Posted on 12/08/2011 11:31:17 AM PST by OneVike
If Obama does one thing for the remainder of his presidency let it be a veto of the National Defense Authorization Act a law recently passed by the Senate which would place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists.
So much for innocent until proven guilty. So much for limited government. What Americans are now facing is quite literally the end of the line. We will either uphold the freedoms baked into our Constitutional Republic, or we will scrap the entire project in the name of security as we wage, endlessly, this futile, costly, and ultimately self-defeating War on Terror.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
This has been an active topic on FR the last couple of weeks. Do a search, there are at least a dozen threads on the issue.
So much for the TEA Party.
bookmarked
So much for the Tea Party?
You’d think...then again, it’s more likely that the opposite would be true. This is (still) America. A sleeping giant WILL awaken. Besides, these totalitarian despots never seem to consider the law of unintended consequences.
They really are NOT THAT SMART.
I will take this opportunity to point out that during the course of human history, far more people have been deprived of their freedom, posessions, and lives by their own governments than by foreign invaders.
This lunacy has GOT to stop!
Precisely because it’s been an active topic, I’ve been thinking it over.
I despise any and all forms of government beyond those that are necessary (and even some of those are debateable). On the other hand, how is one to deny the sad fact that thanks to science, the contents of a briefcase can wipe out a big city? The contents of an unchecked container can start a world-ending chain reaction.
It’s not paranoia. There exist the means (anthrax, nuclear, biological), there exists the will (especially among an alarmingly high percentage of our lovely Muslim friends for whom death is not a deterrent, but a means to heavenly orgies).
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness... come in proper order. I doubt the framers ever imagined that they would one day be in competition, that life would truly have to come first.
I don’t have an answer, but given the embarrassment of reality, I can understand the obsession for security among people who also hold their liberties dear.
Are the threats real? Do their time frames allow for due process?
Naturally one can see how politicians (or entire political credos) in bad faith, would just love to take advantage of security issues to increase their control. I’m torn, but the issue keeps coming back, because it’s inescapable.
I hate it even more when I have to concede that he's been right about something.
“Naturally one can see how politicians (or entire political credos) in bad faith, would just love to take advantage of security issues to increase their control. Im torn, but the issue keeps coming back, because its inescapable.”
You question almost answers itself...do you trust this current crop of politicians and panty waist senior military officials to apply these draconian dictates in a way that preserves the best balance between civil liberties and security?
The best options are to do what our early founders did...form well trained militias from amongst the responsible gun owners in this nation and to hold each private citizen more responsible for the saftey and security of this nation. The cops can’t be there all the time.
Notwithstanding the fact I agree with Cowboy Jay, I am having trouble with the level of excitement over this. In my PDF version pages 361-363 for Sec. 1032 U.S. citizens and lawful resident aliens are excluded.
LINK: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s1867pcs/pdf/BILLS-112s1867pcs.pdf
Since SCOTUS reversed course on the detainees at Gitmo and yanked away a power that Presidents had had since FDR, it seems highly unlikely that they’d be cool with this.
Hello mdmathis6,
Thanks for responding. The short answer is no. But unfortunately it’s not so simple. Private citizens don’t have the intelligence / forensic / information gathering / spy craft techniques and equipment.
They sure as hell can help, but then there’s also the risk of vigilanteism.
If you trusted your government, you’d probably feel less queasy about it. The answer is in the “present crop”.
Can you deny the fact that the early founders, for all their brilliance, never dreamed of today’s destructive capacities and extreme vulnerabilities? They did worry about tyranny, foreign entanglements and such. But that was the age of muskets, of tight-knit communities and not sprawling metropolises, of sailing ships and not mini submarines, of horse and ox drawn wagons and not containers all alike stacked up to heaven.
In any case, the issue needs study. I don’t think anyone sincerely worried about security in today’s world needs to automatically be considered an anti-American traitor.
“Those men were much more likely to die at the end of a musket or bayonette, or a noose for taking up against the crown than any of us are to go up in a nuclear fireball, and they considered the liberties we now take for granted more important than their lives.”
Patrick Henry Also told his friends and neighbors After the war was won to take their National Government and Shove It, as he feared that even the Constitution they were proposing Still concentrated the potential for Too much abuse in the hands of Too Few.
“Is life so sweet and peace so dear as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God!”
Ciao Cowboyjay,
Patrick Henry’s was a battle cry against the British. The whole thing as far as known (C&P from Wikipedia):
“It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
It’s not in the constitution and has no bearing on terrorism, but on oppression from a King, a nation, a protestant Christian Nation... that demanded taxation without representation (after “foolishly” allowing a long period of laissez faire).
An entirely different bag of beans than what we’re now faced with. What’s wrong with the word “AND”? Life AND liberty?
Never even mind the fact that we all know what death is much better than what liberty is.
We are not free if we’re hungry, but we’re not free if we are guaranteed a free meal either. Freedom comes with virtue... and virtue comes with some very tough Thou Shalt Not coercions.
My impression of the Libertarians is that they want the movies, but without all the production that goes behind them: in other words they want a free society but without the Sunday Schools, the solid families.
Those men would probably all beg the English of yore to come back and levy those same old taxes... which I bet were lighter than todays. (BTW even here in Italy, Mussolini’s taxation is beginning to look peachy compared to present-day).
The Brits lost and surrendered, I doubt there were any suicide bombers capable of hiding behind civilians among them.
Sorry, but case is not closed. In the name of liberty (for example freedom of religion) you have vast Islamic communities even in the States. You’ve also had the prohibition of beer on private picnics for a couple of decades (and even today in some “dry” counties).
Plus there’s another consideration. The framers were men, statesmen and politicians and not gods. It’s no crime of theirs if they didn’t foresee every problem in their otherwise splendid document.
I think the how-to-deal-with-terrorism (especially of the massively destructive suicidal variety) needs to be studied. Even a bit dispassionately, without out-of-context rhetoric. Life comes first, even if you’re on life support and some libertarian figures that “freedom” is pulling out the plug. It has to come first because liberty needs to be enjoyed by living humans.
With 50 million and plus abortions... “Give me liberty or give me death” is not something a fetus would say. He would say GIVE ME LIFE, give me a mother and a father, a good, hardworking and honest society, but give me life, please!”
Cue DHS memo of a couple of years back........
“I think the majority of these laws are much less about keeping WTP safe from foreign terrorists, than keeping our overlords safe from US.”
Yup.
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