Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom: Totalitarianism nears

The Roanoke Times (roanoke.com) ^ | Thursday, January 02, 2003 | Glen T. Martin

[Weirdad]

Thursday, January 02, 2003
Totalitarianism nears
Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom

By GLEN T. MARTIN

IN NAZI Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.

    In the United States today, people freely shop in large department stores for gifts, and the streets are full of traffic. While in our most recent victim states of Afghanistan, Iraq under murderous sanctions, Argentina after engineering its economic collapse, and Colombia under U.S. military aid for repression, life is a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.

    But what once separated the United States from Nazi Germany was the protection of civil liberties for American citizens. People of Germany had no rights and did not care. Those few who did care were so terrified of their government that they did not dare to speak out. Those who did speak out were declared "enemy agents" and sent to concentration camps.

    Today, people of the United States have given up their rights through the "Patriot Act," the "Homeland Security Act" and the Pentagon's new system of "Total Information Awareness." The astonishing thing about this "land of the free" is that most Americans now have no effective rights and do not care.

    As long as they are free to shop in department stores and have traffic in the streets (with automobiles burning oil stolen from dying Iraqi children), they do not care. And to a greater degree every day, those few who do care about our liberties and rights are too terrified of our government to speak out.

    The so-called "Patriot Act" expanded our government's secret search and wiretapping powers enormously. It empowered racial profiling as a recognized police practice and allowed broad sweeps of people of Middle Eastern or Asian origin. It effectively abolished immigrants' rights, allowing noncitizens to be held in secret locations on secret "evidence," without right to an attorney, for as long as the government wishes.

    The government now has the power to enter your home or your computer and secretly record whatever they find without ever having to notify you. They do not even have to obtain a warrant from a publicly accountable judge showing reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed.

    Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold spoke the following words from the Senate floor on Oct. 11, 2001, when he was the only senator to vote against Attorney General John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act: "There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country where police were allowed to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country where the government is entitled to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your e-mail communications; if we lived in a country where people could be held in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, the government would probably discover more terrorists or would-be terrorists! But that wouldn't be a country in which we would want to live."

    But today, it has gotten worse with the passage of the Homeland Security Act. Notice that these titles, "Patriot" and "Homeland," sound very much like the language of the Nazis. A common slogan of the Nazi regime was "the highest freedom is a noble slavery of the heart." People are free, the slogan meant, when they have enslaved their hearts to the "homeland" in absolute obedience to their government. "Deutschland, Deckhand, uber alles!" they shouted. Blind loyalty, patriotism, and emotion must triumph over liberty, reason and sound judgment.

    Under the U.S. Homeland Security Act (our rights again given away freely by a bipartisan Congress), 22 U.S. agencies are combined in order to achieve "total information awareness" on every American citizen. The government will soon be amassing a file on every American that includes every magazine subscription, credit card purchase, Web site visit, medical record, library record, bank deposit or withdrawals, every airline purchase, as well as judicial, divorce records, and so on. This will be recorded in a central data base, not by a publicly accountable authority, but by the Pentagon, which already operates in total secrecy from the American public.

    Government intimidation for political reasons is real and it has begun. Our government already is using its secret data bases to harass Americans. Political activists checking in at airports at the airline desk have had their names come up from a secret government list as "flight risks." They and their luggage have been supersearched to the point where they are made to miss their flights, and then released to fly. Obviously if they were really "flight risks," they would not be allowed to fly.

    Attorneys have found that their attorney-client privilege has all but disappeared. The government has even placed hidden cameras in prisons to record attorney discussions with their clients. The government has begun harassing people maintaining Web sites they consider politically objectionable.

    The Justice Department announced a plan to use its newfound power to designate U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants" to place such people in concentration camps. Declaring them "enemy combatants" would strip them of their constitutional rights, their access to the courts and allow the government to indefinitely hold them without trial.

    This is identical in purpose to some of the Nazi concentration camps.

    Do we citizens care at all about the future of our children or the plight of the millions of citizens in this country of Arab descent, or those who nonviolently oppose government policy? We have repeated for so long the slogan "it can't happen here." But the darkness and terror of totalitarianism is coming rapidly.

