Pleasant thought of the day: fatherland security

[Manedwolf]

Are they called on it by the US taxpayers and voters? Yes

Really. Try going into a pre-vetted Unitary Executive Pep Rally and even show off a T-shirt that says "I disagree with current policies." Just try it. I dare you.

Watch what happens to you. Oh, you'll be released...but only after being made to feel like you as a peon have crossed a sacrosanct line and offended royalty, and you better not do it again, or THEY will be watching.

A harmless, but just annoyed man in New Orleans shouted "F- you, Mr. Cheney" down the street at Dick Cheney, then went into his house. Now, a real man would have turned, let the Secret Service decide if he was a threat, and ANSWERED him, asked him why he'd said that and what he was angry about. Instead, the SS goons were sent in to handcuff and question the guy as a "threat". For speaking his mind...he didn't like Dick Cheney, and Dick Cheney is not a holy figure or royalty, he was supposed to be an ordinary man answerable to those who pay his salary...US.

Or for that matter, try to get a meeting with your congressional representative with anything less than a $50K lobbyist check in hand to get their attention, and see how far you get.

They've entirely forgotten who they work for.

 

[junyo]

Try going into a pre-vetted Unitary Executive Pep Rally and even show off a T-shirt that says "I disagree with current policies." Just try it. I dare you.

On public property, with press present, I guarantee nothing would happen unless you act like an idiot.

Or for that matter, try to get a meeting with your congressional representative with anything less than a $50K lobbyist check in hand to get their attention, and see how far you get.

My senator's a downright bargain at $1200 for a dinner and and introduction.

A harmless, but just annoyed man in New Orleans shouted "F- you, Mr. Cheney" down the street at Dick Cheney, then went into his house. Now, a real man would have turned, let the Secret Service decide if he was a threat, and ANSWERED him, asked him why he'd said that and what he was angry about. Instead, the SS goons were sent in to handcuff and question the guy as a "threat". For speaking his mind...he didn't like Dick Cheney, and Dick Cheney is not a holy figure or royalty, he was supposed to be an ordinary man answerable to those who pay his salary...US.

Then I guess I'm not a real man, because I wouldn't answer some crackpot that shouts an expletive at me and then runs. And I'd view him as a potential threat too. That doesn't seem like the ideal way to initiate an informed debate as to disagreements over policy. It does seem like a verbal slap, designed to provoke but communicating nothing. How would a "real man" have engaged in substantive conversation after such a devastating opening salvo of logic and wit? "Well f-- you too!"?

And where's the torture, or even the imprisonment, in exchange for political speech?

...but only after being made to feel like you as a peon have crossed a sacrosanct line and offended royalty, and you better not do it again, or THEY will be watching.

Oh, so your feelings would be hurt? Because you went to a room full of people you knew would disagree with your views, made a scene, and got the bum's rush? Well I guess that's the going equivalent of torture these days.

 

[Mr. Ouchie]

Great work Oleg!


---
I feel the people who deny the 'slippery slope' should have to take a little ride down it...

 

[USSR]

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

swingset,

The loony left is WELL represented on this site.

Don

 

[STAGE 2]

I understand the principle, but I don't think this is applicable to anything that is going on today. Habeas has NOT been suspended, citizens are not subject to military tribunals, and dissenters are not being rounded up and shipped off to gulags.

When Cindy Sheehan suddenly disappears then I'll get worried... or happy... or both

 

[swingset]

I understand the principle, but I don't think this is applicable to anything that is going on today. Habeas has NOT been suspended, citizens are not subject to military tribunals, and dissenters are not being rounded up and shipped off to gulags.

Shhh.....don't go ruining the paranoia party we have going here, some guys here have spent a good portion of their day assembling their ammo-can forts and they've donned their Che shirts and full protest regalia.

If I really thought this country was spiraling towards what is being intimated here, I guess I'd get the hell out.....or work to change it instead of crying on a gun site.

I'll bet Noam Chomsky would love this, seeing his poison seep into a gun discussion board.

 

[Srigs]

Very powerful! I like it.

 

[Johnny_Yuma]

This is probably

the most irrelevant and absolutely paranoid/crazy piece of work you've posted on this site to date. I say "probably" only because I'm certain that I haven't seen all of them.

