The American Dream
February 17, 2011
For a moment, imagine that you are awakened one night by a heavily-armed team of federal agents dressed in all black breaking into your home. As you confront them, they hand you a piece of paper that says that your son has been identified as a “terrorist” and that they are there to take him away. They pull your son out of bed, they throw him on the floor and the use a taser on him repeatedly. Then they handcuff him and haul him away without telling you a thing about where they are taking him. Your son suddenly has no rights because the Patriot Act supersedes the U.S. Constitution. That’s right – because your son has been identified as a “terrorist” because of something that he has said on the Internet he no longer has any constitutional rights. Your underage son is held indefinitely and is subjected to “enhanced interrogation” because he has been identified as a “threat”. You are not able to get your son back for years even though it turns out that he is completely and totally innocent. If you think that such a thing cannot happen to you then you are a fool, because this kind of thing is happening over and over across the United States and it is all legal because of the Patriot Act.
America is rapidly turning into a horrible Big Brother police state and most of our politicians are fully supporting this transformation. In fact, the U.S. House of Representatives gave us quite a Valentine’s Day gift the other day when it voted to once again extend provisions of the Patriot Act that allow for domestic surveillance of American citizens, wire tapping of American citizens and warrantless searches of the homes of American citizens.
What was perhaps most disappointing was that a large number of “Tea Party politicians” cast votes in favor of renewing the Patriot Act provisions.
The majority of Americans were absolutely disgusted when the Bush administration instituted the Patriot Act and many other police state measures and they voted for Barack Obama hoping for something different.
Well, it turns out that Barack Obama has been even worse.
Have you been to an airport lately? Yeah, those “naked body scanners” and “enhanced pat-downs” are a lot of fun, aren’t they?
Many Americans voted for Tea Party candidates during the last election hoping that they would be willing to stand up for liberty and freedom.
Well, it turns out that many of them caved when it came time to vote on the extension of Patriot Act provisions.
So is there anyone out there that we can vote for that will stand up for liberty and freedom?
The truth is that this is not a conservative issue and it is not a liberal issue.
This is an American issue.
But doesn’t the Patriot Act keep us safe from terrorism?
No.
Just the other day Dr. Vahid Majidi, the FBI’s assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, admitted that even with all of our “security measures” the chance that the U.S. will be hit a weapon of mass destruction is 100 percent….
“There’s a probability of 100 percent that a WMD event will happen.”
But even if the Patriot Act could keep us “safer”, is that any reason for us to live the rest of our lives as “cattle” in a Big Brother police state that is becoming more like George Orwell’s 1984 every single day?
Are we willing to forever renounce being “the land of the free and the home of the brave” just so that we can feel a bit more secure?
The truth is that the U.S. government is not really protecting us anyway. Our border with Mexico is wide open and millions of people have been pouring across it unchecked. It would be ridiculously easy for any potential “terrorists” to smuggle dangerous weapons into this country.
So please don’t try to tell me that the U.S. government is actually serious about national security. Until the U.S. government is willing to do something about the border they should not be asking the American people to give up a single ounce of liberty or freedom for the sake of “security”.
But instead of securing the border and doing other practical things that would actually keep this country safer, our government has become absolutely obsessed with watching us, tracking us, listening to us, “assessing” us and controlling us.
In the process, the America that we all once loved is rapidly being destroyed. Because of laws like the Patriot Act, our country now more closely resembles East Germany during the Cold War than the nation that our founding fathers originally established.
Government whistleblower Susan Lindauer, who has been arrested under the Patriot Act for protesting the Iraq war, recently authored an article in which she described why Americans should be much more frightened by the Patriot Act….
The American people are not nearly as frightened as they should be. Many Americans expect the Patriot Act to limit its surveillance to overseas communications. Yet while I was under indictment, Maryland State Police invoked the Patriot Act to wire tap activists tied to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group dedicated to wind power, solar energy and recycling. The DC Anti-War Network was targeted as a “white supremacist group.” Amnesty International and anti-death penalty activists got targeted for alleged “civil rights violations.”
Lindauer is speaking from experience when she talks about the Patriot Act. Just hope and pray that you never have to go through what she had to go through because of the Patriot Act….
I cannot forget. I cannot forget how I was subjected to secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony that denied my right to face my accusers or their accusations in open court, throughout five years of indictment. I cannot forget my imprisonment on a Texas military base for a year without a trial or evidentiary hearing.
I cannot forget how the FBI, the US Attorneys Office, the Bureau of Prisons and the main Justice office in Washington — independently and collectively verified my story— then falsified testimony to Chief Justice Michael Mukasey, denying our 9/11 warnings and my long-time status as a U.S. intelligence Asset, though my witnesses had aggressively confronted them. Apparently the Patriot Act allows the Justice Department to withhold corroborating evidence and testimony from the Court, if it is deemed “classified.”
I cannot forget threats of forcible drugging and indefinite detention up to 10 years, until I could be “cured” of believing what everybody wanted to deny— because it was damn inconvenient to politicians in Washington anxious to hold onto power.
At least there are a few members of Congress that attempted to oppose the renewal of the Patriot Act. For example, Senator Rand Paul recently explained why he opposes renewal of this freedom-killing law….
“The Senate yesterday proposed a three-year extension of the PATRIOT Act, a move that would not have allowed for any hearings, amendments, or debate. I objected to this deal. I realize that I might not have the votes to stop this bill, but we should at least discuss this in public as adults.
“We should have the opportunity to explain why the Constitution is being violated. We should talk about how we do not have to give up who we are in order to fight terrorism. It is not acceptable to willfully ignore the most basic provisions of our Constitution—in this case—the Fourth and First Amendments—in the name of ‘security.’”
Unfortunately, most of our other politicians have stood by and have done nothing to stop the horrific abuses that are taking place under this law. A good friend of ours, Charlie McGrath, recently lamented this fact in a recent video….
What in the world is happening to this country?
One of the worst things about all of this is that Christians are actually some of the strongest supporters of the Patriot Act.
The mainstream media has brainwashed many of them into believing that the Patriot Act is “conservative” and that it is going to keep us safe from terrorism. Somehow Christians have been duped into believing that the more power Barack Obama and his minions have to control our lives the safer we all are going to be.
But the truth is that laws like the Patriot Act are transforming this nation into a totalitarian regime. We are becoming more like North Korea, Communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany every single day.
As a Christian, I deeply oppose laws such as the Patriot Act. The Scriptures warn us of a time when a future world government will attempt to brutally dominate all the nations on the planet. Just read the book of Revelation some time.
Any law that takes our liberties and freedoms away is another step in the direction of totalitarianism. Every time another new law like the Patriot Act gets passed we get closer to the time when government completely dominates and controls every single aspect of our lives.
Christians should be loudly denouncing any attempt to strip our liberties and freedoms away. Christians should be loudly denouncing the destruction of our constitutional rights.
Transforming our government into a hardcore socialist police state and handing it all kinds of extreme “Big Brother” powers is not going to make us safer.
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We were sold a pack of lies by the Bush administration and now the Obama administration is trying to cram even more lies down our throats.
Many of us had hoped that Tea Party politicians would be different and would stand up for our liberties and freedoms, but now we can clearly see that many of them will not.
In the past, Americans would ready George Orwell’s 1984 and would think that nothing like that could ever happen in the United States of America.
Well, it is happening in the United States of America.
Are you going to stand up and say anything about it?