Pleasant thought of the day: fatherland security

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Slinger if he had said motherland would you have thought he was comparing the government to the Russians?

I love it. I would say Homeland security instead of fatherland. That is just me.
 
And yet some people still believe the neocons.

Like their forbear Richard Nixon ("Guns are an abomination"), Bush and his cabal deeply distrust the American people beneath their veneer of patriotism. Losing habeas corpus is every bit as grave as losing the 2nd Amendment, and the 4th Amendment is already all but abolished. And if you're wondering how long it'll take until innocent people are caught in their dragnet, wonder no longer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1885684,00.html

Add in the warrantless wiretapping and White House's ability to secretly detain anyone with no charges and no access to a lawyer, and there's no reason to believe the police state isn't already here.
 
I think the point is not that we have arrived at a point comparable to the Nazis, that would be absurd. The point is that this year the government has more power over our lives than it had last year. And that is true for every year of the Bush admin, several years of the Clinton admin, and we could go back further, I'm sure.

We also don't have total gun prohibition in this country. But enough of my freedom to keep and bear arms has been eroded that I'm :fire:

Same with the other civil rights.
 
Pravda!

Oleg, eto poslednee novovvedenie v zakonodatelstve USA yavlyaetsa ni chem inym kak granicheniem teh samyh svobod i prav, za kotorye borolis Vashington, Jefferson i prochie. Spasibo za poster!!
Oleg, this latest @new arrival@ in American legislation is exactly the limitation of freedoms and rights G. Washington and T. Jefferson and others have fought for. Thanks for poster!!
 
Good one.

No, wait, great one.

By my crude count,
it brought two
relatively new members out of the closet,
er, gun safe, er closet.
(One 1st post, one second.)

Nice job.

It's #3 in my list of "Oleg favorites".

#2: Tiramisu.
#1: Quit staring: get your own.

Take home message?
Sex + sweet food > politics.

Nem
 
We've lost habeus corpus twice in this country (Lincoln and Grant) and survived and thrived despite it. Why?

Because in both instances it was necessary, and above all we're forced by extreme circumstances to act on a clear and present danger.

So, why are we different now? Will our war on terrorism plunge us into gulags and death camps? Or, do you think that we should treat terrorists to the full spectrum of US Legal rights, representation, appeals, short (or no) sentences, and subsequent book deals and Oprah tours?

Or, perhaps, there is alot of hyperbole on both sides - equally stupid and extreme. That's my vote.

Oh, and what does this have to do with guns? ;)
 
Can you guarantee that it is unthinkable that a government would want to kill it's own citizens? Maybe I am wrong, why couldn't it happen here?
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DW,

I can't guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow. However, my point is, American's do not have the historical perspective of the Russians. We do not have a history of pogroms, one of which is going on at this very moment in Russia involving the organs of the Russian government against those of Georgian descent. So, from a Russian point of view, if you allow the government to have great power to protect you, you can expect it to be used against you or someone you know. While there are abuses of power in our government (as there are in all governments), a free press and the seperation of powers that our forefathers so wisely created, makes the likelyhood of a police state as envisioned by Mr. Volks photo, about the same as the sun not rising. But, it does make for good fear mongering. Use your heads, guys, and don't buy into it.

Don
 
It's a slippery slope warning.

When we classify citizens in such a way that they somehow no longer have the protection of the Consititution because the government can say they don't we're at risk of becoming a lawless state subject to the whim of the government.

You don't have to apply it to the well known and well recognized and well connected. The real worry is when the guy down the street goes missing and he's done nothing more than piss off his brother-in-law in SomeOtherCountry who tells a lie to get him pulled in by the government. When there barriers to this type of mistake get pulled down it's danger close for all of us.
 
What does it have to do with guns?

Let's say with we get a 'let's fight to keep our guns nut' out there with the ideas of Tim McVeigh. A couple of truck bombings of JBTs and 'liberal' schools may bring the full apparatus of the government down on anyone who spouted such ideas. Procedures used on 'foreign' terrorists will be applied to American citizens by an antigun administration in a heart. The precedent will be the current procedures.

