In its endless quest for dominance and power, the federal government has never "let a crisis go to waste." While there is not now, nor has there ever been, a need for a Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The horrendous attacks on 9/11/01, gave them excuse they needed.
Welcome to post-free, Police State U.S.A.
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. -- James Madison
Living in an Occupied Country
Twice this year I have had a spooky sense of living in an occupied country. The first was the morning after Obamacare was passed, in defiance of ancient understandings of what American politicians are supposed to do when the country has asked them to back off. The second was this morning, when I read the first installment of the Washington Post’s series on the world of intelligence that has been built since 9/11. -- Charles Murray
In what was once "the land of the free," Americans are now being tracked, traced, and databased at an alarming rate. We have drones flying the "friendly skies" to monitor citizens, U.S. passports with GPS chips, traffic cameras, RFID "proximity cards," sound surveillance, biometric authentication schemes, DNA databases, microchips, facial recognition, airport scanners, and our personal data is now collected from the censored Internet, among countless other schemes.
The best part is that you get to pay for it all too. Yes, for them to keep tabs on you!
According to the excellent series in the Washington Post, "Top Secret America," our police state costs taxpayers over $75 billion per year. A figure that doesn't even include budgets so secretive that no one knows how much it all costs. Knowing that our country is on the verge of complete financial collapse too, one has to wonder ... Are politicians and bureaucrats really that stupid? Or are they intentionally trying to destroy us?
And for all you "security hawks" out there, who emotionally trust the government (there's no logical reason to). It matters not if you think you "have nothing to hide," because you still commit 3 felonies per day!
As John Whitehead, author of "Drones Over America: Tyranny at Home," told World Net Daily:
You think a UAV won't be interested in you, innocent of any conceivable (even by the CIA) terrorist connections? Do not underestimate an all-seeing, suspicious government. "State police," writes Whitehead, "hope to send them up to capture images of speeding cars' license plates." And, in 2007, "insect-like drones were seen hovering over political rallies in New York and Washington, seemingly spying on protesters."
Remember too, this is the same government who claims that Tea Party activists, pro-lifers, constitutionalists, and people with Ron Paul bumper stickers, are likely to be "domestic terrorists."
It's funny how trusting the government works, isn't it? Especially when you consider the domestic groups most targeted by the DHS, happen to be comprised of the same "rightwing" folks who champion themselves as "security hawks," and support the DHS!
Always be careful what you wish for ... especially when it comes to the government.
Follow the Money
Yeah, I know ... President Dwight Eisenhower and USMC Major General Smedley D. Butler were crazy "conspiracy theorists" who didn't have a clue. Besides, you read Bill Kristol every day, a man whose credentials are far superior to those 2 numb-nuts (not to mention Eisenhower and Butler sound way too much like that lunatic Ron Paul).
Echoing the Founding Fathers in his farewell address, President Eisenhower famously warned the American people about a "military-industrial complex." Likewise, in his booklet by the same name, General Butler boldly declared, "War is a Racket!"
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
War is a racket, as economist Robert Higgs explains:
Virtually everyone the reporters consulted told them in effect that “the Bush administration and Congress gave agencies more money than they were capable of responsibly spending.” To be sure, they received more than they could spend responsibly, but not more than they were eager to spend irresponsibly. After all, it’s not as if they were spending their own money.
Why would these hundreds of organizations and contracting companies be willing to take gigantic amounts of the taxpayers’ money when everyone agrees that the money cannot be spent sensibly and that the system already in place cannot function effectively or efficiently to attain its ostensible purpose? The question answers itself. It’s loot for the taking, and there has been no shortage of takers. Indeed, these stationary bandits continue to demand more money each year.
And for what? The announced goal is to identify terrorists and eliminate them or prevent them from carrying out their nefarious acts. This is simultaneously a small task and an impossible one. It is small because the number of persons seeking to carry out a terrorist act of substantial consequence against the United States and in a position to do so cannot be more than a handful ...
The sheer idiocy of paying legions of twenty-something grads of Harvard and Yale—youngsters who cannot speak Arabic, Farsi, Pashtun, or any of the other languages of the areas they purport to be analyzing and know practically nothing of the history, customs, folkways, and traditions of these places ... is akin to sending a blind person to find a needle inside a maze buried somewhere in a hillside. That the massive effort is utterly uncoordinated and scarcely able to communicate one part’s “findings” to another only strengthens the conclusion that the goal is not stopping terrorism, but getting the taxpayers’ money and putting it into privileged pockets ...
What we see here is not really an “intelligence” or counterterrorism operation at all. It’s a rip-off, plain and simple, fed by irrational fear and continually stoked by the government plunderers who are exercising the power and raking in the booty to “fight terrorism.”
Butler and Eisenhower were right all along, as were Jefferson, Washington and Madison. Please listen to these wise and experienced men, who also told you the truth. Ignore the neoconservatives with utopian (Wilsonian) schemes, it is they who don't have a clue.
You can't have both limited government and perpetual war, it's a choice between one or the other. Because as Randolph Bourne warned long ago, "war is the health of the state."
And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. -- Major General Smedley D. Butler
I'm rediscovering American History this summer. I was fortunate to have a history teacher who defined revisionism and taught us how to identify it. But I'm finding out a lot about American History that never made it to the textbooks. Working on a post called war and pretext - trying to make sense of it all for myself.
It's ironic that both hippies and uber-conservatives such as myself can both cite Gen. Butler with pride, maybe there is a middle ground in America that will shatter the false left/right paradigm.
It's because today's right is a lot different from the Old Right. The left has changed quite a bit too.
The more I see things, the more I realize that this is a great truth.
Matt, it's so true that it's scary. As I've told you before, I was once pro-war too, but as things didn't go as we were told and lies were piled upon lies, I started rethinking it all and studying history, and our Founders were right all along. Same with Eisenhower, Robert A. Taft, Russell Kirk, FA Hayek, Ludwig von Mises ... even Goldwater and Reagan would be considered "doves" by today's standards.
There's no innocence once in get in bed with the government either, and a lot of big corporations rely on and profit from war. Then look at every collectivist/tyrannical regime throughout history ... they were always about war. Even in America during the Progressive Era, it was progressives who constantly pushed for war.
Personally I don't care for labels even though I consider myself more libertarian in political philosophy and yes that too is a label. The left/right illusion is simply that an illiusion create by those he need division. When most Americans agree on 80 percent of the issues it does mean there is room for progress.
Left and right would make sense if it hadn't been convoluted by the parties. But that's life. It's also why I try to focus on being against the state, not just against Democrats.
I would like to see our soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible. History tells us we can't win in afghanistan.
I'm neither left or right, I just hate the commie / terrorist left more. The right needs to get rid of the old and in with the new. For all you Bush haters > OBAMA is like BUSH on speed..... I also live in a police state and I'm not to happy with that either. In short, A Asian man walking his dog bite me, a cop seen the whole thing and asked me for ID and let the Asian guy go without even saying a word to him. WTF is that bull? I see that as an attack on my white a$$.