If the U.S. is the great evil you make it out to be, please do all of us a favor and go back home where I'm certain things were much nicer.

JY

 

[Sindawe]

I risk to differ.

This is probably
the most irrelevant and absolutely paranoid/crazy piece of work you've posted on this site to date. I say "probably" only because I'm certain that I haven't seen all of them.

If the U.S. is the great evil you make it out to be, please do all of us a favor and go back home where I'm certain things were much nicer.

JY

Uhhmmm... No. Oleg, please do us all a great service and remain in this land and nation.

This one you should most definitely available for purchase. Indeed, I think this would make a superb flyer/handbill.

Habeas has NOT been suspended, citizens are not subject to military tribunals, and dissenters are not being rounded up and shipped off to gulags.

Not yet as I read the recently pass legislation, but we are naught but a riders worth of legislation away from such.

 

[slicknickns]

You can't trust the U.S. government though. They have made good on some of their promises though, but still never trust them.

 

[American By Blood]

Because, as we all know, the NYT editorial staff was put up against a wall last week. John Kerry and Howard Dean whisked off to Gitmo and given the jumper cable special.

That's because none of the people you mentioned are dissidents. They may be the current administation's opposition, but they're still willing to play the financial-democratic politics game and hold to Enlightenment-era ideology. Liberals and Democrats are simply as close as a nation steeped in plutocracy, individualism, and universalism gets to a loyal opposition.

Do a little research on the persecution of real dissidents in recent American history. Just about any group that departed too much from the center (to the left or to the right) and achieved a modicum of success has been monitored, disrupted, and subjected to illegal harrassment. High profile activists have ended up dead and in prison for very sketchy reasons. If our authorities have behaved this way when it was very clearly against the law, what's going to stop them now that they have greater legal lattitude under which to quash dissent?

 

[denfoote]

Ein Reich.

Ein Volk.

Und ein Fuhrer!!!

Seig Heil!!!

NSDAP

Think about it!!!

 

[max popenker]

Again, my point is, as American's we do not have a history of this kind of behavior, and as such,

Well, sorry to interfere, but do you know what happened to most native Americans back in 18th and 19th centuries?
I think in other countries it is called genocide, so, actually, American society, at least historically, is prepared for a downfall not worse than any major European nation.
Each nation has its own skeletons in the closet, and it is advisable to remember them, to avoid repeating old mistakes.

 

[enfield]

A little too paranoid for my taste.

 

[Hutch]

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.

That's going on my sig line.

 

[junyo]

That's because none of the people you mentioned are dissidents. They may be the current administation's opposition, but they're still willing to play the financial-democratic politics game and hold to Enlightenment-era ideology. Liberals and Democrats are simply as close as a nation steeped in plutocracy, individualism, and universalism gets to a loyal opposition.

When you can't make your argument fit within the parameters, redefine the parameters. Now the free press and the main oppo party aren't "real" dissidents. I'm sure Václav Havel and the anti-government journalists in Zimbabwe will be relieved to hear that they weren't/aren't disidents.

A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively opposes an established opinion, policy, or structure. The term is most often used to refer to political dissidents, usually against authoritarian regimes or established constitutional order (although there are rare uses of the phrase philosophical dissident). Political dissidents use non-violent means of political dissent, including voicing criticism of the government or dominating ideology, or protesting individual actions by the authorities.

Do a little research on the persecution of real dissidents in recent American history. Just about any group that departed too much from the center (to the left or to the right) and achieved a modicum of success has been monitored, disrupted, and subjected to illegal harrassment.

And you should do some research on the persecution of dissidents throughout American and world history. People were pretty openly abused in the streets, tarred and feathered for opposing previous wars in this country, and many state and local governments used straight up terror tactics to silence their opponents. Don't get me started on J. Edgar Hoover. People in the US today, who oppose the government, have never been more free to voice their opinions, no matter how stupid they or their opinions are.

And the fact of the matter is, simple logic dictates that the further you veer from the mainstream, the less friends and the more enemies you have; you're opposing more and more people's interest, real or percieved, and people tend to react badly to that. Can you show documented examples of these moderately successful, 'real' dissidents being "monitored, disrupted, and subjected to illegal harrassment" by the state as opposed to non-state actors?

