The Coming Dictatorship, and the Constitution

[elder999]

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Throughout history dictatorships are the conditions under which most people have lived.

Pick any time in history, then make a mental estimate of what percentage of humanity lived under dictatorships of one kind or another at that time. There have even been times when everyone on the planet lived under a dictatorship of one sort or another, and, as if we can’t stand freedom, it seems as if every place men have won freedoms, the generations that followed them gave them away. Always. There’s evidence that that’s what we’re doing now.

The Constitution will still be there and not a word of it will be changed nor will it have been amended. It will remain in place, a showcase to the world, but it will mean nothing.

We’re putting all the mechanisms in place that will make one possible. Two hundred years ago, our Founding Fathers had put as many obstacles as possible in the way of a dictatorship because they feared that unless there were obstacles, specifically, the safeguards in our Constitution, a dictatorship was inevitable, but even then, many of them weren’t optimistic about our chances. When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention, a Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin replied, "A republic if you can keep it." He expressed the sentiment of many of the delegates. Today, as if we’re bent on proving the cynicism in Franklin’s reply was deserved, we’re ignoring—no, we’re actually throwing away—the safeguards hammered out among the delegates to that Convention. We’re not changing the wording or the intent of the Constitution, we’re just ignoring it.

There’s not just one thing we have to worry about; there’s a whole bunch of things that are undermining our freedoms, but I’m not going to say there’s a conspiracy, like some people do, though there may be. I really don’t know. I’d have to say that if there’s a concerted attack on our liberties, whoever’s doing it is a lot smarter than we are and he—or they—have my grudging admiration because these changes aren’t being forced on us, we’re just going along with them.

There are six things that I’d say are sure signs that we’re in trouble.
First there’s the steady erosion of our basic rights, the ones a lot of people call our constitutional rights, though that’s not a good name for them. It’s better to think of them as natural rights, the way our Founding Fathers did—or think of them as God-given rights if you want. Thinking of them as constitutional rights is part of what is getting us in trouble. You have to realize that our Founding Fathers didn’t think of them as constitutional rights because they knew that if our rights are provided by either the Constitution or the government, what the government gives, it can also take away. As natural or God-given rights, they’re absolute. That’s the way they were intended.

The next problem we have is related to this erosion of our rights, but I’d treat it as a whole separate category. It’s the unintended consequences of having created new rights—legal rights created by Congress and which Congress and bureaucrats have decided supercede or nullify our natural rights. These include the new rights that have come about as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Environmental Protection Act, and the American Disabilities Act. Unlike our natural rights, which come to us at the expense of no one else, the new rights have to be provided by someone else. It’s in having to provide them that our government has found ways to erode our natural rights.

Third there’s the unconstitutional bypassing of our legislative process by the President—not just this one in office now, but by all of the recent presidents. Using what are called Executive Orders, they create laws that are not only illegal and unconstitutional, but are created without the consent of the Congress or the people of the United States. Some of these edicts, believe it or not, explicitly suspend the Constitution for an indeterminate amount of time on the whim of the President.

Fourth, there’s the new rules and regulations imposed on businesses by our federal government by which the government circumvents our Fifth Amendment rights by insisting businesses spy on us. This includes banks, airlines, and even manufacturers of things like light bulbs and paper.
Fifth is the creation of a professional, standing army. The Founding Fathers feared a professional army. They believed this country should depend on the militia—and I’m using the word ‘militia’ in the way they used it in the Second Amendment, meaning the body of citizen, not the National Guard or some other professional organization. Professional armies lose their allegiance to the citizenry and have a history of becoming the accomplices of tyrants. It’s highly unlikely there would have been any protests to the illegal war we fought in Vietnam if we’d had a professional army then.

