Posted on 02/06/2002 5:05:45 AM PST by francisandbeans
When Attorney General John Ashcroft told the nation, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists," he wasn't blazing any new trails. He was merely doing what despots and would-be despots always do: attempting to intimidate into silence those who dare to question him.
Ashcroft's statement is one of the most astounding things to be said by a U.S. official in many years. To read it carefully — letting its full message sink in — is to be overtaken by a sense of horror that is otherwise hard to imagine. Every American should be offended to hear the government's chief law enforcement officer equate public expressions of concern about the threats to liberty from drastic "anti-terrorism" measures with joining al-Qaeda. Does Ashcroft have such a low estimate of the American people's intelligence?
Perhaps he needs to become acquainted with Thomas Jefferson. It was Jefferson who said, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." That's true in the best of times. It's doubly true during war — especially an Orwellian undeclared, open-ended crusade against an enemy as nebulous as "international terrorism." Ashcroft is a perfect Orwellian character. In 1984, Big Brother told his people that "freedom is slavery." It follows that slavery is freedom. Ashcroft refuses to concede that the Bush administration is seeking to curtail liberty in the least. Those who see diminished liberty must be hallucinating, seeing "phantoms of lost liberty."
So when the president unilaterally abolishes due process for noncitizens, we are only imaging an erosion of liberty. And when Congress passes, without even reading, the administration's alleged anti-terrorism bill, which expands the government's powers of surveillance, permits secret searches of homes, and weakens judicial oversight of law enforcement, again, we are deluded if we think freedom is evaporating. I write "alleged anti-terrorism bill" because the new law does not restrict the expanded powers to suspected terrorists, but applies them to any criminal activity. This is a classic power grab under the cover of an emergency. September 11 has given policymakers a chance to bring down from the shelf every new police power they have wanted for years. They assume no one will question the need for such broad powers, and if anyone does, they can shut him up by portraying him as an ally of the terrorists. The game is rigged in favor of power.
It is no comfort that the erosion of liberty in the name of fighting terrorism has a bipartisan cast to it. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York has given his blessing to oppressive government with an op-ed in the Washington Post titled "Big Government Looks Better Now." As Schumer puts it, barely concealing his glee, "For the foreseeable future, the federal government will have to grow... The era of a shrinking federal government has come to a close." Of course, the senator was trying to enlarge it long before September 11.
Schumer insists that only the federal government "has the breadth, strength and resources" to keep us secure. Forgive me for asking, but did we not have a federal government on September 11? Was it not in charge of our security on that date? Then what is the senator talking about? And if it isn't impolite to ask, just where does the federal government get all those resources? Last time I checked, it didn't produce anything. It simply took resources from the people who did produce them.
Once we understand that all government possesses is the power of legal plunder our whole perspective changes. Schumer insists that "the notion of letting a thousand different ideas compete and flourish — which works so well to create goods and services — does not work at all in the face of a national security emergency. Unity of action and purpose is required, and only the federal government can provide it." But he’s got it wrong. Security is a service. Competition and innovation are valuable in the effort to keep ourselves safe. The last thing we need is central planning. That’s what we had on September 11.
Damned right it did!! And there's no end in sight... either of the War on Terror or of the apparent support of the Sheeple!!
The article says nothing about who his comments were directed against.
You choose to believe they were directed at average citizens expressing dissent.
I choose to believe they were directed against the far more visible and effective groups of lawyers & 'civil rights' groups who seem to be opposing the war on terrorism out of spite. The same folks that have created an environment where a 86 year old WWII medal of honor recipient gets the same treatment at an airport as a suspected terrorist.
I doubt the AG is much concerned with honest libertarians.
She's got probation for her felony. It's already anounced.
I also hope she gets some help with her drug problem. Xanex is well known by people who use for allowing you to sleep when you can't after an amphetamine bender. I doubt she was trying to get Xanex just to do Xanex.
You may be right, she looked like death warmed over in her mug shot. I hope she gets the help she needs too. Too bad commoners can't get a second (or third...) chance.
That would be impossible since they no longer exist on the server. I can vouch for his statement though. I have seen a few get pretty big before being pulled.
I live in the real world, not in a state of paranoia. The government has no interest in my closets unless I am keeping drugs or munitions there. Since I am not, I do not fear the sudden take-over of the linen closet or the coat closet in the hall.
And now, I am off to get some constructive work done.
He's talking about people who are trying to stir up hatred to suit their agenda... he is NOT talking about 'anyone and everyone' who is concerned about civil liberties. He's not talking about three groups of people, immigrant haters, non-citizen haters, and civil libertarians- he's talking about ONE group of people which fits that description.
I don't think so. I think he's talking to two groups of people, who may an do overlap -
a) "To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens,..."
and
b) "...to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty,"
That's why he said "to those" twice.
And by the way, out of control immigration IS part of the globalist plan. Essentially the balkanization of America. I'm not saying that immgrants, even Middle Eastern immigrants, should be locked up. But I *am* saying that the powers that be are intentionally using immigration to forward their global agenda.
The real point of Ashcroft's sentence that affects most of us here is the 2nd clause. It is separate from the first, I think intentionally.
I don't think I want to hazard a guess, but I'm willing to bet he's also a very good driver, buys his underwear at K-Mart, and watches Judge Wapner at 2:00.
Are we wearing our brown blouse today, Miss Marple?
IMO Ashcroft isn't "quashing" anyone. He's simply rendering an opinion.
The statement by Ashcroft in itself doesn't "quash" anyone but it's very telling of his mindset, as is the silly statue covering debacle. Those events taken with his pushing of the utterly atrocious "Patriot Act" show that to this guy, certain very basic liberties are secondary to agendas. Not merely by his words, but by his actions.
So while the statement itself isn't dangerous, a person with such power having this sort of world view can be potentially dangerous.
Ashcroft is literally saying that if you disagree with his stance on building an overbearing police presence, you're aiding terrorists.
This statement is beyond insulting to those of us who want to kill terrorist but don't appreciate the fact that the FBI can break into our homes and take our belongings on mere suspicion, without even disclosing it to us. Some of us don't like the idea that a technology enabled agent in Northern Virginia could have license to rifle through our hard drives because of something we said in a rant on this forum.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of Human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt - British House of Commons during the Revolutionary War and sympathetic to Colonial America.
The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience
Albert Camus
Everything is incremental. There should be a "yet" in that sentence. Maybe they will be when posting to Free Republic becomes a traitorous offense to the nest Democratic administartion. Remember MM, any power you grant to Republican administrations eventually will end up in Democratic hands.
Then you would be wrong. When this statement was made the detainees were still in Afghanistan.
It appears that the depth of allegiance has reached a new level.
I wonder if your detractors realize that the profile of the traitor is not that of the dissenter but of the blind patriot. When the blind patriot finally feels cuckolded by those he was devoted to is when he seeks vengeance in treachery.
The intelligence agencies know who is likely to turn.
Interesting. So if you have "munitions" in your closet, it's the government's business? Strange, I thought the Bill of Rights told the government that "munitions" in the hands of the citizens of this country were a protected right.
And by the way, a few decades ago people might have said that the government had "no interest" in their land, farms, etc. That would have been before they started confiscating it. The federal government now "owns" a huge percent of the land that used to be either "public land" or private property.
Doesn't the sand ever get in your eyes?
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