I guess you need to ask yourself if you TRULY believe in the Dream that is America.
You must ask yourself if you truly believe.......in ,as Ronald Reagan put it, the "Shining City on the Hill."
redrock
redrock
Lovely. Just in time for Thanksgiving
The America you write of has been gone for almost 70 years and it won't be revived by writing passionate essays no matter how well written they are.
Almost noone alive remembers what it's like to live in freedom.
What we are living in is a uniquely American version of the Fall of the Roman Empire.
L
Supurb article, redrock . . . here's a BIG PING in appreciation !!!
Try driving fast down a sparsely traveled highway on a clear day with your own car on roads you paid for. You'll get pulled over and have to pay even more money to the state (as if gas taxes, tolls, driver's license fees, etc... aren't enough). That's if your lucky. In some states, you can go to jail for exceeding the speed limit by a certain amount.
Try starting a new business. You have to worry about literally hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations. There are so many rules, you're bound to be guilty of something, so your only hope is to not piss off the 'powers that be'. Even if you be a "chump" and succeed in this, there is always the problem of civil lawsuits by parasitic ambulance chasers who can and will take everything you own.
Try carrying a gun. Here in Florida, it is a FELONY to carry a concealed firearm without a permit. It's also illegal to carry openly, even with a permit. Simply exercising your rights is enough to ruin your life. It's even worse in other states.
Try talking about God in a public school. Expect to be suspended if you're a student, or have "child services" called to investigate.
Try talking about the Constitution to anyone in "authority". They'll look at you like you are crazy if they don't laugh in your face.
The list is endless, and anyone could go on with more examples. But the bottom line is that Freedom has been an extremely rare thing throughout history, and ours is slipping away under the guise of "majority rule" and "safety". Tyrants and traitors have infiltrated the government. This has been going on for years and years. And like a cancer, they are destroying America.
Is the ballot box the answer? Maybe, but how is the ballot box the answer when your vote-- the vote of a self sufficient man or woman-- is cancelled out by an illegal immigrant, or an illiterate drug addict, or a welfare slut?
One small case in point, if he is still not convinced that Bush won the election in light of all we know now, then he is just choosing to be ignorant so he can rant. He is a lot of noise, period!
What they will "get" is more airplanes launched into buildings - - or anthrax, or truck bombs, or smallpox, or "dirty" bombs, or suitcase nukes....
When they send us to the camps, you tell me I was wrong.
Okay. This guy is a loon. Who are "they", and why are we all going to "camps".
Sorry, Neil. No sale.
Neil Smith makes a whole lot of good points. And he is dead on about the potential for abuses and erosion of basic civil liberties. He is right to sound the alarm. But to paint a guy like George Bush as a Hitler-like fascist who is hungry for power just doesn't wash.
I do accuse him, his father, and their vile cronies and allies of making totalitarian plans for us and then waiting, just like vultures on a cactus, for some horrific event that would appear to justify them.
Smith is a paranoid, tin-foil mad hatter if there ever was one. A complete loon.
What, exactly, would be the motivation for Bush and his "vile cronies" to foist all this evil on America? Money? Power?
Gimme a break.
This administration has blown gaping holes in what's left of our constitution. Under the guise of his phony "war on terrorism" (Why aren't we bombing the KLA in Kosovo and Macedonia?), Bush, with the help of his accessories in congress, has put into place the instrumentation for our future oppression. He is the closest thing to a dictator we seen since FDR. His failure to learn the lessons of history (governments have a way of enslaving their citizens) and his contempt for the Bill of Rights is truly shocking.
I fear for this once-great Republic.
- Un-PC
I'm not a historical buff so I can't even begin to touch on all the why's and wherefore's of past deeds/misdeeds of our previous presidents (well -- Clintoon would be a no-brainer).
I do however, strongly disagree with you about Bush. The terrorists acts of 9-11 was a declaration of war on our country, therefore we are at war. Their actions declared it, therefore we don't have to for it to be official that we are at war.
If we do not aggressively destroy every terrorist network around the world, then we invite more of the same. Surely you have seen how too many clerics in too many Islamic countries are raising their children from the cradle to the grave to hate and destroy America. It is the clerics in these countries who assume the task of education. The governing/business side of these countries look the other way because it has been an accepted practice that the two entities are separate and do not encroach upon each other's territory. These clerics must accept a major portion of the blame, but so should the governing parties who keep their people in such poverty that they are pleased to have the clerics give the people a common enemy to blame -- America.
What we have now is a whole generation of bin Laden's -- who would nuke us if he had the capability!! Billions of dollars of aid from America to these impoverished countries has changed nothing. Do you really think kind words and negotiations will have any effect? Or that taking out a minute handful of their leaders will not leave their followers lined up to do the same?
