Posted on 10/25/2001 9:06:42 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
It's a safe bet that most of the people reading this alert aren't high government officials or corporate mega-barons.
Unlike Attorney General John Ashcroft, Senate Majority Leader Tom Dashle or Larry Ellison ("Mr. National ID"), CEO of the giant database company Oracle, you won't be responsible for creating the laws, regulations, and technologies that are rapidly being used to turn the U.S. into a police state under the false claim that mass surveillance of citizens and uncontrolled searches are the best means to "combat terrorism."
But you may be responsible for implementing these police-state policies.
The possibilities are plentiful and frightening -- all the more frightening because these things may soon become the stuff of everyday life and work. Just the ordinary routine of police- state America. The Bush administration has declared a War on Terrorism. And to whatever extent that means hunting down and punishing genuine terrorists, we support the effort. But just as the War on Drugs became a 20-year war on the American people and an excuse to tear away the protections of the Bill of Rights -- eroding property rights, privacy, due process, and dozens of other liberties -- the War on Terrorism may be used to strip away the last remaining American freedoms.
Millions of you will be asked to be the foot soldiers in that Jihad against American Liberties -- the dutiful, loyal "Jihad Joes" (and "Jihad Janes") obeying the commands of higher ups. If you go along with abusing the rights of your countrymen -- in major ways or insignificant ones -- you'll only be "following orders." You'll just be "doing a job."
"Don't blame me," thousands of cops and clerks and technicians and programmers and internment camp guards will shrug. "I'm only a little guy trying to protect my pension."
It's true that the obedient Jihad Joes don't have the power of their masters. But without their obedience, the masters wouldn't have the power to surveil and control the citizens of America. They would not have the power to steal our freedom. They need US to help them do that.
The U.S. government has the authority to track down and deal with terrorists without gutting one more article of the Bill of Rights. All the new demands -- for expanded searches, new crimes and increased sentences, wiretaps on the innocent, indefinite detentions, more databases, more cameras, more record keeping, more biometric ID, more submission -- are just an excuse for implementing a long-held agenda of control.
When CCOPS and its sister organization Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership have sent out alerts describing the problem of growing tyranny, many readers have responded, logically enough, "Yes, but what do we do about it?"
No one has THE answer to ending tyranny. But there is AN answer -- a big, important one that you can immediately practice in your own life, without having to wait for your congressman or anybody else to act.
Problem is, it's an answer almost no one wants to hear: RESIST.
The ultimate responsibility of everyone who truly loves freedom is to LIVE freedom. That means to resist bad laws. That means to refuse to enforce or in any other way help implement police-state policies.
We must refuse to obey, refuse to submit to the searches or to conduct them, refuse to take a national ID card or to program the database for it or install the scanners used to track cardholders. We must refuse to be disarmed or to disarm innocent others.
It is our responsibility. It is the ultimate test of whether we sincerely value freedom or we just want to sit and whine as powerful people and their Jihad Joe minions seize it from us.
"But," the potential enforcers object, "If I refuse to obey or if I quit my job, they'll just replace me with somebody more brutal and more willing to follow bad orders."
We hate to say it, but maybe seeing the true ruthless face of the police state is exactly what it's going to take to wake Americans up. Maybe the polite cop or the courteous clerk enforcing the police state only helps prolong the agony of tyranny by making injustice more tolerable to foolish men and women.
"But," many potential resisters object, "If I resist and others don't, they'll just roll right over me. I'll accomplish nothing for freedom and might get myself arrested."
That's a risk, certainly. So we must not only resist individually, but encourage and organize resistance from others. It's worked for the left for decades. And we're not talking about polite marches, petitions, and protests that the media and government will ignore. We're talking about making it impossible for the controllers to have control.If we do nothing, we're guaranteed to accomplish nothing. If we resist and fail, at least we're keeping the flame of freedom alive. We're preserve the spirit of freedom in our own lives, even if it dies all around us. We must resist to give our children and grandchildren the only hope they can possibly have of being free again.
We all have a responsibility now.
DON'T BE A JIHAD JOE. Don't look your grandchildren in the eye someday and tell them that when the police state came, "I WAS ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS."
© Copyright 2001 Aaron Zelman
Jihad Joe....I love it.
Thanks for the post.
L
Why don't we deport EVERYONE in this country that are NON-CITIZENS. And keep a real keen eye on the Muslims who remain. Why don't we do REAL background checks on people applying for Visas and follow them like hawks until they leave this country! Then we won't need anti-freedom laws and rules and regulations. While these might be fine under a Bush, think about this same power in the hands of the next Clinton. That should be enough to scare everybody!
Irrational statements do NO ONE any good.
What a great phrase! I love it. LOL
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