Ever since 9/11, there have been a number of small encroachments on the civil liberties of American Citizens. From the questionable provisions of the Patriot Act to the executive orders that consolidate powers in the event of a “catastrophic event”, bit by bit we’re being hemmed in, all in the interest of “national security.”
Conservative pundits, many of them no enemies of big government as long as the largesse is of a military or intelligence-gathering nature, love to say “If you have nothing to hide, it shouldn’t bother you.”
But I have nothing to hide and I think it should bother you. It definitely bothers me. It’s about government overstepping its bounds, peeking into our records, performing excessive surveilance, or telling Americans - without any legal authority to do so - what they can or can’t take a picture of in a public place.
This last one really got to me yesterday. It’s totally groundless:
Like a number of people without a ticket to the Nationals’ game Sunday, Mark Butler stood outside the left field gate and watched some of the historic event from a distance. The Minnesota man carried a digital camera to capture the memories. For a member of the Uniformed Division of United States Secret Service, Butler captured too much.
9NEWS NOW photographer Greg Guise was rolling when an officer approached Mark Butler. Butler said the officer demanded he delete any pictures that showed the security checkpoints set up to screen fans for the visit by President George Bush.
“It’s kind of like not being in America,” Butler said. Butler said he was not interested in the security but in the part of the stadium you could see beyond the gate.
Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley told 9NEWS NOW that there is no “hard and fast rule” in this situation. Wiley said it is a situation left to the discretion of the officer.
When specifically asked about the legality of ordering someone to delete pictures Wiley answered, “We have the authority to ask them to remove the picture from the camera.”
Arthur Spitzer, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area, said “ask” could be the operative word in that statement by Wiley. Spitzer said he knows of no law in these circumstances that would allow law enforcement to force someone to delete pictures.
Totalitarianism rarely arrives overnight. It’s a slow, gradual accumulation of power in the hands of a few. In my dystopic science-fiction musings, I find myself imagining a day when some “catastrophic” event finally sends our nation’s economy into a death spiral and the executive branch finally seizes control and starts calling all the shots. Rome was a republic before Julius Caesar decided he’d do a better job running things himself.
Bush has joked about such things. Back in 2000, he quipped: “If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” I’m not ready to believe he really wants that, but I’m also not entirely sure he doesn’t.
And if not him, then the socialist Democratic candidate for prez just might. The sort of totalitarian control that would be tempting to a President Obama is frightening. He recently complained, “George Bush called this the ownership society, but what he really meant was ‘you’re-on-your-own’ society,â€. In Obama-land, the government always has your back. And your healthcare. And your income. And oversight of whatever you do.
I bet it could be argued that fascism and socialism are just two sides of the same power-hungry coin. The Republicans and the Democrats each want to consolidate power for their own reasons, but neither party is interested in giving it back to the people. In this country, that’s where the power belongs. And if we don’t care, they’re just going to take it from us.
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“In my dystopic science-fiction musings, I find myself imagining a day when some “catastrophic†event finally sends our nation’s economy into a death spiral and the executive branch finally seizes control and starts calling all the shots.”
I just finished reading this book. It’s called “Caliphate” by Tom Kratman. America loses three cities to nuclear attack by Islamic terrorists in 2015 (it would have been seven, but two of the bombs were “just” dirty bomb misfires and two failed to fire at all). London is also destroyed.
In the election of 2016, we elect an American Hitler, who proceeds to wreak a terrible vengeance and builds a de jure American Empire. Western Europe follows the demographic spiral to its logical Islamic conclusion. By 2113, when most of the book’s events occur, the world is split several ways between bad guys and less-bad bad guys. A grim and deliberately cautionary tale.
I’ve got to read that. I’ve been plotting out a story not entirely dissimilar in my head for a while now. I go a step further though, getting all “truthers” with a “false flag” nuclear attack in DC that acts as the immediate catalyst for martial law and executive dictatorship.
I mean, if it was good enough for Hitler to burn the Reichstag…
I bet it could be argued that fascism and socialism are just two sides of the same power-hungry coin.
Fascism is a flavor of socialism. Somebody made a PR coup by positioning Fascism as “right” when it’s actually “left”.
