Posted on 07/18/2002 10:03:53 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
During the Cold War, when the United States faced a really dangerous adversary capable of incinerating our entire country in 30 minutes, we kept to our principles, stressing the virtues of a free society over Soviet communism.
The Cold War must have sapped our strength. Now, faced with Muslim terrorists who are nothing in comparison to Soviet ICBMs, we have adopted the methods of our former communist adversaries. The Bush administration is putting in place the neighborhood informant system used by the infamous Stasi, the communist East German secret police.
Bush's plan, known as TIPS, Terrorism Information and Prevention System, intends to turn one out of every 24 Americans into a government spy reporting on their fellow citizens.
The results in the United States will be the same as in East Germany. Jealousies, rivalries, misperceptions and inflamed imaginations will result in the reporting of many innocent people, who will be investigated, questioned, detained and, on occasion, framed.
Conservative gun owners will be likely targets of anti-gun liberals. Hunters will be reported by animal rights activists. Career rivals and rivals for the attention of a member of the opposite sex will be tempted to nudge each other out of contention with "suspicious activity" reports.
The irresponsible American media will make mountains out of molehills. As hysteria mounts, more people will feel a patriotic duty to report their neighbors. Jokes, protests, comparisons to the Stasi will all become evidence of disloyalty.
The war against terrorism has just begun, and already it has turned into a war against the American people. The U.S. government's fear of its own citizens first manifested itself in "airport security." Everyone is subject to warrantless and unreasonable searches. Regular air travelers observe that the vast majority of people searched could not possibly be terrorists, even if their lives depended on it.
Yet, the mass insult of American citizens by their own government continues unabated. Millions of man-hours are wasted standing in lines while the moronic policy of searching feeble elderly couples, young mothers with babies and U.S. military officers wastes taxpayers' dollars.
The Bush administration's assumption is every citizen is a potential terrorist. An entire new federal bureaucracy exists for the purpose of violating the Constitution's prohibition against unreasonable search.
The government's fear of the American people exceeds the ability of bureaucrats to control us. To make sure we are properly watched, the Bush administration is recruiting 12 million Americans to report on their fellows.
What's going on here? Why are 12 million Americans, in addition to thousands of government police agents with unprecedented eavesdropping powers, needed to ferret out the suspected 5,000 terrorists in the United States?
The best complexion that can be put on this is that the U.S. government has realized the insanity of the multicultural-diversity-open-borders-visas-to-all-immigrants-from- everywhere mindset that has turned the United States into a sanctuary for terrorists and illegal aliens. Too cowardly to deal with the immigration issue, the government instead has adopted police-state methods to watch the population.
It is amazing to watch conservatives and patriots cheer on the advent of the Orwellian state. A new bureaucracy will be formed to record suspicious activity reports from the 12 million citizen informants. Once the police state bureaucracy is in place, it will never be dismantled. As Hoover Institution scholar Martin Anderson has pointed out, not even the fearsome Nixon White House was able to abolish a tiny bureaucracy of tea-tasters.
Milton Friedman said that a country cannot have open borders and a welfare state. Even less can a country welcome multicultural immigrants whose loyalties reside elsewhere. Open borders for terrorists means a police state for citizens.
Rome fell when Romans came to view their government's predations as worse than those of the invaders. Will this be America's fate? Will our government do us more harm than the terrorists?
You don't think they're recruiting from targeted segment of society with an eye toward expecting to chit chat as they mood strikes them?
If that's the case ... what's the point of the program in the first place. Why wouldn't some "War on Drugs" style commercials and plenty of shiny Soviet-style bills pasted in all state buildings, banks and other Civil-minded entities do the trick?
You don't think there's any actually "signing up" to be a part of the Program?
Now I really don't understand. Help me out here.
Sort of like "crime stoppers"? Ya know this is getting ridiculous. Just exactly what in the hell is the problem? There is not a darn thing being proposed here that is not already in place in one form or the other all over the country. If there is some diabolical plot going on to turn neighbor against neighbor maybe someone could explain to me ..............why?
You're absolutely right. TIPS is asking nothing more of us than we have always been prepared to give. If any of us witnessed someone murdering someone, we would call the authorities; same principle is involved if we saw our neighbor building bombs. TIPS will be specifically for suspicion of terrorist activity is the only difference I see.
It's no different than my local news station giving descriptions of wanted criminals and asking anyone with any information to call in.
That's for sleazy informants and hostile narcs.
We're talking about Joe Patriot, here, who's going to join the TIPS program ... without actually registering, I guess ... based on knowing the Government's looking for a few good Truckers, Cable Guys, Bank Auditors, or whatever other Private Sector folks they think are somehow especially positioned to observe Suspicious behavior.
It is interesting to watch how a country can go from a democracy, more or less, to the fringe of a facist state. All of the apparatus is being put into place. We will await the person who puts it all together for us. Perhaps, it will be the Hildebeast?
Is there something wrong with "joe patriot"?
You gonna be a part of your local Citizen Corps? Surely that's the least you could do.
I guess ... without knowing what you do and where you live ... I can't exactly shame you for not expressing an interest in being a part of TIPS as well. It's possible you're not the Right Stuff for serving as the State's eyes and ears.
You keep inserting insinuation as reality. You appear to do that a lot. I could launch a complete investigation of you or anyone else simply by picking certain posts from this very website. I do not need “TIPS” to do that all I need is a hard drive and a malicious motive. As I said “TIPS” for good or ill is not going to be implemented but that does NOT protect you, me or anyone else from malicious fellow citizens. The only thing “TIPS” would do is that you cannot be had anonymously.
I think patriotism -- as in love of country -- is a magnificent and admirable quality.
It's nationalism that's problematic for me.
Joe Nationalist just didn't have the same ring to it ... although it would have been more correct.
The use of Patriot (like the PATRIOT Act, for example), was just a spur of the moment thing. Pure poetry, don't you think? We'll discuss the nitty gritty some other time.
You joining up?
Shhh ... you'll give folks ideas.
But that is the point. It does not happen even as down and dirty as we get around here with each other.
But I thought we could make anonymous tips and even collect information (folks who truck around the web being valuable sources for complete profiles) to impeach each other or convince management a voice could be silenced, an account killed. (Neither of those always being bad things.)
But this is private property and, contrary to the evidence strewn about the net, being banned from Free Republic will not mean the end of one's life (unless they choose to obsess about it endlessly).
It's not an actionable crime -- or it shouldn't be -- for folks to hate you or shun you or ban you from their property as long as they don't kill you or harm you in the process.
(Hurt feelings don't count. Waaaay to subjective to be actionable despite what the Trial Attorney have to say about Pain and Suffering.)
But to apply the controls and invasions of privacy proper to parents with their kids or a private individual's property are not proper to the government as a matter of course.
We are not their children. They do not own us or invite us to be here.
As you say, we're perfectly capable of calling the authorities as we see fit. What is the point of the Government's specifically encouraging folks from targeted walks to serve as Hall Monitors?
Is this really the beset idea they've got for improving the lousy performance to date of our agencies? They can't chew properly the intelligence they get now. (Probably just swallow as a rule, anyway.)
Is this a Good thing? Would you expect a child who's been properly exposed to Character Training to think so?
Does suspicion breed confidence?
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