"All governments are run by liars." - Independent journalist I.F. "Izzy" Stone
© SOTT
President Obama has managed, with singular assistance from Congress and the courts, to mangle the Constitution through repeated abuses, attacks and evasions.
This is nothing new, as I've documented in my book
A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. However, with his recent speech on the National Security Agency - a heady cocktail of lies, obfuscations, contradictions and Orwellian doublespeak - Obama has also managed to pervert and propagandize our nation's history, starting with Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty, likening their efforts to secure our freedoms to NSA phone surveillance.
Frankly, George Orwell's Winston Smith, rewriting news stories for Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth, couldn't have done a better job of revising history to suit the party line.
While it didn't bode well for what was to follow, here's how Obama opened his speech:
"At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the 'The Sons of Liberty' was established in Boston. And the group's members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America's early Patriots. Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our country and our freedoms."
Obama's inference is clear: rather than condemning the NSA for encroaching on our privacy rights, we should be commending them for helping to "secure our country and our freedoms." Never mind that the Sons of Liberty were actually working
against the British government, to undermine what they perceived as a repressive regime guilty of perpetrating a host of abuses against the colonists.
After such a
1984-esque send-up, it doesn't even really matter what else Obama had to say in his speech about NSA reforms and the like. Rest assured, it was largely a pack of lies. Mind you, Obama said it eloquently enough and interspersed it with all the appropriately glib patriotic remarks about individual freedom and the need to defend the Constitution and securing the life of our nation while preserving our liberties. After all, Obama has proven to be very good at saying one thing and doing another, whether it's insisting that "you can keep your health care plan," that he'll close Guantanamo, or that his administration's controversial drone strikes only target terrorists and not civilians.