Monday, June 24, 2013

A Nation of Snoops, Snitches & Busybodies: Tyrannical Government & Monstrous Invasions of Privacy


 
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
 
--Amendment IV of the U.S. Constitution
 
 
The recent revelations of Edward Snowden, exposing documentary material evidence of massive and pervasive unlawful, unconstitutional government  domestic spying and surveillance is hardly a news flash, at least among those of us who have dedicated our time and efforts over decades to issuing warnings of such abuses and engaging in activism to rein in Big Government tyranny.
 
Upon hearing of this latest scandal , my first thought was: So, what else is new? As if this is not a known fact of life in the U.S. of A.? However, given the mainstream media firestorm of controversy generated, making this issue one the general populace cannot ignore, it can no longer be relegated to the realm of "conspiracy theories", but has been established as conspiracy fact.
 
As for Edward Snowden, I will leave the readers to draw their own conclusions about his credibility, motives, sincerity, etc.  --and whether or not there is more going on here than meets the eye-- or if, as often happens when the intelligence community is involved, the situation is not as it seems.  
 
And let's not forget the mainstream media, owned lock, stock and barrel by Big Government vested interests, which has become a profession of prostitutes and shills. Does anyone really believe that the truth is being reported by the clowns featured as "news anchors" or "reporters" in this media circus? The "alternative" media, staffed heavily by controlled opposition, is not much different.  
 
As always, the Big Debate arises in response to the situation. People are polarized into two camps:
 
Some see Snowden as a heroic whistleblower; others consider him a criminal and traitor. But analyzing these opinions (for they are no more than that), or Mr. Snowden himself, is not the purpose of this report. Rather, I am going straight to the heart of the matter, addressing the pathological mentality, the views, the core values, the beliefs, the opinions, the ideologies, of those who would allow or support these monstrous invasions of privacy; and of those who are direct participants in violating the privacy and personal boundaries of others.
 
PRIVACY: A GOD-GIVEN RIGHT
   
Privacy is a God-given unalienable right, "protected" and "guaranteed" under the U.S. Constitution. Privacy cannot be removed from the equation of Liberty. Respect for the privacy and personal boundaries of others is a moral imperative, a principle to be fiercely and uncompromisingly defended.
 
Privacy, like all rights, is an INDIVIDUAL right (just as "we the people" are individuals, rather than a collective), not to be lawfully violated by the government; and which will never be violated by any person of principle, honor and integrity.
 
As for the government bureaucrats, they always have a long list of ready excuses at hand, the reasons they claim their violations of unalienable rights are justified. Since 9-11, the excuse has been "The War on Terror", which in reality has never been anything more than a contrivance.  How  convenient that their objectives of  waging "wars" (undeclared by Congress) of aggression against nations who have not atttacked the United States; and turning our own country into a police state reminiscent of Nazi Germany, or Bolshevik Russia (another war of aggression, against their own people) are so well served.  But the bottom line is this: You cannot justify the unjustifiable, nor do the ends ever justify the means, when the rights of even one person are being violated.
 
Consider the word "invasion". It is defined by an act of aggression, whereby one person or entity willfully oversteps, intrudes, trespasses, and thereby violates the rights of another, or a group of others.
 
But such violations are not solely the province of a corrupt and tyrannical government. Any government is comprised of individuals, and so is the general populace.  Each and every individual is responsible for his own actions, and should be held accountable for his transgressions; and they certainly will be, by any self-respecting person with a spine, a love of Liberty, and a set of uncompromising principles by which they live.
 
The right to privacy is paramount in maintaining individual sovereignty, and defending privacy has always been one of my most important personal crusades. From my perspective, I don't care if it's the government invading my privacy, or just a garden variety busybody. The basic issue is the same, as are the attitudes and mindset of the violator.
 
