Posted on 07/06/2019 12:45:05 PM PDT by rktman
I recently watched a German-made political movie, The Lives of Others, which was released back in 2006. Every American should take the opportunity to watch this movie, for it portrayed the destructive consequences for the people and a society living under what was formally an all-powerful East German police state.
The East German state police agency, the Stasi, was granted virtually unlimited power to monitor and spy on the lives of their citizens with the objective of maintaining absolute control over all aspects of the personal and professional lives of its people. The Stasi was renowned for being highly proficient and effective in its ability to subjugate East Germany's citizens.
This movie is a warning to Americans about the dire consequences of increasing the powers of the state. Too many Americans take for granted the continued blessings of our great American system, instituted by the Founding Fathers, based on the premise that man can rule himself.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
And I admit: I supported the PATRIOT Act.
I shouldn’t have.
I should have known better.
But in my view, we were at war. We had just had several thousand of our countrymen murdered in cold blood in a matter of hours. I have always held that in time of war, there are going to be limitations on freedom. The press won’t be able to discuss ship or troop movements, that kind of thing.
What I didn’t readily accept is that the pervasive level of surveillance and data storage they needed to carry out to accomplish their ‘goals’ was power we simply cannot give to a government, no matter how well intentioned they may be.
As we have seen with the Obama Spy Scandal, that access to data is simply impossible for humans to resist abusing. They put all kinds of rules and regulations (the violation of which are punishable by codified law) into place to protect us as citizens.
And they simply ignored them and stepped over them as if they weren’t even there, so sure they would never be found out and punished.
We cannot ever again agree to things like that, and must find a way to roll this back what is there.
I bear responsibility for tacitly approving of it, and was I ever wrong. There are many who take pleasure in crowing about how they were right, and I take no pleasure in hearing that, but that is the price I must pay.
How far from that are we? When a government wants to control your health care, what you put in your mouth to eat or drink, or how much water you can flush down your toilet, what is there that they cannot control.
Europeans have found this out the hard way via the oppressive regulations applied by their unelected EU overlords which delve deep into the most innocuous areas of daily life, but most (Except for people like Nigel Farage) seem to readily accept it.
1913
I was furious with the patriot act. Said my piece got flamed and shut up. We were at war but it was everything the DS wanted for years. That’s why it was ready to go.
we are at the point where it is going to solidify or evaporate. Keep praying, fighting,and living.
“And when/if that happens, then it be time for us to apply Law .308 and Law 5.56. From everywhere.”
“Judiciously and with extreme predjudice.”
Amen, and amen.
2012
I would like to say it was the details in it which were dangerous, but it wasn’t.
It was the same as accepting at the 10,000 foot level that a human is not a human at the moment of conception.
Once you concede that, anything up to and including infanticide is possible.
Bottom line is humans simply cannot be trusted with that level of power. We are individually too tempted by various things and capable of corruption.
The Founders knew this very well, and tried to write it into the Constitution.
Which worked fine until politicians realized they could simply ignore the Constitution with no consequences. As they did with the safeguards in the PATRIOT Act.
History repeats, but it never repeats exactly. There is usually just enough difference that many people don’t notice what is happening.
Today, the Totalitarians in our government (AKA Democrats) have the assistance of the “Shadow Government”, tech-companies, doing the censorship and surveillance for them.
Today, on Fox News, they announced that Amazon saves ALL of your voice commands to Alexa. Forever. WTF????
The Lives of Others is on Netflix, so I’ll definitely watch. Txs.
I shouldn’t have.
I should have known better.
Very few can admit being under the spell of propaganda, but we all have been. Yours is an important acknowledgement, as you now can prepare for the inevitable fight. I hate to think like this, but it's reality.
I think I was more under the spell of traditional thinking rather than succumbing to propaganda but in the end...one is just as bad as the other.
Excuses, like an anal sphincter, are had by everyone, and all stink.
I take it as a learning experience, and have tried to get something positive out of it.
Great movie. Watching that movie changed my outlook on a few things for me. And this was even long after I had read “The Gulag Archipelago”.
The police are a member of the Government. They are members of the Executive Branch. They will do as the Government Leaders order.
I actually saw “The Lives of Others” many years ago as a Netflix rental. It was chilling.
I’m quite aware of Stasi tactics, since half of my wife’s family lived under that system. Erich Fritz Mielke murdered my wife’s uncle. I don’t fear the State where I live, because they’re still a bunch of bumbling boobs and everybody knows where they live.
Just ask Chancellor Frau Muggle since she was a stazi member.
The real Stazi would have just shot her through the keyhole ...
They always say "and" can be used to divide a sentence into important parts...the second part is just as important as the first one.
If the day ever comes when they want to thwart our 2nd Amendment rights, they better keep that in mind.
The point there was there was no detail too small to leverage. They depended on huge amounts of people feeling as if they had no choice but to inform on their families, neighbors, and co-workers.
In the movie, this particular woman was leveraged in just that way because they had her over that barrel, and let her know explicitly that was the expectation, IIRC.
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