* * * * *
The Subversive Thomas Jefferson
> On 29 July 2003, I became a casualty in John Ashcroff's politically
> convenient “War on Everyday Activites Which Some Terrorist May Also Have
> Done.” I carried a camera onto the public hiking trails surrounding West
> Hartford (CT (Connecticut)) Reservoir. It's a pretty little reservoir,
> inviting locals to partake in biking, hiking and other healthy activities
> on the miles of natural and manmade coastline.
>
> No signs said that cameras were not allowed. The police officer was
> reminding me that I “am not in any trouble,” but that I had to surrender
> official state identification and car registration anyway. Numerous other
> shutterbugs are catalogued each day, just in case a “pattern” might somehow
> develop.
>
Via Techdirt [1], “TERROR FILE 1 by ~halley [2]”
It's a picture of a rusty plate, eye bolt and one rusty chain link.
> the British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and
> model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has
> at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the
> ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful,
> we have believed them ourselves. yet where does this anarchy exist? where
> did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? and can
> history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say
> nothing of it's motives. they were founded in ignorance, not wickedness.
> god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. the people
> cannot be all, & always, well informed. the past which is wrong will be
> discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive;
> if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the
> forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states
> independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one
> rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever
> existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve
> it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their
> people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is
> to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few
> lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from
> time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural
> manure.
>
“Thomas Jefferson”, 1787
Keep up the good work, Ashcroft! Who knows? In another year or so we might
have to get all Jeffersonian on you and stage that 20 year revolution he so
elequently talked about …
[1]
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030911/110206_F.shtml
[2]
http://www.deviantart.com/view/2736979/
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