Who gave your rights away?

Many conservatives, liberals and libertarians are protesting the numerous invasions of your liberty that Congress and the Bush administration have imposed during the past two months.

But without realizing it, many of the protestors brought these invasions on themselves.

The new law allows federal officials to search your home when you're not present and not even tell you your home has been searched. You could come home one day and find your computer, file cabinets and legal papers have disappeared. You'd naturally think it was a burglary, but the burglars would be government employees (shades of Watergate).

Warrants can be issued in secret, and you may not be allowed to see a warrant – or contest it – covering a search of your property.

Government officials can go into any company anywhere and search records of your purchases and credit history, discover the websites you've visited, or monitor your e-mail – without evidence of a crime and without telling you, and they can order the companies not to tell you about the search.

Then the Bush administration, apparently invoking the divine right of kings, decided that people can be tried and executed by secret courts (using secret evidence not available for you to refute), that government agents can eavesdrop on attorney-client conversations, and that federal agents can conduct searches without judicial oversight.

And understand that the so-called "War on Terrorism" is only two months old. This is just the beginning. What's still to come?

In previous wars, citizens were imprisoned for speaking out against the government, newspapers were closed for protesting the war, private publications were censored, and people of foreign ancestry were put in concentration camps. We have a lot to look forward to.

The press implies that the new civil-liberties invasions will apply only to terrorists.

They apply to you, because anyone can be suspected of being a terrorist – including you. In fact, the new definition of "suspected terrorist" includes people speaking out against government policies.

And if law-enforcement officials are to decide whose civil liberties will be denied, one of them may become convinced you're connected to the terrorists in some way, try you in a secret court, sentence you, imprison you and even execute you – with no opportunity for you to appeal the verdict or your sentence.

An administration official told The Washington Post "The U.S. Constitution doesn't protect anyone hiding and planning acts of violence." But what he meant was, "The U.S. Constitution doesn't protect anyone we suspect of hiding and planning acts of violence." They don't know who's actually guilty until after a civil, public trial – conducted with all the traditional rules of evidence. What they have arrogated to themselves is the power to decide whether or not you will be protected by the Constitution.

Have you been told that some of these invasions apply only to aliens – or some other small group of people?

Don't be reassured. When has any invasion of liberty not been expanded to cover all people eventually?

The clearly unconstitutional RICO laws were supposed to apply only to organized crime – but hardly a single Mafia kingpin has been prosecuted using RICO, while abortion protestors and stockbrokers have been jailed by these laws. The clearly unconstitutional asset-forfeiture laws were only to nab big-time drug dealers, but all across America the property of innocent people has been seized.

I said that many of those protesting these invasions brought this on themselves. How?

And there you have it. As Randolph Bourne said, "War is the health of the state." Once you grant the government war-making powers, you grant the politicians the power to do anything they want. After all, you can't put your own personal liberty ahead of the good of the Fatherland, can you?

Congress didn't declare war. There were none of the usual pre-war negotiations to try to avoid going to war. We're not even at war with any specific nation. But just utter the magic word "war" and all your rights can be stolen from you.

So if you hollered for war, you hollered to have your rights taken away from you.

Who gave your rights away? You did – if you supported the idea that the politicians should be free to do anything they want to satisfy a national lust for revenge.

To be perfectly honest with you, no.

If they can do this sort of thing to one segment of the population, what's to prevent them from doing it to anyone?

IMO, if David Koresh hadn't been a pedophile

I don't believe that Koresh was a pedophile any more than I believe that the Branch Davidians had a meth lab or that they had illegal machine guns. This is simply the fedthugs throwing mud at their victims and hoping some of it sticks

skirt the law of the land

What law did Koresh (admittedly wierd) skirt? He was accused of all sorts of things, but what actually did he do except stand up to the federal jbts? By the way do you think that the Jews did the right thing by not "skirting the law" and not resisting when they were removed to death camps? And before you say that isn't at all analogous and that it can never happen here, think about Manzanas and Wounded Knee.

Afterall if you have nothing to hide what are you worried about. When the feds come kick in your door and pin you to the ground just remember that its for your own good. Try to remember while they violate your rights and trash your house that if you have nothing to hide, the whole incident is for your own benefit.

I'll try to remember, but I might have a hard time since Hitlary can't remember anything about real estate, billing records, etc

Let me ask, hypothetically, what would the reaction be on Free Republic had Al Gore won the Presidency and enacted the aforementioned legislation

I don't know for sure but I suspect that all of the republican cheerleaders (like GOPmom etc) who are stating how wonderful it is would be singing a different tune. Fortunately I long ago recognized Shrub as only a slight improvement on Algore. Both had the same long term goal of growing government, it is just the little Bush is more polite about it and has a slightly longer schedule (well maybe not now that the sheeple have apparently given him carte blanch to expand fedthug powers and remove remaining citizen rights)

You all have valid points and I don't dispute that. (with the exception of NC Libertarian who's "thoughtful response" only reveals his impotence) However, I can't live my life thinking there is conspiracy around every corner. I don't have "blind" faith in the government, however it's all we have. I suspect most of you do also or you would not be living here. It's a big world and there are plenty of places to live. Yet we choose to stay here.

There is a necessity to stay vigilant and make sure our rights aren't violated. But we also have a right to protection from "the evil doers", and unfortunately I alone, nor you alone, can do that and sometimes, like it or not, you must rely on authority.

But I do thank you for this discussion. Most of you are much more informed than I on alot of these issues and I appreciate your responses. I look on this as an educational forum where I can receive information that I certainly won't get in the mainstream media.

Re: David Koresh, I don't even know how we got on that one, but true, we will probably never know the whole story.

The ballot access laws didn't 'prevent' the Libertarians any more than it did the Reform party from getting in....it did, however, make it a hell of a lot harder. It made it harder for the Libertarians in the end, though, because they probably had less money to throw around.

Didn't you read what I said above in reference to Buchanan? He had about 1000X the media attention, he had commercials, he had it all in relation to the Libertarians...and Harry outperformed him in about half the states. Overall, Buchanan didn't get a significant number of more votes, although I forget the exact figures.

I focused on this at the time because the fact that they covered Buchanan means they should have covered the Libertarian numbers....a great example of media bias/conspiracy. None of the networks mentioned him. They just focused on the 'non-extreme' third parties, Buchanan, Hagelin, Nader, and an occasional Phillips. All levels of government considered, the Libertarians are bigger than any of these, and are bigger than the communists I mean Green party.

I admit the Libertarians, like the Reform party, have done some stupid things. Here in Arizona there was a conflict among the Libertarians and we could only vote for L. Neil Smith. However, this is no different than the Republicrats. The only difference is that they're big enough to have primaries and settle their civil wars before the main election.

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