At the core of this issue is a profound lack of respect for the rights of others --but before you can develop a healthy respect for another's rights, you need to firstly acknowledge them, which these violaters simply refuse to do. Whether it's the government meddling in foreign affairs (witness the United Nations, the busybodies of the known world) or the private lives of its own citizens; or the do-gooder busybody meddling in the private lives of friends, family or even strangers, it is the attitude of NO RESPECT which is at the root of the problem.
 
It is important to understand that these snoops, meddlers, gossips, snitches (as a general description, "busybodying") all share a form of psychopathology, no matter how small, or how great the offense. People who violate the rights of others will usually tell you that they are engaging in this behavior because they "care", out of "love", or "kindness". But in truth there is a compulsion operating within them by which they are deluded into believing that they know what is "best" for others, and so have the "right" to act on that belief, without the permission (and often without the knowledge) of the other person(s).
 
Make no mistake: this behavior is nothing less than an act of aggression, and it's all about POWER and CONTROL. It's called tyranny and is not to be tolerated. The do-gooder busybodies, the government snoops, the "concerned" parties who presume to tell you what is "best" for you, or what is for the "greater good", are all at heart tyrants with a compulsion to interfere in the lives of others; to usurp your God-given right to self-determination; to choose for yourself, to decide for yourself, to live as you see fit, as long as you are not violating the rights of others. That is what Individual Liberty is all about.
 
If you don't believe me, just see what happens when you confront one of these violators and tell them in no uncertain terms that their behavior is unacceptable; that they have crossed your clearly drawn line in the sand; that they have overstepped their bounds; that their meddling, their violations of personal confidences, their gossip in putting YOUR business in the street, appointing themselves as unwanted intermediaries, matchmakers, deal-brokers, or Town Criers, without so much as a by-your-leave from you.
 
Typically, instead of acknowledging that their behavior is wrongful and unprincipled, instead of apologizing, they will attempt to justify their intrusive, indiscreet and disrespectful behavior. They will become defensive and angry with you and attempt to twist your very reasonable objection to their violations of your privacy, your personal boundaries, your very God-given rights and liberties, into a convoluted power struggle. When all you are doing is defending YOUR rights, making it clear that it is not their place, not their prerogative, not their business, not their concern, to interfere in YOUR life, in an way, shape or form. 
 
This unprincipled behavior wreaks havoc in the lives of everyone involved. Busybodies stir up a world of trouble, simply because they refuse to MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS and leave others in peace to tend to theirs.
 
 
Barbara Hartwell Percival
Defender of Personal Privacy & Individual Sovereignty
June 24, 2013
 
 
HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE: BE A BUSYBODY
 
But enough of my personal analysis and viewpoints. There have been many people, throughout the course of history, who have stood in defense of the right to privacy, who have denounced the snoops, the gossips, the meddlers. Let's hear it from them, since they have expressed it so very well. 
 
Definition of busybody: an officious or inquisitive person
 
 
Examples of busybody:
 
The neighborhood busybody is telling everyone that the couple up the street is getting divorced.
 
That busybody across the street is always telling me how to tend to my own garden.
 
Synonyms: buttinsky, interferer, interloper, intermeddler, intruder, kibitzer, meddler, nosy parker
 
Related Words: gaper, gawker, gawper, gazer, peeper, peeping Tom, prier, rubbernecker, snoop, snooper,, spy, blabber, discloser,, gossip, gossiper, prattler, quidnunc, betrayer, talebearer, tattler, telltale, snake, sneak, informant, snitcher, squealer, stool pigeon  
 
The Urban Dictionary
 
 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=busybody&defid=274878
 
Busybody:
 
The kind of person you just want to punch in the mouth for being so damb annoying. They have no life and way too much time on their hands. They frequently use their excessive amount of time to annoy and monitor others, taddletale for small meaningless crap, butt into everybody's business except their own, and spy on people as if they think they are a cop or an important person or something. You know busy bodies when you see them: they evesdrop, will report you for "child abuse" when you discipline your kids in the mall by giving them a small smack on the hand, they knock on your apartment door for "being too loud" when chopping vegetables on your counter for dinner, will tell flight attendants something like "excuse me but I saw that man using his cell phone during the safety demo" and will tell a COP something like "excuse me sir but I saw that man's license plate tag as being expired." What do you want me to do about a cell phone or an expired tag you stupid, loser? I had a friend once who was a busybody. He told me 6 months after I moved to Arizona that "I am going to report your car to the state DMV if you dont get your car registered with the state." He did exactly what he said and I punched him in the face for it. We are not frinds anymore. I can't stand ANY busybody like this. Let's just say busybodies are the fingernails and we are their chalkboard. 
 
