Originally published June 13 2014
Progressive intellectual Noam Chomsky terrified that Obama is 'determined to demolish our civil liberties'
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) Leftist hero and intellectual Noam Chomsky said in a recently-penned column he fears that President Obama, no doubt the most liberal progressive chief executive in the nation's history, is on a path to destroy some of America's founding principles.
"In the past several months, we have been provided with instructive lessons on the nature of state power and the forces that drive state policy. And on a closely related matter: the subtle, differentiated concept of transparency," he wrote in a column published by the liberal news site, Alternet.
In particular, Chomsky is particularly concerned about recent revelations that the National Security Agency may have used some of its top secret technology to eavesdrop on Americans' private phone and electronic communications - technology that was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
"The documents unveil a remarkable project to expose to state scrutiny vital information about every person who falls within the grasp of the colossus - in principle, every person linked to the modern electronic society," Chomsky writes. "Nothing so ambitious was imagined by the dystopian prophets of grim totalitarian worlds ahead."
'There is no way to reconcile these principles'
The NSA's surveillance programs grew following the passage of the Patriot Act during the Bush administration; they have been maintained and strengthened by the Obama White House.
Chomskey laments that the NSA's surveillance is tantamount to serial violations of the "Bill of Rights," and specifically, the Fourth Amendment's privacy protections and requirement for the government to obtain search warrants before collecting information.
"Much as government lawyers may try, there is no way to reconcile these principles with the assault on the population revealed in the Snowden documents," Chomskey, a retired MIT professor, says.
"As the colossus fulfills its visions, in principle every keystroke might be sent to President Obama's huge and expanding databases in Utah," he said. "In other ways too, the constitutional lawyer in the White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil liberties. The principle of the presumption of innocence, which dates back to Magna Carta 800 years ago, has long been dismissed to oblivion."
Obama 'has exceeded his authority'
"It is of no slight import that the project is being executed in one of the freest countries in the world, and in radical violation of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, which protects citizens from 'unreasonable searches and seizures,' and guarantees the privacy of their persons, houses, papers and effects," Chomsky said.
Chomsky does limit his criticism of Obama - who has consistently abused his office by circumventing Congress, as noted by liberal Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley in recent congressional testimony - to the actions of the NSA.
Granted, the NSA situation - if the agency is truly spending its limited manpower and resources "spying" on Americans - is constitutionally problematic, but as Turley noted, Obama seems to be precisely the kind of imperialistic president the Constitution, through its establishment of three branches of government designed to serve as a check and balance on each other, sought to prevent.
During testimony, Turley said he believes that Obama "has, in fact, exceeded his authority in a way that is creating a destabilizing influence in a tripartite, or a three-branch, system." He further observed that while "this problem did not begin with President Obama," and that he actually agrees with the president on most of his policy positions, "the rate at which executive power is being concentrated in our system is accelerating. And frankly, I am very alarmed by the implications of that aggregation of power."
Sources for this article include:
http://dailycaller.com
http://www.alternet.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1EYH3kxNmg
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