Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_dux
smooth....I've had access to many briefings by DHS (and several by the WH) to state/local officials since 9/11 and I heard lots of talk about consolidating a response to terrorist threat or natural disaster.
I dont recall them every mentioning that the president has the unilateral power to determine "other conditions" where federal troops could be deployed.
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To clarify, I'm not suggesting that anyone spoke in a class of students and said that the president now has unilateral power to deploy federal troops.
I'm only saying that the reasons for the folding of the depts. into one umbrella organization was to better facilitate responses to terrorist attacks rather than suppressing political activism.
Now, that said, I'm as concerned as anyone else posting in this thread that the realities of our current situation necessitate rapid response teams, and I'm not happy about that. I just personally don't know what to do about that. I mean, the choice is to adhere to idealism that federal troops ready to deploy on US soil a bad idea, in general and in theory vs. the reality that in the event of a dirty bomb that if it weren't for how our system is being setup that we will be in for a world of hurt.
I guess that the corollary is the growth of regulatory bodies that historically encroach upon what was supposed to be governed by state and federal legislative bodies. We know that members of Congress are not necessarily experts in food safety, so we hand those issues off to the FDA which operate outside the direct of Congress. This is an issue that I put on a lot of essay tests for students to think about...that there is a fundamental inconsistency between the fundamentals our nation was founded upon and the realities it takes to run the nation. Congress can't handle it all, even if they were experts in the various agencies' aspects, due to time and scope of things it takes to make things run efficiently. As a result, we have a lot of regulatory bodies that operate independently from Congress.
I'm not quite sure what the answer is, tbh. I'm either not far from willravel or even more extreme in my concern over these issues. I just don't know how we can make sure our country can respond to real threats vs. making sure our rights and ideals are remain intact. It's not hyperbolic to suggest that if a dirty bomb were to go off in a 30 mile radius of where I live that western civilization would end as we know it. Definitely western capitalism. whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a personal decision.
EDIT: I'm not offended by anything you've written, willravel. I share the same concerns, regardless of how my posts come off. I posted earlier (but not explicitly) that my main concern with hyperbole is that it makes it so we can't communicate with people who are more reasonably minded than we are. LOL