printThe specter of residents of the suburb of Watertown, in the Greater Boston area, being forcibly turned out of their homes and stared down by SWAT teams is not likely to disturb your average American. Said the great Roman statesman Cicero: “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.”
Perpetual children, Americas don’t know squat about their constitution, its philosophical origins, and why the framers, who were sophisticated thinkers, put certain provisions in place.
Of those Americans who vaguely compute something about a Fourth Amendment—“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects”—most still believe that blatant violations of these sacred protections are probably justified, and visited only on “terrorists.”
In other words, if an authority figure violates the Fourth Amendment—you average, pliant American will simply surmise that it’s likely OK.
In addition, liberty as it was codified by the founding generation demands a rational mind. Being both childish and sentimental in the extreme, Americans shun rational thought. It thus becomes impossible to think clearly about liberty.
This isn’t it:
MORE.
UPDATE (4/26): Locked-down Bostonians rationalize tyranny:
Where is the outrage that the Powers That Are in Boston essentially made prisoners of an entire city? On what grounds and by what authority does any municipal government presume to place every citizen of a major United States city on house arrest? In the afterglow of the successful capture of the remaining Boston Marathon bombing suspect, alleged Islamist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the people celebrating in the streets that Tsarnaev was taken alive (ironically, only because the “lockdown” was lifted and the property owner in whose boat Tsarnaev was hiding could finally go outside and check his yard) ought to be asking themselves what they have to be happy about. They are beta testers of the New Freedom, which looks a lot like the Old Oppression. At whim, your government may order you to remain in your home, and if you dare disobey, they will point guns at you, essentially threatening to murder you.