What would the duties of the new internal military be exactly?
Enforce borders?
Added internal military members to help the local police?
ID checks in neighborhoods? Listening in on phone calls, internet? Talking to neighbors?
Policing dissidents?
We already have a Homeland security. A national policeforce is a way around posse comitatus.
One of the BIG ideas of the left is to have everyone live, work, play and travel within a defined area of no more than a walking space or small transit area. Going outside the area would need a permit to ostensibly reduce pollution and global warming and also to keep life “sustainable.”
Your life would be lived within this sphere with your local representatives chosen from within. Of course, those local representatives would be hand-picked.
Are we having fun yet?
Fraulein, let me see your papers please.
I think that police forces are already militarized enough, don't you? They have APCs and machine guns fercryinoutloud.
ID checks in neighborhoods?
Cops can (and do) already do that in many locales. They stop and ID pretty much anyone they want, via "sobriety checkpoints," or "equipment checkpoints," or whatever euphemism they want to give them. And if you think those checkpoints were set up to catch drunks, I've got some swampland in Florida I'd love to tell you about. Or they just plain stop you if you're walking down the street.
Listening in on phone calls, internet? Talking to neighbors?
Again, not necessary - the NSA already does that w/ the willing cooperation of the telecomms, and the FBI seems more than happy to talk to the neighbors.
Policing dissidents?
Hm. Who have I heard complaining about the Feds and local police infiltrating dissident and activist groups in the last few years...?
Are we having fun yet?
Oh yeah [eyeroll].
You know what's really funny? You sound JUST LIKE the liberals and civil libertarians who've been squawking about the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, the NSA, etc.
You also sound JUST LIKE the people here on FR who were hollering about abuses under Clinton, when similar and worse have been done in the guise of fighting the terroriz.
I'm not sayin'....I'm just, uh...sayin'.