Posted on 04/07/2003 5:24:19 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
It simply amazes me to watch our military in action as they cut through Iraqi defenses like a hot razor through melted butter. 'Liberate the Iraqi people' is the mantra and everyone joining in the chant seems driven to free these poor down trodden 3rd world troglodytes.
Certainly we agree that Saddam is a murderer, tyrant and a sociopath. Saddam is a psychotic mad man who really does need to be exterminated.
Let's look a bit deeper into the Iraqi culture and make a few comparisons.
The Iraqi's don't pay any direct taxes, have minimum restrictions on starting businesses, free medical care from cradle to grave, no property taxes, no sales taxes, minimal zoning and planning laws, free college education with daily meals provided in the campus cafeteria. Iraqi's are encouraged to own guns, have virtually no crime, no homeless (the Bedouin's choose their nomadic lifestyle), Iraqi's are free to travel, write, create, make art and worship their God.
The state funds it all with natural resource development. I could go on but I think the picture is clear. So where's the tyranny?
The one area where there is no freedom is in the political arena where absolute faith and loyalty to Saddam's regime is required, or else. The brutality is well recorded, the torture, murders, rapes and violent resolutions. No jury of peers, no objective judges, sheer punishment without regard for justice.
Bottom line, the Iraqi people are controlled by fear.
Last Thursday an incident in my offices caused me to make some mental comparisons. Bernice, wife of Monte, one of our sales staff came rushing into the office in a panic. It was clear that she was terrified, pale faced, clammy skin, shaking and clearly frustrated. She looked as though she had been chased by Saddam's muggers and narrowly escaped. Bernice is in her early 60's, a gentle and kindly woman, 5'9" tall, 115 pounds, she's committed to the Lord and though her life has met with difficult challenges over the past several years, she never shows it. An all American girl, born on a ranch in Montana, well traveled, a working woman who helped her husband run a popular downtown upscale shoe store for many years, raised two children who are successful and looks forward to being a grandma.
Yet here she was, wringing with fear, shaking and distraught. I asked her "What's wrong"? "You look like you just saw a ghost" I said. She responded…"The taxes! I have to get these forms out and I can't be late and I need to get Monte to sign them so I can mail them tonight" Trembling, out of breath clearly frightened, she had mistakenly thought April first was the deadline.
At that moment all of the things that irritate me as an American and a businessman began racing through my mind. The horrendous tax burden I carry, the way taxes are collected, the fear we all share every April 15th.
I began thinking about Ruby Ridge, Waco, Donald Scott, long retired stories of government tyranny. I got mad, really mad.
Zoning, planning and building laws and restrictions, parental authority being undermined by the state, anonymous phone calls bringing out the state child snatchers, people being jailed for not paying taxes, smoking pot, loss of property rights, the regulations and hurdles put in front of start up businesses, the idiotic bureaucrats wielding their authority like a slave master's whip. I got mad, really mad.
Our hired help has run amuck.
America has more laws and restrictions on the books than any country on earth. More people are incarcerated in America then red China and Russia combined. More stupidity flows from our supposed free and democratic system than ever envisioned by any civilization in world history.
Even the toilet in your bathroom is regulated now and they can put contractors or property owners in jail or fine them substantially if they put a real toilet in. This is freedom they tell me.
Seat belts, kiddy car seats, motorcycle helmets, laws for child rearing and discipline, firearms regulations, sign codes, licenses, permits and government permission is required for virtually everything we do. Permission needed to peaceably assemble? Permission to speak and time restrictions on public testimony at open meetings? Warrant-less searches, civil forfeitures, hocus pocus - phony boloney.
It's illegal to be out in public without your "papers". Identification laws prohibit our right to anonymity. If a policeman asks who you are he/she can throw you in jail for simply refusing to cough up your papers and cooperate whether you are breaking the law or just casually resting on your front porch. You will submit to the hired help or face the consequences. As for your drivers license or I.D. card ? Don't leave home without them! And just think, an implantable transponder is in the works.
