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.
I take that statement as an insult to my integrity. Did you read the rest of my post?
;)
'Would you mind telling me you disagree ith in this statement?'
******
The statement does not stand well 'out of context', and it shouldn't. Those who defend smoking, the life of the unborn child, and the right to bear arms as 'Constitutional' rights, are scaring the PC people. These expressions of concern over 'liberty lost' would be seen as aiding terrorists in the context presented.
The out-of-context presentation of the Ashcroft remark is 'AGENDA' driven. And, as Ashcroft is a conservative, I would have to guess the 'smear campaign' is coming from the AGENDA of the socialist/communist 'left', and not the conservative/religious 'right'.
This is where I was coming from too...time will tell which one of us is correct.
BTW...most of you southern folks are might respectful :)
'Must' or 'can' stand alone? If they 'must' stand alone, grounds for concern exist, much like the corporate subsidiaries of 'Enron' and 'Global Crossing' were separated for financial agenda, so could Ashcroft's clauses be separated for political agenda.
So many ways to look at things, so many to want to trust.
Thanks for the 'subordinate clause' discussion, Loopy.
Put most simply, Mr. Ashcroft appeared before Congress. He read prepared opening remarks, part of which are discussed here. Since the remarks were written, the grammar used is vitally important. Words mean things; you agree with that don't you?Here Mr. Ashcroft used a sentence construction that labelled "assistant to terrorists" (1)those that did whatever is not being discussed here AND (2)those that "scare peace loving people with phantoms etc."
You may choose to ignore the words and grammar MR.ASHCROFT chose. But it is entirely disingenuous to say that those of us who understand english should do so.
The Attorney General did not equate expressions of concern with joining Al Qaeda. He just pointed out that if you hamper investigations, you aid the perpetrators. His comments were obviously aimed at the Liberal media, making it clear to them that this is not a very good time for whining about the lack of "political correctness" in law enforcement.
I did mention that we share a lot of 'common ground', didn't I? {;~)
We read the same words, we have different hearts, and we see different hearts. We desire liberty, and only 'truth' will set and keep us free. As long as we are in 'truth', we are free, dead to the world, and an enemy of 'bad' government maybe, but FREE.
PING!!!
I was pretty concerned about erosion of our liberties under Clinton, but there was plenty of evidence that such concerns were well-founded. I see no such tendencies on the part of this administration & in particular this AG.
I guess to some some this is hypocritical, but I don't think so. Until Ashcroft gives me a reason to worry (sorry, hanging a toga on a statue or simply being a christian fundamentalist do not qualify) I'll give him the benefit of a doubt.
BTW I'll admit to not being as well versed in the Patriot Act as I might be, if someone can point to something particularly onerous in that bill I'm open to persuasion.
If Robert E. Lee said "On my honor, I swear..."
Even a yank would have believed it.
If Bill Clinton had said "On my honor, I swear..."
We'd die laughing.
Speeches are not meant to be read. A speech before a live audience has to be choreographed entirely different from one on radio, or one on TV. The written word also needs a certain care you do not have to extend to speech. Give me a thread on FR and I can twist just about anyone's statements by shifting the punctuation or dropping phrases from the quotes.
I once made a comment on a thread that we should bomb the gun statue at the UN
...with sunflower seeds for all the pigeons.
Take Pat Buchanan's famous- or infamous- 'culture war' speech from the Republican convention. It was an incredible speech- my favorite one of all those voiced during that convention. But he was slayed for it. (Don't take that last sentence literally.) Every word was taken out and twisted and he was painted as a reincarnation of Hitler. It was as if other people had witnessed an entirely different speech.
Take Reagan's comment that "Bombing will begin in five minutes."
Now, if you were in Russia, and lived in deathly fear of a first strike from the US, that would have scared the crap out of you. If you understood American humor or the context, or saw his face, you would just laugh. Some Chinese general said roughly the same thing about bombing LA and we in the US went nuts over it, because we took him seriously.
Take the second ammendment. Some libs read it just as it appears and assume that the militia is the only group entitled to guns, and assume the militia is some sort of special military force different from regular citizens. So they think guns are for the military, not the people. We cannot take things out of context of the whole, nor out of the time in which they were written.
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