An article you should read. Calling out the R's and D's for being equally stupid.

[LibertyLemming]

The Institutionalization of Tyranny

Republicans and conservative Americans are still fighting Big Government in its welfare state form. Apparently, they have never heard of the militarized police state form of Big Government, or, if they have, they are comfortable with it and have no objection.

Republicans, including those in the House and Senate, are content for big government to initiate wars without a declaration of war or even Congress’ assent, and to murder with drones citizens of countries with which Washington is not at war. Republicans do not mind that federal “security” agencies spy on American citizens without warrants and record every email, Internet site visited, Facebook posting, cell phone call, and credit card purchase. Republicans in Congress even voted to fund the massive structure in Utah in which this information is stored.

But heaven forbid that big government should do anything for a poor person.

Republicans have been fighting Social Security ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law in the 1930s, and they have been fighting Medicare ever since President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law in 1965 as part of the Great Society initiatives.

Conservatives accuse liberals of the “institutionalization of compassion.” Writing in the February, 2013, issue of Chronicles, John C. Seiler, Jr., damns Johnson’s Great Society as “a major force in turning a country that still enjoyed a modicum of republican liberty into the centralized, bureaucratized, degenerate, and bankrupt state we endure today.”

It doesn’t occur to conservatives that in Europe democracy, liberty, welfare, rich people, and national health services all coexist, but that somehow American liberty is so fragile that it is overturned by a limited health program only available to the elderly.

Neither does it occur to conservative Republicans that it is far better to institutionalize compassion than to institutionalize tyranny.

The institutionalization of tyranny is the achievement of the Bush/Obama regimes of the 21st century. This, and not the Great Society, is the decisive break from the American tradition. The Bush Republicans demolished almost all of the constitutional protections of liberty erected by the Founding Fathers. The Obama Democrats codified Bush’s dismantling of the Constitution and removed the protection afforded to citizens from being murdered by the government without due process. One decade was time enough for two presidents to make Americans the least free people of any developed country, indeed, perhaps of any country. In what other country or countries does the chief executive officer have the right to murder citizens without due process?


It turns one’s stomach to listen to conservatives bemoan the destruction of liberty by compassion while they institutionalize torture, indefinite detention in violation of habeas corpus, murder of citizens on suspicion and unproven accusation alone, complete and total violation of privacy, interference with the right to travel by unaccountable “no-fly” lists and highway check points, the brutalization of citizens and those exercising their right to protest by police, frame-ups of critics, and narrow the bounds of free speech.

In Amerika today only the executive branch of the federal government has any privacy. The privacy is institutional, not personal – witness the fate of CIA director Petraeus. While the executive branch destroys the privacy of every one else, it insists on its own privilege of privacy. National security is invoked to shield the executive branch from its criminal actions. Federal prosecutors actually conduct trials in which the evidence against defendants is classified and withheld from defendants’ attorneys. Attorneys such as Lynne Stewart have been imprisoned for not following orders from federal prosecutors to violate the attorney-client privilege.

Conservatives accept the monstrous police state that has been erected, because they think it makes them safe from “Muslim terrorism.” They haven’t the wits to see that they are now open to terrorism by the government.

Consider, for example, the case of Bradley Manning. He is accused of leaking confidential information that reveals US government war crimes despite the fact that it is the responsibility of every soldier to reveal war crimes. Virtually every one of Manning’s constitutional rights has been violated by the US government. He has been tortured. In an effort to coerce Manning into admitting trumped-up charges and implicating WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, Manning had his right to a speedy trial violated by nearly three years of pre-trial custody and repeated trial delays by government prosecutors. And now the judge, Col. Denise Lind, who comes across as a member of the prosecution rather than an impartial judge, has ruled that Manning cannot use as evidence the government’s own reports that the leaked information did not harm national security. Lind has also thrown out the legal principle of mens rea by ruling that Manning’s motive for leaking information about US war crimes cannot be presented as evidence in his trial.

Mens rea says that a crime requires criminal intent. By discarding this legal principle, Lind has prevented Manning from showing that his motive was to do his duty under the military code and reveal evidence of war crimes. This allows prosecutors to turn a dutiful act into the crime of aiding the enemy by revealing classified information.

Of course, nothing that Manning allegedly revealed helped the enemy in any way as the enemy, having suffered the war crimes, was already aware of them.

Obama Democrats are no more disturbed than conservative Republicans that a dutiful American soldier is being prosecuted because he has a moral conscience. In Manning’s trial, the government’s definition of victory has nothing whatsoever to do with justice prevailing. For Washington, victory means stamping out moral conscience and protecting a corrupt government from public exposure of its war crimes.

 

[SniperFire]

Blathering Lemming -

The 'fault' is that of the people.

 

[jwoodie]

How about an Executive Summary?

 

[LibertyLemming]

Blathering Lemming -

The 'fault' is that of the people.

You mean the people who vote R and D down the line?

 

[LibertyLemming]

How about an Executive Summary?

D's gave up tons of liberty through social programs.
R's gave it up for security.

Obama has united the two parties by usurping liberty via security theater and social programs.

 

[SniperFire]

Blathering Lemming -

The 'fault' is that of the people.

You mean the people who vote R and D down the line?

Yes.

Don't pretend the people are not the one's responsible for this.

 

[LibertyLemming]

Blathering Lemming -

The 'fault' is that of the people.

You mean the people who vote R and D down the line?

Yes.

Don't pretend the people are not the one's responsible for this.

I'm not lol? The people put the politicians there and then the politicians act a fool.

 

[SniperFire]

You mean the people who vote R and D down the line?

Yes.

Don't pretend the people are not the one's responsible for this.

I'm not lol? The people put the politicians there and then the politicians act a fool.

