I agree. The troop deployment is drawing down, and there is no reason for a lot of this patriot act stuff anymore after 12 years. We can and should have a case for drawing down the American occupation. It should be as much a part of our platform as the second amendment.
Vince Ferrer: “...there is no reason for a lot of this patriot act stuff anymore after 12 years.”
Agreed. You’d think there would be popular support, from traditional liberals as well as people on the right, to roll this police state crap back. I grew up thinking the police were my friends. Now I want nothing to do with them, as I see any interaction as potentially negative. It doesn’t even matter if I’m a law-abiding citizen (as much as that’s possible in this day and age of laws for virtually everything). The best one can hope from an interaction with the police (or the completely arbitrary legal system) is that one escapes relatively unharmed.
Unless we want a true police state, we need leaders willing to tackle asset forfeiture, militarization of police, and criminalization of relatively benign acts. We need to restore the constitutional protections of private property and freedom from search and seizure without probable cause and a warrant.
Great idea. If the intervening years since 9/11 have shown us anything it’s that our enemies are for the most part impotent. 9/11 wasn’t the end of America.
End the TSA, demilitarize our police and federal agencies and go back to pre-9/11 laws and procedures. If the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is over then the war in America and against American liberties is too.