People are routinely denied due process, jury trials, and competent legal council. Tossed in jail on trumped up charges and held on a lie. In court the police are always right even if their testimony is in direct conflict with their written reports. They aren't allowed in court as evidence. Luckily most police are honest, but many aren't and there isn't anything you can do about it…nothing. The hired help, those thankless bureaucrats, have the power and use it with a vengeance everyday against unwitting Americans for no other reason than the hired help wanting to send their message of fear to the rest of the "village".
How often have you been casually driving along and spotted a police car in your mirror, grabbed for you seat belt, worried if you had your license, registration, proof of insurance, "your Papers" in order. Is that really freedom? I wonder how many car wrecks causing death and injury result from that tyranny? Will the bureaucrats fund that study?
In many places smoking is now virtually a crime, don't drink in public because police are frequenting bars looking for intoxicated folks, dragging them outside and field testing then citing or arresting them in the parking lot for being drunk in public, and - they weren't even driving!
In Bellville, Illinois the police are wandering around with code enforcement officers walking into private homes unannounced and without warrants to check "occupancy levels"? Those who ask questions or interfere are being dragged off to jail or fined for interfering with a code enforcement officer in the midst of his/her duties? Is this America?
Criminal gangs run free throughout America holding millions of people hostage in their own homes after dark and little is being done to stop it. Keeps the critters controlled I suppose. Narcotics flow from Mexico through tunnels unabated into the bodies of our children and there is no real effort to stop them. Blame the demand they say, not the suppliers?
The American tax collection system sucks. It's driven by the same kind of fear Saddam uses to control Iraqis. I am ashamed to be a willing participant in the tax out of fear game. I am not opposed to paying my fair share, I am really satisfied that my tax dollars have clearly been well spent on the awesome military we now know is undeniably the best in the world. I am happy to have made my meager contribution. But, I don't like the collection tactics. They must be changed.
Why is it that backwater nations like Kuwait and Iraq are able to use their natural resources to the advantage of the people and in our supposed free country the resources are locked up by whacko environmentalists for all eternity, blocked from usage by laws, court orders and Green Nazi propaganda? Can't we exploit some of our bountiful resources to finance government and lessen the chains of tax tyranny here in America? Can't we find a way to collect taxes without scaring the hell out of little old ladies? Can't we?
Moral relativism has replaced old-fashioned truth and right and wrong depend on your personal twisted code of situational ethics. Good is bad, bad is good. A book that criticizes the Federal Reserve is banned, while smut shops are allowed under freedom of speech.
Nafta, Gatt, the WTO, Free trade was going to solve all of our problems. Anyone looked at the economy lately? Notice how the phony free trade issue never comes up?
We were promised that the abandonment of our industrial base and redistribution of labor jobs overseas would be offset by growth in information technology jobs (IT). But the tax incentives and labor costs have major companies including Ross Perot's EDS hiring out those IT jobs in places like India. Jobs by the millions are given to other countries.
So much for promises!
We have nearly a one half trillion dollar trade deficit. We are told deficits are good. Try that one on your bank the next time you bounce a check! Let's get real here folks.
Banks are demanding fingerprints to cash their own checks? Even our local animal hospital demands your thumbprint now if you write a check.
I asked myself as Bernice left the office the other day just how many people die from heart attacks, strokes, panic attacks and suicide every year due to government intervention. I don't suppose the bureaucrats have funded that research project yet, either.
I used to laugh at the Libertarians. Liberty I thought came with due diligence and a strong adherence to common principles and historically established community standards. I think I am right, but the Libertarian message is looking better to me all the time.
I just want my freedom back. I don't want to overthrow the government, start a civil war, protest in the streets or terrorize my fellow Americans. I just want my freedom back!
I am proud of our President and his efforts to free the Iraqi people. I pray we succeed and open the door for democratic forms of government to spread to the rest of the world, especially the Middle East and Northern Africa.
I am haunted however by that age-old adage "be careful what you ask for…you might just get it".
I am praying for our success, our President, the troops and their families, the innocent Iraqis and for the leaders of this war effort.
But, I would ask you to consider what freedom is, and what it isn't. Let your congressman/woman and President Bush hear our call to liberate America too, liberate America next..