You act like the 'R's and D's' are not delivering exactly what the people demand.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

this is such bs it is not worth reading. the agenda of this is so transpaaaaaaarent

 

[g5000]

Excellent article. It says an awful lot of what I have been saying and thinking.

We are under threat of totalitarianism from both the right and left these days, and each side is completely blind to their own tendencies.

 

[LibertyLemming]

this is such bs it is not worth reading. the agenda of this is so transpaaaaaaarent

Do explain sir. I'm aware of your reputation as a trolololololol but I'll bite.

 

[LibertyLemming]

Yes.

Don't pretend the people are not the one's responsible for this.

I'm not lol? The people put the politicians there and then the politicians act a fool.

You act like the 'R's and D's' are not delivering exactly what the people demand.

It helps to read before you open your mouth. I'm not saying that at all.

 

[SniperFire]

I'm not lol? The people put the politicians there and then the politicians act a fool.

You act like the 'R's and D's' are not delivering exactly what the people demand.

It helps to read before you open your mouth. I'm not saying that at all.

I am going by your general body of posting 'work' of that of you and your idiot Libertarian/ anarchist brethren who like to pretend real America are embracing your ideology, but those evil 'Rs and Ds' keep leading us down a path which nobody votes for or demands.

Remember, your candidates get about half a percent of the popular vote for a reason.

 

[g5000]

You act like the 'R's and D's' are not delivering exactly what the people demand.

It helps to read before you open your mouth. I'm not saying that at all.

I am going by your general body of posting 'work' of that of you and your idiot Libertarian/ anarchist brethren who like to pretend real America are embracing your ideology, but those evil 'Rs and Ds' keep leading us down a path which nobody votes for or demands.

Remember, your candidates get about half a percent of the popular vote for a reason.

More than 40 percent of Americans, including me, chose not to vote at all for a reason.

 

[teapartysamurai]

What liberty have I given up in the Patriot Act?

You stupid libertarians and liberals cry and cry about that, but the last time I looked, the ONLY people suffering under it, ARE TERRORISTS.

I have asked liberal after liberal, what freedom they have lost with the terrorist act. They start screaming about something that "might" happen, but they never can give me on thing that has happened to them.

But, you want to know all the terrorists acts that have been stopped because of the Patriot Act?

Dick Morris made my hair stand on end, relating all of the attacks in New York alone that were stopped because of the Patriot Act.

Unfortunately, it's in a documentary about terorrism, and is not on Youtube. I wish it was.

You ever wonder why there are no more 9/11s. Well it isn't because we got lucky! We caught them because we didn't have to jump through hoops of red tape.

 

[LibertyLemming]

You act like the 'R's and D's' are not delivering exactly what the people demand.

It helps to read before you open your mouth. I'm not saying that at all.

I am going by your general body of posting 'work' of that of you and your idiot Libertarian/ anarchist brethren who like to pretend real America are embracing your ideology, but those evil 'Rs and Ds' keep leading us down a path which nobody votes for or demands.

Remember, your candidates get about half a percent of the popular vote for a reason.

I never pretend "real America", whatever that is, is embracing my ideas. If they were these kind of articles wouldn't be authored.

You can't entirely blame the people. The Government, with lots of help from the media, makes the people think they are in constant danger from terrorists and so the people go along with the loss of their rights in the name of Security Theater. Likewise, they push propaganda that says we need all these social programs, and that they work, and so the people eat it up. I still blame the people for being too stupid to see the forest through the trees.

 

[g5000]

I bet if you took the number of people who did not vote for Romney, but were really voting against Obama, and added them to the 40+ percent of Americans who did not vote at all, you would probably come up with a damn near super majority of Americans. This speaks to the utter distaste Americans have for either party these days.

What Paul Craig Roberts, one of the fathers of Reaganomics, said about the state of the GOP today is absolutely correct.

He may be a looney toon on other subjects, but the GOP's eagerness in the past dozen years to destroy the first, fourth, fifth, and fourteenth amendments is outrageous. And their boot stomping militarism is pathological. They have become a snarling band of mindless proles. It is way past time they be bitch slapped for it.

 

[jwoodie]

For better or worse, our two-party system has provided a more stable government than most parliamentary multi-party systems. Where it seems to break down is when one party has complete control of government (e.g., 1977-80, 1993-94, 2001-2002 and 2009-2010. Since WW2, one of the best combinations seems to be a Dem President with a GOP Congress (e.g., Truman and Clinton). The reverse, not so much.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

people are stupid

 

[LibertyLemming]

What liberty have I given up in the Patriot Act?

You stupid libertarians and liberals cry and cry about that, but the last time I looked, the ONLY people suffering under it, ARE TERRORISTS.

I have asked liberal after liberal, what freedom they have lost with the terrorist act. They start screaming about something that "might" happen, but they never can give me on thing that has happened to them.

But, you want to know all the terrorists acts that have been stopped because of the Patriot Act?

Dick Morris made my hair stand on end, relating all of the attacks in New York alone that were stopped because of the Patriot Act.

Unfortunately, it's in a documentary about terorrism, and is not on Youtube. I wish it was.

You ever wonder why there are no more 9/11s. Well it isn't because we got lucky! We caught them because we didn't have to jump through hoops of red tape.

You ever wonder why there was a 9/11? It is because we have been participating in warfare in brown town for decades, despite never being attacked by them. How long can I bomb your neighborhood and kill your neighbors before you fight back the only way you are capable?

If you honestly think the Patriot Act only dilutes the rights of "terrorists" you're nuts lol. The NSA intercepts and stores over a billion emails a day, you think they're all terrorist emails? Despite any of that, even if the person is a terrorist, this is America, if he is a citizen he deserves due process and warrants to get wiretapped and all the rest like the Constitution guarantees him. He certainly deserves due process before we assassinate him, but Obama didn't think so.