Posted on 06/29/2004 9:27:45 AM PDT by ksen
Police state, ho!
by John Whitehead
6/28/04
With each passing day, America is inching further down a slippery slope toward a police state. Soon, we’ll have picked up so much momentum that there will be no turning back.
Incredibly, not too many people appear concerned. Bombarded by media images and a mind-numbing entertainment culture, people seem to be so distracted that they do not even realize that our civil liberties are slowly and stealthily eroding away.
Yet the signs of a police state are everywhere. They have infiltrated all aspects of our lives, from the mundane to the downright oppressive. We were once a society that valued individual liberty and privacy. But in recent years we have turned into a culture that has quietly accepted surveillance cameras at traffic lights and in common public areas, drug-sniffing dogs in our children’s schools, national databases that track our finances and activities, sneak-and-peek searches of our homes without our knowledge or consent and anti-terrorism laws that turn average Americans into suspected criminals.
In our post-9/11 world, government officials have effectively used terror and fear to subdue any public resistance to legislation like the Patriot Act, which embodies the heavy-handed empowering of government intrusion into our lives. Our police officers have become armed militias, instead of the civilian peacekeepers they were intended to be. Now, even average citizens—those that should have nothing to fear or worry about—are becoming unwitting targets of a government seemingly at war with its own people. Understandably, fear and paranoia rule the day.
Now with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, we have reached yet another milepost on our journey to a police state. A majority of the high court agreed that refusing to answer when a policeman asks “What’s your name?” can rightfully be considered a crime under Nevada’s “stop and identify” statute. Nineteen other states already have similar laws on their books. No longer will Americans, even those not suspected of or charged with any crime, have the right to remain silent when stopped and questioned by a police officer.
The case arose after Larry D. Hiibel, a Nevada cattle rancher, was arrested and convicted on a misdemeanor after refusing to tell his name or show identification to a sheriff's deputy. By requiring individuals to identify themselves on pain of arrest, this ruling turns Americans innocent of any wrongdoing into immediate suspects. Indeed, it is hard to ignore the similarity to the police states found in countries like China and North Korea. It can only be a matter of time before we are required to carry identification at all times. With all the talk of digital chips and national IDs, it may not even be so far-fetched to think that someday our slightest movements will be tracked by government satellites.
We are fast becoming the police state that Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tx.) warned against in his June 2002 address to the House of Representatives. His words painted a chilling portrait of a nation willingly allowing itself to be monitored, tracked, fingerprinted and controlled. “Personal privacy, the sine qua non of liberty, no longer exists in the United States. Ruthless and abusive use of all this information accumulated by the government is yet to come.”
“It’s the responsibility of all of us to speak the truth to our best ability,” cautioned Paul, “and if there are reservations about what we’re doing, we should sound an alarm and warn the people of what is to come.”
Although the alarm has been sounded repeatedly from critics on all sides of the political spectrum, is anyone listening? If they were, every piece of legislation that tightens the government’s stronghold on American citizens would be considered an affront to freedom. And every court decision that weakens the right of each American to privacy and to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures would be considered an attack against individual liberty.
Politicians love to boast about how far we’ve come since 1776. Yet sadly, we seem to have lost the love of freedom that laid the groundwork for the American Revolution. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have further confused the situation. In fact, it is common to hear both our elected officials and citizens state rather bluntly that it’s time to relinquish some of our freedoms in order to feel more secure.
This kind of sentiment was completely foreign to those who founded this country. Obviously, those who fought the arduous battles to preserve our freedom had a different concept of what a society should be and what it meant to be a good citizen.
Vested with the deep-seated belief that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, those who founded America took a courageous stand for their right to freely pursue life, liberty and happiness. And when their outcries were ignored by Great Britain, they declared that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government.” This led to the drafting of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It has been said that on a sunny day in Philadelphia in 1787, just after the Constitutional Convention had finished its work, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked, “Mr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us?” “A Republic, madam,” Franklin quickly answered. “If you can keep it.”
I only hope that we have the wisdom and the courage to keep it.
