Posted on 12/03/2001 10:00:13 PM PST by Mercuria
Even in the worst of times, there's always something to be grateful for, a silver lining in the darkest cloud. For my part, I'm grateful the attacks and the events after it didn't happen while Bill Clinton was in office. Clinton was fundamentally in love with power. As he did after the bombing in Oklahoma City, and school shootings, he would have taken advantage of the deaths of other Americans for his own political advancement. In an example of extreme hypocrisy, his backers would call his grubby exploitation honoring the dead, and would accuse anyone who disagrees of having no concern for the loss of life. I've never understood the attitude that the way to memorialize the dead is by giving up freedom, the thing that makes us Americans. All I can say is, I'm glad Republicans don't have that attitude.
Picture what Clinton might have done, through crass political manipulation of the crisis. It would have been an excuse for a federal power grab. I'd imagine that he would get laws passed making it legal for his jack-booted thugs to search homes without even telling the person whose property is searched. He's the kind of dangerous politician to have done that, and more. He might have gone further, letting federal law enforcement track what content a person accesses over the internet, and, in his boundless desire to have unlimited authority over ordinary people, he might have required a lower standard of proof than probable cause. Maybe the only requirement would be that it's relevant to an investigation. I'm glad Bush is in office instead.
In 1998, the Clinton administration released plans to implement a set of regulations called "Know Your Customer", which would have required banks to determine the sources of customers' funds, track their transactions, and report anything considered unusual. The reports would be investigated by something called FinCEN, which would keep the records around for the feds to snoop through, regardless of whether there was any evidence of a crime. The whole idea was abandoned after a public outcry. Bill Clinton thus showed himself to be an enemy of financial privacy, and given what we know about his unscrupulousness he wouldn't have hesitated to exploit the situation to resume his attack. Maybe he would have revived Know Your Customer, or maybe he would have attacked privacy some other way. Maybe he would have made all retailers follow the rules banks already follow under the misnamed Bank Secrecy Act.
On that subject, that Democrats give their bills gimmicky, misleading names has always annoyed me. It's as if they know that political truth in advertising would undo them. If the Bank Secrecy Act had been called the Spy Bank Accounts Act, nobody would have voted for it. Clinton probably would've bundled all of it together in a single bill with a gimmick name like the "Patriot Act". I'm glad the honorable man in the White House now would never do something like that.
Beyond Clinton himself, there was his authoritarian Attorney General, Janet Reno. The Butcher of Waco would have plunged headlong into whatever tyranny she thought she could get away with. That was her nature, seeing no reason not to have a police state and every reason to have one, and thus subjugating ordinary people to official thuggery every time she could. By now she might have hundreds of people held incommunicado in jail, without charges, and in secret. The worst fears of the black helicopter crowd would be coming true. That woman, I tell you, had no respect whatsoever for our basic legal traditions. She might even have gotten the FBI to spy on political and religious organizations, creating the opportunity for purely political investigations like J. Edgar Hoover used to have.
But maybe I've taken it too far. Even if she wanted to, the public would never stand for that. War or not, there would be enough public complaint to stop that. And even if the public is too complacent, at least we now have good men in office, who would never take advantage of that kind of complacency.
Don't hold your breath waiting
Reference his article, there's no insight necessary for such a thin and transparent attempt to be clever. For "tongue in cheek humor" to be interesting and thought provoking it has to be subtle. This is a ham-handed attempt that doesn't work. When an author's point of view is apparent from the start the document ends up as this one does -- mental masturbation and fodder for those predisposed to support that position from the beginning. In this case the point is proven by the lack of interest in this thread by FReepers other than those that continually support each other's point of view.
Regards.
Of course the JBT fans won't let you get away with this. You've denigrated their deity.
Yes, if we are going to call a spade a spade, then by all means President Bush should have asked for a declaration of war.
So it's the non-subtlety of the approach that you're taking issue with.
Okay.
But he made his point.
Maybe he intended to be transparent because the reasons some of the readers have for supporting the current Administration for actions said readers would never tolerate from the barely-departed Administration of Clinton are equally, if not even more, transparent?
Whatever the reason for his style...do you agree with the message he was trying to present? If not, why not?
Great. Now I have to bookmark this article so I can remember who said that...
I was never a supporter of Bill Clinton. Everything I said about him and Janet Reno above was entirely sincere. I simply reserve the right to hold Bush to the same standards I held Clinton to.
There's no such thing. There is also no gizmo to do that while eroding Constitutional rights. The dichotomy you've set up, between survival and liberty, simply doesn't exist.
In short...to you, are the deaths of millions an acceptable collateral damage of remaining able to continue your "banking in private?" Are you willing to see entire cities disappear from the planet in your country so that your email messages are not recorded by a third party? Can you accept the loss of major Fortune 500 companies within seconds in exchange for someone taking your picture as you enter a football game. Just asking...
You speak as if having freedom (i.e. being Americans) will make those thing happen. It won't, nor will the lack of freedom prevent them.
I'm picturing it and the only thing I can come up with is what Bush has done.....
Aren't we glad the GOP doesn't do this sort of stuff.
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