Last of all, but not least, our economy is no longer a true free market economy. It is now one of the socialist economies. We’re now a fascist economy. For all of our posturing about how bad fascism is, we have created a fascist economy as a compromise between capitalism and communism.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

All of these changes are milestones on the road to tyranny. If they had all been invoked at once, we’d have seen them for what they are, an attempt to subvert what had once been the freest society history has ever seen. There’d have been a revolution in this country; blood would have run in the streets. But they’ve come over generations, and the American people, whose collective attention span is brief and whose memory is even shorter, have come to believe that the way things are in this country today is the way they’ve always been.

Maybe, even though we are putting all mechanisms for a dictatorship into place...maybe it won’t happen. Though why we’d want to tempt fate by putting all the machinery for a dictatorship in place, I don’t know. But if I had to bet, I’d say that sometime in the not too distant future we will live under tyranny. Sometime after that historians are going to look back to where the United States stood on the dawn of the new millennium and wonder if we’d gone mad or if we were just idiots. History is not going to treat us well; I can almost assure you of that.

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
John Philpot Curran, (1750-1817)

 

[Makalakumu]

Gay Marriage, Abortion, and Gun Control are the issues that are being manipulated so that the things that you are talking about are coming to pass. Of all of them, Gay Marriage probably has the most momentum to turn heads away from the real problems. Ever wonder who is donating to funding all of these focus groups? I bet that list of names that donated large sums to all three may surprise alot of people.

 

[Bigshadow]

I believe if one connects enough dots and *sees* the picture taking shape it would wake people up. But for now they sleep. I am beginning to believe that there is a cabal at the top of world and they have the front row at the feed trough.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Liberty is never lost all at once, but inch by inch.
Today we have:
- A President who has said it doesn't matter what the law says, he'll do what he wants.
- Congressmen and Women who condemn the Constitution for being in their way
- "Free Speech" zones
- Open ended imprisonment of US Citizens
- Government organizations that exist solely to spy on US Citizens that answer to no one but the president
- Excessive privilege for Congress and the Executive that far outstrip those given to the ordinary citizen.
- Out of control government spending
- Laws passed with little to no review, nor concern for the effects.

All of these are against the desires of those who wrote and defended the Constitution for it's first 100 years.

- Presidents should be limited to 1 5 year term, congress to 2 4 year terms.
- Executive privilege should be ended
- Laws should be passed individually, without extra "riders" attached, and not before being subject to serious thought and research.
- The secret police should be disbanded
- Free Speech should be the entire nation, not just a little fenced in area down an alley.
- Any item being bought by the government that costs more than twice what it costs at Sears should be subject to intense scrutiny. I can understand a little markup, but not when a $5 screwdriver goes for $200.

 

[elder999]

We've now learned that the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA) has persuaded American telecommunications companies to allow whole trunk lines of electronic transmissions to be monitored. The agency explains that they have not gone to court for individual warrants because there have been no individual suspects. This is, therefore, surveillance of the whole system of American communications. The president has approved blanket monitoring of the gateways to see what the agency can come up with.

The NSA apparently has technological capacity to monitor millions of signals. If they see connections from some American location to Pakistan, or Kabul, or Iran, they say they want to look more closely and see if there is a pattern. To find such patterns, they have been trolling the whole telecommunications environment, searching the known universe.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, however, requires a president to go to court to show probable cause — a specific criminal connection linked to a specific person — before he spies on American citizens. Mr. Bush has admittedly broken this law, asserting that he intends to continue to break it and, in addition, saying that he will strike back, launching an investigation to catch and punish whoever leaked his program. The leak was illegal, he says, and he will enforce the law against the leaker, though he takes a different view of the law applied to himself.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, by which the president is bound, prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The president says that his surveillance is not unreasonable. If, however, violating a congressional act written specifically to control the president is not unreasonable, what on earth is left? If it is not unreasonable to act illegally, what can “unreasonable” mean?

The enormity of the offense lies in the fact that the NSA is not just spying on a few individual suspects. They are spying on all of us, on whole trunk lines, to see who of us fits “a pattern.” When the initial surveillance identifies persons whose patterns suggest a connection to terrorism, the NSA will then, presumably, seek court authority to listen to the details of those calls.

