When they murdered all the Jews, I didn't speak up because I wasn't Jewish....

And so on...

Well, the mainstream media could make the same claim: when Ashcroft's USA PATRIOT Act turned Americia into a police state, they didn't speak up because they < ahref="http://commondreams.org/views01/1115-10.htm">didn't want to seem unpatriotic... Now, of course, weeks after it has been passed and we, effectively, no longer have Constitutional protections under the law, the press pundits are crying that Ashcroft has turned this country into a police state!

Hey, you wonks, it's a bit late, eh?

First of all, America has been a police state since that hero to all neo-conservative pundits, Ronald Reagan, signed an executive order in--you guessed it--1984, calling for the building (or, under Bushie the first, the abandonment of military bases for the purposes) of concentration camps for "foreign and domestic terrorists" and other defenders of rights granted to us by God and the Bill of Rights. (So you think this is the first time OmegaZine! has told you that? Then you need to do some reading in the archives. I won't point you to specific articles because a good number of articles, not just a few, will provide this info.) The program I refer to is called the "Rex 84" program, though I don't remember the Executive Order number. Then, Bushie I and Clinton added more fascism to the list, designating a whole host of EOs defining how FEMA is going to run the country when (not if!) martial law is declared.

This means that had the media done what it perports to do, be a watchdog of government, we would not be in the position we are now--when only the unconscious and the herd-beyond-all-redemption aren't feeling like we are in an Orwellian drama-farce.

But far be it for me to rant against the lapdog media here (I do enough of that in my Suite101.com Media Issues articles). This screed is directed at the "starting to get a clue" herd, the folks who just have to conform because they can't handle life outside the phalanx, and the brain-dead, the "love it or leave it-what good are my rights when I'm six feet under" crowd.

"When they jailed the Arab-Americans, I didn't speak up because I'm not Arab-American"....

Of course, you all heard that Bush stated he would not put any of the Arab-Americans and Islamics in internment camps. I know I did. But W. Bush has since done what he swore on September 11 he would not do--curtail our Constitutional freedoms. Yeah, yeah, Ashcroft is the one who did that, not Dubya, but who do you think authorized the AG to rush through the "Patriot" Act? We're not talking about fast passage here. We're talking about passage so speedy that even the few members of Congress with any spine wouldn't have a chance to read it. I mean, Ron Paul, who used to be the only member of Congress I had any faith in, voted yes on the bloody thing (but now, of course, has spoken out against it). Turns out only Feingold, a bleeding-heart liberal, had the chutzpah to oppose this implementation of Nazism in America (or, for you former Black Panthers out there, Amerika). Paul, a so-called constitutional and libertarian Congressman from the Texas Panhandle, caved in, since he "didn't want folks to think he was unpatriotic", nor did he read the thing--and now I have absolutely no faith in Congress at all. Yeah, they say they're going to "investigate" that Act in some "subcommittee", but I guarantee you nothing will come of it. These "lawmakers" have no more guts than the old Roman Senate did when their Republic became an Empire.

Oh, and, they have already incarcerated thousands of legal Arab and Islamic immigrant folks in jails across the country on mere "suspicion" that they had anything to do with the 9-11 attacks. For weeks and now months, without trial. Funny, some are here illegally--but wasn't it the Clintonesque "open borders" attitude of Congress that sent all those Mid-Easterners to this country, legally or illegally, in the first place? It's only a matter of time, as the US-Brit-"Northern Alliance" forces get further bogged down in the "war on terrorism" quagmire (first Afghanistan, then Iraq, then...), before Arab- and Islamic-American citizens get their butts thrown into some Manzanar-styled camp somewhere in the high desert. Maybe right here in Fort Davis, home of an internment camp in the "Amerika" miniseries back in the 80s.

"When they imprisoned all the anti-war dissidents, I didn't speak up because I wan't an anti-war dissident..."

Freedom of speech itself is under assault by the McCainiacs, the flag-wavers, Hollywood, MTV, the bomb Al-Jazeera crowd, and diehard card-carrying members of the herd. "Snitches" are out there ready to turn in their neighbors (now the "neighbors" are Arab-looking; tomorrow the "neighbors" will be you and me) because they breathe wrong, or have an axe to grind (see Ellen Ratner's WorldNetDaily article as well as this one) or won't wave the flag, or they participate in a war protest. The nefarious "Patriot" Act includes some broadly-defined provisions to take care of free speech "dissidents" (ie., "domestic terrorists"), which, if the war proceeded badly enough, will make the Vietnam war protests seem like a day in Washington Square, and then quite a few will realize the war is worth protesting--thus putting themselves in danger of being interned under this Act.

"When they imprisoned the free-speech advocates, I didn't speak up because I was too afraid to..."

Well, then you must be a certified member of the brainless herd, with one more brain cell than a cow. And when they put you in jail because they "think" you have a mind of your own, you won't get any sympathy from me!

Note: The term "flag-wavers" is not used here or in any of my articles to define true, loyal, patriotic Americans for whom the flag symbolizes liberty, freedom of speech, the Constitution, God-given rights of individuals over the group--the ones who have always waved the flag! By "flag-wavers" I mean those who do it out of fear that they won't look "patriotic" if they don't wave it, the flag-wavers of fashion, or those who wave it in support of the looming fascist police state. See also the Steven Yates commentary on LRC.BTW, I myself wave the flag fairly regularly, and have a "God bless America" T-shirt I wear about once a week.--DL