Linguistic evidence of this can still be seen in the word “Nazi” - which is a contraction in German for “Nationalist Socialist”. To distinguish their flavor of socialism from “internationalist socialist” flavors like the Bolsheviks.
As the good professor said: “What are they teaching in those schools these days?”
peace,
Zach,
I’ve definitely heard the argument that Fascism is leftist, and I know about National Socialism. I’ve also heard it argued that Fascism shares certain characteristics, however, with extreme right positions, not just left ones. Is this not the case?
And if not, what do we call extreme right positions when they become totalitarian?
I’d very much like to get my hands on Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. I’m guessing it would be a hell of a good read.
Steve,
Well, in my understanding, Fascism is simply “socialism with private ownership” - that is, control of the means of production goes (ultimately) to the State, while ownership remains (at least nominally) in private hands.
I’m not sure what “extreme right positions” means - I think it’s a swear word to mean “screw-the-people autocratic kleptocracy,” but I’m not certain.
And if not, what do we call extreme right positions when they become totalitarian?
Um, “totalitarian”? “Despotic” and “tyrannical” used to be perfectly fine words — I don’t know why they’ve fallen out of fashion.
peace,
Dammitall man! I need labels! CATCHY LABELS!!!
American’s whingeing about their “burgeoning police state” always make me laugh.
We didn’t all choose to move from one socialist country to another, Hil.
Sorry for the length of what follows, but this is a pet peeve of mine. The view that fascism is socialist is essentially amoral (and that’s its attraction to some) — i.e., it constructs the political spectrum upon the question “how big is government,” while dismissing the question of “what ends should government serve.”
As to why fascism/nazism (FN) belongs on the right and/or differs from socialism/communism (SC) on the left — I’d note that most of what I will say reproduces the left-right cleavages have been broadly reproduced everywhere in post-1789 West, including in the current US, with due differences for local issues and differences among political cultures. On the latter, that means I’d say that calling any post-WW2 Anglo-Saxon a fascist is a pile of crap. But anyway, to why FN is right and SC is left:
(1) FN is nationalistic and tribal and sees the volk as the basis of politics; SC is internationalist and cosmopolitan, with no place for ethnicity per se;
(2) FN, while secular, is often friendly to the church and the church has sometimes reciprocated (more so for F than N; there’s even a flavor called “clerical fascism,” e.g. Father Tiso or Dollfuss); SC is atheistic and almost always hostile to the church or religion absolutely, with the non-love returned;
(3) FN is bellicist, i.e., war is a good for its own sake as the ennoblement of men, and it views the military with awe; and while SC is often violent, it’s always a means to an end, and views the military with contempt as a source of reactionary values (until it can be reconstituted upon SC taking power);
(4) FN holds that the Enlightenment/1789 were some kind of Fall and, though modern itself, acted in the name of Throne and Altar and Tradition to restore an image of the past or its virtues and could and did work with traditional elites and aristocrats (this is all more true of F than N); SC is thoroughly progressive and views itself as the logical end of Modernity and the French Revolution, the executors of History bringing about the future eschaton and abolishing inherited tradition and traditional elites as superstition (”the last aristocrat strangled with the entrails of the last priest,” as the saying goes;
(5) FN had a place for private property, albeit not a liberal capitalist one, but something closer to syndicalism; SC is the per-se rejection of property;
(6) FN seeks to transcend economic class in the name of the organic nation or people, with the classes preserved but collaborating; SC seeks to abolish economic class in the name of proletarian internationalism and sees the classes as permanently at war (”all human history has been class struggle”);
(7) The two actual historical groups claim different intellectual antecedents — vitalism, other forms of modern irrationalism, Nietzsche, Gentile, DeMaistre, etc. for FN, versus economic science, rationalism, Marx, Engels, Mill, the Fabians, etc., for SC;
(8) FN’s summum malum is social decadence; SC’s is economic exploitation;
(9) FN were very traditionalist on matters of sex roles and the family; SC have always been feminist and sought to erase sex difference;
and lastly and perhaps most obviously:
(10) FN practically defines itself as anti-communist, and took its actual full historical forms mostly after and in reaction to the Russian Revolution; even before the Spanish Civil War, and with the sole exception of the two-year Hitler-Stalin pact, SC routinely has painted its opponents as “fascist” and itself as leading the struggle against it.