This vast network of terrorists are out to destroy us incrementally or massively according to their capabilities. They have 'sleeper cells here in our backyard just waiting for the right opportunity
So far, 'civil rights' violations have only applied to foreigners, and maybe a few foreign citizens who supported them. We have no idea how many planned terrorist attacks have been thwarted thanks to our new alertness and these new laws that are nothing more than common sense in times of war.
But I will be watching, like many others, to see if these new laws are taken advantage of, and if it comes to that, then I will speak out vociferously.
"Anarchist" is probably a better word to describe Neil, along with "ideologue" and maybe "adolescent." "Manichean" is another good epithet.
There are more than "two Americas." Or maybe there are fewer. But in any case they are not so "separate and distinct" as he makes them out to be.
It's a little hard to recognize Alexander Hamilton as a cannibalistic Vampire. Maybe he's thinking of George Hamilton in "Love at First Bite."
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and most of the rest of us fall between these two caricatured extremes.
But if it makes Neil "feel better" I suppose he'll go on thinking as he does.
When I finally got to this statement, I then dismissed this guy as a charter member of the tinfoil-hat club;
Yes, whoever attacked the Trade Towers, damaged the Pentagon, and killed thousands of innocent victims should pay for it with their lives. Many of them have been dead since September 11. Nor will I accuse Bush of having engineered those atrocities for the sake of power -- although there are plenty of writers doing exactly that right now.
He might as well have added 'If you get my drift'.
But there was more - oh yes, it gets better, or stranger;
I do accuse him, his father, and their vile cronies and allies of making totalitarian plans for us and then waiting, just like vultures on a cactus, for some horrific event that would appear to justify them.
Yeah, that's it, Bush and his father are latent totalitarians, waiting to pounce on a naive and clueless America. I suppose they cackle and rub their hands together while they burn the constitution over a pyre. Geesh.
This is even worse than the hate-Bush looney left stuff I've seen.
Well, I wouldn't want to spoil the Bush-bashing fun here and risk accusations of being naive, blind and probably possessed or something not to see the evil that the Bush administration represents to this L. Smith guy, the award winning author.
I Guess I'll have to just sit back and wait to be 'sent to the camps'. Right. Then I won't be able to tell Neil Smith he was wrong, but until that fateful day, I will tell Mr. Smith that whatever conclusions he may draw from American history, his predictions indicate to me that he's a loon. Of course, good news doesn't sell many books so I doubt Smith will lighten up any time soon; looming extinction seen by only the enlightened few is a lot more comforting and offers that instant gratification some folks need, badly. Buy the books, read the articles, prepare to be 'sent to the camps' by 'them'. Sorry Mr. Smith, but I'll pass.
You have the idea that you can prevent another 9/11. The people have demanded that the authorities take action to prevent another 9/11. They and you both think that If you just pass the right legislation and regulations that will allow the authorities to inspect, limit, regulate and control the people you serve, this atrocity will never happen again.
You are sadly rushing headlong down the wrong path. Our government is given the task of defending our shores, guaranteeing our freedom and enforcing our constitution and the bill of rights.
Our founding fathers grudgingly accepted a new government. They knew by the collective scars on their backs and chafe marks from the yokes so recently cast off, that by God they'd not willingly create a new master that was as tyrannical as the last.
They understood that government was force, and force was the one monopoly granted to our government and it was to be used only when our freedom was at stake. They grudgingly accepted this new government because the bill of rights so firmly bound this new government with severe limits of what it could do and where it could not go.
The result of this radical idea that people own their lives and the fruits of their labor was 200 years of unprecedented progress against poverty, disease and hunger. When people are not shackled with bureaucrats, despots and dictators and others who seek to CONTROL their energies, they are free to use those energies to seek to improve their condition. America has done so tremendously.
You have to ask yourself why for 6,000 years mankind has struggled to feed himself, lived in mud huts and died before he reached the age of 50 years. What made the last 200 years different?
One word - Freedom
Freedom from a central authority that proposes to know better how a man's life may be spent.
Freedom from leeches and parasites (sometimes known as bureaucrats, intellectuals or lawyers) that know better than the common man how his money and energies should be spent.
Today's Americans are willing to trade all of this progress for security. They demand it of their government.
The cries resound to their masters
· You MUST pass a law
· You must take care of us
· You must see that we don't harm ourselves
· You must make life fair
· You must see that we don't starve in the twilight of our lives
· You must make life safe and secure and our lives easy
· You must control us, for we can't control ourselves
Freedom is hard
Freedom means that you must be responsible and productive or you will starve. Too many today place little value on their freedom; they would rather be secure.
Remember that the fall of the great civilizations came after governments were firmly controlling men's lives. It can happen to us. The day could come when the planes will no longer fly, the electricity stops flowing, the food isn't on the store shelves.
Just remember that we wanted security.
Listenhillary
That's the ticket. That's what we need to do to restore the splendor that once was America's.