The Stalinist future of the U.S.

[Smoke]

Now that we have accepted free speech zones, the effective abolition of the 4th Amendment, torture, and living under surveillance, what's next?

When I was a kid, the Communist scare was on, and one of the things they said about the godless Communists was that they had children inform on their own parents. Monsters!

Now we're doing it, to fight the scourge of Demon Weed.

CMS elementary student brings pot to school to turn in parents - WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC-

"Even if it's happening in their own home with their own parents, they understand that's a dangerous situation because of what we're teaching them," said Matthews Officer Stason Tyrrell. That's what they're told to do, to make us aware."​

 

[Revoltingest]

When I was a kid, the Communist scare was on, and one of the things they said about the godless Communists was that they had children inform on their own parents. Monsters!

We have met the commie & he is us.

 

[Penumbra]

Well, there are more checks and balances in place now. So, it at least slows down oppression and the removal of freedoms and allows time to counter it.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Well, there are more checks and balances in place now. So, it at least slows down oppression and the removal of freedoms and allows time to counter it.

Actually I would love to see much of the oppressive measures repealed and utterly destroyed and any intrusive surveillance (with the power to bite) such as that found in Britain and various parts of the U.S. eliminated with some reasonable exceptions made to the rule like border surveillance.

I don't appreciate the idea of being forcibly corralled through any kind of "legally" monitored rat maze where even the slightest deflection from breaking lockstep results in a ticket or summons in the mail, or for one reason or other suddenly finding oneself surrounded by a number of questioning authorities in an aggressive posture carrying weapons and lead weighted nightsticks solely based on the premise of suspicion and not fact. I just don't want to live my life out in a structured potentially oppressive environment like that. It's too surreal based on what I was previously taught as to what a free country should entail and consist of. Brits especially are aware of this, and the U.S. seems fast on the track to become just like Britain.

I personally think Britain as a free country is already done for. The U.S. seems to have a bit of time yet to get to the level that Britain has, but if nothing is done to address the issues by our representatives, we will be done as well as far as living in a free society goes.

 

[Penumbra]

Actually I would love to see much of the oppressive measures repealed and utterly destroyed and any intrusive surveillance (with the power to bite) such as that found in Britain and various parts of the U.S. eliminated with some reasonable exceptions made to the rule like border surveillance.

I don't appreciate the idea of being forcibly corralled through any kind of "legally" monitored rat maze where even the slightest deflection from breaking lockstep results in a ticket or summons in the mail, or for one reason or other suddenly finding oneself surrounded by a number of questioning authorities in an aggressive posture carrying weapons and lead weighted nightsticks solely based on the premise of suspicion and not fact. I just don't want to live my life out in a structured potentially oppressive environment like that. It's too surreal based on what I was previously taught as to what a free country should entail and consist of. Brits especially are aware of this, and the U.S. seems fast on the track to become just like Britain.

I personally think Britain as a free country is already done for. The U.S. seems to have a bit of time yet to get to the level that Britain has, but if nothing is done to address the issues by our representatives, we will be done as well as far as living in a free society goes.

I wasn't equating checks and balances with oppression.

I was using the phrase checks and balances to refer to the way the government is set up; the balance of power is split and protected. The way that leaders only operate for finite terms, and that the various branches of government can intervene with each other, helps put safeguards in place against this country ever turning into something like with Stalin.

 

[Father Heathen]

Here in America, abuse and corruption is only bad when it's the "other side" doing it.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I wasn't equating checks and balances with oppression.

I was using the phrase checks and balances to refer to the way the government is set up; the balance of power is split and protected. The way that leaders only operate for finite terms, and that the various branches of government can intervene with each other, helps put safeguards in place against this country ever turning into something like with Stalin.

Oh O.K. I see.

Originally Posted by Penumbra
Well, there are more checks and balances in place now. So, it at least slows down oppression and the removal of freedoms and allows time to counter it.

I took it as the system of checks and balances previously failing in the manner of questionable legislation affecting the Constitution and Bill of Rights that has been ambitiously pushed through and implemented with minimal resistance and opposition to the legality of the measures among the three branches of goverment.

 

[Penumbra]

Oh O.K. I see.

I took it as the system of checks and balances previously failing in the manner of questionable legislation affecting the Constitution and Bill of Rights that has been ambitiously pushed through and implemented with minimal resistance and opposition to the legality of the measures among the three branches of goverment.

The checks and balances cannot protect people from themselves. The system can protect the people from a few individuals, but if the masses learn to distrust freedom then they can bring the system down.

