Isilion

. . . just so I can vote for this guy.

The Patriot Act Four Years Later

July 25, 2005
by Ron Paul

Congress passed legislation last week that reauthorizes the Patriot Act for another 10 years. . .

One prominent Democratic opined on national television that “most of the 170 page Patriot Act is fine,” but that it needs some fine tuning. He then stated that he opposed the ten-year reauthorization bill on the grounds that Americans should not have their constitutional rights put on hold for a decade. His party’s proposal, however, was to reauthorize the Patriot Act for only four years, as though a shorter moratorium on constitutional rights would be acceptable! So much for the opposition party and its claim to stand for civil liberties.

Unfortunately, some of my congressional colleagues referenced the recent London bombings during the debate, insinuating that opponents of the Patriot Act somehow would be responsible for a similar act here at home. I won’t even dignify that slur with the response it deserves. Let’s remember that London is the most heavily monitored city in the world, with surveillance cameras recording virtually all public activity in the city center. British police officials are not hampered by our 4th amendment nor our numerous due process requirements. In other words, they can act without any constitutional restrictions, just as supporters of the Patriot Act want our own police to act. Despite this they were not able to prevent the bombings, proving that even a wholesale surveillance society cannot be made completely safe against determined terrorists. Congress misses the irony entirely. The London bombings don’t prove the need for the Patriot Act, they prove the folly of it.

The Patriot Act, like every political issue, boils down to a simple choice: Should we expand government power, or reduce it? This is the fundamental political question of our day, but it’s quickly forgotten by politicians who once promised to stand for smaller government. Most governments, including our own, tend to do what they can get away with rather than what the law allows them to do. All governments seek to increase their power over the people they govern, whether we want to recognize it or not. The Patriot Act is a vivid example of this. Constitutions and laws don’t keep government power in check; only a vigilant populace can do that.

Read the full article at www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2005/tst072505.htm

John Locke says: “[T] he earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men.” I don’t know how much weight I or anyone else would or should put on his contention “[I]it is very clear that God, as King David says (Psalm 115. 16), ‘has given the earth to the children of men,’ given it to mankind in common,” and I’d argue about whether or not living things, at least those with central nervous systems, can be owned, but insofar as the concept of property is acknowleged, I accept that it was all originally “in common” and that its division and appropriation as individual or private is the core question of economics.

For me, an aging hippie boomer, to ever think I would be admiring a Republican congressman from Texas would have been, well, unthinkable.

The requirement that law enforcement demonstrate probable cause before a judge preserves the Founders’ system of checks and balances that protects against one branch gathering too much power. The Founders recognized that one of the chief dangers to liberty was the concentration of power in a few hands, which is why they carefully divided power among the three branches. I would remind those of my colleagues who claim that we must set aside the constitutional requirements during war that the founders were especially concerned about the consolidation of power during times of war and national emergences.

www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul264.html

The United States and Great Britain used hundreds of tons of Depleted Uranium in the first Gulf War, and they have used thousands of tons in this current war. (A dose the size of an M&M is potentially fatal.) During the first war they were used primarily in the desert, now they are used in the cities. In the area around Basrah where DU was used extensively in the first war, the incidence of childhood leukemia has increased by 700 percent, overall cancers by 1000 percent, birth deformities by 2000 percent. People also experience immunodeficiency disorders, AIDS-like syndromes, kidney and liver dysfunction, neurological problems, rashes, vision degradation, sexual dysfunction, and psychological disorders – to name a few of the problems. In effect, the people of Iraq are suffering as though they are the victims of a nuclear war. They are. The United States has inflicted a low level, slow motion nuclear war on the people and country of Iraq.

www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/shetterly3.html

I sent a message to one of the authors of this article and said:

I just read your article about DU on LewRockwell.com. You have written a damning indictment of the cabal who have hijacked our government. I suppose I should have asked first, but I sent a copy of your article to the same list of folks as my aunt who since the beginning of the war has been sending the most mindless neocon rants in support of every fantasy in the twisted mind of President George W. Bush to me and a couple of hundred poor souls who happen to be in her address book. I hope you don’t mind.

Somewhere in here, www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer-arch.html, Butler Shaffer talks about straws and camel’s backs. Well, as I read your article my camel’s back broke. I’m ready to start tossing tea into the harbor. History is going to judge us harshly. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that both what we did to the natives of this continent and our shame in ever allowing the institution of slavery in the country pale in insignificance to what we are doing right now not only Iraq but to the entire world. I am ashamed to be an American and feel impotent rage against something that seems totally beyond my ability to fight. I am on the verge of giving up hope for us as a people and a nation.

Sorry to be dumping this all on you, but you struck something deep in me and I wanted you to know it. Your conscience is heartening.

As I said in that message I am ready to start throwing tea into the harbor. If anyone reads this and feels the way I feel I’d love to hear from you. I’m feeling very alone these days.

While reading an entry in The Arthurian Encyclopedia about a poem called Alliterative Morte Arthure I came across this:

Though the poem celebrates the heroic virtues of courage against odds, of loyalty to leader and fellows, of desire for fame, the poet appears at the same time to be ambivalent, even ironic (it has been argued), about war in general. Perhaps he is simply displaying the medieval ability to hold conflicting viewpoints in tension without their invalidating each other. (Empasis added)

And I remembered I read once the genius is the ability to hold two mutually exclusive thoughts in your mind at one time. I make no pretense at genius, but I will allow I might be a bit medieval. I grew up in the Sixties and early Seventies. Like most of my generation at some point, I considered myself some sort of happy revolutionary. We were going to create a world full of peace and love where everyone and everything would be free. Again like most of my generation, with the passage of time those dreams and visions faded as reality set in.

One of the things that managed to stick was my sense of myself as an environmentalist. I have a sense of the Earth as a living thing comprised of all that is alive and the places where life exists.

All political systems are dependent upon the generation of mass-minded thinking, to persuade each of us to lose our sense of individuality and responsibility in the collective herd. We condition our minds to accept identities for ourselves, to think of ourselves not as self-directed, self-responsible beings, but as members of various groups, whose interests are not only mutually exclusive, but antagonistic. Whether we identify ourselves by race, religion, nationality, lifestyle, ideology, economic interests, gender, geography, or any other category, we put ourselves into a state of conflict with others. Political systems then promise to protect us from “them,” and most of us are too dull to recognize that our alleged “protectors” are the very ones who induced us to play the games that now threaten us! If you haven’t yet figured out that the events of 9/11 and their aftermath are but extensions of the decades-old politicogenic conflicts manufactured by political systems, then you have been watching too much cable television!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/ozymandias/

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer-arch.html