Back in the Eighties, when the Time-Life series on the Civil War was coming out, there was a dramatic ad with a Civil War soldier pointing a musket at the reader. The ad said: “If the battle of Gettysburg were fought today, you would be the enemy.” Increasingly many Americans, most, but not all, conservative and/or religious, are being treated as enemies to be subdued by their own government. Angelo M. Codevilla in a brilliant post at the Library of Liberty and Law faces the issue squarely:
Government’s violent treatment of citizens has become generalized and unremarkable. Consider.
But governments, including ours, do not and cannot oppress citizens equally.
Go here to read the troubling rest. A police state is incompatible with a free state and that is what is being constructed before our eyes. If this is not halted, and halted soon, I think this country may face dark days indeed in the years to come, as political battles are no longer fought only with words.
Once again, American Samaritans only step in when the man has been robbed, beaten, and left for dead. It is far too late to stop this trend, enshrined in Article I Section 10 of the US Constitution.
Art. I sec. 10 –is that the “Good and Proper” clause, or the “Necessary Welfare” clause?
It is human nature to fear and loathe those whom you have harmed. Ergo the war against us.
Despair is a sin. Don’t do it.
I can think of nothing less likely.
As Slavoj Zizek observes, “The commonly accepted motto is that the Left, if it is to regain political effectiveness, should thoroughly reinvent itself, finally abandoning the so-called “Jacobin paradigm.” In our post-modern era of “emerging properties,” chaotic interaction of multiple subjectivities, of free interaction instead of centralized hierarchy, of a multitude of opinions instead of one Truth, the Jacobin dictatorship is fundamentally “not for our taste”… Can one imagine anything more foreign to our universe of the freedom of opinions, of market competition, of nomadic pluralist interaction, &c., than Robespierre’s politics of Truth (with a capital T, of course), whose proclaimed goal is “to return the destiny of liberty into the hands of the Truth”?” No “politics of Virtue” for today’s Left
Today’s sensitive liberals want 1789 without 1793; that is, a decaffeinated revolution. It is only dinosaurs on the Hard Left, like Alain Badiou, who still argue that, if one wants A, then you should not shirk from its consequences, but gather the courage to say B – the terror needed to really defend and assert A. Saint-Just asked: “What do they want, who want neither Virtue nor Terror?” His answer is well known:”They want corruption.” That is today’s Left to a T (the T left over from truth)
Michael, you tell me I must seek out the opinions of a Serb intellectual and believe him and not my own eyes about what is going on and has been going on in my own country, in some aspects for more than fifty years and in some respects for about a dozen years. Thanks for your input.
I take solace in the fact that Jesus look Pontius Pilate straight in the eye and said, “My Kingdom is NOT of this world.” I fear the day (far more than this police state) when He will return and we all will have to look on Him whom we have pierced, and He will judge the living and the dead – every single one of us. Domine Deus, miserere nobis and totius mundi!
What is happening is this country because of godless liberal progressive Democrats is terrible, but in a perverse sort of way this is God’s justice. He dealt severely with the Northern Kingdom Israel and the Southern Kingdom Judah for their apostasy. He does not change. We have sown the whirlwind and have asked that He remove His protecting hand. Being a true Gentleman, He will oblige us just as He did in the first Civil War.
Of course they want corruption. That’s because corruption is how you prepare a people for enslavement to a Despot, as Franklin acknowledged at the time the Convention adopted the Constitution for Ratification:
The un-named woman above was Miriam Carey. As described by Emmett Tyrrell Jr in an article titled A Disgraceful Killling she was a young black single mother with a college degree who was suffering from severe post partum depression with psychosis. Not a danger to anyone according to health officials. Because she was driving erratically, armed federal police surrounded her car and shot to kill. She had nothing in her vehicle that was dangerous, only her 1 year old son in the back seat and luckily he was not harmed.
The police could have incapacitated her by shooting out her car’s tires or some other means. Amazingly Congress gave the participating officers who shot to death an unarmed woman a standing ovation. Few news stories on this senseless killing. No public outcry about police violence. No Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.
Sad.
I have been telling people that Christians and conservatives are being maligned like the Jews were before the killing started–and just like the vast majority of the world at the time Hitler came to power refused to believe what was actually happening–those with whom I address this subject also refuse to see what is happening. I will be surprised at nothing.
MPS, I wish to my core you were correct. This, however, prevents me from agreeing as readily as I might have before:
http://www.purdueexponent.org/city_state/article_8ed51601-e141-5257-a543-324245911b84.html
Sorry, I missed the punchline.
“It Can’t Happen Here.”
We live in Bizarro World when people will wear Trayvon Martin hoodies, and their parents let them (I just passed by such a family at the mall), but those same people wouldn’t wear a “Remember Miriam Carey” shirt, and probably wouldn’t know who she is. I guess it’s okay to be shot & killed by aggressive police, but not killed in self-defense. I totally understand what Jesus meant when He said, “Weep for your children.”
In 2009, we were told there was a need to watch out for domestic terrorists and that these included people who are pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, religiously motivated, and returning veterans. You know, people like us. The federal government is growing far too powerful and we are in grave danger of losing our freedom, perhaps our lives. Beginning with the so-called War on Drugs, police departments have become increasingly militarized. SWAT teams seem to be mainstreamed into police work. Poor Miriam Carey appears to have had a nervous breakdown at the wrong time and in the wrong place. May she rest in peace and may God help this country.
[…] is a nice touch. This is all part of the ongoing war against us that I have written about here. Beyond this Vale of Tears the Founding Fathers must be absolutely astounded that Americans are […]