Slippery Slope

All right, all you Constitutionalists- why am I reading the following only on liberal outlets [from the Washington Post]:

White House Proposal Would Expand Authority of Military Courts August 2, 2006

R. Jeffrey Smith

The Washington Post

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.

The draft proposed legislation, set to be discussed at two Senate hearings today, is controversial inside and outside the administration because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and traditional military criminal justice systems.

Phones wire-tapped without due process, citizens stripped of right to bear arms, and unconstitutional (if you consider the Supreme Court still having right to make that call- if left to the people, do you really think it would have been different?) detaining methods, all piling up in the last few months.

Whilst their civil liberties were eagerly beset upon by Bigger than Big Government, the people slept soundly in their apathy cocoons, confident that nothing could ever happen to them.

History books remained tightly shut, when they weren't surreptitiously revised.

All of them took care to read the same News feed approved by Administration propaganda denizens.

They rejoiced at the tightening rein on free speech on televison and radio programming. Making the culture 'kid-friendly' in every possible way equated to a safer World.

Those who showed the Truth, which has both darkness and light- and at times darkness prevailing- became either harbingers of treasonist intent or made into demi-gods of buffoonery.

This people needed a sanitized World, where only those unlike them deserved to die, where only their God deserved to win, and no one need inherit a better Earth to inhabit than their parents.

Imbed the chip, take your stabilizing pill, and think back how cute protest marches seemed through a historic filter of people actually giving a rat's ass.

Comments

[tamsen]

This ain't culture.

1. Wire-tapping- BushCo...bring it like Nixon, as the kids say.

2. Right to bear arms stripped- Nat'l Guard- under Bush.

3. Guantanamo's prolonged encampment, with no trials, no verdicts- under Bush.

4. FCC going nuts over a breast, but violence is never an issue- under a super-conservative Bush contributer.

this damage ain't due to liberal, progressive thinking.

[Jeff]

I think you may be basing, Bob, your statement on the fact that the rest of world seems to hate us, therefore we are not "increasing our cultural value to the world". I would argue that it is the rest of the world that is fucking nuts, not the U.S. Just because we are hated, does not mean our values are subordinate. I agree with and fear the slippery slope concept, although the slope we are on is not coming from this Admin. Our culture has been deteriorating since the 1960's as Leftism has gained ground it it's agenda.

[Bob]

I'm beginning to think that this is the natural lifecycle of a dominant nation-state. Once a nation reaches it's peak, culturally dominating others (Roman Empire, Ancient Greece - Athens, Germany c 1850 to 1940), it falls in on itself by it's own laws and petty in-fighting.

Once the Berlin wall fell, I think we've had our breif cultural dominance and now we are in decline.

I'd like to be upbeat about this, but I just don't see any data that says we're increasing our cultural value to the world.