Rogue Government
Rogue Government- “Was Donald Trump under surveillance during his presidential bid?”
by Bill Lockwood
As governments tend to grow in size they not only become unwieldy, but oppressive of the very freedoms they are framed to protect. For this reason, the Founders, knowing that the very nature of government is to expand its scope– for it is the nature of man to seek to rule over others, continually warned that the United States Government should remain small and limited at a national level. The powers granted to the Federal government were to remain “few and defined” (James Madison, The Federalist).
Thomas Jefferson reminded us: “Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward [township] direct the interests within itself.”
Further, he explained, “It is by dividing and subdividing these republics, from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.”
Jefferson then asked, “What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun?” The answer: “The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.” We might add “so also the American Republic.”
The latest “surveillance” revelations apparently made by the Obama Administration on presidential candidate should warn thoughtful citizens that governments that are large enough to take care of you are too large.
Surveillance?
Was Donald Trump under surveillance during his presidential bid? Trump himself tweeted that he was and that Trump Tower had been “wiretapped.” This caused a major explosion among the press as well as members of Congress, Republican and Democrat. Various members of Congress began to investigate.
On Wednesday, Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) revealed in a press conference that “US citizens involved in the Trump transition team” were “incidentally” surveilled by the Obama administration. Nunes stated that what his Congressional committee discovered “has nothing to do with Russia,” but “everything to do with possible surveillance activities, and the president needs to know that these intelligence reports are out there …”
Politico reported it this way, “Nunes: Trump transition members were under surveillance during the Obama administration.”
The Daily Wire ran a piece this week which downplayed the significance of the above facts. “And no, nothing Nunes said changed the underlying facts: Team Trump got caught up in incidental collection of information. That’s not the same thing as accusing the intelligence community of violation law in order to target Trump and company.”
Really? Consider the following.
First, The Washington Times reminded us on Monday that according to an NPR report on May 2013 “The Associated Press is protesting what it calls a massive and unprecedented intrusion into its gathering of news. The target of that wrath is the U.S. Justice Department, which secretly collected phone records for several AP reporters last year.” This occurred under Eric Holder’s leadership at the Dept. of Justice. Mass surveillance upon citizens was apparently in the Obama playbook.
Second, the Obama Administration made more than one attempt to get an official government surveillance on presidential nominee Donald Trump. Obama even had the proposed process “converted” in a “national-security investigation under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)” (National Review). The FISA application by Obama was denied. Yet, Obama tried a second time. This again shows Obama was in the spying business, more concerned about potential Republican nominees to the White House than real foreign dangers. The FISA court evidently agreed with that assessment.
Third, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward warned this week that there are persons from the Obama administration who could possibly face criminal charges. The reason is that these individuals illegally “unmasked” the names of the Trump transition team that were in these “incidental” surveillance reports of foreign officials (The Washington Examiner). These names were then illegally passed around by the Obama Administration. This directly answers the Daily Wire claim which said that there was “no violation of law” in incidental surveillance. This is a smoking gun.
As the Examiner reports: Trump and members of his transition team had their identities “unmasked” after their communications were intercepted by U.S. intelligence officials. “The revelation is notable because identities of Americans are generally supposed to remain ‘masked’ if American communications are swept up during surveillance of foreign individuals.”
In conclusion, instead of encouraging everyone to remain calm, as The Daily Wire has done, because there are no apparent “violations of law” in what occurred regarding wire-taps, perhaps it is time the American people awakened to the fact that there is plenty of evidence here to warrant grave concern that our own government has become rogue-enough to spy on its own people with intent to harm.
The real cause of all of this is in the size and scope of the government which we have allowed to grow into unconstitutional mammoth proportions. And this under the siren song that the government can better care for us than we ourselves can. The real issue here is freedom. Will we as a people be able to control our own government or has it grown to such an extent that it now controls us?
John Adams of the Founding generation stated in a letter to his wife in 1775, “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” Ominous words these.