Conservative pundits champion liberty but also USA PATRIOT Act?

To start, let me just put it out there: Our freedom isn't threatened, and our liberties will be preserved regardless of who's in office. Yep, I said it. We are too well-informed today for it to be otherwise. If you believe your liberties (distinctly separate from "freedoms") are threatened and that a few radical maniacs from flyspeck, dirt farm countries in the Middle East are a real threat to the most powerful military in the history of mankind, then you are a precise example of that to which this article refers. Your fear response quite literally dictates your beliefs and actions.

There isn't a country on Earth that would dare attack us openly. The 9/11 bombing - if indeed it was carried out by Islamic terrorists - was the single worst instance in the last 15 years, which says a lot about our intelligence network and the measures we already have in place (that could be carried out without the USA PATRIOT Act, by the way, which was signed into law by conservative policy makers who were interested in little else aside from absolute power). But it says even more about the capabilities of these impoverished, insane zealots - that is to say, they don't really have anything in the way of capabilities.

Let me start with solutions, then I'll address everything else. Here are two solutions that will fix pretty much everything wrong with our current government (there are others, but I'm just going with these two for now, because they're the most potent):

1. Term limits. With term limits, we can get those old geezers out of Congress who are incapable of seeing things any other way but the way they've always seen them. We can have new ideas and a fresh approach to our current problems. And we get rid of the corporate cronies who have had their elections bought for them for decades. And most importantly, people who aren't worried about getting reelected will be more likely to focus on long term issues, and perhaps actually care about the future of their nation instead of their future stock options. It might also help eliminate the two-party system.

2. Raise the minimum wage. Conservatives use the same tired argument I referenced above, "if you do that, they'll send our jobs...blah blah blah." But they won't, for the exact reasons I already stated. Their interest is to make as much profit as they can, in as short amount of time as they can. That is demonstrably impossible without the contributions of American consumers. I think there are likely very few multinational corporations on Earth that don't have an enormous percentage of their vested interests in the U.S. I doubt there are ANY that don't do a large percentage of their business in the U.S. It wasn't that long ago that a single-income, middle class family could survive in this country. That is unthinkable today. $7.25 an hour at 40 hours per week is $290 a week, $1160 a month, before taxes. The average two bedroom apartment in Mississippi - which has one of the lowest monthly rental averages in the country - is $800 per month. That leaves a single-income family with $360 (less taxes) to pay utilities, purchase groceries, gas, insurance, incidentals and entertainment. For a month. Hell, $15 an hour isn't enough, either. But it's a start.

And frankly, if a corporation's board is so greedy it would rather pack up and leave the U.S. in order to do business elsewhere than pay its employees a living wage, then why in the hell would we even want them here in the first place?

To address the fear response, let's look at it this way. Most terrorists of Middle Eastern descent (likely most terrorists, period) are extremely poor, and not nearly as well-funded as conservative pundits would have us believe. I have yet to hear or read one who made the claim that Al Qaieda (sp?) and ISIS are well-funded refer to any evidence or authoritative statements to that effect. Show me the evidence and I will rescind that assertion. Seriously, I would like to see it. I keep hearing the pundits and news media reference it, but offer no evidence to back it.

Their weapons are relatively primitive compared with ours. Relatively? More boldly (coldly?) put, their Kalashnikovs (which the Russians gave to them, hahaha) are about as high-tech as they get. They lack the capability, intelligence or resourcefulness to get any substantial WMDs into the country. And on the off chance they did, they could cause a tragedy, sure, but all that would serve to do is change policy . . . for the worse . . . by the same sort of lawmakers who signed into law the USA PATRIOT Act, which is inarguably the most UNpatriotic, UNAmerican, most privacy-invading law in U.S. history. In other words, Trump and his ilk would stop at nothing to try and rob us of yet more freedoms, privacy and liberties. They can already listen to your phone calls, read your emails, and federal law enforcement officers can already sign their own search warrants. Next, they'll be searching our homes, placing cameras on every light post, random strip searches in malls, and who knows what else? And we'll put up with it and believe them when they say they're just doing it to protect us, that sometimes we must sacrifice liberty for security. Because we really are that gullible and stupid.

If you're concerned about liberty, then conservative ideals are anathema to your beliefs. Thing is, conservative pundits are VERY good at making you believe the opposite. Because they're paid to by their corporate overlords. Do you really believe corporations would pack up and send all their jobs overseas if we don't comply with their demands and tax breaks? It's called an EMBARGO, my man. And if those corporate douchebags were regulated as they should be, they would be banned from doing any business in the U.S. - the largest and wealthiest consumer population in the world - if they even THOUGHT about taking those jobs overseas or paying anything less than a living wage.

Sidebar: The USA PATRIOT Act is an acronym, "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism." When you think of how awful it is and how it is the antithetical enemy of patriotism and liberty, you can begin to see why it is. Then again, acronym or not, I am fairly certain the word, "patriot," was the honey that coated that bitter little pill and made it easier to swallow. But every time I read that so-called acronym it is like the first time I read it, because it gets no less jaw-droppingly, bitterly, and audaciously outrageous.