Cindy Sheehan is a person with whom I disagree on a number of points, but at least she has begun to realize that Bushco is just a particularity malignant and repulsive symptom of a much larger disease that has been brewing in this country for a very long time. While the Bush regime has drawn a great deal of attention through their aggressive and overt methods, their actions and attitudes are not unique in the halls of American government, nor are they a partisan issue.
Our government has been encroaching upon our personal freedoms at a slow and steady pace for years. Few of the American people have noticed this creeping tyranny, and many have even unwittingly welcomed it, willingly ceding undue authority over their lives to the state...most especially if the law is billed by its proponents as one controlling the behavior of people with whom they disagree or just generally dislike, never thinking it through far enough to realize how those new laws can be turned against them later.
While nearly everyone has complained from time to time about one or two of the restrictive regulations imposed on us...the ones that affect their lives directly....few seem to have a clear view of the overall picture...the way that each of these thousands of little statutes, regulations, laws, executive orders, etc...have woven into a web of state control over the lives of us all.
We seem to have learned nothing from the lessons of history, dismissing the suffering of the countless people who have gone down this road before. The route to tyranny is clearly marked if you study history even superficially, yet we continue to pass those road signs mile after mile without even a pause to consider their implications.
While this has been a fearsome picture when taken as whole for quite some time, the in your face escalation of tyranny that has been apparent over the past several years seems much more ominous. The very fact that those in power don't seem to feel the need to disguise their crimes and abuse of power signifies that they are quite confident that our society no longer has the power nor the will to defend our freedom effectively.
I am VERY afraid that they may be right.
Excerpt of an article by Cindy Sheehan:
Of course the present state of our nation is not as overtly oppressive as the government of Myanmar (Burma), presently where a Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi has been under house arrest there for years, but we who have been paying attention to events can see that America is on the precipice of serious fascism and only the brave actions of Americans committed to freedom, democracy and peace will help stem the tide of this rising neo-fascism that doesn’t march through our streets in goose-step and swastikas, but is creeping into our lives like cat’s paws.
According to Chris Rowthorn, in his brilliant article, When America Went Fascist, we went fascist on December 11, 2000 when the Supreme Court appointed George as our unelected, un-democratic and illegal President. Although it is easy and tempting to blame everything on BushCo, this is about the only assertion that I disagree with in his article.
What about during the Clinton regime? Does anyone remember Elian Gonzales or The Branch Davidians in Waco? Let’s go back further. What about when Truman dropped to WMD on hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Japan? What about Korea? Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex? What about the Gulf of Tonkin? What about Watergate? What about Panama? Kosovo? Nicaragua? Free trade agreements that hurt workers in all countries that are involved in them and what about the abuse of language in this country: Patriot Act; Homeland Security; Clear Water and Clean Skies—and the No Child Left Behind Act that leaves every child behind and is just a funnel to the recruiter’s office?
There are just a few measures that we can use to stop this slide and Rowthorn articulates what has become an important part of my platform. Only vote for candidates that promise the following things…for president, or any other federal elective offices:
* Repeal the Patriot Act
* Repeal No Child Left Behind
* Scale down the Department of Homeland Security and rename it so it loses its Nazi
tone and is brought under civilian control.
* Restore habeas corpus and close all torture camps by repealing the Military Commissions’ Act.
* Repeal all contracts with paid mercenary killer companies.
* Restore the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
* Repeal all BushCo-Presidential directives (especially Directive 51) and review all laws that contain signing statements.
* Restore the 4th Amendment by enforcing warrants for spying on Americans.
* Impeach Bush and Cheney-post presidency so they can’t receive federal benefits.
* Bring all troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and review military needs for other bases around the world.
* Repeal all free trade agreements.
* Kick AIPAC and other lobbyists out of the halls of Congress where they have no business.
One of the most profound ways we can stop this descent into fascism is by impeaching, removing from office and incarcerating George Bush and Dick Cheney, et al. I am very skeptical of a complicit Congress, Inc doing anything about them in this term. I am also very skeptical of a “professional” and fascist military leadership taking their oath of service seriously and above their corporate-military allegiance to the Executive Branch recently and so tellingly revealed by General Betray-Us, so a military coup is out of the question and has the tricky element of becoming a military dictatorship.
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