As is no news to anyone possessing any form of media, today marks a day when yet another nail in the coffin that holds our Constitution was driven in with maniacal glee by those whom value an illusion of safety above a dangerous, uncertain, yet LIBERATED reality. With FISA passing in a disconcertingly one sided vote, we as Americans find ourselves facing the real threat of seeing our liberty legislated away from us-- which is infinitely more frightening than having it ripped from us physically, as the form that this disease is taking means that not only are we gradually being disenfranchised, it's being done all legal and proper, with the patience and calculation of a murderer whom carries out his ends over the course of months, if not years, as opposed to committing a crime on a whim.
In the face of such issues, I find myself almost unable to write concerning them-- most of what I can say in a broad sweeping stroke can and has already been said thousands if not millions of times all over the Internet and other forms of media. All I would be doing is assembling the arguments in a slightly different order. However, what I can share with you is a letter I've just recently finished to one Mr. Jay Rockefeller. When looking at the vote tallies (which anyone can do by simply visiting the Senate's website) I found that only one of my home state of West Virginia's elected officials had disgraced himself by yelling "Yea" when his time came to vote. While I have, admittedly, been too lazy to look into how many WV natives in the House had voted for this bill, it is the Senate much more than the House that I trust to be the "last rampart" that keeps the barbarians at bay. In finding that one of my own had assigned himself to supporting this awful legislation, I did something I have never done before... I wrote my congressman. Below is, in full, my letter to Mr. Rockefeller. Fellow West Virginians, I urge you, if you are as outraged as I am that one of our own would willingly comply with the systematic destruction of our Bill of Rights, write him as well. While one letter is unlikely to make a difference, a mountain of them, which to him will be viewed as a mountain of lost votes come this November, may well be enough to, if nothing else, force him to realize that such actions will not go unpunished, even if the punishment comes only at the polling booths as opposed to the hands of justice.
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Mr. Rockefeller:
Salutations, sir. My name is Aaron Chambers and I am a 23 year old native son of West Virginia. Such introductions can be redundant, I know only too well, and in this case, they're fairly unnecessary. You see, we once had the mutual pleasure of sharing our company in a setting in which the unity and solidarity of West Virginia's native sons and daughters was paramount. It was during the memorial event for the deceased miners of Aracoma in my home town of Logan that I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance. That you would remember me is a possibility I do not indulge, and I mention our encounter only to address the duress under which I write this correspondence.
You see, despite the fact that, politically, neither you nor your colleague Mr. Byrd are in any way particularly in line with my own set of thoughts and philosophies, my encounters-- both privately, as in Logan, and through your discourse in the public forum-- have always left me with the honest impression that, despite whatever differences we may hold as to our politics on certain issues, you and Mr. Byrd, at the very least, hold the well being of the citizens of our state and country as your highest concern. In an uncertain world that is rotted with weakness of both character and intellect, and rife with charlatans willing to exploit this rot, that was quite enough reason for me to lend both of you my support, and though I was too young (by a mere matter of months) to lend you my vote in the 2002 election, I actively spoke out for you at the time, and until today, had been intending to lend you my vote this coming November.
What a difference a day can make.
Sir, I possess neither the arrogance nor the audacity to make the assumption that, concerning H.R. 6304 (FISA), you lack facts, perspective, or adequate intellect, which would otherwise explain your voting "Yea" for a bill that undermines that which is most sacred in our nation-- the guarantee that no man or woman, without do cause and process (both of which would be bound by the chains of utter accountability), shall have their lives invaded by any authority, be it public or private. In lending your stamp to this nonsense, you have quite markedly placed your name amongst the myriad of other cowards that will gladly relinquish the ideologies on which our nation was founded and dance upon the graves of patriots who were willing to soak American soil and the soil of innumerable foreign lands with their own blood in order to serve and protect the rights of the American citizenry.
To believe that wiretaps and other such spying and invasions of privacy have not or would not occur without such poisonous legislation is a stipulation that I shall leave to the more naive of my compatriots. However, at the very least and in the face of the knowledge that such clandestine and unconstitutional offenses can and will always occur, it was at least a comfort to know that, should such villainy be discovered, it would bare the full brunt of accountability and thus the accountable would be punished. Now, however, you have given credence to a measure that, while not the worst of such legislation, does much in its own right to crumble our Constitution and our way of life. You have essentially provided immunity to those who would comply to such dastardly ends, and have given a free license to all who would see any attempts at corrupting the foundation of America in the name of fear and of ignorance much room to see their ends come to fruition.
Mr. Rockefeller, I doubt very seriously that you will read this, and I doubt even more fully that if you should happen to read it, you will make it this far. But if you have, let me again reiterate the fact that, in my past experience with you, I found you to be nothing but humble, kind, and compassionate. Perhaps this is why your supporting this debacle, this treasonous attack on American values, has caught me so square. I, and many other West Virginians, have trusted you with the responsibility of safeguarding us from the greatest threat a citizenry can face: their governing body. And now, it is plain for us to see that our trust has been misplaced. You have failed us, Senator. Every time you're willing to shuck off such objections as you hear from me now, every time you're willing to simply wave away those who would call to task you and the rest of the government for forgetting that your job as a politician is to protect our LIBERTY as well as our physical well being, and every muttered defense you produce for this bill and for other like minded policies is a sign of your capitulation to ignorance, as well as your ineptness at maintaining the seat of power you now hold.
It is an unavoidable truth that the political system of our nation has been hijacked in the name of partisan politics, in the name of special interest, in the name of half measures and half truths, and especially in the name of small concessions to disinterested Americans who would rather bend the knee to a tyrant, be he foreign or (more likely) of our own making, than assume the full weight of the responsibility that accompanies freedom. Such men and women, Mr. Rockefeller, are neither my equals nor my compatriots. And now, to my great regret, I find that you have thrown in with them in throwing away that which is most important. For this, you should be ashamed.
-Aaron Chambers
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