note: Jason Raimondo, and his Internet site AntiWar.com, collates opinion from many parts of the political spectrum. Raimondo is a sharp youngish commentator who produces columns that run from genuine invective to fairly leftish opinions he conjoins to his own basically Libertarian viewpoint. But his work is always well-documented and solidly built.
For those of you who'd like to see the hyperlinks embedded in this piece, I suggest you dial up AntiWar.com for today's date and read Raimondo's column fully the way he wrote it.
I find myself agreeing with some of what he says nearly all the time, just as I quarrel with some of his content and viewpoints.
But I nearly always learn something from reading him.
--Z
( paste)
Is America Becoming a Police State?
Yes, because perpetual war means dictatorship at home
by Justin Raimondo
In the question and answer session following a speech given at the American Enterprise Institute, Karl Rove blurted out the truth. Although no doubt inadvertent, this unusual incident of truth-telling is nevertheless shocking to those of us who have grown used to an administration that lies as a first resort. In front of an audience of politicians, policy wonks, and journalists, the president's grand strategist admitted that, while Americans are content with their economic lot, they are in a "sour" mood because of the Iraq war: "I think the war looms over everything," Rove said:
"There's no doubt about it. Being in the middle of a war where people turn on their television sets and see brave men and women dying is not something that makes people happy and optimistic and upbeat."
While it is no doubt true that Americans are disturbed and saddened by the sight of their soldiers falling in combat, it isn't the fact of war per se that has soured them on this administration, and, more broadly, the GOP. If television cameras had been present to chronicle, say, the War of 1812, one can hardly imagine that the sight of Washington burning would have lessened their zeal to keep up the fight. To take a more recent example, Americans would not have caviled and turned against Franklin Roosevelt even as they watched the battle of Bataan and the fall of Corregidor broadcast live: the reaction might even have increased support for the Roosevelt administration as the public rallied around their commander in chief and determined to fight the "Japs" – as the newspapers of the day routinely referred to the enemy – with renewed fury.
During World War II, Americans knew – or thought they knew – why they were fighting, and had to fight. No such certainty is present in their minds as they watch the tragedy of Iraq unfold on the nightly news.
As Hitler's armies occupied the Eurasian landmass, in the early years of WWII, and Japan gobbled up the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and threatened Hawaii, Americans believed they were in a fight for their very survival. They believe no such thing when it comes to the war in Iraq. Most Americans are skeptical of this administration's announced war aims: they correctly perceive the invasion and conquest of Iraq as a futile crusade to "democratize" a region that has never known anything but the rule of thugs. They see their sons and daughters dying, not to protect the homeland or even to defend capital-D Democracy, but to ensure the survival of an Iraqi government made up of authoritarian mullahs and their armed gangs.
Americans do not fear adversity, nor do they quail at the sight of brave men and women dying – as long as it's in a good cause. The only causes one can discern in the current conflict, however – a lust for oil, and the seductive power of America's pro-Israel lobby – are hardly enough to inspire a crowd much bigger than the editorial staff of the Weekly Standard.
Rove is right when he says the war looms over everything. As the cost of our Iraq campaign approaches the trillion-dollar mark, the entire Republican agenda of less government and lower taxes has been fatally undermined by the Napoleonic foreign policy championed by this White House. And we aren't even winning! If this is the price of defeat, one has to wonder what victory would cost us.
While the astronomical cost in dollars and cents has an immediate and readily apparent impact, the price we are paying in other ways – in damage to our core values and institutions – is even dearer. The Bush administration may be losing the war against the Iraqi insurgency, but they are doing much better with their war on the American people – reading our e-mails, gathering up our phone records, and instituting a hi-tech spy system such as no Russian commissar ever dreamt of. The news that the feds are tracking phone calls made by and to major news organizations, including ABC News, the Washington Post, and the New York Times – ostensibly to find evidence of "security leaks" – is just the latest in a series of outrages against civil liberties and common decency.
The price of perpetual war is a police state, one in which a permanent state of "emergency" – the threat of a terrorist attack – is utilized to break down institutional safeguards, the system of constitutional checks and balances, that protect us from dictatorship.