    Do we have the courage and integrity to speak out now, before it is too late? Or will we continue to freely shop in our large department stores for gifts for family and friends - as they did in Nazi Germany.

    GLEN T. MARTIN is professor of philosophy and religious studies at Radford University.

[Weirdad]

For discussion.

Stay alert!

[Mr. Mojo]

As long as they [Americans] are free to shop in department stores and have traffic in the streets (with automobiles burning oil stolen from dying Iraqi children),

LOL....what a loon.

[A Vast RightWing Conspirator]

Talking about 'total info awareness', does anyone know how I could find ALL the posts I made at FR?

[TomServo]

Already discussed here.

[dirtboy]

This was posted earlier and thoroughly dissected. But I'll tear apart this paragraph again for good measure:

Under the U.S. Homeland Security Act (our rights again given away freely by a bipartisan Congress), 22 U.S. agencies are combined in order to achieve "total information awareness" on every American citizen.

The Homeland Security Act mentioned NOTHING about TIA, and in many ways was a net positive for liberty, since it killed off TIPS, denied funding for a national ID card and created a privacy officer to ensure the new department complies with federal privacy laws. Which leads us to the next claim:

The government will soon be amassing a file on every American that includes every magazine subscription, credit card purchase, Web site visit, medical record, library record, bank deposit or withdrawals, every airline purchase, as well as judicial, divorce records, and so on. This will be recorded in a central data base, not by a publicly accountable authority, but by the Pentagon, which already operates in total secrecy from the American public.

No, it will not. First of all, TIA is just exploring the concept at the moment, and probably will not like what they find - to be implemented as envisioned by Poindexter, it would require EVERY business re-do their transaction processing systems and then send the data to TIA. Fat chance. Second, there would need to be significant changes in federal and state laws to allow collection of this data. And third, there is already significant bipartisan opposition to TIA, and it will probably either be killed or curtailed.

Rants just aren't as colorful when inconvenient facts are included...

[dighton]

The astonishing thing about this "land of the free" is that most Americans now have no effective rights and do not care.

For example, there's no First Amendment. The daring Professor Martin just got dragged off to Dachau, or will be at any moment.

Right?

[BlueLancer]

"Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom: Totalitarianism nears'

Film at 11:00.

[hang 'em]

Talking about 'total info awareness', does anyone know how I could find ALL the posts I made at FR?

Check with the FBI, they're in your file.

[dighton]

More from this loon, posted at the evil-smelling aztlan.net:

The death of democracy in America and the world

The mass media plays military cheerleader

By GLEN T. MARTIN
Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Radford University - Radford, Virginia

IN A MEMO not considered important enough to publicize in the mainstream press, Attorney General John Ashcroft recently commanded the Justice Department to resist all requests under the Freedom of Information Act. And President George Bush has ordered the records of recent U.S. presidents sealed from the public.

Our government must operate beyond the purview of the people entirely. It is already mostly there. Meanwhile revelations continue to surface about U.S. pressure on the Taliban over the past several years to allow an oil pipeline through Afghanistan.

The Taliban refused even under threat of U.S. bombing. Then Sept. 11 gave the government the perfect excuse to bomb that already poverty-stricken country even further into the Stone Age. Several sources cite 3,600 civilian casualties and millions starving and displaced into hell-hole refugee camps. Now the United States is installing a new government friendly to its interests, that is, to building an oil pipeline through their country.

Of course, the function of the mass media is to provide a cheering section for our military destruction of other peoples and to hide the truth. But just in case the propaganda system is not effective enough, government secrecy must be increased.

Under the anti-terrorism act, the millions of noncitizens in the United States can be detained on “secret evidence.” The government is not required to operate in public. Whatever democracy we may have had is in shambles. But don’t think that the “watchdog” press will scream at the destruction of democracy. Their job is to be cheerleaders for government policy and the big corporations that control our government.

In 1993, the press gave great hype to the U.S. Marines landing in Somalia on a humanitarian mission to a starving country in chaos. There was no mention of the fact that the United States had for the previous two decades supported a brutal dictator who destroyed the country while selling off the rights to nearly two-thirds of the country to U.S. oil corporations . After the people revolted and chaos ensued, the Marines were sent in as “saviors.”

