Russia and other Eastern Bloc countries recently observed the 20th anniversary of the official end of the Soviet Union. During the late 1980s-early 1990s millions of people were freed from the repressive shackles of the almighty Soviet communist State. Unfortunately, over these past 20 years, here in the U.S. the federal government has grown and grown and become increasingly oppressive and tyrannical. As I noted recently, the FEMA camps are being manufactured by the feds that, unless the police state trend is stopped, will most probably become very much like the Soviet gulags.
And this is coinciding not accidentally with the new law that the dupes and criminals of Congress passed overwhelmingly and that Barack Obama signed that gives the president the power to have the military apprehend any American and detain indefinitely anyone the president labels a “terrorist” or accuses of conspiring or being an accessory to terrorism, without evidence brought forward (as the president assassinated U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without evidence provided). You see, if someone accuses someone else of something — regardless of how horrible or heinous the crime — the accuser is morally and legally obligated to show evidence against the accused. This is because anyone can claim that someone is a “terrorist” or a pedophile etc., but you need proof of your claim. It doesn’t matter who the accuser is, an ordinary civilian or the president, it doesn’t matter. Especially given that the government is a compulsory monopolist of territorial protection and judicial decision-making, and that such monopoly police powers attract the worst amongst us, we must never trust the word alone of any government official. Even the Nuremberg Tribunals were obligated to give alleged Nazi war criminals their right to due process.
In 2002, Ron Paul gave this speech before the House of representatives, Are We Doomed to Be a Police State? in which he foresaw that the post-9/11 hysterical policies the Bush Administration put into place could very well cause America to become a police state. Given the political nature of government — the power that such an apparatus gives to individuals working for it or associated with it — if you know the history of past governments, the Nazi regime and the Soviets especially, then you can see that giving government officials, military or police these extra intrusive powers that violate civilians’ persons or property without due process is the way to tyranny.
Even back in the 1980s, White House basement Iran-Contra organizer Oliver North wanted martial law, particularly as a means of stifling political dissent. (Further info on North, and please read my piece on martial law, if you haven’t already.) North’s ideal of stifling political dissent is what the Soviet gulags were for. People on the side of State power and its police powers do not like political dissent. Such dissent undermines their power, although they like to lie and fool the masses by saying that such dissent “undermines the country.” As we have seen, it is the government and its expansionism and intrusiveness that have been undermining America.
It is unfortunate that so many people on the Left support groups such as ACORN, S.E.I.U., AmeriCorps, and other pro-Obama, anti-liberty organizations, even though it is these organizations of the Left who will be the “brownshirts” that, along with Obama’s obedient yes-men of the military, will apprehend people from their homes and offices, from the baseball park and from the local diner, people known to be political dissenters and critics of the regime, and detain them indefinitely. That is what the FEMA camps are for. That is what ObamaCare is really for: let the government have access into every aspect of everybody’s medical matters, as a means for greater control. (See this and this about Soviet medicine.That is what the American Left wants.)
There is little to no difference between the Obama-Leftists and the Oliver North-Dick Cheney military central planners. They are all of the same anti-liberty, pro-absolute government control ilk. Both sides believe religiously in the Total State.
The Establishment — politicians and their media stenographers — have been ignoring, smearing, and shunning Ron Paul and his message of individual liberty and private property, free markets and freedom of association, because the State’s brownshirts, Stasi, Gestapo and KGB-wannabes do not want major changes to their regime, their precious government wealth-confiscating and expropriating apparatus. They are as clinging to it as the communists were in their resisting the desocializing and “capitalizing” efforts of their people (See this on how the Gorby communists and their clinging prolonged the pain of desocializing, and Rothbard on the right way to desocialize).
As the 20th anniversary of the official end of the Soviet Union comes and goes, we must remember that the people of the old Soviet Union wanted to cut the shackles with which the State enslaved them, and the State’s criminals couldn’t cope with the thought of such a loss of control over the people. We are experiencing all that now, as those Americans who desire freedom want desparately to dismantle that oppressive regime in Washington and cut their own shackles of repression, while the DC resisters panic and want to impose martial law against the dissenters. Some people are just evil, and thrive on control over others.
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Unfortunately, reality is very depressing. Let’s hear Ronald Reagan tell Soviet jokes instead:
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