If you think it won't happen, think of the Japanese-Americans in WWII. In fact, we still get idiots justifying that.

Do you give up rights for expediency of unproven real value?

The blindness of many folks is that the only see the procedure being used on folks they don't like. But then they come for you.
 
The fact that critics of the Patriot Acts, etc., cannot yet point to any serious or widespread abuses is irrelevant. It is the principle and the precedent that matter. A parallel: Why would I care if .50BMG is banned at the Federal level? Doesn't affect me. I'm not a recoil junkie and I can't afford either the rifle or the ammo, anyway. As long as it's not the first step in a larger program of expanded gun control, why should I be concerned? :rolleyes:

There, now the thread has some gun content. :)
 
I don't see what the Nazis did to those who dissagreed with them or didn't fit into their master race plan has to to do with what is happening to the battlefield captives being held in Gitmo.

Sometimes ugly stuff has to happen to protect us from our enemies. These detainies were not draged off the streets of America.
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Sigh.

Do you think that one day in, say, 1935, groups of German villagers suddenly just woke up and said "Hey! I know! Let's be EVIL! That'd be cool!"

No. They followed a path from wanting security to giving up civil liberties to scapegoating to blind, nationalistic fervor and mob mentality excusing atrocities. It's a road to hell, and it's the duty of EVERY American to watch that we don't go down it...because it's a slippery slope, and by the time you'd noticed it had happened, most people either don't want to see it, while the others are helpless to stop it.

Sometimes ugly stuff has to happen to protect us from our enemies.
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Be cautious when fighting monsters, lest ye become a monster yourself.

Also: Yes, no dissidents IN THE SPOTLIGHT have been disappeared. But who knows if Joe Anonymous Citizen was the victim of a clerical error and is now somewhere in a dark cell? They can't have a lawyer, they can't have a trial. You'll never know who they were or what happened to them. And it could happen to YOU, too.

Think about that.
 
Many countries did not have a history of pogroms. Did Germany before WWI - no. However, we know from studies of genocide and social psychology with small groups that social conditions can generate genocidial conditions and the like very quickly in human beings.

The USA is not immune to such factors. Only a very, very, strong bulwark of socialization to respect human rights as paramount can overcome some of our baser instincts. For expediency and bigotry, many will forgo those protections - until they come from them.

Waco and the Japanese - study the behaviorial history of how that happened and the thought processes of the goverment dealing with Davidians. It's a microcosm of what could happen to anyone unless we don't go down the slippery slope.
 
Do you think that one day in, say, 1935, groups of German villagers suddenly just woke up and said "Hey! I know! Let's be EVIL! That'd be cool!"
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Wasn't necessary. The long history of xenophobia and anti-Semitism had already defined away a lot of the distance between good and evil. In a democracy it can't start with governmental erosion of liberties, it starts with the breakdown of social and cultural bridges. Short of social engineering, nothing you can do about that. But heck, Confederate flags ARE cool!
Yes, no dissidents IN THE SPOTLIGHT have been disappeared. But who knows if Joe Anonymous Citizen was the victim of a clerical error and is now somewhere in a dark cell?
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I liked that movie the first time I saw it, when it was called Brazil. Any American that has raised a stink of any significance so much as stubs his toe and every Pulitzer craving journalist in this country is looking for an angle to prove the government did it. So where, exactly, is the upside for the state to bagging some loudmouth and dragging him to Gitmo? It's all bad PR and lost votes (see American Political Parties, Republican). And frothing at the mouth over potential and percieved abuses is a constant crying of wolf that makes people more apathetic when real abuses occur.

Undoubtedly abuses can, and do, occur. Under what system don't they? And what's the cost of being absolutely certain that abuse cannot occur? I'm intensely concerned about the errosion of civil liberties in this country, as much as almost anybody. But I'm just as concerned about the fact that Western society is rapidly losing the will and ability to defend itself. And being civilized takes second place to survival any day in my book.