A foreign policy driven by the imperial impulse is bound to have grave domestic consequences, none of them conducive to the American form of government. The Founders envisioned a republic, not an empire: they set up a system designed to govern the 13 former colonies, not the world. Foreign policy was a matter of avoiding reabsorption by the British and quashing the ambitions of the other European empires in their quest for North American colonies. Domestic policy was the main concern of every major American political figure and political party, right up until World War II. With the advent of the Cold War, however, and the rise of the national security state, the focus was increasingly on foreign policy.
Garet Garrett, the Old Right author and editor, saw the dawn of the new day and was quick to discern its meaning. In his 1951 philippic "Rise of Empire" [.pdf file], Garrett described what he called the "marks of empire," the signs that say the republic is no more and "Hail Caesar!" There were, I recall, five or six of them: the first was the ascendancy of presidential power over the other two branches of the federal government. We see this, today, in the neoconservative theory of the "unitary executive," which puts special emphasis on the president's role as commander in chief of the armed forces. Militarism goes hand in hand with this Bonapartist impulse, quite naturally, and this, in Garrett's words, gives rise to:
"A second mark by which you may unmistakably distinguish Empire is: Domestic policy becomes subordinate to foreign policy.
"That happened to Rome. It has happened to every Empire. The consequences of its having happened to the British Empire are tragically appearing. The fact now to be faced is that it has happened also to us. The voice of government is saying that if our foreign policy fails we are ruined. It is all or nothing. Our survival as a free nation is at hazard.
"That makes it simple, for in that case there is no domestic policy that may not have to be sacrificed to the necessities of foreign policy – even freedom."
That was written just as the first frosts of the Cold War blew arctic gusts across Europe, and the freezing wind of witch-hunts and loyalty oaths deadened the political atmosphere in America. Yet it could easily have been written today, as America gets ready to launch a new global struggle – the president calls it his "global democratic revolution" – against a new enemy. We are in a war, the president and his allies tell us, that will last for at least a generation. Small wonder, then, that the current administration is launching a large-scale assault on civil liberties of a kind not seen since the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, spying on and trying to intimidate journalists, trampling on what remains of the Founders' libertarian legacy.
There are many reasons to oppose war, both moral and practical. Aside from abhorrence of mass murder, however, libertarians such as myself dedicate so much of their energies to this issue because the price of interventionism is liberty itself. With each war, the power of government increases, until, at some point, it spills over the dike of the Constitution, washes away the Bill of Rights, and drowns us all in a flood tide of tyranny.
As recent events have shown, the danger is not theoretical or postponed to some future time: we are not speaking here of some dark dystopia as a kind of "what if" experiment. The danger is imminent: the dystopia is here and now. The only question is: will the American people stand for it?
( from AntiWar.com, Weds., May 17th, 2006)
IS AMERICA BECOMING A POLICE STATE?
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Zlatko Waterman
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- Contact:
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Zlatko Waterman
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- Contact:
Note:
Here's a "book-end" for the Jason Raimondo piece-- another well-researched and solidly written essay by Ray McGovern. McGovern, if you recall, recently stood up against Rumsfeld in a press conference.
McGovern is a thirty-year veteran of the CIA where he served as an agent, a case officer, and in a variety of administrative positions.
(paste)
Bowing to the Police State
by Ray McGovern
Is Congress aiding and abetting the creation of a police state? Recently, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., helped to give the CIA and NSA unprecedented police powers. By inserting a provision in the FY07 Intelligence Authorization Act, Hoekstra has undermined the existing statutory limits on involvement in domestic law enforcement. This comes after revelations in January of direct NSA involvement with the Baltimore police in order to "protect" the NSA Headquarters from Quaker protesters.
Add to this the disquieting news that the White House has been barraging the CIA with totally improper questions about the political affiliation of some of its senior intelligence officers, the ever widening use of polygraph examinations, and the FBI's admission that it acquires phone records of broadcast and print media to investigate leaks at the CIA. I, for one, am reminded of my service in the police state of the USSR, where there were no First or Fourth Amendments.
