Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, is a person who has truly helped
to change the world for the better. This brilliant man, in my
mind, deserves to be placed in the same camp as say Thomas Edison.
The fruits of his labor have changed life dramatically for the
good.
And Wozniak
did it the right way, as a private individual working for a private
company. So you won’t see his face on the front of the funny money,
or hanging up in a classroom, or carved into Mount Rushmore.
Yet despite
Wozniak’s brilliance, when it comes to understanding the nature
of The State, he’s as clueless as a child. Like most Americans,
his heart is in the right place, but his mind has
accepted the government propaganda that has been fed to him his
entire life.
Wozniak
was on Piers Morgan’s show, talking
about his disgust at the U.S. government’s spying:
“Read
the facts: it’s government of, by and for the people. We own the
government; we are the ones who pay for it and then we discover
something that our money is being used for — that just can’t
be, that level of crime.”
The only truth in that statement is “we
are the ones who pay for it”.
That’s it!
The rest
is 100%
incorrect.
When Morgan suggested the government would not be able to keep
such a close eye on citizens without the work of innovators like
him, Wozniak acknowledged: “I actually feel a little guilty about
that — but not totally. We created the computers to free
the people up, give them instant communication anywhere in the
world; any thought you had, you could share freely. That it was
going to overcome a lot of the government restrictions.
We didn’t realise that in the digital world there were a lot of
ways to use the digital technology to control us, to snoop on
us, to make things possible that weren’t.
In my opinion, Wozniak should not feel guilty at all. Tyranny thrives
when individuals are unable to communicate with one another. The
tools that have been created are bringing people together like never
before. Geography no longer prohibits one individual from understanding
others who may be different.
With communication
tools, people on one side of the earth are able to think outside
of government’s propaganda that those on the other side are just
a bunch of “gooks” who need to conquered and remade.
Wozniak
should sleep with a clear mind. The creation of good should never
be suppressed for fear of what evil will do with it. The creation
of good should always flow out of creative minds; for in the end,
the good will always win out.
“All
these things about the constitution, that made us so good as people
— they are kind of nothing.
“They are
all dissolved with the Patriot Act. There are all these laws that
just say ‘we can secretly call anything terrorism and do anything
we want, without the rights of courts to get in and say you are
doing wrong things’. There’s not even a free open court any more.
Read the constitution. I don’t know how this stuff happened. It’s
so clear what the constitution says.”
This is one of the most common errors that Americans make.
When one
truly understands the
nature of The State, he/she realizes that there’s no restricting
it. You can write down some rules, and they may last for awhile.
But the rules will be as effective as telling a bunch of cancer
cells that they have to stay put, and are not allowed to spread.
Put a barrier
in front of a group of men who have a lust for power, and they
will spend every waking moment thinking of ways to get through
it.
The evisceration
of The U.S. Constitution began immediately (even though
it was supposed to chain down The State). We are now over
200 years in, and the last vestiges are being removed; but the
power hungry went to work right away, before the ink was even
dry.
In fact,
for
the real history nerds amongst us, many of those who created
the Constitution did so to increase their power. While
there are some good elements in the document (The Bill of Rights),
the whole ordeal was no doubt a coup against liberty.
So Wozniak
rightly hates what the government is doing, but because he doesn’t
understand what government is, what its nature is, he’ll
most likely join the multitudes in seeking solutions that are
equivalent to a dog chasing its tail.
Reprinted
with permission from Economic
Policy Journal.
This article originally appeared on: Lew Rockwell