Connect The Dots But Dont Collect The Dots - Road to the Middle Class

DO YOU MEAN to say, Senator Leahy, that you had no idea that the NSA was doing data mining on phone records? That you, as the ranking minority member on the Judiciary Committee have never been briefed on this program?

"Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida? These are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything. ... Where does it stop?" _ Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Notice that the Senator did not express suprise. He just expressed shock and outrage. His words are, if you can believe it, rather artfully chosen.

And Senator Leahy, if you are shocked and appalled by the efforts of the NSA to �collect the dots� about terrorists operations are you going to remain respectfully silent the next time that the government fails to �connect the dots?� What would be your position on that?

This business of �collect the dots� vs. �connect the dots� is the idea of columnist and humorist James Lileks, interviewed here (perm) by Hugh Hewitt. It�s nonsense, says Lileks,

because what they're telling you, essentially, is that the Democratic platform is not to do any data mining, any sort of pattern matching. They want us to connect the dots, but they do not want us to collect the dots. The dots should apparently just walk up and volunteer, here I am. I'm a dot. And that's the extent of the War On Terror.

The liberal obsession with government eavesdropping is intriguing. For this conservative, the government eavesdropping on all my financial transactions and complete access to all my salary records is profoundly disturbing. But really, I should care about the government listening in on my phone conversations?

Liberals think differently. They imagine themselves involved at some future time in some political conspiracy, valiantly battling against the fascist US government, and dissenting against its illegal and immoral foreign policy. One thinks of John Kerry negotiating with the North Vietnamese back during the Vietnam War. Imagining such a heroic future for themselves they want the rules set up now so they can conspire against the government of the United States in the future without being monitored. But finances? Well, they work for the government, and the government is going to be paying ttheir pension.

But the rest of us who are not liberals have to wonder. Is this liberal concern for �privacy� real, or is it just liberal conceit?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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