Like the proverbial frog in slowly boiling water, we have become inured to what goes on in the name of national security. Recent disclosures about increased government surveillance and illegal activities would be shocking, were it not for the prevailing outrage-fatigue brought on by a long train of abuses. But the heads of the civilian, democratically elected institutions that are supposed to be our bulwark against an encroaching police state, the ones who stand to lose their own power as well as their rights and the rights of all citizens, aren't interested in reining in the power of the intelligence establishment. To the contrary, Rep. Hoekstra and his counterpart in the Senate, Pat Roberts, R-Kan., are running the risk of whiplash as they pivot to look the other way.
James Bamford, one of the best observers of the inner workings of U.S. intelligence, warned recently that Congress has lost control of the intelligence community. "You can't get any oversight or checks and balances," he said. "Congress is protecting the White House, and the White House can do whatever it wants."
Consider the following nuggets drawn from Sunday's Washington Post article by R. Jeffrey Smith about the firing of senior CIA analyst Mary McCarthy. Apparently McCarthy learned that at least one "senior agency official" lied to Congress about agency policy and practice with regard to torturing detainees during interrogations.
According to Smith's article, one internal CIA study completed in 2004 concluded that CIA interrogation policies and techniques violated international law. This is said to have come as something of a shock to agency interrogators who had been led by the Justice Department to believe that international conventions against torture did not apply to interrogations of foreigners outside of the United States. McCarthy reportedly was also chagrined to learn that the CIA's general counsel had secured a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the creation of a category of "ghost detainees," prisoners transported abroad, mostly from Iraq, for secret interrogation – without notification of the Red Cross, as required by the Geneva Convention.
No problem, said senior CIA officials. We'll just lie to the committee leaders about the torture; they will wink and be grateful we did. The lying came during discussion of draft legislation aimed at preventing torture. As deputy inspector general, McCarthy became aware that CIA officials had misled the chairmen and ranking members of the congressional "oversight" committees on multiple occasions. Neither of the committees seemed interested in taking a serious look at the torture issue.
It will be highly interesting to see what the intrepid chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees do, if anything, to follow up on Smith's report that "a senior CIA official" meeting with Senate staff last June lied about the agency's interrogation practices. Or that a "senior agency official" failed to provide a full account of CIA's policy for treating detainees at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in Feb. 2005 under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat. Will Roberts and Hoekstra hold those agency officials accountable, or will they let the matter die – like some of the detainees subjected to "enhanced" interrogation techniques to which the chairmen have so far turned a blind eye?
Hoekstra is a master at Catch-22. On the one hand Hoekstra insists that those in intelligence who have information on illegal or improper behavior report it to his intelligence committee; then he refuses to let them in the door. Russell Tice, a former NSA employee, has been trying since last December to give Hoekstra a firsthand account of illegal activities at the NSA. He has rebuffed Tice, with the lame explanation that the NSA will not clear Hoekstra or any of his committee members for the highly classified programs about which Tice wants to report. With the door locked to the intelligence committees, Tice has turned to the Senate Armed Services Committee and said that he will meet soon with committee staff in closed session to tell of "probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts" at the NSA while Gen. Michael Hayden was in charge.
Amid the recent revelations of secret CIA-run prisons abroad, torture, and illegal eavesdropping, Hoekstra has chosen to express outrage – but not at the prisons, torture, or eavesdropping. Rather, the House Intelligence Committee chairman is outraged that information on these abuses has found its way onto the public square. Hoekstra has turned his full attention to pursuing those who leak such information – never mind that the activities disclosed, not the leaks, are the real outrage.
The executive branch is "walking all over the Congress at the moment," complained Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. Unlike Roberts and Hoekstra, Specter seems genuinely troubled at the president's disdain for the separation of powers and particularly his end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which prohibits eavesdropping on American citizens without a court warrant.
But when Specter meets a stonewall, he caves. He may ask telephone company CEOs why they surrendered records to the government, but – illegal eavesdropping or no – Specter will likely remain a spectator, as Pat Roberts greases the skids for Big Brother Gen. Michael Hayden, architect and implementer of eavesdropping on Americans in violation of FISA, to become the next director of the CIA. Hayden's disingenuousness in his testimony before the intelligence committees has been clear, but the committee chairmen are as much to blame for winking at it.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has told Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., that it is stopping its months-long investigation into who approved the NSA's eavesdropping-on-American-citizens initiative (now euphemistically dubbed "the terrorist surveillance program"). Justice explained to Hinchey that the NSA would not grant Justice department investigators the appropriate security clearances to investigate the NSA program. Kafka would smirk.