Otherwise what's the point?
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.-- THE LAW by Frederic Bastiat, 1850
Bttt!
All right, all right, we have enough to put up w/by the liberals bandying about that term of "tyranny." What you're describing is "tyranny"? I'm reminded of when Richard Wurmbrand, author of TORTURED FOR CHRIST as a Romanian pastor under communist rule...was asked about pro-lifers suffering in the late 80s when they peacefully sat in front of abortion clinics if they were indeed a persecuted lot. Wurmbrand's response was, "Tortured? Maybe inconvenienced {for Christ}."
Anyone describing the " 'your Papers'" in order" scenario as tyrannical has not experienced true tyranny. It reminded me of the Knight Ridder article that ran in my local newspaper Sunday 23, "Demanding to be heard: To disagree is an American right, but dissenters often drowned out."
Knight Ridder article excerpt: "Critics of this war on Iraq have discovered the truth of what Alexis de Tocqueville, the French commentator, observed about America 160 years ago, that 'the tyranny of the majority' often 'represses not only all contest, but all controversy.' "
So, there you have it: The liberal media observing that when we boycott Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks or label the Columbia University prof as a marxist that America is engaging in outright tyranny.
Traditional left-wing double standard: The left can dissent from support of the war; but dare anybody dissent--separate by distance--from the dissenters and, look out, tyranny is running amok.
Somehow, liberal doctrine preaches that there is a protective sanctuary for dissenters. It's OK for them to verbally attack any and all institutions, but, somehow, they are free from verbal combat.
I recall our local paper doing the same thing after 9/11, running a Dallas Morning News article on 10/1/01 that there were "Dissenters under attack"...Woah! Really? Wow! That's bad! "Why, that's rarely happened before in modern times. Normally, we dissenters can get away with saying anything wacky that we want to and now, you mean, somebody just might hold us accountable for what we say?"
In that Dallas Morning News article back in '01, it quoted National Review editor Jonah Goldberg as saying "Dissenters now have an obligation to think twice about saying some the stupid stuff they say in peacetime."
The Dallas Morning News then went on to whine about a University of Texas prof who wrote a letter to the editor in the Houston Chronicle that the 9/11 terrorists were on par with the "massive acts of terrorism the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime."
The response? That prof received 2,500 e-mails in two weeks time--"Many were filled with obscene denunciations...while others called him traitorous and un-American." And the prof's (Robert Jensen) response to those e-mails?
"What does it mean," he asked "to be an American if not to talk and argue? This has revealed the impoverished political culture we have in general. People don't know how to dissent."
It sounds to me, Mr. Jensen, that close to 2,500 (and more that ensued) did know how to argue (not all of them richly) and dissent from your opinion. You just couldn't stand acknowledging that your prized right to dissent doesn't stop upon your presumed final word!
I don't. I quit reading the article when this clown referenced some daffy woman in his office who didn't even know that April 15 was the day to file income tax returns!
There's no "tyranny" in America. And everybody on this website, save a few tinfoiled zealots, know it.
The breathless stupidity of this article is overwhelming, to say nothing of the author and his goofy business associates!
I think I am right, but the Libertarian message is looking better to me all the time.
Yep. Those Libertarians are so cool! Why, if we listened to the Libertarians, Saddam Hussein would still be jerkin' Hans Blix around and making fools of the civilized world.
I've had people who came here from Communist countries tell me they hadn't seen this much government intrusion into the citizens' lives in their native lands. It's hard to accept, isn't it, but the truth is, as tyrannical and bureaucratic those governments were, as human organizations they weren't as mature and advanced as ours are today! Most of the immigrants these days are economic immigrants and you see how many refuse to assimilate, living here with the point of reference of their lives outside the borders of America. In the meantime, the law factories in the state capitals and in DC just keep churning out new absurd laws, new insane regulations, new taxes. Many here expected Dubya to roll back some of the gubmint and are now deeply saddened (so to speak)! They should have remembered Ronald Reagan's "successes" implementing the same project.
Indeed.
I'm sure they'll be on the next boat back.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.