Coffee Talk with a Compliant Brother

“Sometimes we should just accept things the way they have been and understand that we should sacrifice some of our personal liberties to benefit our nation and this war against terror”.

The paraphrased quote above came from my older brother earlier this new year as I sat down on his porch after a cozy cup of caffeinated coffee and taking hits from a social disease I suffer from called smoking. We were in a debate over the rantings of Keith Olberman directed at his attack on our current administration regarding the lifting of Habeas Corpus and the new founded state of dictatorship our current administration has enacted.

My brother was raised the same as I was, in a Reagan Republican household who thought the Republicans can do no wrong. Now the differences between us are found in our talents: He is a musician, and a damn good one at that. He can rip out lyrics and blur his hands on the neck of any guitar i have ever seen him on, all the while busting out cords that are more sonorous than I have to say the best of them. He would frequent clubs and studios throughout the greater Southern California and simply do what he does best, play. He took himself further than most who have no name and has played with names that went on to sell themselves out for a price, something he never did. I can play a stereo quite well.

Now my brothers argument regarding Habeas Corpus and the new dictatorial powers our current administration have is that their hands are tied to do anything necessary to stop some foreigner from blowing us up on our home soil. He believes that in order for us to continue down our path of freedom we should have to exercise our freedoms by giving some of them up, as did the Japanese Americans during WWII and the nation during the MacCarthy period. All of these we should take into consideration since 9/11.

Another point which he made was that we as a nation have not grown but declined in our way of thinking regarding searches and seizures, whether it be detained while the police search your valuables, your home or your person. His statement is one we have heard throughout the later half of the 20th century “if you’re not doing or hiding anything, whats the problem?”. He truly believes that our police should have the right to do as they please and pull over, walk into, browse and demand on site without a judge. He also feels that giving up these rights are justifiable and will not be abused. Yet he is a Reagan Republican through and through.

My rebuttal was duly noted and thrown out the window. We sat there for a few minutes afterwards as I finished another social leper smoke stick and a cup of caffeinated ambrosia from the gods of Mt. Olympus and went home, pondering the thoughts of his arguments and realized he has one point to his thinking. This thought is what drove me to even mention anything on this blog about our conversation.

I love my brother but he has no clue what he is talking about. Anytime we lose our freedoms Ayn Rand wipes a single tear from her face in the Christian Hell.

My brother apparently feels it is okay to be pulled over for “DWB”(Driving While Black) or being incarcerated on the grounds of “JBT”(Just Being There). His statements I found sadly real but not right. He used the argument that while he would play in clubs in Hollywood and standing around the back doors of some of the venues that the musicians would constantly be detained while their equipment and vehicles would be searched for “paraphernalia”. He was used to the searches, so he knows how it feels and he feels it is okay because he was not hiding anything. “If you just go along with it, everything’s fine”.

My brother feels that the Patriot Act is there to help us, and we should help our government by giving up our rights. He says that we really have no rights, but privileges. Where that came from I don’t know. It wasn’t in our family manual on Reagan Worship as far as I can recall, so I have no clue where this idea of a government giving us privileges instead of inalienable rights resides in his psyche.

The realization I came to in my brothers discussion is that he is just like every other person out there who chooses to exist inside a dictatorial society and chooses to go with the flow of our nations current direction under the strength of our current administration. The blind shall lead the compliant into the hands of Total control and we can kiss our liberties on the ass as they are thrown in to the great abyss of a psychotic dictatorship.

So what we have here is simple: people complied with the Patriot Act in the name of “National Security”. People complied with, even clapped at its signing, of the suspension/abolishment of Habeas Corpus and in the same day the establishment of American totalitarian leadership under the guidelines that our government has the right to take anyone off the streets they so choose for any reason that are stated as “an enemy combatant” which is a pretty loose and broad spectrum of people, like me in some eyes and social venues.

The suspension of Habeas Corpus is wrong. The Patriot Act is wrong. Compliance to a Totalitarian System is wrong. Failure to comply to a single search and seizure because of DWB or JBT is wrong. Freedoms are Freedoms and Rights are Rights, not privileges. Taking any of these away at any cost is failure to support America and its foundation. The values we support are not to be taken with a grain of salt as we venture further into the 21st Century. We uphold our core values as they are the footstool Lady Liberty stands upon; without that, she would be much shorter and sadly closer to the ground for which to be incarcerated for “JBG”(Just Being Green) and held in jail without release any time soon for having a torch which could be considered drug paraphernalia and thus an enemy of the State for her radical political views placed on the book she holds.

My brother is an educated man, quite sharp on his thoughts, actually. But he has been brainwashed just as much as everyone else in our Great Nation has been simply by compliance to the system which has quickly lost touch with its very foundation.

And as Ayn Rand cries in the Christian Hell over our loss of America’s freedoms in this past year due to our current administrations proposals in the “War against Terror” and “Homeland Security” she is also flipping us off because we have allowed this to go on.

We need to, as a party, stop squabbling over semantics and simply do what we are supposed to do: promote freedom, express the Libertarian ideal, live our dream and breathe fresh air for once. Maybe some day we can show my brother what true freedom is and not his blinded compliances he calls freedom.