We have no guarantee, however, that the NSA will listen only to suspected terrorists or that they will refrain from listening to details of American business transactions, billings, tax reports or even to personal matters, divorces, arguments and politics. There is no firewall to insulate Americans from this domestic spying other than the good-faith assertions of a president who says he will not do that. His record does not breed confidence that he has the will or intention to be careful.

Every journalist covering foreign affairs has presumably been part of a “pattern” of calls to some region of the world. A journalist who is critical of the Bush administration, or hostile to the war in Iraq, or favors the social policies of Islam, cannot now be secure that his or her personal views will not be passed on from the NSA to some other executive branch and result in a tax audit or secret complaints to his or her corporate boss.

I have been in communication with professional colleagues and associates in Moscow and the Caucuses for more than 10 years. I am quite clearly part of a “pattern” of people who are connected to the former Soviet Union. There are, of course, terrorists in that part of the world, and so perhaps the NSA has been collecting my e-mails(in fat, they almost certainly have, but that's neither here nor there). I have certainly not been supportive of the Bush invasion of Iraq. Has the NSA been listening, therefore, waiting to find out when e-mailed copies of my commentaries will cross some subjective line that they alone determine? Are there technicians in the basement of some giant monitoring complex deciding whether any of these troublesome Iraq-war critics should be silenced? Will some operative consider presidential anger as if it were a command to put me, or any one of thousands like me, on some list, to be watched, to be taxed or to be barred from the airlines?

The purpose of constitutional restraints was originally conceived to control a president who it was hoped would never become as arbitrary as George III of England. This president has turned the formula on its head and claimed that, to the contrary, the constitution sets him free. But if that is true, and if these extraordinary powers can last as long as wars last — that is, indefinitely — what is left of the difference between a president with unlimited powers, extending forever, and a king?

 

[celtic_crippler]

Another inch gained by the government in their quest for an all powerful police state:

Friday, July 6[SUP]th[/SUP], President Obama quietly signed an Executive Order titled the “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions” under the guise of public safety.

All legalese aside, this order effectively gives the president the authorization to seize private facilities in order to shut down or limit civilian communications according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

That means the government can seize or shut down wireline, wireless, satellite, cable, and broadcasting. Effectively, allowing the president control over the nation’s internet access as well (no Facebook for you!)

http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-preside...nications-770/

Republicans and Conservatives are upset over this and rightly so, but let’s not forget that President Bush signed into law the “Patriot Act’ on October 26[SUP]th[/SUP], 2001, also under the guise of the security and safety of “the people.”

The Patriot Act dramatically reduced restrictions in law enforcement’s ability to “gather intelligence.” Some of these abilities include indefinite detentions of suspects (habeas what?), home searches without knowledge and/or consent of the occupant (no warrant necessary), and searches of telephone, e-mail, and financial records without a court order.

Just FYI, President Obama signed an extension of three key provisions of the act on May 26[SUP]th[/SUP], 2011 including roving wiretaps, searches of business records, as well as conducting surveillance of individual suspects NOT linked to terrorist groups.

“Those that would trade security for liberty deserve neither.” ~ Ben Franklin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act

Many Democrats and Liberals called for the lynching of President Bush because of the Patriot Act, calling him a “tyrant” among other things.

What I find extremely fascinating is that both of these acts are violations of American liberty and the fundamental principles of freedom; however, both got support from party members depending on which “party” was in power at the time of the passing!

Both of these acts are blindingly obvious in their intention to continuously progress our nation towards an all-powerful, tyrannical police state, yet these facts are lost on the supporters of the respective demagogues. It would seem all they care about is a “win” for their chosen side.

