WVTL Radio Heats Up

The Bob Cudmore Show on WVTL radio is usually a low blood pressure type show. This morning it got about as heated as its ever going to when Peter Olsen, Editor of The Weekly out of Glenville, called in with his weekly Small Talk column, and began to defend the government’s intrusion into people’s privacy. Bob does not normally practice conversational interruptus, but he frequently broke in on Peter to disagree with him.

I found myself siding with Bob. I particularly don’t care for Peter’s argument that if you aren’t saying anything wrong or doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from the government tapping your phone or searching your belongings. As many innocent people have found out, investigators have a way of turning the most benign conversation, note or whatever they find into something sinister. Furthermore, there are things we want to keep private because they are intimate, important, may I even use the word precious.

Peter’s thinking reflects the confused thinking of the typical conservative today. Conservatives in the past stood for small government. Conservatives traditionally held that you should think twice before giving the government any more power than it has. The U. S. Government is the most powerful government in the world. How much more power does our government need to combat terrorism?

The U.S. is still one of the most free nations in the world, but you cannot keep giving your government more and more power and expect to maintain that freedom. As the government’s power grows, its list of enemies (suspected or real) will grow along with it. Who knows, one of them might turn out to be Peter Olsen.