Posted on 10/03/2005 8:01:29 AM PDT by Mikey
Item: "The government will grant increased powers to law enforcement and security agencies to enhance their capacity to prevent attacks. Importantly, control orders will be available to our law enforcement agencies in circumstances where a person might pose a risk to the community but cannot be contained or detained under existing legislation." – John Howard, prime minister of Australia, Sept. 7, 2005.
Item: "I think when people say this is an abrogation of our traditional civil liberties, I think it is possible to exaggerate that. I mean, as far as I know people have always accepted that with rights come responsibilities." – Tony Blair, prime minister of the United Kingdom, Sept. 16, 2005.
Item: "The system itself is the problem. We are trying to fight 21st-century crime – ASB, drug-dealing, binge-drinking, organized crime – with 19th century methods, as if we still lived in the time of Dickens. The whole of our system starts from the proposition that its duty is to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted. Don't misunderstand me. That must be the duty of any criminal justice system. But surely our primary duty should be to allow law-abiding people to live in safety. It means a complete change of thinking." – Tony Blair, prime minister of the United Kingdom, Sept. 27, 2005.
Item: "Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case, but is there a natural disaster – of a certain size – that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort? That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about." – George Bush, president of the United States of America, Sept. 25, 2005.
Item: "President Bush yesterday sought to federalize hurricane-relief efforts, removing governors from the decision-making process. 'It wouldn't be necessary to get a request from the governor or take other action,' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday. 'This would be,' he added, 'more of an automatic trigger.' Mr. McClellan was referring to a new, direct line of authority that would allow the president to place the Pentagon in charge of responding to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and outbreaks of disease." – Washington Times, Sept. 26, 2005.
Item: "Bird flu 'could kill 150 million people' A flu pandemic could happen at any time and kill between five to 150 million people, a U.N. health official has warned." – BBC News, Sept. 30, 2005.
Despite wide-open borders and a consistent federal refusal to enforce national immigration laws, there have been no terrorist attacks in the United States for more than four years. Despite decades of warnings about AIDS, Ebola, SARS, West Nile, Anthrax and now Bird Flu, there have been no mass outbreaks of disease in the United States for more than eight decades.
At a certain point, one is forced to wonder. Are these top government officials primarily concerned with preventing potential dangers to the public, are they primarily concerned with covering their political posteriors in the event of failing to prevent such dangers that actually come to pass or are they primarily concerned with using the perception of potential danger to destroy the liberties of their nations' citizenries?
It seems most strange that three of the most powerful leaders in the once-free West should simultaneously choose the very same moment to call for drastic changes in their respective legal systems. Coincidentally, all three leaders happen to be arguing for the elimination of individual liberties and centuries-old legal protections by dangling the fabulous carrot of increased safety and security before the public.
Since the passage of the Patriot Act – which conservatives who should have known better argued themselves blue in the face in trying to convince everyone of its innocuous nature – the Bush administration has steadily continued its ominous drumbeat for an ever-increasing expansion of central government power. Now, it is daring to openly argue that a single attack, natural disaster or outbreak of disease should grant the executive branch the power to shred the Constitution and declare martial law at will.
This is freedom-hating idiocy of the highest order. Even if the current president has the purest and most angelic of intentions, as well as Christ in his heart, such legislation is akin to placing the collective neck of the American public in the guillotine for the remainder of the Republic's doomed existence. For sooner or later, there will be other presidents who are not so virtuous. If the American people are so foolish as to grant the present administration its wish for this anti-constitutional abomination, they will richly deserve the servitude to which they will inevitably be reduced.
Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist church, and has been down with Madden since 1992. Visit his Web log, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary and responses to reader email.
Every transaction we make, every trip we take, every time we produce a driver's license to conduct business would be noted and recorded in a government database. And with the national ID 'smart card' almost certainly being linked -- at first, or after Americans get used to the idea -- to our financial lives in every critical respect (checking accounts, credit cards, etc.) there won't be anything the government, its myriad agencies and even private-sector contractors, won't know about us except our never-voiced thoughts -- the last realm of privacy that may be left to Americans a decade from now. ... What Messrs. Moran and Davis have proposed is, in fact, 'a system that will erode individual freedom and increase governmental power without significantly improving safety,' as Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center puts it. He and other civil libertarians ridicule the government's straw man -- that a national ID will prevent future terrorist attacks. They argue, convincingly, that well-funded criminals and would-be terrorists will always find a way to get around such a system. Only the average citizen would find himself under the ever-present watchful eye of government.
As with gun control, the national ID will result in diminished freedom and privacy for law-abiding citizens who pose no threat to honest government but are objects of these ever escalating, police-state tactics. The national ID card is a terrible idea, perhaps born of good intentions -- which should nonetheless be dropped before we get more than we bargained for."
People of the world, get ready for the;
People of the world get ready to live under the boot and loving whip of the;
People will ALWAYS trade their freedom for security. One point Vox Day makes that Bush supporters refuse to acknowledge about the Patriot Act:
This is freedom-hating idiocy of the highest order. Even if the current president has the purest and most angelic of intentions, as well as Christ in his heart, such legislation is akin to placing the collective neck of the American public in the guillotine for the remainder of the Republic's doomed existence. For sooner or later, there will be other presidents who are not so virtuous. If the American people are so foolish as to grant the present administration its wish for this anti-constitutional abomination, they will richly deserve the servitude to which they will inevitably be reduced.
...This is freedom-hating idiocy of the highest order...
Welcome to the Community.
Bush is doing his assigned job.
Next, Hillary has plans for you.
"People will ALWAYS trade their freedom for security."
Let me rephrase your bullshit statement.
IGNORANT people will ALWAYS trade their freedom for security.
I am not amongst that group!
It was a general statement and was not meant to encompass EVERYONE. So don't take it personally. The sad fact is that most Americans are IGNORANT. Most could not tell you how many admendments are in the Bill of Rights, or even what the 1st Amendment says.
I've heard so many people say some of the dumbest statements one can ever hear regarding safety and security verses liberty. Most of these people have actually said they'd gladly give up some of their liberties in order to have security. Damn.
How easy would it be to transform Rick Perry's Trans Texas Corridor to such a use.........
I've gone into hunt clubs and asked members to quote the 2nd Amendment verbatim and the explain what it truly means and most members can't do it. Its absolutely appalling.
It would be very easy!!! The funny thing is that our vehicles are monitored in every major city in the United States and on most of the major in-town freeways as well.
The newer cars with the GPS systems can be easily tracked and monitored. I've read in some magazines and saw a piece on TV about how the auto manufactures are going to help stop high speed chases by installing a chip in the auto's computer that would allow police to shut your car down.
"They who would sacrifice essential liberty for personal security deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"I am not amongst that group!"
Doesn't matter. You will be out-voted and your freedom will be traded whether you like it or not. Listen to the Bushbots here on FR. Only too willing to give up your rights for the illusion of their safety. Only too willing to spend your money on their agendas.
I haven't given up all hope, yet. But I'm getting close.
Great links!
Glad to have you in the %5 who care about tomorrow.
That reminds me of these quotes from H. L. Mencken.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
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