Rep. Hoekstra's speaks of "vigorous oversight" of the NSA, but the evidence of that is lacking. Late last year, the current head of the NSA, Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, deliberately misled House intelligence committee member Rush Holt, D-N.J., on the eavesdropping program. On Dec. 6, Holt, a former State Department intelligence specialist, called on Alexander and NSA lawyers to discuss protecting Americans' privacy. They all assured Holt that the agency singled out Americans for eavesdropping only after warrants had been obtained from the FISA court. Later that month, when disclosures in The New York Times made it clear that Alexander had lied to a member of his committee, Hoekstra merely suggested that Holt write a letter to Alexander to complain. The inescapable message to Alexander? Fear not: Hoekstra the fox is watching the hen house.
When the writers of the Constitution envisioned a separation of powers to ensure checks and balances in our government, they were relying on the leaders of those branches to fight to maintain their own power within the system. Fresh from the struggle against King George, they could not have predicted that some of our leaders would voluntarily sign away their own rights to another George who would be king.
This piece originally appeared on TomPaine.com.
Here's a "book-end" for the Jason Raimondo piece-- another well-researched and solidly written essay by Ray McGovern. McGovern, if you recall, recently stood up against Rumsfeld in a press conference.
McGovern is a thirty-year veteran of the CIA where he served as an agent, a case officer, and in a variety of administrative positions.
(paste)
Bowing to the Police State
by Ray McGovern
Is Congress aiding and abetting the creation of a police state? Recently, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., helped to give the CIA and NSA unprecedented police powers. By inserting a provision in the FY07 Intelligence Authorization Act, Hoekstra has undermined the existing statutory limits on involvement in domestic law enforcement. This comes after revelations in January of direct NSA involvement with the Baltimore police in order to "protect" the NSA Headquarters from Quaker protesters.
Add to this the disquieting news that the White House has been barraging the CIA with totally improper questions about the political affiliation of some of its senior intelligence officers, the ever widening use of polygraph examinations, and the FBI's admission that it acquires phone records of broadcast and print media to investigate leaks at the CIA. I, for one, am reminded of my service in the police state of the USSR, where there were no First or Fourth Amendments.
Like the proverbial frog in slowly boiling water, we have become inured to what goes on in the name of national security. Recent disclosures about increased government surveillance and illegal activities would be shocking, were it not for the prevailing outrage-fatigue brought on by a long train of abuses. But the heads of the civilian, democratically elected institutions that are supposed to be our bulwark against an encroaching police state, the ones who stand to lose their own power as well as their rights and the rights of all citizens, aren't interested in reining in the power of the intelligence establishment. To the contrary, Rep. Hoekstra and his counterpart in the Senate, Pat Roberts, R-Kan., are running the risk of whiplash as they pivot to look the other way.
James Bamford, one of the best observers of the inner workings of U.S. intelligence, warned recently that Congress has lost control of the intelligence community. "You can't get any oversight or checks and balances," he said. "Congress is protecting the White House, and the White House can do whatever it wants."
Consider the following nuggets drawn from Sunday's Washington Post article by R. Jeffrey Smith about the firing of senior CIA analyst Mary McCarthy. Apparently McCarthy learned that at least one "senior agency official" lied to Congress about agency policy and practice with regard to torturing detainees during interrogations.
According to Smith's article, one internal CIA study completed in 2004 concluded that CIA interrogation policies and techniques violated international law. This is said to have come as something of a shock to agency interrogators who had been led by the Justice Department to believe that international conventions against torture did not apply to interrogations of foreigners outside of the United States. McCarthy reportedly was also chagrined to learn that the CIA's general counsel had secured a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the creation of a category of "ghost detainees," prisoners transported abroad, mostly from Iraq, for secret interrogation – without notification of the Red Cross, as required by the Geneva Convention.
No problem, said senior CIA officials. We'll just lie to the committee leaders about the torture; they will wink and be grateful we did. The lying came during discussion of draft legislation aimed at preventing torture. As deputy inspector general, McCarthy became aware that CIA officials had misled the chairmen and ranking members of the congressional "oversight" committees on multiple occasions. Neither of the committees seemed interested in taking a serious look at the torture issue.