Because Janet Reno made it so. Try leaarning some facts. Ken Starr NEVER wanted his investigation enlarged.
LOL!
I'm starting to think that shot rang out some time ago -- and killed a certain troll's pet parrot.
The more I see of that surreal "no I didn't say that" denial, the more I'm reminded of the Monty Python "dead parrot" skit.
"Your parrot is dead!"
"No he's not"
"Yes he is, he's dead as a doornail!"
"No he's not"
[ad infinitum]
I hereby charge you with anticompetitive behavior!
:)
Good grief. I suppose the cop could have just waited until the car moved, then stopped it. This nut wouldn't have had anything to whine about then.
Yeah, you tell 'im, tiger.
Next thing you know, these nutcases will be demanding that the cops wait until a bank is robbed before they arrest the robber, before a murder is committed before they arrest the murder, and so on.
You can see where that would take us.
I mean, if the police are so hamstrung that they have to wait until after an event occurs before they're allowed to take action, where would that leave us as a progressive culture?
No free man should ever object to producing his papers on demand of any officer of the government.
It's the least we can do to make their jobs easier.
I'll grant that sometimes it might not seem to make much sense, but remember, "Remember, our is not to reason why..."
Has anyone else noticed how the troll -- when called on his statement above -- quickly edited it after the fact from "WHERE" to "HOW"?
Typicall trolling behavior. Paint yourself into a corner, and then move the f'n goalposts. (mixed metaphor du jour courtesy of my utter disgust :)
KYC was peanuts compared to TIA, which was also "defeated", and like KYC, returned to rear its ugly head under different branding.
See what I mean?
It first demands "WHERE", in denial that it mentioned them -- then, when confronted with it's faux pas by multiple posters, it attempts to reframe the topic by pretending that the issue is "how", and that it's somehow incumbent on its betters to deconstruct its lunacy, merely to prove it a liar.
Bingo.
For better or worse, the only thing the RKBA will give you is a bit of an edge against street thugs looking to liberate your wallet (or body parts).
If the government feels like crushing you like a bug, it will crush you like a bug.
You (any of you) may not like hearing that, but it's the truth.
If you don't like that, then... well, sometimes life sucks, doesn't it.
Funny, Clinton didn't mention that when he pointed out how the Whitewater investigation spiralled out to cover more and more topics.
Very astute observation.
There are approximately 300M people in the U.S.
The U.S. government could be overthrown if 300,000 people actively harassed agents of the government and their families.
Guns are not the answer. Beatings, poisonings, driving them off the road, harming them financially, etc. are the weapons of a real insurrection. JBTs have fragile morale, high alcoholism and divorce rates, and are ripe to be pushed beyond what they can handle.
Guns are a last-ditch defense weapon. The revolution will not be fought with guns.
Nota bene. "Note well."
You think that's bad, I'm thinking about shipping all of the posting on this and future threads overseas. ;^)
No, 'e's not - 'e's just restin'!
Unfortunately, it's doubtful that this particular parrot ever rests.
Loosen your tin foil hat a bit. Asking for a name and arresting someone for a crime not yet committed are as far apart as east is from west.
LOL Well, if we're talking about Kerry, he's a born waffler. Nothing will change that.
He's just pinin' for the fjords...
Tell that to the cowboy that the SCOTUS just railroaded.
*sigh*
Back in the 1960s when I was chummy with Abbie Hoffman, the "New Left" hung its hat on the expected "revolution", awaited with grand anticipation.
Today, the "New Right" pins its hopes on the anticipated "revolution".
The more thing change, the more they stay the same.
You are correct: "The revolution" will not be fought with guns.
That's because there ain't gonna be no revolution.
Go download a copy of Hoffman's atrociously written "Steal This Book" (Google is your friend). Update a few of the then-current neo-logisms and it could pretty much have come from the "New Right" underground.
There will be no "revolution". You can take that to the bank.
I could go on and on and on explaining why there will be no "revolution", but I'd be wasting my time, so I won't.
President Lincoln curtailed Habeus Corpus during the Civil War.
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