shakran

Now that the thread is opened again, I feel that perhaps some clarification is in order.

I certainly do not accuse the United States of being involved in the mass-extermination of its citizens that some of the countries mentioned by Ustwo are guilty of. What I accuse the United States of is in going down the road toward greater and greater restriction of liberty, which would land us in a similar situation to the "communists." (By the way, yes I know that communism is an economic, not a governmental, system, but in today's vernacular communism is synonymous with an authoritarian government in which liberty is repressed. To avoid having to go into a long discourse on comparitive governments, I simply used the common term.)

What concerns me greatly is that we are losing our freedoms at a steady rate, yet few people are doing anything about it, or even talking about it. Let's look at some facts here:

In 1974 the story broke that half a million 10,000 United States citizens, including Martain Luther King, had been spied on by the FBI and CIA. As a result, a system of checks and balances was put into place, which would strengthen the requirement for search warrants/wiretapping warrants/etc before the government spies on its own citizens. In short, it went to enhance our right to personal privacy. The Patriot Act killed all that - Under the Patriot Act, the government can spy on anyone it wants with no oversight. This sets a dangerous precedent.

Anything we do online can be monitored. Our emails can be monitored. What you look at here can be monitored, and this can all be monitored without the government having to have any justification for this monitoring. Again, this sets a dangerous precedent. At what point do we decide that our personal privacy has been eroded enough, and demand that it stop?


Many people are unaware (I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating) that your credit rating can stop you from flying. Low credit? You might just be placed on the government's "no fly" list. You can be placed on it without warning, with no explanation. The government does not have to and in most cases will not tell you why you are on that list, or what, if anything, you can do to get off of it again.

Vague terrorist threats. Anyone wonder why the terrorist threat level keeps going to orange, and then nothing happens? We don't even hear about any arrests of potential terrorists during these elevated warning periods. And remember, the intelligence agencies that are releasing the data that causes the administration to elevate the terrorist threat level are the same intelligence agencies that Bush & Co. are currently blaming for the WMD fiasco in Iraq.

And speaking of WMD's, where in hell are they? We were told by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and others, that Iraq had them, that they would use them against us, and if we didn't attack we were all gonna be in a world of hurt soon. All this despite the fact that nearly every other country on the planet told us that there was no reason to suspect Sadaam had them, that we were jumping the gun, and that the attack was unwarranted.

Of course, those countries that did tell us that, and who chose not to involve themselves in an immoral act of war perpetrated by the United States, were promptly ridiculed by America. France comes to mind here. Freedom toast, Freedom fries, etc, were all asinine and childish ways of trying to get back at France for standing up for what it believed in. Even the president, the most powerful man in the world, and the public face of our country, engaged in this juvenile behavior when he allowed freedom toast to be served on Air Force One. French's Mustard had to release a statement swearing the company is not based in France, and the company still saw a reduction in sales during the France-bashing. Did the American people rally against this kindergarten display? Heck no, they participated in it. The mob mentality took over and we forgot that America stands for freedom of expression. Despite that lofty principal, we bashed France for months for expressing itself.

Now that we're in Iraq, and we've seen WMD's are not there, we also begin to see that the United States has no exit strategy. Why? Because Bush wanted to beat up Sadaam, and he didn't want to plan any further.

We have a president who not only avoids informing himself of world events, but who brags about it! The man came straight out and said he does not read the newspapers or listen to the news, preferring instead for his close advisors to inform him of what's happening. A president who does not keep himself informed is a president who is at best easily manipulated and is so badly misinformed that he cannot possibly make good decisions even if he wants to.

On to today's issue, the constitution is meant to define liberties, not restrict freedom. George Bush is supporting an amendment that would not only restrict freedom, but in fact would be at its core no different than the segregation of black people was. It is a discriminatory amendment that targets gays for the express purpose of restricting their freedom. It's another case of "if you don't hold the same beliefs as your government, your freedom gets taken away from you."

This legislation goes against the fundamental principals of our country. All people are created equal. Equal protection under the law. This amendment would protect marriage only for heterosexual people - that's not equal protection.

During the cold war we were told that Communist Russia was the evil empire because its government denied basic liberties to its citizens. Our government has started on the path to denying those same liberties, which forced me to wonder why we consider communism so dangerous when we ourselves are staring the same type of danger in the face and are doing basically nothing about it.

Hope that clears some stuff up.