AP Poll...Fascism Rising
Terry Liberty-Parker
Forwarded (from: LIBERTY) by Terry Liberty-Parker using timEd.
Originally from Libernet-D (1:204/9.0) to All.
Original dated: May 12 '95, 17:47
From: tho...@solbrn.dseg.ti.com (kenneth t emanuelson ii)
To: no...@mainstream.com, liber...@Dartmouth.EDU
Date: Sun, 7 May 95 01:44:22 CDT
> Quoted under fair use.
>
> Associated Press
>
> NEW YORK (2:43 p.m.) -- Spying on suspicious groups, seizing their
> weapons,
> deporting foreign suspects -- these are powers most Americans say the
> government should have after the Oklahoma bombing.
>
> An Associated Press poll taken April 28 to May 2 found that 54 percent of
> U.S. adults believe the government must try to stop terrorists even if it
> intrudes on some people's rights and privacy.
I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Walter Williams about a month
ago, and we discussed an article he wrote on the subject of secession
from the Federal Govt. He received an overwhelming volume of positive
mail about it. So here's my idea: perhaps if we promised to get Gramm,
Armey, Archer, Perot, and associates off their backs, the liberals would
let Texas secede - sounds like a bargain to me!
I fear that if things go much further, the two sides of our country will
develop "irreconcilable differences." We (the left and the right) can
talk to each other, but we no longer hear each other. All the debates
have been fought, all the issues have been raised, and we are still not
even in the same library, much less on the same page. We have limped
along with this rift, like a bum knee, throughout our history. The issues
of state and individual sovereignty surface again and again. The conflict
goes back before the dawn of our country, back to Plato (original apologist
for the all-powerful state) and Aristotle (original defender of the right
of private property.) We live in Hamilton's America, but there are those
of us that would rather live in Jefferson's America. Reading the results
of the poll above only reinforces my belief that we (the Jeffersonians)
will never get there from here, that there are too many powerful vested
interests at work. I hope I'm wrong.
As the Federal Government expands its reach, it finds its expansion resisted
by men who refuse to accept the moral legitimacy of a government without
restraint. Such men will die before they submit. The Federal Government
is then faced with the choice of either backing off or killing large
segments of the citizenry, as in the Soviet, Nazi, and Maoist "purges."
Could such a thing happen in America? It's not inconceivable. We have the
same flesh and blood, the same minds and souls as the men and women that
carried out the Salem witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust,
the Trail of Tears. All one has to do is instill just the right amount
of fear and just a drop of hatred . . . convince a majority of the people
that they need protection . . . protection from "witches," "heretics,"
"Jews," "savages," "terrorists," "extremists," "radicals," "bigots,"
"hate-mongers," "militias," "angry white men."
Sound familiar?
I'm not saying we're on the brink of fascism, but you CAN get there from
here.
Clinton's "them" rhetoric, his painting individuals with a broad brush,
has got to stop. We must take him to task - and others who do likewise - in
the papers, on the radio, in the mail, through all available means. It will
cost Clinton DEARLY if we can expose him as the McCarthyite that he's become.
-Thomas
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- Origin: Forwarded through Dehnbase Rainbow (1:204/9)