Your not the only one speaking in a language of old From todays CounterPunch dotcom On this the Seventeenth Day Of January in the Year of Our Lord 2006 Bugging America The Liberties of the Subject By WERTHER The overwhelming balance of recorded history has been marked by despotism When homo sapiens sapiens transitioned from hunter gatherer to agriculturalist he gained literacy solid dwellings and other accoutrements of what is commonly considered civilization But he experienced a sharp decline in personal liberty The reasons for this are commonsensical Disputes between tribes of hunter gatherers could be resolved by one or the other simply pulling up stakes and relocating to a new territory there being few material impedimenta to prevent them A settled agricultural existence on the other hand implied permanent villages granaries and land boundaries to be defended against depredation The need for defenses implied a national security state Agricultural surpluses not only necessitated armed defense but allowed a division of labor leading to policemen soldiers bureaucrats and tax assessors the latter of whom would confiscate a percentage of the harvest The evolution of labor conditions also implied a different mental outlook The hunter gatherer was an independent contractor if not brigand who ranged over extensive territory and worked alone or in small groups The agricultural laborer by contrast toiled in one spot making his comings and goings more subject to regulation If the land was not his he became dependent on the Big Man s favor Given the increased population densities in regions where agricultural societies developed he could only rarely strike out on his own the good land had been already taken and game animals cleared or hunted to local extinction 1 With the rise of what Karl Wittfogel call hydraulic civilization 2 the screw of oppression turned once again against personal liberty In order to build the extensive earthworks necessary for the state to survive the next drought or flood the rulers of these proto superpowers subjected their subjects to enforced toil and off duty regimentation which rendered them no more free than so many draft animals It is unlikely the rulers of the states in the Valley of Mexico the Nile the Euphrates the Ganges or the Yang Tze had much toleration for the complaints their subjects who were enslaved enserfed or otherwise regimented for the greater good as defined by the states rulers These complaints had they been permitted would have constituted freedom of speech Nor would the rulers have given credence to a peasant s assertion that the interior of his crude dwelling and the contents thereof were inviolate from the inquisitiveness of the state He the peasant simply had no rights a ruler was bound to respect to paraphrase what a former Supreme Court Justice once said about slaves in a famous ruling in 1857 the only limit on a ruler s power over his subjects was the former s fear of rebellion should discontent overflow Of the two rights discussed thus far freedom of speech and freedom from arbitrary search and seizure the latter is fundamentally more important to human beings maintaining a status above that of mere hive animals This is not intended in any way to disparage the desirability and necessity of free speech But there are practical circumstances when free speech is not exercised by reasonable peopledue to reticence shame or its merely being not worth the effort Or when one is married Much obnoxious and exhibitionistic behavior is rationalized as free speech while more urgent matters are suppressed how many hourly employees feel free to say what they really think of their supervisors and is the resultant lawsuit really covered by the First Amendment But asinine reality TV blares on Out of politeness or discretion most intelligent people censor their opinions about politics in laws bosses and religion when they are in the public commons The inviolability of one s person and one s dwelling is more basic What would the average person resent more being told he can not ask questions of the President of the United States at a staged event or being ordered to be strip searched in public Or for that matter have his house ransacked That is the principle at issue The lesser freedom is essential for political discourse the greater freedom distinguishes us from dogs 3 Respect for privacy for oneself and one s fellow citizens is the benchmark of a sense of an individual self The majority of psychologically well adjusted people believes that there are facts and circumstances about them that just do not bear the glaring searchlight of public revelation Some things are simpl