This particular debate is particularly non-sensical. This is a forum of people that virtually to a person is prepared to violate the most intrinsic right of others in order to perserve their own. You can rationalize it all day, and parse it in terms of when and if a person's right to life was forfeited/voided/'whatever other self absolving phrase you prefer', but when it comes down to brass tacks, you're willing to injure, maim or kill to defend you and yours over him and his. And that's fine, that's natural, that's perfectly rational.

But extrapolate that up to a national level and suddenly there's this most arbitrary of standards; take a guy that will kill you if he had means or opportunity, is maybe planning such, or knows the details of when and who are, and make him uncomfortable or intentionally subject him to pain - outtrageous(unless he's subjected to the pain or injury on the battlefield, then it's moral again). The end of life as we know it. Of course, if that same guy enemy captures one of yours, he'll saw off their head, thus voiding any self interest you might have in providing humane treatment to his comrades. But we'll have the "moral high ground".

And it's not really a slippery slope either, because there's a clear and easy to make distinction between coercion of foreign nationals for the express purpose of extracting information during a declared conflict, and pain/injury inflicted against your own citizens for the purpose of punishment or terror. To the best of my knowledge the latter hasn't been sanctioned by this government, or even contemplated, and there are a ridiculas amount of self regulatory mechanisms in place that would have to be dismantled to get to that point. The WoT has almost nothing to do with any abuses that occur, because before during and after the current administration you'll get a rougher interrogation in a Bronx precinct house for being suspected of shooting a cop than you will in Cuba for shooting at an American soldier, or in Topeka for calling the President a murdering baby eating Hitler. Is any one in this country seriously afraid of criticizing the government? On most of the East coast it'll get you applause, and even deep in Red country where it'll get you smacked in the mouth, it won't be agents of the government doing the smacking.
 
Oleg,

Another suggestion for a poster.

How many of us have been victim of government bureacratic error? Could perhaps show a nonsensical tax form or somesuch with an obvious error, and ask if you wish to trust government bureacratic workers with your freedom..when an error on their part could result in you being locked away with no trial, no lawyer, and no way to speak a single line in your own defense?

We've already seen glaring errors with the TSA's no-fly list, where babies were banned from boarding because their name was similar to a terrorist's name. What happens when it becomes the same for locking up "risks"? What happens if a real terrorist steals your identity? If they take you, thinking you're it, you won't be able to sort it out as ID theft...you're it. No lawyer, no investigation. You're the target.

THAT is what scares me the most, personally.
 
Those who trust in government not to engage in such actions very quickly are again deluding themselves to think they are on the government's side when they come for the folks that the poster doesn't like.

How are gun rights so absolute to posters when they happily will not be absolute on other liberties? That's because they just want to play with guns and are happy to nail those in social groups they don't like. They truly don't understand that you have to protect the liberties of those you don't like to protect your own.
 
By far your best poster yet. Not that I don't like the others, but this one is golden. Perhaps it's the timing of it in the face of the current situation in this country...
 
How are gun rights so absolute to posters when they happily will not be absolute on other liberties? That's because they just want to play with guns and are happy to nail those in social groups they don't like. They truly don't understand that you have to protect the liberties of those you don't like to protect your own.
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My thoughts exactly!

"Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others." -William Allen White
 
Many countries did not have a history of pogroms. Did Germany before WWI - no.
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GEM,

Wrong again. Pogroms and antisemitism were part and parcel of most of Europe's history. Excerpts from The History of Jews in Germany:

