[extropy-chat] Tyranny in place

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Oct 1, 2006, at 1:59 AM, Samantha  Atkins wrote:
> Actually this bill allows anyone at all, including you and I, to be  
> declared an "enemy combatant" by government fiat and many of our  
> rights and protections removed simply on that basis.   This is  
> leaving the barn door wide open to unspeakable abuse.


It is more a new variation on the same theme.  The term "enemy  
combatant" just gets added to a long list of other denotations and  
connotations that the government can apply to a person on a flimsy  
and/or unreasonable basis that leaves them pretty much permanently  
hosed.  Very little about this is new in the abstract sense, they are  
just casting a somewhat wider net.

I have limited sympathy for those who just now are having their  
Martin Niemöller moment.  There is very little that is new here, and  
many of the same people who are up in arms now tacitly supported the  
building of the groundwork for decades.


> How about when the election of 2004 was quite possibly stolen?


Oh puh-lease, tinfoil claptrap mostly argued from specious innuendo.   
Let's not go down this path.


> Sheesh.  All the Jihadists and Islamists (whatever that is) in the  
> world haven't a tiny part of the power required to do any such  
> thing.  But rampant fear-mongering plus our own heavy increasing  
> influence of religion based politics may destroy our way of life.


Very true.  The Islamic Hordes(tm) were never going to be anything  
but a major nuisance that arguably could have been managed much more  
inexpensively (on many levels) than any attempt at eradication.


J. Andrew Rogers