What if our rights didn't come from God or from our humanity, but from the government? What if the government really thinks we're not unique individuals with immortal souls, but just public property? What if we were only entitled to our natural rights if it pleased the government? What if our rights could be stripped away whenever the government considers us to be its enemy?
What if this could all be accomplished with the consent of the people? What if the people's own representatives subverted the Constitution? What if the people were so afraid that they accepted the subversion? What if the government demonizes an external enemy and uses fear of that enemy to suppress our freedoms? What if people are afraid to protest?
What if the government knows this, and thus chooses enemies that are easily demonized, whether they pose real threats or not? What if threats become imminent dangers precisely because the government allowed them to happen? What if government scapegoating of an external enemy is as old as the government itself? What if the government has used scapegoating again and again to scare people into giving up their freedoms voluntarily? What if the government has relied on this to perform the same magical disappearing-freedom act time and again throughout history?
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. He sat on the bench from 1987 to 1995, during which time he presided over 150 jury trials and thousands of motions, sentencings and hearings. He taught constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School for 11 years, and he returned to private practice in 1995. Judge Napolitano began television work in the same year.Please read the full article found by Furyan, a great appeal for civil vigilance.
http://townhall.com/columnists/judgeandrewnapolitano/2011/12/08/what_if_freedom_were_temporary/page/full/
Rights can only be enforced by a government.. therefore I don't see your argument!
AntwortenLöschenDid you read the whole article of the link, Paul?
AntwortenLöschen"What if the government could lock you up and throw you in jail indefinitely?"
AntwortenLöschenI believe Obama has just passed this law.
I think that too.
AntwortenLöschenThey come from the government. All "rights" come from the societies we live in and the government that lays down the structure to give us rights (for example, in the US, to an attorney if you are arrested) or deny them. No one has an absolute right to anything, not even food or life. So, yes, we had best be vigilant, each of us in the societies we live in.
AntwortenLöschenTo the best of my knowldege God hasn't stepped down and protected anyone's rights. Its generally associations of mere mortal people who do that sort of thing.
AntwortenLöschenThe judge goes on to ask some fair questions; "What happens when a government begins scapegoating enemies, and as he points out governments have peformed this trick throughout history. What he fails remember (or say) is that theocratic governments are just as likely to do this, in fact I'd argue more likely as a theocracy has a built in "other" to scapegoat. (whatever the state religion is, theocracy can arm its peasantry and tell them that all the worlds problems are caused by people who belong to some other religion, or no religion at all).
Obama himself may be trying to scuttle the provision regarding indefinite detention of Americans, but he is fighting an uphill battle. As for the indefinite detention of non-Americans, no one seems to object to that.
AntwortenLöschenhttp://www.procon.org/headline.php?headlineID=005047
how many Guantanamo prisoners were ever found guulty of anything
AntwortenLöschenBBC says 5 but that cannot be true surely //// any news peeps ???
some of those found innocent are still there ......... horrendous loss of life for those ...
"That’s right, as of four years after September 11, Bush-Cheney had convicted exactly 14 members of al-Qaeda. But wait, there is more.
Several of them were convicted for planning attacks overseas. As of a year and a half ago, only 4 al-Qaeda-related individuals had been convicted for planning attacks inside the US. Of those, Zacharias Moussawi and Richard Reid came from abroad for the operation. There is no evidence of any significant radical activity among American Muslims."""
http://www.juancole.com/2009/03/obama-v-cheney-on-guantanamo.html
And, unfortunately, that is apparently the only place we are looking for it, despite the Terrorist attack in Oklahoma City.
AntwortenLöschenPer CNN: Terrorist threats against U.S. officials and police that have nothing to do with Islamist militancy are surely also worthy of the scrutiny of Congress, but neither the Senate nor House homeland security committee, nor it seems any other congressional committee, has examined the issue in any detail...
My point being that we are looking for terrorist activities in one place only (the Islamic communities) and not looking elsewhere. This being the case, the average Christian American feels he/she has nothing to worry about with the expansion of government powers of detention.
Those are all valid questions.
AntwortenLöschenI'd argue that our governmetn does indeed scapegoat "the other" even as I was inferring that a secular government is less likely to act that way. touche'