They appear completely oblivious to the fact that they are being “played” like the proverbial “fiddle” by a political duopoly that has been forced upon them, and the only ones benefiting are the Elite who force the duopoly while they, the People, regardless of which “side” they choose to be on are the ones who are losing!

The fact that, overall, we ALL are progressively losing more of our liberties every day is either beside the point or simply ignored in favor of the limited satisfaction of knowing “our side” won.

“If there’s one thing about human beings we know with certainty, they are masters of self-destruction.” ~ Six, BSG

History will record either an avoidance of collapse because we finally woke up and smelled the coffee or it will record us as just another civilization that couldn’t overcome our failings.

 

[Takai]

The only reality that the general population is aware of is reality TV. They are glued to American Idol or the latest bit of news about Kim K. They are being entertained by their XBox and letting FB consume their days. Isn't that what the media is telling them is really important?

When the first inch was given in our god given liberties (and no I cannot pinpoint that time in history) then the Constitution began its death spiral. It is so far down the drain now that I sure that it could actually be revived. We are no longer have a constitutional government. We have a government of policies. It has all become smoke and mirrors. The have effectively numbed the american populace and our liberties have succumbed to the onslaught.

 

[rickster]

I believe if one connects enough dots and *sees* the picture taking shape it would wake people up. But for now they sleep. I am beginning to believe that there is a cabal at the top of world and they have the front row at the feed trough.

I was going to reply with something along that^^^

To pun a term; "Opiate of the Masses"

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I believe if one connects enough dots and *sees* the picture taking shape it would wake people up. But for now they sleep. I am beginning to believe that there is a cabal at the top of world and they have the front row at the feed trough.

Never put down to conspiracy what can be explained through greed, sloth, apathy, and stupidity.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

History will record either an avoidance of collapse because we finally woke up and smelled the coffee or it will record us as just another civilization that couldn’t overcome our failings.

No civilization has endured the test of time. Why would ours be any different?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

The only reality that the general population is aware of is reality TV. They are glued to American Idol or the latest bit of news about Kim K. They are being entertained by their XBox and letting FB consume their days. Isn't that what the media is telling them is really important?

When the first inch was given in our god given liberties (and no I cannot pinpoint that time in history) then the Constitution began its death spiral. It is so far down the drain now that I sure that it could actually be revived. We are no longer have a constitutional government. We have a government of policies. It has all become smoke and mirrors. The have effectively numbed the american populace and our liberties have succumbed to the onslaught.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from that offered by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Drawing an analogy with the latter scenario, Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", by means of which the consumers' rights are exchanged for entertainment. (Note that there is no contradiction between an intentional "Orwellian" conspiracy using "Huxleyan" means, which is an argument advanced in the later book The Unreality Industry: the deliberate manufacturing of falsehood and what it is doing to our lives by Ian Mitroff and Warren Bennis [New York: Carol Pub. Group, 1989]. Postman evidently did not disagree, since he provided a blurb for this book.)

I would say "Wake up, you fools!", but the truth is, the fools like things they way they are; they insist upon them that way.

All of us are sucked in at one level or another - I'm not immune either. But the Left and the Right, especially as evidenced on MT, are really suckers; they bite on the tidbits of non-information offered them and never consider what they WANT, only what they are told to want, what they are told to believe, and what they are told about the OTHER guys. Party-line morons - left and right. And I don't care whose *** that chaps.

 

[Christian Soldier]

I totatly agree with what you guys said, I'm pretty thrilled that that there are this many people with common sense.

Coming from the next generation, what is the solution?

Historically, Dictarorships have only come to an end by way of violent revolution, they haven't ever really ended with a gradual return of liberty and freedom. Is the latter possible today?

 

[blindsage]

Just a few comments I'd like to throw in here.

