What the HELL is going on?

[weswilson]

I listen to a lot of talk radio... I watch and read a LOT of news... and for the life of me, I still can't figure out how Americans can possibly believe that Habeus Corpus and our system of checks and balances are somehow EXPENDABLE. It honestly makes me sick to my stomach... so pardon me for enjoying Olbermanns biting diatribe on its demise.

I hear Hannity and the rest babble on a daily basis about how Islamofacism will be the END of America and our way of life. I have yet to hear one realistic assesment of how this goal can be achieved that does not include us surrendering our very way of life in the face of fear. THEY can't destroy us... only we can. They can kill our people. They can destroy our homes. But only WE can kill America. And we're taking steps to accomplish that goal.

Please... please... PLEASE... right or left wing has nothing to do with this. This has everything to do with Liberty and what our nation stands for.

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[girlvinyl.livejournal.com]

As they say... societies are not murdered... they suicide.

[weswilson]

I am scared... more so than ever before. I just can't imagine why people want to surrender their chances for a fair trial.

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

"People" don't. Those who jikingly represent the People do. Somehow.

[girlvinyl.livejournal.com]

We're well on our way to full out fascism. The lifespan for democracies is typically around 200 years. We are on borrowed time and I don't know of any way to fight the cycle.

[weswilson]

I think we'll be fine if we can get out of this dogmatic spiral of irresponsible partisanship and political posturing. I'm just worried about this particular issue for the people whose lives it could destroy till we get our shit together again.

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

Wow. As an avid reader of the Herberts and their Dune worlds, I had hoped that the world(s) would blow eachother to bits thousands of years after my death. Just the other day, I watched "The Day After". No Corpus? Fuuuuck. Ding Donnng. Who IS it? It's the NSA. Can I help you? Yes, you may turn around and drop to your knees. BLAM.

[weswilson]

oui

[gremlinkin.livejournal.com]

I told a friend whom I work with about this and his response was. "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to worry about.", and " Just because governments have abused this level of power before doesn't mean that this one will."

[grandmofhelsing.livejournal.com]

I pine for the Good Old Days^TM when the American Right was worried that Bill Clinton might have misused some raw FBI files. We're stuck with a situation where the party in power excuses the very outrages they would have railed against when they were out of power. And it's both sickening and, as far as I'm concerned, sadly expected.

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

There was a great line in "I, Claudius" in which a Roman senator, loyal to the republic, tells Sejanus (the right hand of Tiberius) that he is a symptom, rather than a cause - "the putrefaction that comes after [the] death [of the republic]."

The same could be said of Dubya (and many of his predecessors), since our republic effectively died in 1865. Habeus corpus has been suspended before (and much more widely), for equally unnecessary and unjustified reasons. Above all else, Americans (including the embarrassingly ignorant Olbermann) should understand that Bush is a relatively minor tyrant, paling in comparison to the depradations of Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman and LBJ, among others. After all, no legislators of judges have been arrested, we have no military conscription, there is no official censorship, etc. Bush might crack the bottom ten list of presidents, but could never crack the bottom five.

Most of what the federal government does is unconstitutional; the outrage from some quarters, while justified and shared by me, is far too selective.

[porovaara.livejournal.com]

have no military conscription

Are you entirely sure about that? Join once and you can never leave military sounds an awful lot like a form of conscription. No official censorship... on what? This administration has been guilty of censorship in various forms by power-push proxy, removal of government funds for dissenters (see global warming) and trying to stong arm former military personel who simply called it like they saw it. This administration, frankly is a huge step backwards for America, not because of its failures but because of the lack of focus on America. We've gotten so sidetracked we haven't been paying any attention to our real homeland problems.

Bush wouldn't break the list of bottom 5 presidents, this is true, there have been much worse. Notice the phrasing, "have been". It's 2006, we are allowed to raise our expectations of what we expect out of government. This constant pointing to the past is extremely limiting. The past shouldn't be our metric, instead it should be our hopes for the future.

