[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', 'T')he number one killer of people are governments that turn against their own citizens. In the 20th century governments killed 200 million of their own citizens (and another 70 million in wars). Protection from the primary source of violence must be our primary concern. The question is not who will protect you from terrorists, but who will protect you from your own government.

[mattduke]

In case you haven't noticed, the US is becoming a socialist totalitarian state and you're cheering all the way.

[eastbay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', 'I')n case you haven't noticed, the US is becoming a socialist totalitarian state and you're cheering all the way.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', 'I')n case you haven't noticed, the US is becoming a socialist totalitarian state and you're cheering all the way.

[mattduke]

Your post about the forms remaining the same instantly reminded me of a passage from They Thought They Were Free. Of course these days, the daily news reminds me of that book.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

...

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

...

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

[Ferretlover]

Wow.

[I_Like_Plants]

We are Corporatist, and we're getting closer to the gulags (many outside the US consider the US's prisons its gulags) and political litmus tests.... .well.... research the computer hacker scares of the 1980s and 90s, read right out of Solzenitzyn complete with torture and broken bones and dark cells. Right now we have a politician being "disappeared" into the gulag, and it does not take much to land in a gulag and stay there. Racial litmus tests on whether you can go to college, what program, etc as well as where you can live, whether you can buy a house, what job you can get, what company will hire you or if any will, etc.

Read Naomi Wolf on this, if you can get any of it through the censors. Dictatorships are more alike than they are different, and the 10 steps to dictatorship happen the same in all of them - the US is well along.

And like good little eichmanns, we'll close our ears and say LA LA LA LA LA....!

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', ' ')[b]The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.

[roccman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', ' ') Freedom doesn't come from having a cinema in your neighborhood but from having a viable democratic political system.

[roccman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', ' ') Freedom doesn't come from having a cinema in your neighborhood but from having a viable democratic political system.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '
')
Tell ya what PA...don't pay taxes next year...let me know how all that goes for you...

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gnm', 'D')idn't they trace the strain back to weaponized anthrax originating from Ft. Deitrick?

[mattduke]

I disagree. The point of the book was to describe the slow, piecemeal, step by step slide into totalitarianism, one little step at a time. The power of the government to open any mail at any time, is one such step (a popular step amongst totalitarian governments, and always in the name of security). It's the boiling frog syndrome. Imagine the outrage just a few years ago that would have occurred if the president declared that new power. It's barely a headline now. I find the implication that the government is capable of providing security ridiculous anyway. Respecting the 2nd amendment and a $40 handgun in the cockpit could have prevented what a $400 billion dollar defense budget could not.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', 'T')he power of the government to open any mail at any time, is one such step (a popular step amongst totalitarian governments, and always in the name of security). It's the boiling frog syndrome. Imagine the outrage just a few years ago that would have occurred if the president declared that new power. It's barely a headline now.

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he executive branch shall construe subsection 404(c) of title 39, as enacted by subsection 1010(e) of the Act, which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.

[Plantagenet]

"with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials"

exigent: requiring immediate aid or action

A package leaking a hazardous chemical or a letter leaking anthrax are my suggested examples of exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials"

Get it?

---------------

Cheers!

[mattduke]

We are all familiar by now with government's claim of "exigent circumstances" to justify unlawful actions. "Exigent circumstances" were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, for example.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', 'W')e are all familiar by now with government's claim of "exigent circumstances" to justify unlawful actions. "Exigent circumstances" were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, for example.

[mattduke]

Congress is as corrupt as the president.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', 'C')ongress is as corrupt as the president.