"The wild excitement to which the Germans had been driven by exhortations to take the cross first broke upon the Jews, the nearest representatives of an execrated opposition faith. Entire communities, like those of Treves, Speyer, Worms, Mayence, and Cologne, were slain, except where the slayers were anticipated by the deliberate self-destruction of their intended victims. About 12,000 Jews are said to have perished in the Rhenish cities alone between May and July, 1096. These outbreaks of popular passion during the Crusades influenced the future status of the Jews. To salve their consciences the Christians brought accusations against the Jews to prove that they had deserved their fate; imputed crimes, like desecration of the host, ritual murder, poisoning of wells, and treason, brought hundreds to the stake and drove thousands into exile. They were accused of having caused the inroads of the Mongols, even though they suffered equally with the Christians. When the Black Death swept over Europe in 1348-49, the Jews were accused of well-poisoning, and a general slaughter began throughout the Germanic and contiguous provinces, causing a massive exodus east to Poland, where they were warmly greeted by the Polish King, forming the future foundations of the largest Jewish community in Europe.
Nor did the fifteenth century bring any amelioration. What happened in the time of the Crusades happened again. The war upon the Hussite heretics became the signal for the slaughter of the unbelievers. The Jews of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia passed through all the terrors of death, forced baptism, or voluntary immolation for the sake of their faith. When the Hussites made peace with the Church the pope sent the Franciscan monk Capistrano to win the renegades back into the fold and inspire them with loathing for heresy and unbelief; forty-one martyrs were burned in Breslau alone, and all Jews were forever banished from Silesia. The Franciscan monk Bernardinus of Feltre brought a similar fate upon the communities in southern and western Germany. As a consequence of the fictitious confessions extracted under torture from the Jews of Trent, the populace of many cities, especially of Ratisbon, fell upon the Jews and massacred them.

The end of the fifteenth century, which brought a new epoch for the Christian world, brought no relief to the Jews. They remained the victims of a religious hatred that ascribed to them all possible evils. When the established Church, threatened in its spiritual power in Germany and elsewhere, prepared for its conflict with the culture of the Renaissance, one of its most convenient points of attack was rabbinic literature. At this time, as once before in France, Jewish converts spread false reports in regard to the Talmud. But an advocate of the book arose in the person of Johannes Reuchlin, the German humanist, who was the first one in Germany to include the Hebrew language among the humanities. His opinion, though strongly opposed by the Dominicans and their followers, finally prevailed when the humanistic Pope Leo X. permitted the Talmud to be printed in Italy."

Again, my point is, as American's we do not have a history of this kind of behavior, and as such, to fear that by passing a law designed to protect us, we will suddenly act in a manner entirely inconsistant with commonly held American values is ludicrous. Some of you guys need to get out more often. Educate yourself. Go to another country with a different culture, where a different language is spoken. See that the many things you take for granted are either nonexistant or done quite differently in another part of the world. Of course, I grant you, it is much easier to sit on your duff and fill your head with conspiracy theories and theoretical threats.

Don
 
Wow, I never knew how strong the anti-government vibe ran on this board.

I'm optimistic - first because we still elect most of our government, second because each member of government, and the people who carry out its demands, are people like you and me. Do they sometimes screw up? Yes. Are they called on it by the US taxpayers and voters? Yes, like Waco, like the Japanese internment fiasco, like Ruby Ridge, etc. Often, actually in most cases, people answer for their abuse of power.

I don't want the government to usurp individual liberties, and I agree some of the manners in which we're fighting domestic terrorism are cause for concern, but it's not death squads and internment camps on the horizon. If you truly see that, believe that, well I guess you have a very sad and depressing outlook about your fellow Americans. It must suck to live with such a black heart about your country.
 
The convenient thing about our position is that we can afford to be wrong 7 days a week and twice on Sunday...the scary thing about yours is that you can afford to be wrong only once.
 
I guess you have a very sad and depressing outlook about your fellow Americans. It must suck to live with such a black heart about your country.
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Last time I looked, my country is made up of humans, with all of their faults, just like all of the rest. That's why the Founding Fathers set up a government of Law, not men, with all of the Constitutional guarantees of rights and with checks and balances to guard against tyranny of any faction. Because they knew that men (using the term as the FFs did) cannot be trusted to govern in a way to infallably protect our rights. I have a realistic heart about the country, I believe, as did the Founders.
 
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