Posted on 10/18/2001 5:18:58 AM PDT by sendtoscott
I’ve already been accused by some of my newspaper readers of being a coward and a traitor because I can’t get too excited about the Endless War on Terrorism. So I might as well go for the gusto and say what I really think.
First, despite the truly grievous attacks on innocent people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, I still fear my own government far more than I fear Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida network, and whatever foreign governments may have aided and abetted his terrorist plots. In my mind, the FBI is far more frightening than anthrax, and John Ashcroft isn’t much better than the Ebola virus.
Second, while America’s foreign policy – i.e., starving Iraqi children for 11 years because Washington no longer supports the dictator it helped prop up – doesn’t condone terrorism, it explains why some people are supportive of it.
Third, Americans have more to fear from the ideas expressed in a recent neoconservative tirade in The Weekly Standard than they do from the frothing U.S. flag-burners in Pakistan. Last week’s cover story, written by Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal, was titled, The Case for American Empire, and is something well beyond satire. Read it yourself for final proof that the neocons are insane.
Fourth, if I have to hear one more commentator prattle about America being targeted by bin Laden because of our nation’s freedoms, I am going to run into the streets of Santa Ana (where I work) yelling nasty things about our government. Don’t worry, no one will bother me given that English isn’t widely spoken around these parts.
As part of my quiet protest against the jingoism and war-mongering, most of my columns since the Sept. 11 attacks are dedicated to this proposition: America ain’t nearly as free as everyone seems to think it is.
On Sunday, I wrote about how the local children’s services agency has taken a young girl out of the care of her loving grandmother and placed her with a foster parent who, according to court records, owed $31,000 in back child support to his own kids, had a restraining order placed on him so he couldn’t see them, and was accused in a sworn statement of swimming nude with his foster children.
I was reminded that government bureaucrats can take anyone’s kids at any time for any reason, and they needn’t even tell the parent where the kid has been placed for 72 hours. Proceedings take place in a special kangaroo court where what the bureaucrats say is taken for gospel, and what parents and responsible adults say often is ignored. After my column ran, I’ve been inundated with calls from readers relaying similar tragic dealings with these agencies.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about eminent domain abuses. In California, most cities have what are called redevelopment agencies, whose officials can declare any residential or retail area as blighted, and then exert broad powers of eminent domain to take properties from owners and hand them over to big developers. The real goal isn’t blight removal, but the creation of new shopping centers and hotel complexes that bring in more tax revenues than the current residents or business owners bring in.
Cities are supposed to pay fair-market value for the properties they take, but they try to outright steal them by making lowball offers, backed by intimidating tactics worthy of the mafia. I wrote about how the city of Garden Grove took a thriving multimillion-dollar car rental business run by Korean immigrants, and offered them the whopping sum of $16,000 for the enterprise. Small entrepreneurs are routinely forced out of business by the government, and deprived of their livelihoods – making it difficult to find the resources needed to fight back in court. These aren’t anomalies, but everyday occurrences in California and other states.
In another column, I wrote about Catholic school boosters who raised funds and started building a privately funded school on one of the few sites zoned specifically for schools in San Juan Capistrano. Although the local public school district can legally build on most any piece of property zoned in most any way, the public school officials didn’t like the idea of competition. So once they saw the private school effort, they decided to try to use eminent domain to take the site for their own school.
These are just a handful of stories from one small, albeit rather loony, corner of America over the last few weeks. After each article was published, I received calls from other people telling about even more egregious incidents of government abuse. These include developers who have the total value of their property stolen from them after officials discover some endangered bug on the land, property owners who are forced to make their homes conform to bogus historical standards, a city that is forcing some privately owned motels to shut down because they cater to poor long-term residents rather than tourists, and lots and lots of unfair takings examples. Sometimes people are protected in the courts, but only after years of fighting.
We live in a land where the government taxes more than half your income, where officials can take your children or your property on a whim and leave you little recourse, where government agencies have complete power over what you can do on your own private property and when you can do it. Yet we’re supposed to be so proud of our free country that we go around the world liberating other people with our Tomahawk missiles. God bless America, my eye. God save it, is more like it.
You know, as a "l" libertarian, this has always puzzled me about "L" Libertarians. I cannot fathom why they are clinging to this starving the children schtick when they are the first ones to step up to the plate and argue for just leaving other countries to fend for themselves. Now we are to blame for withholding food? Whatever happened to non-interventionism?
People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled–after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.
All too true, we can see the sheeple lining up for slaughter.
We're the best option out there, BUB, and you know what? There's actually a system in place right now that allows a dedicated person with opposing views to get things changed more to their liking. Sounds like you've not going to have a lot of spare time on your hands.
By the way - when the country is at war, it's not real smart to sound like you're trying to the undermine confidence in our basic principles, which are admired worldwide by most educated, non-cave dwelling persons.
Well, maybe, eventually, the Iraqi people will decide to take out their anger and despair on the real culprits in the case ... Saddam Hussein and the rest of his regime.
If not, well, then they don't want it enough.
Enrage the globalists. Join the IDF!
You wanna post congresses declaration of War? I have not seen it as of yet so maybe you can back up that statement. Knuckle Draggers indeed.
So do you need a formal piece of paper to know we are at war, or is the rubble at the WTC, the 6,000 people dead, the bombs falling in Afghanistan, and the anthrax going to do it for ya'?
By the way, the President has filed the apropriate papers formally notifying Congress of military action, as required by law.
That may be true, except we ARE targeting the government .. ie, the nation-state of Iraq.
If the government chooses to pass the suffering along to its own people, that's an internal problem.
Our Government is Worse Than Anthrax is the title of the article.
Gee, I think that is an attack on our basic prinicles, don't you??
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