampled rights, destroyed privacy, heightened secrecy, ruined trust, and worst of all, did not defend but instead detoured around so many of the fundamental principles on which this country is founded?

And I voted for you. I’ll confess you were a second choice. I supported Hillary Clinton first. I said at the time that your rhetoric about change was empty and that I feared you would be another Jimmy Carter: aggressively ineffectual.

Never did I imagine that you would instead become another Richard Nixon: imperial, secretive, vindictive, untrustworthy, inexplicable.

No, I think it is this: secrecy corrupts. Absolute secrecy corrupts absolutely. You have been seduced by the idea that your authority rests in your secrets and your power to hold them. Every attack on that power, every questioning of it only makes you draw in tighter, receding into your vault with the key you think your office grants you. You are descending into a dark hole of your own digging.

But you know better, don’t you? In a democracy, secrecy is not the foundation of authority; that is the basis of dictatorships. Principles and their defense is what underpins your office.

First among those principles is the defense of our freedom. Security is only a subset of that, for if we are not secure we are not free. Freedom demands the confidence that we are not under attack, yes, but also that we are not being surveilled without our knowledge and consent. The balance, which we are supposedly debating, must go to freedom.

You could decide to respect the efforts of whistleblowers as courageous practitioners of civil disobedience who are sacrificing much in their efforts to protect lives and democracy. If they are the Martin Luther Kings of our age, then call off Bull Connor’s digital dogs and fire hoses, will you?

You could decide to impress us with the transparency you still can bring to government, so that the institution you run becomes open by default rather than by force.

You could decide to support a free press and stop efforts – here and, using your influence, with our friends in the UK – to restrain their work.

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike