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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Sunday, February 23, 2014

The Best of Alan Caruba: Post Constitutional America?

Editor's Note:  There are two fully published article here.  My thanks to Alan for allowing me to publish his work.


By Alan Caruba Saturday, February 22, 2014
An organization, Patriots for America, is calling for millions of Americans to descend on Washington, D.C on May 16 for Operation American Spring whose purpose is to demand that President Obama and others in his administration be removed from office.
Among the rules of engagement set forth on their Internet site include (1) no weapons. No ammunition. “The Communist forces that control Washington, D.C. do not recognize the 2nd Amendment and have banned all weapons and ammunition from the district. Do not give them the opportunity to arrest you and prosecute you.” (2) Follow all rules of the road. (3) Comply with all constitutional requests of local authorities. And (4) travel in groups of four or greater.
Geoff Ross is identified as the senior chief of the organization that wants participants to be prepared to stay as long as it takes for Congress to take action. The event suggests that he and many supportive groups think the U.S. is at risk of losing its constitutional government so long as Barack Obama is President.
The worst possible scenario to the event would be if some element of the law enforcement authority is ordered to fire on the gathering, but I recall that in July 2008 presidential candidate Obama said that Americans could no longer “…continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
America does not need a civilian national security force.
We have the military whose job is to protect us against foreign invasion and we have state and local police authorities in our towns and cities to address riots and large protests. The force the President wants would exist solely to intimidate and control Americans who he deems his enemies.
What we do have in the wake of 9/11 is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and it is not intended to be a military force although it does include the Coast Guard. On March 23, 2013, Capt. Terry M. Hestilow, U.S. Army retired, wrote to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) warning that DHS is preparing to go to war with the citizens of the United States.
“It is with gravest concern that I write to you today concerning the recent appropriation of weapons by the DHS that can only be understood as a bold threat of war by that agency, and the Obama administration, against the citizens of the United States of America.” He expressed his concerns over “recent purchases of almost 3,000 mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armored personnel carriers, 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition (with associated weapons), and other weapons systems.”
“One needs only look to the rise of Adolf Hitler,” wrote Capt. Hestilow, “and his associated DHS organizations, the SA and the SS, of 1932-1934, to see the outcome of allowing an agency of government this kind of control over the free citizens of a nation.”
In a February 5, 2014 article on Infowars.com, Kit Daniels reported that “The U.S. Postal Service is currently seeking companies that can provide “assorted small arms ammunition in the new future. The U.S. Postal Service joins the long list of non-military federal agencies purchasing large amounts of ammunition.”
What has a growing number of Americans concerned is this arming of government agencies we do not associate with the need to be heavily armed. “Since 2001, the U.S. Department of Education has been building a massive arsenal through purchases orchestrated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms” reported Daniels. “Back in July, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also purchased 72,000 rounds of 40 Smith and Wesson, following a 2012 purchase for 46,000 rounds of .40 S&W jacketed hollow point by the National Weather Service.”
One might assume that the DHS needs to be armed to some degree, but there is no logical reason for the Post Office, the Department of Education, and NOAA to be heavily armed. Reportedly DHS spent over $58 million to hire security details for just two Social Security offices in Maryland and $80 million for armed guards to protect government buildings in New York and more guards for federal facilities in Wisconsin and Minnesota. “Even the Environmental Protection Agency has its own SWAT teams conducting raids on peaceful Americans,” wrote Daniels.
DHS has been engaged in a program to provide military-style weapons and vehicles to local police forces around the nations.
My most profound fear, my paranoia, concerning the May 16 protest, despite its instructions to participants not be armed, is that some incident would escalate to a point where shots were exchanged. One can conceive of that serving as the reason to initiate an “emergency” proclamation and/or to declare martial law.
One gets the feeling that this government, under the direction of President Obama, is preparing for a national insurrection against his often lawless administration. The May 16 event would provide an excuse to initiate actions that would put us all under the gun.
I no longer believe “it can’t happen here.” We have a President who sees no reason to work with Congress and who recently “joked” that he can do whatever he wants.
I worry that members of our military and others would obey orders to impose governmental control to the extent that we might see widespread resistance by millions of armed Americans. I regard the surge in the purchase of weapons by private citizens during Obama’s terms in office as a reflection of the paranoia that I am feeling these days.
But is it paranoia? Or is it a reasonable assumption that a President who feels free to ignore the Constitution might have plans that do not include peaceful elections or his departure from the office?
© Alan Caruba, 2014

By Alan Caruba Saturday, February 1, 2014
February 1st was National Freedom Day. It commemorates Lincoln’s signing of the House and Senate resolution that later became the 13th Amendment. Lincoln signed the Amendment outlawing slavery on February 1, 1865.
Short of another Civil War, Americans have reached a point verging on the loss of their Constitutional freedoms as ever before. The issue then was slavery, but Americans are rapidly moving toward having their Bill of Rights annulled by a President intent on ruling as a despot, making them slaves of a regime that rules as he wishes, ignoring the Constitution and Congress.
His actions have been supported by the Democratic members of Congress and because Republicans only control the House they have seen their legislative efforts to oppose the regime blocked, often by one man, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader. The nation’s media with few exceptions have supported or ignored the President’s actions.
Why is this happening? A brief review of the means put forth in Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals”, written by a “community organizer”, outlines what Obama is doing as he seeks to turn America into a socialist state. It is a process that progressives/liberals have been pursuing since early in the last century.

1) Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people.
2) Poverty – Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3) Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.
4) Gun Control – Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state.
5) Welfare – Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).
6) Education – Take control of what people read and listen to – take control of what children learn in school.
7) Religion – Remove the belief in God from the Government and schools.
8) Class Warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.
 
We are close to having everything we write and say known to the regime. As Andrew Napolitano asks, “What if the government spies on all of us all the time and recognizes no limits to its spying? What if its appetite for acquiring personal knowledge about all Americans is insatiable? What if the government uses the microchips in our cellphones to follow us and listen to us as we move about?”
And what if Congress, as World Net Daily’s Bob Unruh has written, has empowered the President to “arrest, kidnap, detain without trial and hold indefinitely American citizens thought to ‘represent an enduring security threat to the United States.’” That’s what the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) does!
“Some of the nation’s most respected legal teams are asking the Supreme Court to take up a challenge to the indefinite-detention provisions” of the Act “charging that the law has created the framework for a police state.” That’s how far along we are toward the destruction of the U.S. Constitution.
“The 2014 NDAA was fast-tracked through the U.S. Senate, with no time for discussion or amendments, while most Americans were distracted by the scandal surrounding A&E’s troubles with ‘Duck Dynasty’ star Phil Robertson. Eighty-five of 100 senators voted in favor of the new version of the NDAA, which had already been quietly passed by the House of Representatives.”
Ostensibly a law to address terrorists, the NDAA is a blueprint for a nation in which its citizens have none of the rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights. All it will take is the declaration of martial law or a national emergency.
Sen. Ted Cruz, a leading opponent of Obamacare, writing in The Wall Street Journal, said, “Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the President’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat…the President’s taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology.”
Americans will soon have little recourse against a government intent on controlling every aspect of their lives, spying on them, and arresting them for criticizing it.
A May 16 march on Washington may cause the White House and the Congress to pause in its attacks on our freedom and liberty. One can only hope that millions participate.
Americans fought a war to end slavery. Will we have to fight to resist becoming slaves?
© Alan Caruba, 2014

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