There are six things that I’d say are sure signs that we’re in trouble.
First there’s the steady erosion of our basic rights, the ones a lot of people call our constitutional rights, though that’s not a good name for them. It’s better to think of them as natural rights, the way our Founding Fathers did—or think of them as God-given rights if you want. Thinking of them as constitutional rights is part of what is getting us in trouble. You have to realize that our Founding Fathers didn’t think of them as constitutional rights because they knew that if our rights are provided by either the Constitution or the government, what the government gives, it can also take away. As natural or God-given rights, they’re absolute. That’s the way they were intended.

I agree and we always say this, but we throw it out the window when it applies to others. If certain people don't have God given rights, because they aren't from this country, then how can we say they're God given? And if we say they are God given, even for those people, they can we really be surprised when our rights are eroded if we don't respect those same right for others?

The next problem we have is related to this erosion of our rights, but I’d treat it as a whole separate category. It’s the unintended consequences of having created new rights—legal rights created by Congress and which Congress and bureaucrats have decided supercede or nullify our natural rights. These include the new rights that have come about as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Environmental Protection Act, and the American Disabilities Act. Unlike our natural rights, which come to us at the expense of no one else, the new rights have to be provided by someone else. It’s in having to provide them that our government has found ways to erode our natural rights.

ALL rights cause expense to others, by definition. Declaring 'rights' defines limits on behavior within the society. If you say there is freedom of speech, then you restrict my right to make you shut up. You can say all day long the rights are God-given, but it means little to nothing if a government doesn't recognize and respect those rights. It's a semantic argument to say the Bill of Rights talks about natural rights (and how is the right to bear arms, or the prohibition of excessive bail 'natural'?), but that the 'rights' safeguarded in the acts you mentioned above aren't. The only rights we have are the ones we recognize and then institutionalize in our society. If rights are 'natural', then everyone has them, even political prisoners in China, even the citizens of Syria, even illegal aliens. The difference is, our government recognizes them and has set up provision to protect them. We still require a government to do that, or we don't benefit from them. Now, I agree that those basic rights are being eroded, and for much of the reasons you say, but not all of them.

Third there’s the unconstitutional bypassing of our legislative process by the President—not just this one in office now, but by all of the recent presidents. Using what are called Executive Orders, they create laws that are not only illegal and unconstitutional, but are created without the consent of the Congress or the people of the United States. Some of these edicts, believe it or not, explicitly suspend the Constitution for an indeterminate amount of time on the whim of the President.

This I utterly and entirely agree with.

Fourth, there’s the new rules and regulations imposed on businesses by our federal government by which the government circumvents our Fifth Amendment rights by insisting businesses spy on us. This includes banks, airlines, and even manufacturers of things like light bulbs and paper.
Fifth is the creation of a professional, standing army. The Founding Fathers feared a professional army. They believed this country should depend on the militia—and I’m using the word ‘militia’ in the way they used it in the Second Amendment, meaning the body of citizen, not the National Guard or some other professional organization. Professional armies lose their allegiance to the citizenry and have a history of becoming the accomplices of tyrants. It’s highly unlikely there would have been any protests to the illegal war we fought in Vietnam if we’d had a professional army then.

Ditto.

Last of all, but not least, our economy is no longer a true free market economy. It is now one of the socialist economies. We’re now a fascist economy. For all of our posturing about how bad fascism is, we have created a fascist economy as a compromise between capitalism and communism.

Now this, I just find silly. I understand the fascism reference, and in large part agree, government and business are in bed with eachother. However, we have NEVER truly had a free market economy. Thinking so is ahistorical and for a large part not understanding free markets. We can't have and refuse to have truly free markets, for a couple of simple reasons: 1) Truly free markets require "perfect information", meaning that every actor everywhere knows everything necessary to make a decision, an absolute impossibility. Much of microecomics is based on this idea. If ANY information is not availible then you have, by definiton, market distortions, and the market is not a 'free' one. 2) Truly free markets require the full freedom of movement of capital and labor. Meaning people should be able to move anywhere at anytime where there is a need for labor as determined by the needs of the market. We have NEVER allowed for the completely free movement of people into our borders. If you're not for this, then you don't believe in truly free markets.

