Posted on 12/05/2011 4:48:11 PM PST by rabscuttle385
Since 9/11, Senator Lindsey Graham has said repeatedly that we must fight the terrorists “over there” so we don’t have to fight them “over here.” But this week, Graham threw that all out the window. Apparently, we are now at war everywhere. Forever.
Commenting on the controversial Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act — which many contend gives the federal government new powers to arrest American citizens without charge — Graham made clear this week that “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”
The entire world is now a “battlefield”? “Including the homeland”?
There have been serious constitutional questions raised recently concerning whether our federal government should be able to arrest or assassinate American citizens overseas without charge or trial. This new and largely uncharted legal territory has been troublesome. But arresting or assassinating American citizens here in the United States without trial? Rounding up and holding American citizens indefinitely without charge? What country is this?
This is a new and unprecedented government power that should scare the living hell out of every last American. Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) rightly called it “one of the most anti-liberty pieces of legislation of our lifetime.” Jim Gilmore, former Virginia governor and chairman of the Congressional Panel on Terrorism, roundly denounced it: “The provisions of this bill undermine the basic safeguards that we enjoy as Americans. It is dangerous, and should not be supported by anyone: Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, citizen or non-citizen.”
Added Gilmore: “This ill-considered bill is one of those dangers to our liberties by an unwise extension of military power in the homeland contrary to all law, precedent and history.”
As Amash and Gilmore note — and Graham ignores — the basic constitutional principle of protecting individual liberties through due process is not some negotiable piece of historical trivia. It is the bedrock of the most rudimentary American and Western law dating all the way back to the Magna Carta. Accepting this legislation blindly — as the majority of both parties seem entirely comfortable with — is to surrender the most basic of American liberties. Said Sen. Rand Paul, who fought hard and mostly alone to strip the National Defense Authorization Act of this terrifying provision: “Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then the terrorists have won.”
And the terrorists have won. If a primary purpose of terrorism is to induce fear, and Americans are willing to give up their most precious freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism, how is this anything less than a monumental victory for our enemies?
Most who support this new power for the federal government — and especially Graham — also agree that what we call the “war on terror” is a war that will last forever. In this light, this new legislation poses a particular danger, or as Sen. Paul explains: “During war, there has always been a struggle to preserve constitutional liberties. During the Civil War, the right of habeas corpus was suspended … Fortunately, those actions were reversed after the war.”
Paul then notes:
The discussion now to suspend certain rights to due process is especially worrisome, given that we are engaged in a war that appears to have no end. Rights given up now cannot be expected to be returned. So we do well to contemplate the diminishment of due process, knowing that the rights we lose now may never be restored.
A state of permanent war inevitably means permanent loss of liberties. When “protecting our freedoms” is defined by gradually giving them up one by one, Americans are no longer protected or free. This was understood well by our Founding Fathers and was one of the primary reasons they wrote the Constitution their descendants are now so eager to discard. Benjamin Franklin believed that when you give up liberty for security, you get neither. James Madison wrote:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other...In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people...
The great fear in allowing government officials to forgo due process is not that it might hurt actual terrorists (for the record, I’m in favor of hurting actual terrorists, badly) but that it might hurt you, me or any other innocent American in the future. To support giving government this sort of power, you must assume two things: 1) Government never makes mistakes; and 2) Government never abuses its power. I know few who believe either.
Let us gauge our decline in our rhetoric. James Madison said in 1795: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Lindsey Graham said this week, boastfully: “When they say, ‘I want to talk to a lawyer,’ we tell them, ‘Shut up! You don’t get a lawyer!’”
This isn’t protecting America. It’s destroying it.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
You sure about that?
I thought it was Eurasia....that’s what I was reading yesterday.
Guess I didn’t get the memo from Minitrue. Better update all my files. Thanks for letting us know!
It is time for the two minutes of hate brothers!
The industrial military complex has won with this new bill. And they will use it upon the citizens of the USA.
Then the only option left to us will be to go down swinging, if go down we must. No surrender.
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Really? Are you kneeling before Allah every sunrise and sunset? Are we no longer building high rise buildings?
Can't wait until next year's Hate Week! This year's was really good!!!
Everyone should dust off that old copy of 1984 in the attic next to the LP’s and reaquaint themselves with it.
Are you in favor of that provision in the bill? Do you agree with Graham and McCain?
From infoplease.com
On February 19, 1942, soon after the beginning of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The evacuation order commenced the round-up of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of 10 internment camps—officially called "relocation centers"—in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.snip
In Canada, similar evacuation orders were established. Nearly 23,000 Nikkei, or Canadians of Japanese descent, were sent to camps in British Columbia. It was the greatest mass movement in the history of Canada.snip
Legal Challenges to Internment
Two important legal cases were brought against the United States concerning the internment. The landmark cases were Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), and Korematsu v. United States (1944). The defendants argued their fifth amendment rights were violated by the U.S. government because of their ancestry. In both cases, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. government.
They aren’t even trying to hide their intentions anymore.
The frogs are almost done boiling.
My personal favorite part of 1984 is “The Book”....The Theory and Practice of Oligarchial Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein.
As I’ve often darkly joked, 1984 is meant to be a warning.....not an instruction manual.
Oh, yeah, that and Brave New World. Keep the masses happy with soma (you know, American Idol, “reality” TV) and the majority of folks really don’t give a hoot in hell what their leaders get up to, as long as the economy stays reasonably good (or has the illusion of it).
Okay, let’s round up all Muslim Americans then.
...And they occupy every office of the US Government.
...Ladies and Gentlemen, if we are at war here, it's time to port arms and fix bayonets.
You could if you specifically declared a war on "Islam." However the war is declared on "Terror" instead. -Tom
Doubleplusgood brother.
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