It Will Never Happen Here!

I have noticed that since I have been saying more and more of what I really believe that our readership has dropped 75%....so be it.

Here is a bit from Chuck Baldwin (a man I do not always agree with) quoting Ron Paul (a man a usually agree with).

In an interview with nationally syndicated radio talk show host Alex Jones, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas recently discussed President Bush's support for the Military Commissions Act. During the interview, Paul said that "the law officially allows for citizen concentration camp facilities."

Paul also warned that "the Military Commissions Act and the Defense Authorization Act . . . essentially wipes out Habeas Corpus."

Paul continued by noting, "Right now we don't have concentration camps, but . . . the authority has been given so that concentration camps can come without Habeas Corpus." He then said, "If they can lock you up, what good is freedom of speech or what good is a gun?"

Ok I will admit, I pay some attention to Alex Jones, he has the general problem right even if sometimes he might go down rabbit holes in search of facts that probably aren't there. All the same, Alex is looking in the right direction - even when he gets distracted.

Folks generally dismiss anything a person says when they mention the idea of concentration/detention camps. I know a lot of sites on the net dedicate a lot of space to supposed FEMA camps built in places like Alabama and Montana by Haliburton. Who knows, if such things exist or not is not the point at all. It is easy enough to build such places when and if a government decided they needed them.

What is more significant is the tremendous power the various acts passed since 2001 give the Federal Government. When you combine these acts with the gradual increase in Federal power since say - well you really have to go way back to mark the beginning of the death of the Republic and of state/individual rights.

Ron Paul has it pretty much right on though - habeas corpus is the bedrock of all other rights. Without it no other right articulated in the first ten amendments or retained via common law has any weight at all.

Chuck Baldwin warns -

Ladies and gentlemen, please wake up! Under the leadership of President George W. Bush, rights and freedoms that have been lost to you include your right to an attorney, your right to know the charges being levied against you, the right to a speedy trial, the right to trial by a jury of your peers, the right to not be subjected to torture, the right to not have your home and personal items searched and seized without warrant, the right to not have your personal conversations (including letters and email) intercepted without court order, and the right to not incriminate yourself, just to name a few. And now we learn that our government has authorized and is planning to build "concentration camp facilities."

Furthermore, just because you or I have not yet been personally subjected to this tyranny, does not mean that we won't be! The seeds are already planted; the die is already cast. The time to act is not when you are being carted off to an "undisclosed location." By then, it is too late.

It is fascinating how quickly people dismiss this sort of talk as unreasonable and claim that such a thing "could never happen here." History has proven that such things do occur in places where people would not believe it and would not accept it until it was already occurring. For those people it is always too late once they wake up.

Just do the math, the other day I read an article that claimed that 1 out of every 11 Americans is in a jail of some sort. Beyond notable cases such as that of Jose Padilla, few of these are there for political reasons. My point is already a large (relatively) portion of our citizenry is in government custody (many deservingly obviously). We say it is incomprehensible that the government would ever make enemies of the people and lock up dissenters. I say that we could easily raise the number of "prisoners" from 1 in 11 to 2 in 11 without really noticing.

We already have so many laws and so much law enforcement, it would not be difficult to raise the incarceration count in fairly short order. The government could make criminals of dissenters without resorting to overt tyranny. For the hard cases, they could follow Newt Gingrich's advice -

According to the (Manchester, NH) Union Leader, "Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday [Monday, Nov. 27] in Manchester said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

"Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a 'different set of rules' may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message."

Free speech means nothing without habeas corpus but imagine for a moment - such a thought process as expressed by the fat little man from GA is wide open to interpretation. The folks they say they want to snarl in their net are not terrorist in a foreign land but folks within the US. Who is to say that at some point in the future their net is not widened to include say - folks like Johnnie and I and all the folks we link to and email and maybe you for just reading what we have to say?