How much freedom are we willing to relinquish for the guise of protection? -Ed
by Chuck Baldwin
By now, most readers are familiar with the story of how a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, crashed the White House State Dinner last Tuesday evening. President and Mrs. Obama were entertaining Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the first official State Dinner of the new administration. The Salahis were not on the invited guest list, but were still allowed to walk right into the White House. They even had face-to-face conversations with both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Photographs of the Salahis with the President and Vice President have been published in numerous newspapers and on hundreds of web sites.
I wonder if the American people are thinking this episode through? Think of it: in the post-9/11 world, a world that has invented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), body scanners, retina readers, the Patriot Act, hundreds of laws and regulations restricting the freedoms and liberties of the American people, thousands of cameras photographing our public movements, and satellite spy devices, a couple can walk right into the White House and meet the President and Vice President without being invited!
Is there something wrong with this picture, or what?I well remember what I had to go through when I was an invited guest of then-Vice President George H. W. Bush at the White House. My wife and I joined several others for a luncheon with Vice President Bush and his wife, Barbara. Later that day, we were in a crowd of several hundred who got to meet President Ronald Reagan. Needless to say, security was tight.
Upon arriving, we had to show the proper credentials to White House security, along with a photo ID and the personal invitation that had been sent to us ahead of time. I remember how some of the folks who had actually received invitations were denied entrance due to bureaucratic mix-ups or unintentional lapses in proper protocols. And these were people who really did have an invitation to be there. I can tell you this: there was absolutely no way that an uninvited person could have gained access to the White House that day. And remember: that was nearly two decades BEFORE 9/11!
That an uninvited couple could be granted access to the President and Vice President in this day and time is more than a “fluke.” It betrays something much deeper.
For the last 8 years, the American people have been told they must sacrifice certain liberties in order that the federal government might protect them. And for the most part, the American people have been happy to accommodate this incessant intrusion into their personal liberties. They know the feds are monitoring their emails, personal phone conversations, and even their personal letters when received from overseas. They have sat silently as their banking institutions have monitored and reported virtually any and all financial transactions to the federal government. In today’s super-security world, one cannot even cash a check without showing the bank teller his or her driver’s license, which is recorded and made available to the feds. Sometimes, we are even required to provide our thumbprints. Beyond that, even certain service personnel that must come into our homes to provide in-home repair services, home inspections, or general services are often required to report what they see to various law enforcement authorities. All of this is done in the name of “national security.”
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