All of these changes are milestones on the road to tyranny. If they had all been invoked at once, we’d have seen them for what they are, an attempt to subvert what had once been the freest society history has ever seen. There’d have been a revolution in this country; blood would have run in the streets. But they’ve come over generations, and the American people, whose collective attention span is brief and whose memory is even shorter, have come to believe that the way things are in this country today is the way they’ve always been.

Maybe, even though we are putting all mechanisms for a dictatorship into place...maybe it won’t happen. Though why we’d want to tempt fate by putting all the machinery for a dictatorship in place, I don’t know. But if I had to bet, I’d say that sometime in the not too distant future we will live under tyranny. Sometime after that historians are going to look back to where the United States stood on the dawn of the new millennium and wonder if we’d gone mad or if we were just idiots. History is not going to treat us well; I can almost assure you of that.

I agree with some of what you say here, and I agree we are heading down a dangerous road, but at the same time I feel there are serious flaws in how you have come to this conclusion.

 

[celtic_crippler]

That was the "Great American Experiment"... the Founders wanted to see if we really could learn from history and not allow it to repeat itself.

 

[granfire]

hey, with over 200 years, we had a great run....also historically speaking.
(no, wait, I think Switzerland has been going longer on that one... oh darn...)

 

[elder999]

I totatly agree with what you guys said, I'm pretty thrilled that that there are this many people with common sense.

Coming from the next generation, what is the solution?

Get rich. Have a bug out plan. Buy guns second-hand. Stockpile food, and water, and work on home security. Practice, practice, practice.

Keep yer powder dry. Watch yer six.

Pray.

Historically, Dictarorships have only come to an end by way of violent revolution, they haven't ever really ended with a gradual return of liberty and freedom. Is the latter possible today?

More than a revolution, I envision the division of what will remain of the Republic via fractionalized, regional civil war, possibly with racial or class undertones, and several separate state entities in the aftermath.

Of course, I'm well known for being a raving paranoiac, but that's what I see happpening-I don't think the "dictatorship" will be able to withstand the very forces it is utilizing to come into power-namely, the division of the plebiscite on a variety of issues-the fact that we're split consistently on a near 50/50 basis on almost every issue-and some of the most mundane of them have become hot topic pushbutton items-is something that has been manipulated almostfrom the start. In the end, people's disatisfaction will erupt into anarchic violence against the government and each other.

We'll no longer be "United States," in fact, we haven't been for some time.

JI agree and we always say this, but we throw it out the window when it applies to others. If certain people don't have God given rights, because they aren't from this country, then how can we say they're God given? And if we say they are God given, even for those people, they can we really be surprised when our rights are eroded if we don't respect those same right for others?

A cursory glance at some of my other posts would show that I'm in agreement-and that I am firmly in the "God given," and respect for others camp.

For all the good it does: some would say that the Constitution is written for U.S. citizens only.

ALL rights cause expense to others, by definition. Declaring 'rights' defines limits on behavior within the society. If you say there is freedom of speech, then you restrict my right to make you shut up.

You don't have a God-given right in regards to others, therefore you have no right to make me shut up. QED.

You can say all day long the rights are God-given, but it means little to nothing if a government doesn't recognize and respect those rights. It's a semantic argument to say the Bill of Rights talks about natural rights (and how is the right to bear arms, or the prohibition of excessive bail 'natural'?), but that the 'rights' safeguarded in the acts you mentioned above aren't. The only rights we have are the ones we recognize and then institutionalize in our society. If rights are 'natural', then everyone has them, even political prisoners in China, even the citizens of Syria, even illegal aliens. The difference is, our government recognizes them and has set up provision to protect them. We still require a government to do that, or we don't benefit from them.

It's not a semanitical argument in regards to our the formation of our government. Ours isn't the first Constitution, or the only one, but it was the first and only one that did not confer rights: it is meant to impose restrictions on how the government can impose on our rights as individuals-it takes those as a given, and structures the government from there.


