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Does the government work for us that we worked for the government -- people truly be free when the government spies on them.
Tonight a history of spying all too familiar.
Domestic spying in the United States pre -- the republic itself.
British soldiers are produced -- into America during the colonial period they rummage through columnist trash.
And even -- their own search warrants to after the comments homes and seize their property and papers.
With what the American revolution largely because of the surveillance operation king George the third set up in America.
Yet despite this domestic spying found a place in the earliest days of the republic.
John Adams the second president of the United States signed into law the hated alien and sedition acts.
He's grossly unconstitutional.
Laws that were also the first in a series of endorsements of domestic spying.
Actually made it a crime to speak ill ill of officials in the government.
I've often wondered how the same generation in some cases the very same people who wrote in the First Amendment.
That congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech could in fact -- a federal law that did just that.
Unfortunately it did more than just that it began a long train of abuses that combined government spying and suppression of speech.
The aliens -- -- expired and Jefferson threatened to veto their reenactment.
But the -- of those in power to interfere with personal freedom continued.
During the civil war Lincoln put it to place a lot of measures that -- harbingers of things to come.
He suspended habeas corpus drafted thousands of -- without lawful authority.
Jailed tens of thousands of dissidents and abrogated the free speech about hundreds of newspapers with whose anti war views he disagreed.
Lincoln's war surveillance policies were so monumental in fact the president George W Bush's attorney general Alberto Gonzales.
Cited Lincoln.
And congressional testimony defending President Bush's war and surveillance policies.
Woodrow Wilson through all kinds of people in -- from German Americans suspected of treachery but never actually charged with any crimes.
To the socialist candidate for president to thousands of political dissidents.
One of the young federal agents who -- Wilson's spying and suppression of speech was a guy named.
Hoover's FBI spearheaded the -- the most widespread domestic surveillance operation in American history.
Called the counterintelligence program or call one tell pro.
Which targeted political groups almost exclusively dissidents.
-- -- ran from 1956 and 1971.
And was intended as a national security exercise it was supposed to prevent violence and maintain the existing social and political order.
Under -- tell pro the FBI infiltrated all the political organizations.
That it could find that disagreed with the government.
From the John Birch Society to the NAACP.
It should come as no surprise then that that era was the most violent and disruptive to the social and political order in our modern history.
What the government spying in the sixties and seventies did not do is prevent the political changes that wrongfully sought to prevent.
It control it contributed instead to a loss of faith in government and ultimately to a loss of freedom and dissent.
The domestic surveillance regime the Patriot Act created right here ten years ago came in the context of nearly three centuries.
Of domestic spying.
So this week's news that the FBI has granted itself new powers comes as no surprise to students of American history.
The FBI can now write its own search warrants investigate -- it pleases follow anybody that wants and rummage through your garbage.
Just like the -- soldiers did in the eighteenth century.
You see we are coming close to a full circle in the long saga of the struggle for freedom.
And President Obama plays the role of the bright young hope who comes to stop the governments -- -- grab for power but ends up enhancing it.
Barack Obama campaign for president as a professor of constitutional law a defender of civil liberties and an opponent of domestic surveillance.
Once he took office -- deception became clear almost immediately.
He's double down -- just about every significant component of President Bush's domestic surveillance policies.
Bending the structure American law enforcement ever closer to the model king George the third and forced on the artists while wiping out dissent.
Under President Obama spying has increased federal agents -- themselves new powers the president starts his own wars and kills whoever wants.
-- -- a Cold War against eastern European countries.
That spied on their own people haven't won that war the government has now turned to spying on us.
How we respond to what President Obama has done will determine the next act of this American drop.
Will the struggle for freedom be extinguished.
As we sink into a totalitarian state or -- President Obama -- dark transformation.
Reignite the struggle for freedom and provide it with -- -- Well we already know the President Obama does not understand economics 101.
When we look beneath his very -- we learned that he doesn't understand personal freedom either.
From the -- that there.