Posted on 04/28/2020 4:11:32 AM PDT by Kaslin
All my life, I have dismissed paranoids on the right ("America is headed to communism") and the left ("It can happen here" -- referring to fascism). It's not that I've ever believed liberty was guaranteed. Being familiar with history and a pessimist regarding the human condition, I never believed that.
But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.
People will argue that a temporary police state has been justified because of the allegedly unique threat to life posed by the new coronavirus. I do not believe the data will bear that out. Regardless, let us at least agree that we are closer to a police state than ever in American history.
"Police state" does not mean totalitarian state. America is not a totalitarian state; we still have many freedoms. In a totalitarian state, this article could not be legally published, and if it were illegally published, I would be imprisoned and/or executed. But we are presently living with all four of the key hallmarks of a police state:
No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.
The federal, state, county and city governments are now restricting almost every freedom except those of travel and speech. Americans have been banned from going to work (and thereby earning a living), meeting in groups (both indoors and outdoors), meeting in their cars in church parking lots to pray and entering state-owned properties such as beaches and parks -- among many other prohibitions.
No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state's messaging and deprivation of rights.
The New York Times, CNN and every other mainstream mass medium -- except Fox News, The Wall Street Journal (editorial and opinion pages only) and talk radio -- have served the cause of state control over individual Americans' lives just as Pravda served the Soviet government. In fact, there is almost no more dissent in The New York Times than there was in Pravda. And the Big Tech platforms are removing posts about the virus and potential treatments they deem "misinformation."
No. 3: Use of police.
Police departments throughout America have agreed to enforce these laws and edicts with what can only be described as frightening alacrity. After hearing me describe police giving summonses to, or even arresting, people for playing baseball with their children on a beach, jogging alone without a mask, or worshipping on Easter while sitting isolated in their cars in a church parking lot, a police officer called my show. He explained that the police have no choice. They must respond to every dispatch they receive.
"And why are they dispatched to a person jogging on a beach or sitting alone in a park?" I asked.
Because the department was informed about these lawbreakers.
"And who told the police about these lawbreakers?" I asked.
His answer brings us to the fourth characteristic of a police state:
No. 4: Snitches.
How do the police dispatchers learn of lawbreakers such as families playing softball in a public park, lone joggers without face masks, etc.? From their fellow citizens snitching on them. The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, set up a "snitch line," whereby New Yorkers were told to send authorities photos of fellow New Yorkers violating any of the quarantine laws. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti similarly encouraged snitching, unabashedly using the term.
It is said that about 1 in every 100 East German citizens were informers for the Stasi, the East German secret police, as superbly portrayed in the film "The Lives of Others." It would be interesting, and, I think, important, to know what percentage of New Yorkers informed on their fellow citizens. Now, again, you may think such a comparison is not morally valid, that de Blasio's call to New Yorkers to serve a Stasi-like role was morally justified given the coronavirus pandemic. But you cannot deny it is Stasi-like or that, other than identifying spies during World War II, this is unprecedented in American history at anywhere near this level.
This past Friday night, I gathered with six others for a Shabbat dinner with friends in Santa Monica, California. On my Friday radio show, I announced I would be doing that, and if I was arrested, it would be worth it. In my most pessimistic dreams, I never imagined that in America, having dinner at a friend's house would be an act of civil disobedience, perhaps even a criminal act. But that is precisely what happens in a police state.
The reason I believe this is a dress rehearsal is that too many Americans appear untroubled by it; the dominant force in America, the left, supports it, and one of the two major political parties has been taken over by the left. Democrats and their supporters have, in effect, announced they will use state power to enforce any law they can to combat the even greater "existential" crisis of global warming.
On the CNN website this weekend, in one of the most frightening and fanatical articles in an era of fanaticism, Bill Weir, CNN chief climate correspondent, wrote an open letter to his newborn son. In it, he wrote of his idealized future for America: "completely new forms of power, food, construction, transportation, economics and politics."
You cannot get there without a police state.
If you love liberty, you must see that it is jeopardized more than at any time since America's founding. And that means, among other things, that at this time, a vote for any Democrat is a vote to end liberty.
Yes, this was a “dress rehersal” to see how far the Constitution could be destroyed.
The next time it will be even more treasonous.
“Imagine being told last December that this would be imposed by law in February.”
These are Executive Orders and rules pulled out of a bureaucrats ass not laws. Yet the police enforce them and no on takes them to court. Where are the civil rights lawyers?
That was the moment I knew this country is doomed.
