America a Police State? by Ron Paul

Is America Becoming a Police State?
by REP. RON PAUL

In 2002 I asked my House colleagues a rhetorical question with regard to the onslaught of government growth in the post-September 11th era: Is America becoming a police state?

The question is no longer rhetorical. We are not yet living in a total police state, but it is fast approaching.

The seeds of future tyranny have been sown, and many of our basic protections against government have been undermined. The atmosphere since 2001 has permitted Congress to create whole new departments and agencies that purport to make us safer- always at the expense of our liberty. But security and liberty go hand-in-hand.

Members of Congress, like too many Americans, don't understand that a society with no constraints on its government cannot be secure. History proves that societies crumble when their governments become more powerful than the people and private institutions.

Unfortunately, the new intelligence bill passed by Congress two weeks ago moves us closer to an encroaching police state by imposing the precursor to a full-fledged national ID card.


Within two years, every American will need a "conforming ID to deal with any federal agency -- including TSA at the airport. Undoubtedly many Americans and members of Congress don't believe America is becoming a police state, which is reasonable enough. They associate the phrase with highly visible symbols of authoritarianism like military patrols, martial law, and summary executions.

But we ought to be concerned that we have laid the foundation for tyranny by making the public more docile, more accustomed to government bullying, and more accepting of arbitrary authority -- all in the name of security. Our love for liberty above all has been so diminished that we tolerate intrusions into our privacy that would have been abhorred just a few years ago.

We tolerate inconveniences and infringements upon our liberties in a manner that reflects poorly on our great national character of rugged individualism. American history, at least in part, is a history of people who don't like being told what to do. Yet we are increasingly empowering the federal government and its agents to run our lives.

Terror, fear, and crises like 9-11 are used to achieve complacency and obedience, especially when citizens are deluded into believing they are still a free people.

The loss of liberty, we are assured, will be minimal, short-lived, and necessary. Many citizens believe that once the war on terror is over, restrictions on their liberties will be reversed. But this war is undeclared and open-ended, with no precise enemy and no expressly stated final goal. Terrorism will never be eradicated completely; does this mean future presidents will assert extraordinary war powers indefinitely?

Washington DC provides a vivid illustration of what our future might look like. Visitors to Capitol Hill encounter police barricades, metal detectors, paramilitary officers carrying fully automatic rifles, police dogs, ID checks, and vehicle stops. The people are totally disarmed; only the police and criminals have guns.

Surveillance cameras are everywhere, monitoring street activity, subway travel, parks, and federal buildings. There's not much evidence of an open society in Washington, DC, yet most folks do not complain -- anything goes if it's for government-provided safety and security.

After all, proponents argue, the government is doing all this to catch the bad guys. If you don't have anything to hide, they ask, what are you so afraid of?

The answer is that I'm afraid of losing the last vestiges of privacy that a free society should hold dear.

I'm afraid of creating a society where the burden is on citizens to prove their innocence, rather than on government to prove wrongdoing.

Most of all, I'm afraid of living in a society where a subservient populace surrenders its liberties to an all-powerful government.

It may be true that average Americans do not feel intimidated by the encroachment of the police state. Americans remain tolerant of what they see as mere nuisances because they have been deluded into believing total government supervision is necessary and helpful, and because they still enjoy a high level of material comfort.

That tolerance may wane, however, as our standard of living falls due to spiraling debt, endless deficit spending at home and abroad, a declining fiat dollar, inflation, higher interest rates, and failing entitlement programs. At that point attitudes toward omnipotent government may change, but the trend toward authoritarianism will be difficult to reverse.

Those who believe a police state can't happen here are poor students of history.

Every government, democratic or not, is capable of tyranny.

We must understand this if we hope to remain a free people.

http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2004/tst122004.htm


It Can't Happen Here
By Rep. Ron Paul
12-21-2004

Date: Nov 29, 2007 11:59 AM


Paul Craig Roberts, a Republican who worked in the Reagan administration, is predicting a 9-11 type of attack before the 2008 elections. If that occurs, Bush can declare martial law and begin arresting those who disagree with his foreign policy (based on Executive Orders recently issued by the Bush Administration that grant the president these powers and more.) Wild stuff.

Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the "Father of Reaganomics".
He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.

The original 28 minute audio clip was found at

http://www.archive.org/details/71907T... under the heading "Open Source Audio".

By JBS Staff
Published: 2007-11-29 21:16 Email this page | printer friendly version


When the full Senate returns to Washington in early December, they will soon begin to schedule floor votes on several pieces of legislation. One such piece of legislation is the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.

With two versions of this bill currently in the Senate (H.R. 1955 and S. 1959), the legislation could attack First Amendment rights by mandating the government to clamp down on free speech online, among other things.

It should be remembered that following the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Clinton administration blamed not just the indicted perpetrators, Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, but also all those who had like McVeigh, Nichols and Fortier protested against the government's deadly actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Time magazine and other media organs joined the administration in charging that these "anti-government" protesters were actually "ideational co-conspirators" with the OKC bombers.

Like President Clinton, President Bush now equates opposition to his policies, especially concerning the War in Iraq and the "War on Terror," as unpatriotic, or even treasonable. We are perilously close to losing our precious right to freedom of expression.

Would Americans be liable for arrest and prosecution under the "Violent Radicalization," "Homegrown Terrorism," or "Ideologically based violence," provisions of H.R. 1955 and S. 1959, for example, for stating that citizens must be armed to protect themselves against government-imposed tyranny? Perhaps not just yet, but it is not at all farfetched to suggest that such a state of affairs could quickly develop, especially considering the virulent anti-gun bias of the elites in the media and government.

Having recently freed themselves by force of arms from the tyranny of King George and understanding full well the importance of an armed citizenry for the preservation of liberty, our Founding Fathers were adamant that Americans have the means and the determination to oppose any similar tyranny that might develop under the proposed new national government.

Thomas Jefferson was inflexible on the issue, asserting: "No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."


Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist (No.28): "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government .... "


Noah Webster expressed the same principle this way: "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."


Patrick Henry declared: "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined .... The great object is that every man be armed."


George Washington averred that firearms are "the people's liberty teeth."


However, under H.R. 1955 and S. 1959, each of these Founding Fathers might be prosecuted for "planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual ... to intimidate or coerce the United States government."

To take immediate action on the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, click here.

[link to capwiz.com]

To donate to The John Birch Society's legislative alert system, click here.

Thank you,

The John Birch Society
Standing for family and freedom since 1958

[link to www.jbs.org]
'When the people fear their government, there is tyranny;
When the government fears the people, there is liberty.'
Thomas Jefferson



RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT IN 08!!!
www.ronpaul2008.com