To miss this is, essentially, part of how those rights are eroded: people don't step up and say, You can't do that.

Now this, I just find silly. I understand the fascism reference, and in large part agree, government and business are in bed with eachother. However, we have NEVER truly had a free market economy. Thinking so is ahistorical and for a large part not understanding free markets. We can't have and refuse to have truly free markets, for a couple of simple reasons: 1) Truly free markets require "perfect information", meaning that every actor everywhere knows everything necessary to make a decision, an absolute impossibility. Much of microecomics is based on this idea. If ANY information is not availible then you have, by definiton, market distortions, and the market is not a 'free' one. 2) Truly free markets require the full freedom of movement of capital and labor. Meaning people should be able to move anywhere at anytime where there is a need for labor as determined by the needs of the market. We have NEVER allowed for the completely free movement of people into our borders. If you're not for this, then you don't believe in truly free markets.

And, in actuality, there has never been a "free market." More to the point, unregulated markets and "free market solutions" don't really work-or always work: the savings and loan and subprime mortgage debacles are evidence of that. On the other hand, many of the restrictions that have been imposed in the interest of corporate rights are what have stifled what free market qualities our economy has had and needed.

Less people have more of the wealth, all the time-in spite of our being the nation of "entrepeneurship"

 

[celtic_crippler]

Of course, I'm well known for being a raving paranoiac, but that's what I see happpening-I don't think the "dictatorship" will be able to withstand the very forces it is utilizing to come into power-namely, the division of the plebiscite on a variety of issues-the fact that we're split consistently on a near 50/50 basis on almost every issue-and some of the most mundane of them have become hot topic pushbutton items-is something that has been manipulated almostfrom the start. In the end, people's disatisfaction will erupt into anarchic violence against the government and each other.

That... right there.

History shows that once anarchy erupts, the people turn to those best capable of restoring order... often, in the more recent past, it is the ones who were the catalyst for the anarchy and discord in the first place. For example, "brownshirts" in pre-Nazi Germany routinely caused chaos and once the s**t hit the fan, they were the best equipped to restore order... because they planned for it. The people willingly accept totalitarian rule at that point as it is preferable to anarchy. Many have attained power in this manner throughout history.

Oddly enough, history also shows the inevitability of the people eventually rebelling agasint the totalitarian rule... and the cycle begins again.

Too bad they don't teach that kind of "history" in school. People might be more aware of how they're being played...

Pehaps human beings are simply incapable of self government... perhaps we are simply too flawed. Lacking a moral compass of any kind definately contributes to the problem and this generation is certainly lacking in that regard.

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”

― Robert A. Heinlein

 

[blindsage]

A cursory glance at some of my other posts would show that I'm in agreement-and that I am firmly in the "God given," and respect for others camp.

For all the good it does: some would say that the Constitution is written for U.S. citizens only.

I have always gotten that impression from you.

You don't have a God-given right in regards to others, therefore you have no right to make me shut up. QED.

Because we say it's true. One person's right in regard to others, is another persons right in regards to self, it's self defined, and only true when we agree on it and institutionalize it. I agree with the ones institutionalized in our Constitution, but it's still what we decide to recognize, God-given or otherwise.

It's not a semanitical argument in regards to our the formation of our government. Ours isn't the first Constitution, or the only one, but it was the first and only one that did not confer rights: it is meant to impose restrictions on how the government can impose on our rights as individuals-it takes those as a given, and structures the government from there.

Absolutely, but the others Acts you talk about extend the same.

To miss this is, essentially, part of how those rights are eroded: people don't step up and say, You can't do that.

I understand the point, but the acts you talking about are, generally speaking, there because people stood up and said, You can't do that.

