It’s not terrorists who take our freedoms, it’s politicians

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a bit obsessed with security cameras.

Currently, there are 2,400 in Manhattan alone. The city’s police department doesn’t think that number is enough and they are currently discussing ways to add miniature drones and better facial recognition software to their security apparatus.

In March, before the Boston Marathon bombings, the New York Daily News quoted Bloomberg as saying:

We’re going to have more visibility and less privacy. I don’t see how you stop that. And it’s not a question of whether I think it’s good or bad. I just don’t see how you could stop that because we’re going to have them.

Bloomberg is basically saying, “Stop fighting the increase in security cameras. It’s too late.”

Of course, it’s too late mostly because politicians like him don’t want to restrict the growth of the cameras. Bloomberg is one of the politicians constantly selling fear: Fear of the next terrorist. Fear of the next attack. Fear of your neighbor.

This is why he continued to push for more cameras a week after the bombings in Boston. It fit his narrative. He said:

We have to understand that in the world going forward, we’re going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That’s good in some sense, but it’s different from what we are used to.

Bloomberg went further, saying the bombings prove it is time to re-examine the U.S. Constitution.

We live in a complex word where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.

Bloomberg won’t be satisfied until every square inch of this country is monitored in some way. He’ll do this even though cameras don’t have the ability to stop terrorists from acting. They only allow investigators to examine videos in hopes of figuring out who committed the crime.
But, perhaps, even worse than his continued push for more cameras is this statement he made:

Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms.

Note the irony.

Mayor Bloomberg is the one who wanted to limit soda sizes. He banned transfats in New York City restaurants. He’s trying to raise the minimum age for adults to buy cigarettes. If Bloomberg truly believes terrorists attacks are attempts to take away freedom, then he is helping them win by taking away those sacred freedoms.

Look, I’m not trying to insinuate that Bloomberg is like the terrorists but I don’t think the Tsarnaev brothers bombed the Boston Marathon to take away Americans’ freedoms.

They can’t. They just took advantage of them.

It’s the politicians like Bloomberg who try and take those freedoms away when terrorists strike. They are the ones encouraging a reinterpretation of the Constitution.

Bloomberg’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t seem to or doesn’t want to recognize this.