Privacy: September 2007 Archives

It's sad that our legislators don't have the guts to repeal laws that are clearly unconstitutional, but thankfully the courts still stand as the third leg of government.

Technorati Tags: government, politics, privacy, patriot act

I wrote this piece in 2005. I was spending a lot of time on the plane, and I had been reading Geoffrey R. Stone's “Perilous Times - Free Speech in Wartime” and Howard Zinn's “A People's History of the United States”. Then I saw Chris Chandler perform at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. He does an amazing show where he talks and the music backs him up, moving from song to song. In particular, listen to “There is something in the air - but it's not on the airwaves” (although I liked the live version better).

So when I got to music camp (the one week a year when I'm usually offline, offgrid and offwork), I got inspired. By midweek I'd dropped all my classes (except for Peggy Lynn's SongWriting class, which I kept visiting for advice and encouragement) and was camped out on the dining hall porch with my laptop and several books--frantically trying to narrow down the scope of the piece. By Friday morning (day of the “talent” show) I had it down to fifteen minutes (still way too long), but I had no music. So I enlisted Beth Lawton, a Meadowlark Music Camp student who does a lot of historical reenactment music, to help me out. She and others helped me pick out the background music and which verses we would do. And somewhere in there I roped her, her partner, and Sheldon Campbell into performing them for me.

By dinner time I had the piece down to ten minutes and that was all I had time to do (the Friday capture-the-flag game after dinner is too much of a tradition to miss). None of the performers had heard more than a few bits and pieces of the performance, and I'd just scribbled down some queues for when they should start playing each song. We had no time to arrange for playing background throughout the piece, which I would have liked. A few hours later-hot, sweaty, out of breath, sore (capture-the-flag), and smelling of lobster (dinner)-we put it on.

All things considered, it went pretty well. It was certainly the longest performance anyone had done at the talent show, and the first using a laptop (I had not had time to memorize the words), but it went over well. A number of people suggested I should do a video-which would be very cool if I ever had the time....

The sad thing is that in 2005, the number of examples I had for misbehavior of the Bush administration were fairly limited. I certainly believed there were more, but there hadn't been a lot of details of specific misbehavior, just bad words and suppression of speech. Torture, illegal wiretaps, indefinite incarceration of citizens-that all came later. If I were to write the piece now, the ending would be far nastier. Sigh.

In any case, here it is.

• Kee Hinckley - spoken words, vocals
• Sheldon Campbell - guitar, vocals
• Beth Lawton - guitar, vocals, music selection
• Kevin Hagen - banjo, vocals, music selection
• Meadowlark attendees - chorus
• Chris Chandler - inspiration
• Peggy Lynn and the Meadowlark Song Writing class - encouragement and support

Most of the information and quotations come from two sources. Geoffrey R. Stone's “Perilous Times - Free Speech in Wartime” and Howard Zinn's “A People's History of the United States”. See the lyrics for more details.

Note: The quotation attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the end of the piece, though commonly presented as such on the internet, is in fact incorrect. He may or may not have written it, and it probably reflects his views. However a more correct statement would be “As published by Benjamin Franklin.” And the correct text is: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” See “Franklin Quoted by Minsky” for details.

Lyrics after the break.

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