 

[Manedwolf]

That doesn't seem like the ideal way to initiate an informed debate as to disagreements over policy. It does seem like a verbal slap, designed to provoke but communicating nothing.

Ironic, since Dick himself used that very expletive on the Senate floor against Senator Patrick Leahy. I believe that's precisely why that man chose that term. For Cheney to use it resulted in no repercussions. For the man to use it resulted in being handcuffed by the Secret Service.

Interesting.

The loony left is WELL represented on this site.

As is the "*smack* Thank you sir, may I have another" extreme right.

Amazing how daring to disagree with the administration and calling them on gross violations of basic American principles and ethics automatically makes you a "leftist". I wasn't aware that expanding government alphabet agencies like inflating Zeppelins, trampling states' rights, trashing the Constitution and shoving federal power down everyone's throats while spending like drunken sailors were conservative principles. Seems to me rather the opposite.

 

[NineseveN]

Wow, looney left? Go back home (to Oleg no less)? What's with the name-calling?

 

[ec-10]

Hey junyo, are you saying that the idea of having to pay to talk to our representatives is acceptable or are you just having fun with the other guy?

Have you seen the "protest zones" that they set up now for a presidential visit? I have seen this first hand (I wasn't protesting). The people who left the zone were threatened with arrest and were basically bullied back by the police.

 

[USSR]

Wow, looney left? Go back home (to Oleg no less)?

NineseveN,

If the shoe fits, wear it. As an American citizen without prior citizenship in any foreign country, I am home. Having seen the results in other countries, of the kind of thinking that some of the posters here espouse, I am just trying to keep this country from going down that path.

Don

 

[chaim]

If the U.S. is the great evil you make it out to be, please do all of us a favor and go back home where I'm certain things were much nicer.

JY

Johnny_Yuma is so right. It is downright un-American to use your free speech rights to point out perceived wrongs perpetrated by our government or to oppose policies of our current leader. Being foreign born, and having the nerve to criticize, Mr. Volk should indeed go "home" to where he came from (not stay at his home here that he has done so much to try to make better since his current opposition to certain sacred ideas make him un-American). :banghead:

 

[roo_ster]

Once one gets by the self-nullifying Nazi reference, the fact that torture by our military & intel officers has been clarifyingly outlawed, and no dissidents have been rounded up, the poster hits the nail on the head.

 

[STAGE 2]

Johnny_Yuma is so right. It is downright un-American to use your free speech rights to point out perceived wrongs perpetrated by our government or to oppose policies of our current leader.

Whether it is impolite, improper, or incorrect, JY has just as much free speech here to criticize as Oleg does to post the poster. (Please don't get into the whole its a private board thing, I'm speaking in generalities here)

I always find it funny when Person A says something, Person B says Person A is an idiot and then Person C starts yelling free speech. If there is going to be free speech then Person B has every right to state his opinion.

 

[NineseveN]

USSR,

Baloney. Naturalized citizens have no right more or less than a native citizen, Oleg has the very same right to free speech as you do whether you like his message or not. If you dislike his POV or the man himself, perhaps you should reconsider your relationship on this forum, because it's hypocritical to vomit up such rubbish in telling an American to leave the country and go somewhere else because they don't happen to trust our government but then use a forum that he provides to us free of charge as a common meeting ground to discuss and educate ourselves and others on the Second Amendment and civil liberties. I'm all with being able to criticize the folks that run this or any other board, but some of the comments are way out of line and seem to stem from a lack of an argument that can stand on its own and an absence of character and integrity on the part of those making the comments.

People can criticize this particular type of message all they want (whether it's Oleg making it or someone else), but when that criticism illustrates a void in one's understanding of this country, why it was fought for and created and why the founding documents were constructed and worded as they are and the one being criticized obviously gets it, I'd rather have one of him than 5 of the rest of you in this country any day of the week.


As for the rest of the gripers:

Maybe all of the so-called 'loonies' should go and make our own country where we're not only free to criticize and be suspicious of federal powers, but where our founders and our documents of law encourage such things...


Oh wait, they did...you're in it. Who let you people in?


Feel free to go back to your name-calling and childish antics, because that message is sure to get your point across and win the argument.

 

[.41Dave]

It is disturbing to see how many frogs think those other frogs who try warn them are crazy or paranoid. After all, the water is Soooo much more comfortable now that it has gotten a bit warmer...