It will be highly interesting to see what the intrepid chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees do, if anything, to follow up on Smith's report that "a senior CIA official" meeting with Senate staff last June lied about the agency's interrogation practices. Or that a "senior agency official" failed to provide a full account of CIA's policy for treating detainees at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in Feb. 2005 under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat. Will Roberts and Hoekstra hold those agency officials accountable, or will they let the matter die – like some of the detainees subjected to "enhanced" interrogation techniques to which the chairmen have so far turned a blind eye?
Hoekstra is a master at Catch-22. On the one hand Hoekstra insists that those in intelligence who have information on illegal or improper behavior report it to his intelligence committee; then he refuses to let them in the door. Russell Tice, a former NSA employee, has been trying since last December to give Hoekstra a firsthand account of illegal activities at the NSA. He has rebuffed Tice, with the lame explanation that the NSA will not clear Hoekstra or any of his committee members for the highly classified programs about which Tice wants to report. With the door locked to the intelligence committees, Tice has turned to the Senate Armed Services Committee and said that he will meet soon with committee staff in closed session to tell of "probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts" at the NSA while Gen. Michael Hayden was in charge.
Amid the recent revelations of secret CIA-run prisons abroad, torture, and illegal eavesdropping, Hoekstra has chosen to express outrage – but not at the prisons, torture, or eavesdropping. Rather, the House Intelligence Committee chairman is outraged that information on these abuses has found its way onto the public square. Hoekstra has turned his full attention to pursuing those who leak such information – never mind that the activities disclosed, not the leaks, are the real outrage.
The executive branch is "walking all over the Congress at the moment," complained Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. Unlike Roberts and Hoekstra, Specter seems genuinely troubled at the president's disdain for the separation of powers and particularly his end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which prohibits eavesdropping on American citizens without a court warrant.
But when Specter meets a stonewall, he caves. He may ask telephone company CEOs why they surrendered records to the government, but – illegal eavesdropping or no – Specter will likely remain a spectator, as Pat Roberts greases the skids for Big Brother Gen. Michael Hayden, architect and implementer of eavesdropping on Americans in violation of FISA, to become the next director of the CIA. Hayden's disingenuousness in his testimony before the intelligence committees has been clear, but the committee chairmen are as much to blame for winking at it.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has told Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., that it is stopping its months-long investigation into who approved the NSA's eavesdropping-on-American-citizens initiative (now euphemistically dubbed "the terrorist surveillance program"). Justice explained to Hinchey that the NSA would not grant Justice department investigators the appropriate security clearances to investigate the NSA program. Kafka would smirk.
Rep. Hoekstra's speaks of "vigorous oversight" of the NSA, but the evidence of that is lacking. Late last year, the current head of the NSA, Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, deliberately misled House intelligence committee member Rush Holt, D-N.J., on the eavesdropping program. On Dec. 6, Holt, a former State Department intelligence specialist, called on Alexander and NSA lawyers to discuss protecting Americans' privacy. They all assured Holt that the agency singled out Americans for eavesdropping only after warrants had been obtained from the FISA court. Later that month, when disclosures in The New York Times made it clear that Alexander had lied to a member of his committee, Hoekstra merely suggested that Holt write a letter to Alexander to complain. The inescapable message to Alexander? Fear not: Hoekstra the fox is watching the hen house.
When the writers of the Constitution envisioned a separation of powers to ensure checks and balances in our government, they were relying on the leaders of those branches to fight to maintain their own power within the system. Fresh from the struggle against King George, they could not have predicted that some of our leaders would voluntarily sign away their own rights to another George who would be king.
This piece originally appeared on TomPaine.com.
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stilltrucking
- Posts: 20607
- Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
Thanks for the very timely article.
Ten four on that Norman. There are some great links in there. Well worth checking out. This one is my favorite so far.
Dr. Seuss Went to War:
A Catalog of Political Cartoons
By
Dr. Seuss
http://orpheus-1.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/
For those of you who'd like to see the hyperlinks embedded in this piece, I suggest you dial up AntiWar.com for today's date and read Raimondo's column fully the way he wrote it.
Ten four on that Norman. There are some great links in there. Well worth checking out. This one is my favorite so far.