Similarly, the mainstream press has ignored revelations of a whistle-blower working for DynCorp in Bosnia, a giant corporation that provides maintenance support for the U.S. military . The whistle blower provided evidence of massive fraud involving military money. What reportedly led him to speak out was DynCorp executives buying 12- to 15-year-old girls from neighboring countries as sex slaves . Researchers have documented that sex slavery and prostitution for executives of U.S. corporations is a worldwide, multibillion-dollar business.

Money is power and that is why the U.S. military (with much of our national budget to use in secret ways we will never know about) and U.S. corporations rule the world, devouring everything, raping the globe of its precious resources, destroying the environment and paying off the mass media to be their cheerleaders and pimps.

It is the same for poor countries around the world - from Somalia to Afghanistan to Yugoslavia (destroyed by the U.S. military in 1998) to Iraq (destroyed by the U.S. military in 1991) to East Timor (whose invasion by Indonesia had U.S. approval) to Nicaragua (whose revolution against a U.S.-installed dictator was destroyed by a U.S.-created terrorist army during the 1980s). Any government that cares about its people, the U.S. propaganda machine calls a “communist dictatorship.”

The United States destroyed the Nicaraguan government by 1990 and instituted a new government that cared for our multinational corporations more than the people. We call this “free trade.” Today, sweatshops operate in “free trade zones” in Managua exploiting a starving people at misery-level wages so you and I can buy cheap clothing in superstores.

I recently returned from India where I toured huge slums . Even I was shocked at the level of misery of the tens of thousands of people living there. Jammed into tiny rooms, entire families work day after day making the products that you and I buy so inexpensively. They get pennies per day for their endless work. They sell to middlemen who sell to the big corporations that are taking over India . Hundreds of thousands exist in a living hell of hunger, disease and insecurity.

This is why democracy is being destroyed in the United States and around the world. The goal of the U.S. ruling class and its puppet U.S. government is military and economic domination and exploitation of the entire world. It has nothing to do with terrorism or standing for justice or any such nonsense. But democracy could not be destroyed without the help of their cheerleaders, the U.S. mass media. That is why it is important that none of the things I have mentioned ever gets reported.

The people must be convinced to voluntarily give up democracy and the future of our planet.

[Weirdad]

I searched and missed it. Sorry. Thanks for poiunting it out. In self-defense the previous poster changed the title completely. It's always a problem when people do that!

[dirtboy]

What a tool:

Then Sept. 11 gave the government the perfect excuse to bomb that already poverty-stricken country even further into the Stone Age. Several sources cite 3,600 civilian casualties and millions starving and displaced into hell-hole refugee camps.

Once again, he's not about to let facts get in the way of his rants. Ousting the Taliban has let the relief convoys roll into Afghanistan, saving hundreds of thousands from starvation and allowing displaced Afghanis to return to their homes and start rebuilding.

Yep, this is yet another hate-America leftist, and some folks here just lap up what he says because he shades the facts to make this seem like a totalitarian state. And he's not alone - I hear the same crap from some talk-radio hosts. Folks nowadays really aren't interested in reporting the truth, they're only interested in senasationalism that makes things seem a lot worse than they actually are.

[RockandRollResurrection]

The fact that the UNpatriot Act passed with all but one "aye" shows how there is really little difference between the "two" parties. And it shows how if we ever want to have a country worth living in again, we need to oust those traitors.

[Fiddlstix]

Film at 11:00.

Ditto

Film at 11:00

[buffyt]

I thought college professors wanted a bigger government.

[buffyt]

Funny popcorn audio!
I haven't notices the Tag Line was back! Hey, ShovelHead, did you see that? Goodie!

[beckett]

Martin is the president of of International Philosophers for Peace and an active member of the World Constitution and Parliament Society, both far leftwing organizations.

Martin is quoted on the Radford University website making the following statement:

"...What I know is that we have to do what’s right – not because we’re going to get something for it, but simply because it’s right. We have immense problems to deal with, but rapid transformations of human consciousness have happened in the past, and it’s very possible that we’re in the midst of one of those transformations now."

"Human beings are complex creatures, and within that complexity we have higher capabilities such as love, kindness and generosity, and lower functions such as anger, hatred and greed. There’s no reason why we can’t create a civilization based on those higher ones. A better world is possible."