I really was surprised how many governors just “made laws” to deal with the virus. It was like their legislative branches were completely superfluous. Oh, look at me! I have emergency powers! I’m gonna do stuff!
With almost no push back.
Kill the snitches. They go first. And second ...
Following orders? Like these guy are doing?:
I understand. I just hope that when there’s a real push by the authorities that some police will refuse to go along. I know that there are good cops everywhere but liberty is more important than anything.
Thank you for your optimism, I’m trying to “make some lemonade from lemons” from this as well. Hopefully this will drastically alter our relationship with Communist China, we didn’t become so dependent on them overnight and disentanglement won’t happen overnight either. Models and experts have been wrong so many times in all aspects of the China virus, hopefully less credence will be given to them in the future in dealing with pandemics and anything else (climate change for one).
“The reason I believe this is a dress rehearsal is that too many Americans appear untroubled by it.”
a very simple explanation for it; the feminization of America...we are all becoming chicks, inculcated by all their underlying phobias and hangups...
It’s very sad. There will always be those, however, who will rebel against it because they know the state is not their master. Problem is, it gets very messy. It’s easier to get to a police state than to get out of it.
“Doomed!”
.
Well,
Perhaps.
I saw the same parade of satellites last month. Just before dawn. At first I thought I was seeing things but then I remembered the news of his starlink program. Weird.
“... the human condition is that most people would be perfectly content living in a police state because they are emotionally conditioned to have their lives managed by others.”
Our Founders broke that. And America became great.
But our teachers, professors, unionists, Democrats and MSM have been very very busy, for many decades, thwarting our Founders’ ideals and emotionally conditioning us toward a police state.
I’m still amazed by the level of hyperbole and panic that seems to characterize much of what’s being posted here the past week or so.
“America is destroyed” “Police state” “We’ve surrendered all of our liberty”... It’s nonsense. No one is being dragged from their homes for reeducation. No one’s having the doors to their home welded shut so they can’t get out as was done in China. The police are not shooting curfew breakers indiscriminately... If that begins to happen, we should return fire. It goes without saying that we will be breaking their curfew.
Most everyone has been mildly inconvenienced so far. That is all. Your favorite restaurant is closed, (and may never open again). The local barber can’t cut your hair.
When it becomes a life or death matter (if it ever does), YOU are the one responsible for finding a solution for you and your tribe. If you are old and disabled and incapable of providing that solution, then YOU were responsible for training the young men in your tribe, so that THEY can provide a solution. Let’s hope you did.
Having failed to do that, you and yours will likely Darwin out, either in this crisis or in one that hasn’t yet occurred. It’s a shame.
The truth post-coronavirus is the same as the truth pre-coronavirus: The only liberty you’ve ever had is the liberty you exercise. The only things that you own, or ever have, are those things that you can possess and defend. Nothing else is yours, or ever was.
It isn’t that all the people will willingly go into servitude. It’s that so many have already done so, and are therefore unable to function in an environment of change.
That’s the principal reason that so many cry out to “restart the economy now”, and dive head-first into the wilder sort of conspiracy fiction... More of the same servitude they’ve always enjoyed is the only condition they’re equipped to handle.
These people actually believe that some all-powerful “other” controls whether there is an economy or not.
That’s MY opinion anyway.
‘You have the right to leave your house and sit in your car at church, but that right stops if I’m afraid of a virus.’
ha...that’s pretty good; wish I’d thought of using that against these sheep that I was arguing with on our local FB page...these people were accusing me of the gravest of human crimes because I don’t want to wear a mask...
Words mean things. The problem with many of the actions by "law enforcement," during this pandemic is that they aren't really laws. This shows the troubling, problematic results of poor civics education in our schools. In our republic, "laws," are generally speaking, passed by an elected, representative legislature and then signed by an elected executive (or vetoed and over-ridden by the legislature).
What our "law" enforcers are enforcing are in many cases not laws, but rather unilateral executive decrees by governors, mayors or worse yet, unelected bureaucrats.
The customers may be mildly inconvenienced. But if you are the restaurant owner or the barber this is hardly just an inconvenience.
THIS is why the police state is so easy to impose on a population of willing sheep ... because most people are NOT business owners.
YES. I can’t put into words how encouraging it is. It also makes me remember (this was when real American history was taught in the schools) that during the American Revolution a/k/a War of Independence, the vast majority of people sat on their butts, just like they are today. A very small number of people fought, and that very small number of people WON.
One has to remember there are many left wing trolls on FR for the purpose of swaying opinions here leftward.
There will be others who’ll open a business to replace the ones that don’t survive.
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