Dr. Seuss Went to War:
A Catalog of Political Cartoons
By
Dr. Seuss
http://orpheus-1.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/
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Doreen Peri
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14539
- Joined: July 10th, 2004, 3:30 pm
- Location: Virginia
- Contact:
I thought the US has been a police state for quite a few years.
Here's an interesting story.
1 out of 136 US citizens are behind bars!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060521/ap_ ... population
Man! I KNEW it was really really bad but I thought really really bad was something like 1 out of 2,000. But 1 out of 136???? Geezzzzz... if that's not the picture of a police state, I donno what is.
sighhh
Here's an interesting story.
1 out of 136 US citizens are behind bars!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060521/ap_ ... population
Man! I KNEW it was really really bad but I thought really really bad was something like 1 out of 2,000. But 1 out of 136???? Geezzzzz... if that's not the picture of a police state, I donno what is.
sighhh
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stilltrucking
- Posts: 20607
- Joined: October 24th, 2004, 12:29 pm
- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
What I want to know is what is new?'bECOMING'? -- No,
try: America IS a police state
Reminds me of the saying, "He just discovered america."
I liked the article, it was well done, great links too. But you know ...You can look back over the last hundred years or so and It has always been this way, take a look at civil liberties under Woodrow Wilson for an example...the Palmer raids.
We are winning the war, the war against the working poor and children, we are winning the war against drugs, (more prisions coming soon to a neighborhood near you) How many of those prisioners are non violent drugh offenders?
And we are a lamp unto the world, an inspiration to China. Show them how it can be done. I think they are the only country who comes close to us for excutions and prision population. No that can't be right. Can it? They have a population of billions.
.
i believe that China exceeds any country (all others together?) in executions but that the U.S. has a greater incarcerated population.
i could be wrong about this but that's my understanding.
so, while apparently China is maybe an example that executions work, the U.S. is an example that prisons are an excellent growth industry, good for the economy. The prohibition of slavery does not apply to prisoners.
i could be wrong about this but that's my understanding.
so, while apparently China is maybe an example that executions work, the U.S. is an example that prisons are an excellent growth industry, good for the economy. The prohibition of slavery does not apply to prisoners.
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.
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stilltrucking
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Yes you are right. China and Saudi Arabia lead the pack. And I always believed the USA was number one in every way. Only sixty executed in the USA last year. I thought Texas alone had more than that.
The Human Use Of Human Beings-- Norbert Weiner.
"When we arm ourselves we arm our enemies."
There are no military secretes, sooner or later they get out. They are doing a pretty good job in China of controlling free speech, I am sure our efforts will benefit them enormously.
The Human Use Of Human Beings-- Norbert Weiner.
"When we arm ourselves we arm our enemies."
There are no military secretes, sooner or later they get out. They are doing a pretty good job in China of controlling free speech, I am sure our efforts will benefit them enormously.
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abcrystcats
- Posts: 619
- Joined: August 20th, 2004, 9:37 pm
What's weird about this is yesterday.
I was in a part of Denver I don't usually traverse any more. I had to stop for directions and some radio signal tower messed with my alarm. I ended up calling a tow truck, and the tow truck driver used the exact same words. He said, "This town is in a police state." He believed that the police have control of the city and that this is an unusual and unique condition. If I'd had time I would have told him it is much worse in L.A.
Everyone feels watched, scrutinized. It isn't just the lawbreakers, and it isn't just the liberals (not that the two go together). "Police State" is a phrase I heard just hours ago from a totally different source.
I was in a part of Denver I don't usually traverse any more. I had to stop for directions and some radio signal tower messed with my alarm. I ended up calling a tow truck, and the tow truck driver used the exact same words. He said, "This town is in a police state." He believed that the police have control of the city and that this is an unusual and unique condition. If I'd had time I would have told him it is much worse in L.A.
Everyone feels watched, scrutinized. It isn't just the lawbreakers, and it isn't just the liberals (not that the two go together). "Police State" is a phrase I heard just hours ago from a totally different source.
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Dave The Dov
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- Location: Madison Wisconsin which is right here
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Could the question be do we want to go back to Fifties when a generation just stood back and let the goverment do what it wanted to do and said or did nothing about it????
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