I'll be glad when California finally secedes.

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

"Join once and you can never leave" does sound a lot like conscription, but no one is forced to join, and I don't believe that the specific terms of enlistment are changed during the enlistment. More potential enlistees really do need to read the fine print (and a lot more history), because they don't realize that in the case of an actual military conflict, they can be held for the duration.

I'm using censorship strictly in the governmental suppression sense, and its absence means that you are free to publish what you can afford to publish. I don't believe that there should be guarantees of actual access to any particular news medium or audience. If there were heavy taxes on newspapers and journalists that didn't exist on other businesses, that would be tantamount to censorship. The partisan criticism of dissenting retired officers and servicemen is a disgrace, but that's not censorship, either. The fact that one may face career problems because of what one says is a fact of life (often unpleasant) with which we all have to deal.

This administration is a step backwards, and I agree that most of the problems stem from unwarranted interference in international affairs. However, there have been severe failures domestically as well. Federal spending is far too high, Bush has barely used his veto, and Congressional Republicans have lost what little financial discipline they may have had (and it was overrated; we libertarians laughed when we heard the phrase "Republican Revolution" in the 90s).

Perhaps future generations will add Bush to the list of mistakes from which we can learn, but I am dubious. After all, Lincoln is still revered by almost everyone. Former President Clinton once said, quite erroneously, that you can't love your country and hate its government. The loyal opposition rightly disagreed, but now that they're in power, they seem to agree!

There's never been a secession movement I haven't supported, including the one that failed in 1865, so good luck to the Golden State. However, it's worth noting that the federal government hasn't taken kindly to the notion. :-)

[dunce-at-large.livejournal.com]

As Gore Vidal noted in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, "the American people can no longer directly influence their government."

[orangecone.livejournal.com]

You should read what one of my representatives wrote to me about that very subject. He can rest assured he won't get my vote.

[wholovesthesun.livejournal.com]

i keep hearing these things on NPR and i get scared.

i get even more afraid when i hear people trying to defend it. they say things like: "i don't think we should give terrorists the same rights as everyone else".

WAIT A DAMN MINUTE. WHO THE HELL CONVICTED THEM OF BEING A TERRORIST?

Don't people realize that as soon as we start eroding people's inalienalbe rights (which - by the way aren't limited to CITIZENS of the U.S.) then our whole system of government will come crashing down too?

le sigh. i guess it has happened before (the confinement of japanese-americans during WWII, etc.)

[inspectorjury.livejournal.com]

He is good. I mean that in the best of ways. I have yet to not be stirred by his reports. We as a people can not allow fear to be the overriding factor on how we relate to the rest of the world, yet that is exactly what we are doing. I am not a brave man. I simply don't believe myself to be important enough to be a target. But, even if I were, I would refuse to give up the smallest of my freedoms to save myself from being the end result of an terrorist plot. How can we subject our youth to being in harms way while closing our borders out of fear? It just doesn't wash with me and never has. I am so very glad there are voices like this man's to raise doubt this administration's actions.

[dunce-at-large.livejournal.com]

My main news sources are literary magazines like Harper's (liberal) and the Atlantic (independent). They are so far removed from the flash-in-the-pan ooga-booga splattershot news of FOX, CNN, most teevee and many internet sources.
There's very little "breaking news" - the publications come out monthly - but there's always cogent analysis about these little things like history, sociology, economy and and religion going on about the world messily as usual.
But what American has time for that? Hint: I think we *make* time for what is important to us, one way or another.
And our values have certainly changed. Over a million words in the Left Behind series of books, and not one reference to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Left Behind

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Blimey, have you read them all? (Do they prefer 'Blessed are the cheesemakers', which is pehaps a beatitude too far, and means you can dispense with the actual line.)

[cjets.livejournal.com]

god, what an idiotecha.