Busy bodies are usually self-rightous hypocrites that are quick to point out the faults in others but get defensive when you point out theirs.
  
I can't stand any busybody. I want to punch them all in the mouth.
 
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.
--Marcus Aurelius
 
"Gossip needn't be false to be evil - there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around."

--Frank A. Clark

Who gossips to you will gossip about you.

--Irish saying

"He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue."

--Mark Twain

He that covers a transgression seeks love: but he that repeats a matter separates good friends.

Proverbs 17:9

"Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker."

--George Eliot

"Count not him among your friends who will retail your privacies to the world."

--Publilius Syrus

"Avoid inquisitive persons, for they are sure to be gossips, their ears are open to hear, but they will not keep what is entrusted to them."

--Horace

"And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too."

--Alexander Pope

"One who is too wise an observer of the business of others, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity."

--Alexander Pope

"There is a lust in man no charm can tame: Of loudly publishing his neighbor's shame: On eagles wings immortal scandals fly, while virtuous actions are born and die."

--William Harvey

"That which is everybody's business is nobody's business."

--Izaak Walton

"Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility."

--Josiah Glibert Holland
 
 “Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.”
 
--Stephen King, Hearts in Atlanta
 
“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”
 
--C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
 
“Language ... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.”
 
--Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now
 
“Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite."
 
--Marlon Brando
 
 “No one likes to see a government folder with his name on it.”
 
--Stephen King, Firestarter
 
“When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp?”
 
--Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
 
“What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night,
So stumblest on my counsel?

Who are you? Why do you hide in the darkness and listen to my private thoughts?
 
--William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
 
“He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.
 
--Benjamin Franklin
 
 "Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum."
 
--Samuel Adams
 
"The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life."
 
--Justice William O. Douglas
 
"Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?"
 
--Jimmy Durante
 
"A busybody's work is never done"
 
--A.N. Wilson
 
"I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own"
 
--Billie Holiday
 
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."
 
--C.S. Lewis
 
"I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors."
 
--H.L. Mencken
 
"Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."
 
--John Stuart Mill

"The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance -- a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms -- A Nation of Finger Pointers."
 
--Lance Morrow
 
"The poorest man may in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement."
 
--William Pitt
 
"It will take America fifteen years of steady taking care of our own business and letting everybody else's alone, to get us back to where everybody speaks to us again."
 
--Will Rogers
 
"He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom."
 
--Arthur Schopenhauer
 
"The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business."
 
--George Bernard Shaw
 
"If you mind your own business, you won't be minding mine."
 
--Hank Williams
  
But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler.

1 Peter 4:15
 
Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not.

1 Timothy 5:13

[It is] an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling.

Proverbs 20:3

The words of a talebearer [are] as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.

Proverbs 18:8


Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing covered.

Proverbs 11:13

Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with a simple babbler.

Proverbs 20:19

RELATED REPORTS

PRIVACY: THE FINAL FRONTIER

http://barbarahartwellvscia.blogspot.com/2008/08/privacy-final-frontier.html

The Right to Privacy
 
 
Invasions of Privacy & Meddling: Garden Variety Busybodies
 
 
REAL I.D.: The Death Knell of Personal Privacy
 
 
Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do
 
 
For more reports, see the section on this website, called THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY.

 
Barbara Hartwell Percival
Legal Defense & Research Trust
Barbara Hartwell Vs. CIA