The system has been set up in a way that people have to mess up really, really badly to bring it down. It can't just change overnight, with one leader taking control and having his way. But over a long period of time, if people keep making decisions out of fear, and begin to fill all three branches of government with people who distrust freedom, then it becomes bad. For it turn Stalinist, however, they'd not only have to distrust freedom, but trust each other enough to forgo power to a smaller group of people, or one person, which is quite a jump.

The safeguards give people virtually endless opportunities to reverse their way of thinking if it is beginning to cause them problems.

 

[Twilight Hue]

..But over a long period of time, if people keep making decisions out of fear, and begin to fill all three branches of government with people who distrust freedom, then it becomes bad. For it turn Stalinist, however, they'd not only have to distrust freedom, but trust each other enough to forgo power to a smaller group of people, or one person, which is quite a jump.

That sounds eerily prophetic and plausible for some reason. It might make for a possibly good thread of which questions if a Stalinist style takeover could ever happen this way, using our own political system as it is presently set up.

 

[Smoke]

For it turn Stalinist, however, they'd not only have to distrust freedom, but trust each other enough to forgo power to a smaller group of people, or one person, which is quite a jump.

The safeguards give people virtually endless opportunities to reverse their way of thinking if it is beginning to cause them problems.

Surveillance of American citizens, tapping their phones, rootling through their private papers and monitoring their electronic communications, all without warrants, has long been a covert practice of the executive branch, and such actions have been regularized by acts of Congress and are now practiced routinely without any effective checks.

Under Bush, the President was granted the power to detain anyone, including American citizens, indefinitely without charging them with any crime and without giving any reason for their detention, a power that has not been rescinded since Obama took office. Consequently, whatever rights and privileges you may enjoy in the United States, you enjoy them at the pleasure of the President.

The American people have bartered away their constitutional rights and protections in exchange for the illusion of security against terrorism, assuring themselves all along the way that if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about.

 

[ellenjanuary]

Checks and balances - banks and lawyers. If ya ain't got the dough, into the pit you go.

 

[Antibush5]

A Stalinist state without communist propaganda? Thats just wrong, its wrong!

 

[Sunstone]

The American people have bartered away their constitutional rights and protections in exchange for the illusion of security against terrorism, assuring themselves all along the way that if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about.

Which turns my stomach. You don't even got to be macho to have far more guts and strength of character than those weak-kneed, hysterical, near-fainting, Fox-viewing, "Americans" who demand security at the price of liberty. Those ******** make me want to puke.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Surveillance of American citizens, tapping their phones, rootling through their private papers and monitoring their electronic communications, all without warrants, has long been a covert practice of the executive branch, and such actions have been regularized by acts of Congress and are now practiced routinely without any effective checks.

Under Bush, the President was granted the power to detain anyone, including American citizens, indefinitely without charging them with any crime and without giving any reason for their detention, a power that has not been rescinded since Obama took office. Consequently, whatever rights and privileges you may enjoy in the United States, you enjoy them at the pleasure of the President.

The American people have bartered away their constitutional rights and protections in exchange for the illusion of security against terrorism, assuring themselves all along the way that if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about.

I understand the need for national security, but this IMO is just as bad if not much more worse as the Japanese internment in WW2.

The very fact that a U.S.citizen (with exception to being an active enemy combatant) can for no other reason other than suspicion be dragged away and imprisoned (for life?) without ever undergoing legal recourse, hearings and trials still has my jaw dropping in light of the Constitution and Bill of Rights concerning the protections applied to it's citizenry. Unless someone can tell me just how this is even legally possible to implement without first violating a U.S. Citizen's right granted and " *Ahem *protected" by the Constitution.

Someone educate me as to what is going on here since the war has officially "ended" as well as that of Obama's inactivity and apparent reluctance to address issues such as this. If you can.

 

[Revoltingest]

Under Bush, the President was granted the power to detain anyone, including American citizens, indefinitely without charging them with any crime and without giving any reason for their detention, a power that has not been rescinded since Obama took office.

Source? (Want to read about specifics of it.)

 

[Smoke]

Source? (Want to read about specifics of it.)

Basically, the President's right to detain any person indefinitely without charges rests on his authority to declare, without due process, any person an enemy combatant.

Senate Bill 3081, "The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by John McCain, would strengthen the President's authority to detain both citizens and non-citizens and to strip them of their constitutional rights. Fortunately, it hasn't passed into law.

A report by the CATO Institute (http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/hb108-12.pdf) and another by the Congressional Research Service (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL31724.pdf) are both outdated but summarize some of the problems.

 

[Revoltingest]

Thanx!