I'm really short on time today so maybe I shouldn't bring this subject up until I have to the time to run down some links. But I wanted to say that I'm becoming convinced that the government's response to the attacks on September 11 (e.g., "Patriot Act") were a cover to implement changes to our society that they wanted to make but couldn't figure out how to do without the equivalent of another "Pearl Harbor."
That is, the changes the administration in Washington wanted to make were so anti-liberty/anti-Constitution that even they knew the changes would never be enacted unless there was an event of such national proportions that people would give up their liberty to gain a little illusory safety.
For example, within six months of passage of the Act, prosecutors began to switch from targeting al-Qaida terrorists to US citizens suspected of being smugglers, con artists, or drug dealers.
In the case of drug labs, people are being charged with creating chemical/biological weapons of mass destruction.
Within six months of passing the Act, the US Justice Department urged prosecutors to use the Act not against bin Laden, but to use wiretaps against ordinary US citizens which they suspect of wrong doing. To use the Act to seize private assets of US citizens without due process of law. To use the Act to access private financial dealings of US citizens that have absolutely no connection to terrorism at the whim of prosecutors without any checks and balances.
It is becoming clear that these changes were planned years before the attacks of September 11th and were always targeted at US citizens, not foreign terrorists. That is, they felt it was time for a change and this is what 49 percent of the voters had elected them to do. For too long criminals were given rights. That the pendulum had swung too far to the left and it was time for some good old right-wing goon squads to deliver justice swiftly, if not Constitutionally.
Further, it is becoming clear that these are examples of misguided, and no doubt righteously frustrated officials feeling that the ends justify the means. That safety is always more important than liberty. That only Big Brother knows what is best for their ignorant subjects. And most tragically, that anyone who opposes Big Brother is by definition subversive and must be immediately imprisoned without a hearing before an impartial judge or, heaven forbid, a jury of his or her peers.
See one chilling round-up of governmental abuses of the Act here.
If you don't think any of this can happen to you, remember this:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government purposes are beneficent...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding. -- Justice Louis Brandeis
In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me. -- Rev. Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran pastor arrested by the Gestapo in 1938. He was sent to the concentration camp at Dachau, where he remained until he was freed by the Allied forces in 1945.
Aloha!
