Following Lynch Mobs on the Right

Still, it's really a wondrous, and repugnant, sight to behold the Bush-following lynch mobs on the Right melodramatically defend the Virtues of Privacy and the Rule of Law. These, of course, are the same authoritarians who have cheered on every last expansion of the Lawless Surveillance State of the last eight years -- put their fists in the air with glee as the Federal Government seized the power to listen to innocent Americans' telephone calls; read our emails; obtain our banking, credit card, and library records; and create vast data bases of every call we make and receive and every prescription we fill and every instance of travel and other vast categories of information that remain largely unknown -- all without warrants or oversight of any kind and often in clear violation of the law.

Here's another angle on a controversy that erupted here the other day. And yes, criminal privacy violations are wrong. I'd like to see more of us demand that it stop and that violators be held accountable.

Here's the train I can't hop on:

As despicable as I personally find the Palin hacking to be, it pales in comparison to the Bush crimes, because when someone runs for President or Vice President, they voluntarily cede vast amounts of their personal privacy, which is why they're required to disclose things like their medical records, tax returns, assocational history, and other financial documents...

The key word is "voluntarily." They don't have to run for office. The hacking was wrong.

I don't think it qualifies to be a part of a "lynch mob" if one's position is consistent, and there are numerous examples where I've strayed from the topic of guns to protest citizen surveillance and other intrusive police state actions.

A while back, a couple of you in "comments" asked why I don't branch from guns and cover more Liberty-oriented topics. In fact, I do, and you can find plenty of examples--heck, just yesterday we had a doozy. But I'm careful what I emphasize lest it drag me into a long and time-consuming debate. It's tough enough to get some of us to agree on the best way to proceed in protecting RKBA. I've actually had people chew me out and tell me where to go because they had always agreed with me before, and now felt betrayed that I was such an idiot when I touched the nerve of one of their other cherished beliefs.

And then I get the other kind, who'll complain if I wander from the reservation that they thought this site was supposed to be about guns.

To me, the keystone issue is guns, because unless we can defend ourselves and our ideas...

Like the saying goes, it's not about guns, it's about freedom. And what I do here and in my magazine columns is my niche.

So that's where I'll continue to focus, although occasionally I will pick up on whatever the hell else it pleases me to address. People who object to that can form a line and I'll give them every cent of their money back.

[Via Mama Liberty]