And, in actuality, there has never been a "free market." More to the point, unregulated markets and "free market solutions" don't really work-or always work: the savings and loan and subprime mortgage debacles are evidence of that. On the other hand, many of the restrictions that have been imposed in the interest of corporate rights are what have stifled what free market qualities our economy has had and needed.

Less people have more of the wealth, all the time-in spite of our being the nation of "entrepeneurship"

In total agreement with this.

 

[Master Dan]

We've now learned that the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA) has persuaded American telecommunications companies to allow whole trunk lines of electronic transmissions to be monitored. The agency explains that they have not gone to court for individual warrants because there have been no individual suspects. This is, therefore, surveillance of the whole system of American communications. The president has approved blanket monitoring of the gateways to see what the agency can come up with.

The NSA apparently has technological capacity to monitor millions of signals. If they see connections from some American location to Pakistan, or Kabul, or Iran, they say they want to look more closely and see if there is a pattern. To find such patterns, they have been trolling the whole telecommunications environment, searching the known universe.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, however, requires a president to go to court to show probable cause — a specific criminal connection linked to a specific person — before he spies on American citizens. Mr. Bush has admittedly broken this law, asserting that he intends to continue to break it and, in addition, saying that he will strike back, launching an investigation to catch and punish whoever leaked his program. The leak was illegal, he says, and he will enforce the law against the leaker, though he takes a different view of the law applied to himself.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, by which the president is bound, prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The president says that his surveillance is not unreasonable. If, however, violating a congressional act written specifically to control the president is not unreasonable, what on earth is left? If it is not unreasonable to act illegally, what can “unreasonable” mean?

The enormity of the offense lies in the fact that the NSA is not just spying on a few individual suspects. They are spying on all of us, on whole trunk lines, to see who of us fits “a pattern.” When the initial surveillance identifies persons whose patterns suggest a connection to terrorism, the NSA will then, presumably, seek court authority to listen to the details of those calls.

We have no guarantee, however, that the NSA will listen only to suspected terrorists or that they will refrain from listening to details of American business transactions, billings, tax reports or even to personal matters, divorces, arguments and politics. There is no firewall to insulate Americans from this domestic spying other than the good-faith assertions of a president who says he will not do that. His record does not breed confidence that he has the will or intention to be careful.

Every journalist covering foreign affairs has presumably been part of a “pattern” of calls to some region of the world. A journalist who is critical of the Bush administration, or hostile to the war in Iraq, or favors the social policies of Islam, cannot now be secure that his or her personal views will not be passed on from the NSA to some other executive branch and result in a tax audit or secret complaints to his or her corporate boss.

I have been in communication with professional colleagues and associates in Moscow and the Caucuses for more than 10 years. I am quite clearly part of a “pattern” of people who are connected to the former Soviet Union. There are, of course, terrorists in that part of the world, and so perhaps the NSA has been collecting my e-mails(in fat, they almost certainly have, but that's neither here nor there). I have certainly not been supportive of the Bush invasion of Iraq. Has the NSA been listening, therefore, waiting to find out when e-mailed copies of my commentaries will cross some subjective line that they alone determine? Are there technicians in the basement of some giant monitoring complex deciding whether any of these troublesome Iraq-war critics should be silenced? Will some operative consider presidential anger as if it were a command to put me, or any one of thousands like me, on some list, to be watched, to be taxed or to be barred from the airlines?

The purpose of constitutional restraints was originally conceived to control a president who it was hoped would never become as arbitrary as George III of England. This president has turned the formula on its head and claimed that, to the contrary, the constitution sets him free. But if that is true, and if these extraordinary powers can last as long as wars last — that is, indefinitely — what is left of the difference between a president with unlimited powers, extending forever, and a king?

My understanding from an tech stand point is go to any major internet location google what ever and where ever thier main location is lest say 10th floor the NSA has a complete floor above or below and everything goes through them thats how they monitor certain phrases or words and keep profiles on lots of stuff that was public information some time ago

 

[jks9199]

No. Simply no. Not how things work.

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