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Gettysburg: The Union Is Preserved But What Of Liberty

by | Jul 2, 2013

[Reprinted from The Baltimore Sun, July 2, 2013]

In an age of surveillance, has government of the people perished?

Even with all of the monuments, markers and preserved artillery pieces, the pastoral calm of south central Pennsylvania still dominates the battlefield where some 160,000 Americans clashed in the continent’s most epic and consequential military confrontation.  The familiar images from three raging days of furious and deadly battle for America’s soul still stand in stark contrast to the undeniable tranquility of the setting.  Yet it was here that the union was most famously preserved, and where Abraham Lincoln, in his eloquent address, ultimately challenged the nation to establish a new birth of freedom based on its founding ideals of liberty and equality.  During this week’s 150th commemoration of the battle, we could all do well to be mindful of Lincoln’s call for resolve that Gettysburg’s dead shall not have died in vain.

Today we find that the National Security Agency, dedicated to the collection and analysis of foreign communications, has routinely engaged in covert surveillance of the American public’s phone and internet usage.  That it took a criminal act to reveal this is demonstrative of how little “government by the people” was involved in the development of this policy.  It was conceived and carried-out entirely in secret and apart from the deliberations of a democratic republic, and was thus undiscoverable in the normal processes of government. (more…)