In response to the Professor's position, a pardigmatic example of the what Steven Pinker calls the "Blank Slate - Noble Savage" school of thought which dominastes leftwing po-mo thinking in academic circles, I sent him the following email a few days ago, after I first read the above column:

Dear Prof. Martin,

I was very interested to learn in the informational essay posted on Radford's website about you that you believe humanity may be moving to a higher consciousness and that it is our duty to help that "transformation" succeed. You said that "we have higher capabilities such as love, kindness and generosity, and lower functions such as anger, hatred and greed."

In Darwinian terms, the division you make between higher and lower is very interesting in itself, and could make for lengthy exploration, but for the sake of our discussion here, let's say anger, hatred and greed are "lower" than love, kindness and generosity in human consciousness.

And now let us briefly explore the method necessary to "transform" humanity from the lower realm to the higher. How do we expunge hatred, anger and greed? Things start to get a little dicey here, because quite clearly no automated "expunge" program exists. So one must assume that you mean to lead by example on this problem, and by example show us what a consciousness free of hatred, anger and greed looks like.

Anger, of course, is a multifaceted beast, originally developed by evolution to provide protection from threat. Today it takes all sorts of forms, one of the most common of which among intellectuals is righteous indignation. Have you succeeded, dear, gentle Professor, in freeing yourself from righteous anger and indignation?

Well, let's see. If you make an obviously false comparison between Nazi Germany and the United States, and if you make the obviously false statement that the "victim state" of Afghanistan is a "living nightmare of human rights violations," clearly you have not yet expunged righteous anger from your consciousness, and in fact will use falsehoods to ratchet it up to another level and spread the anger around to others.

So even a consciousness like yours, one which is on the threshold of a breakthrough "transformation" in human consciousness, hits little bumps in the road now and again. Hmmm...this transformation of humanity thing is going to be a little tougher than we thought, eh, Professor?

Sincerely, etc.

[300winmag]

More from this loon, posted at the evil-smelling aztlan.net:

Similar policies were endured by Americans during World War II, with no lasting ill effect. And we didn't have hundreds of thousands of enemy (outside of POW camps) inside the country then. NOW we do.

Interestingly, the same policies were undertaken, publicly and secretly, during the "golden age" of the klintons, with the approval of this fascist nutcase. Anybody remember the Clipper Chip and Carnivore? The IRS and FBI investigations of political opponents? When these programs finally made it into public discussion, kneepadders like Glen T. Martin cheered, swallowing the explanation that it was needed to protect us from "gun runners, militia, tax cheats, and pornographers". As long as liberal turds like this still cheer the memory of Waco and the lesbo-fascist attorney general of that era, they have no right to complain now.

[Mr. Mojo]

Aztlan.net

Good find. It wouldn't - doesn't - surprise me that this Amercia-despising leftist POS professor thinks Mexico is entitled to "reclaim" a large chunk of the U.S. After all, and in his mind, it was our "imperialism" that stole this land away from the Mexican children to begin with.

It's nothing short of amazing how some supposedly conservative Freepers could defend this uneducated, irrational, leftist liar.

[L.N. Smithee]

IN NAZI Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.

Don't forget the part about "The Final Solution," "the master race," and the wanton slaughter of those in the camps, Mr. Accuracy.

While in our most recent victim states of Afghanistan, Iraq under murderous sanctions, Argentina after engineering its economic collapse, and Colombia under U.S. military aid for repression, life is a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.

Yeah, right. Afghanistan, Argentina, Colombia and Iraq are U.S. "colonial states." Afghanistan was an ideal democracy with a flowing economy before the USA went over there and bombed it for fun, Argentina doesn't experience a regular cycle of collapsing economies and governments, Colombian officials were always in control of heavily-armed cartels, and Saddam Hussein really wants to feed his precious babies, but he can't build palaces, jail and/or execute political opponents, and supply milk for the moppets, can he?

Someone alert David Horowitz. Another moron who thinks that the letters after his name entitle him to re-write history.

[ohioman]

Where in the hell is the barf alert? Thank God that this nutbag's opinion represents about .00008% of the population. Unfortunately, that equals to about 95% of all college professors.