WHAT DID BEN FRANKLIN KNOW???

Remember that nice guy in the Verizon commercials a few years back...a guy-next-door type going around the country always asking “Can you hear me now?”              

He’s been absent from our screens for a while, but the Chattanooga Times-Free Press brought him back with a vengeance recently in a political cartoon..he’s holding a newspaper with the headline “Verizon and NSA surveillance," as he asks.."Can they hear me now?”

Can they ever!

Not only hear but intercept; phone calls, e-mails and bank checks…and in some cases, letters. The President says.."No one is listening to your phone calls.”  Mr. President, I respectfully disagree. You can’t say that with a bureaucracy as big as ours and with the technical capability of ours. Remember that private (!) who gave 200,000 pages of our secrets to Wikileaks? No one thought he could do that either.

The President says we need to have a public debate on whether to give up a few of our freedoms for more security.  Mr. President, I agree…but the very secrecy your administration has imposed means the public has not gotten the absolutely essential information we need to hold such a debate…and make a wise decision.

You, and others in government, seem to be saying “Trust us.” No way, sir..not when your Director of National Intelligence lies to Congress, just as your former IRS Commissioner did.

A free society trusts the people to make the final decision. Trust us a lot more, and government agencies a lot less and maybe we’ll get out of this morass.

Remember what Ben Franklin knew:

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

I'm just sayin'...