Will some sort of Nazism take control of the US if a major terrorist attack occurs?

[Odin]

Originally posted by Pekka
Odin, yeah.. I don't know too much about the Patriotic Act, and I'm not a citizen either so I just give up and let you continue from here on .

Basically, ANYONE cane be thrown in jail indefinitely without being charged with a crime, you can be wire-tapped without a judge's order, government agents can check library records so they can see what people are reading, plus alot more crap I can't rember of the top of my head.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Pekka
Odin, ...

Why are you taking the leftist Fez seriously?

[Pekka]

Never underestimate your enemy...
Assumption is the mother of all **** ups... and so on.

Just kidding

I'm tired, it's 6.30 am here. I should go to sleep.

[Jon Shafer]

Sure the whole Patriot act et al. isn't quite right, but the last thing we really need is another Vietnam quagmire. Gulf War I made the US soft regarding casualties in wars... take 1/125th the casualties of Korea or Vietnam and everyone is up in arms about the "cost" of things.

Heaven forbid if a pre-WWII situation arose which might actually require more than a few dozen deaths...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yes, Hitler is going to rise again and the US will throw Jews in Concentration Camps.

[aneeshm]

The terrorist attack has happened , and the US is already slipping into quasi-fascism . When you have SS agents interrogating schoolboys without regard to their rights and without the consent of the parents , when a student is arrested for sharing an inhaler with a asthamatic suffering an attack , whan students are expelled for their childish fantasies , what do you have but fascism ?

[MrFun]

What nonsense -- we may be in the midst of the most serious foreign policy crisis in recent times.


HOWEVER, you did not see the Nazi party rise in power after 9/11, did you?? God -- find something better to theorize.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Um... you have a democratic republic perhaps

Calling the US as quasi-fascism is what those who prefer to live in fantasy like to say.

[MrFun]

Yes -- similar to the fantasy world that Reagan was a hero who saved the United States from a "Dark Ages" or who single-handily overthrew the Soviet Union.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So you believe the US is quasi-fascist?

[johncmcleod]

It would be strange to think that United States would become like the régime we just overthrew in the name of democracy if we were to be attacked again by terrorists.

'In the name of democracy,' ah, the phrase reminds me of how righteous we are in spreading the True ideals to the rest of the world.

It wouldn't be so strange to think that the United States would become like the regime we supported in the name of our corporations if we were to be attacked again by terrorists. Not to mention that when the Kurds and various Shi'ite groups rebelled after Bush I called them to, they begged for help in overthrowing Saddam and we said no. Thousands of were then killed, many of them innocents, all within the proximity of US troops, and we did nothing.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Not to mention that when the Kurds and various Shi'ite groups rebelled after Bush I called them to, they begged for help in overthrowing Saddam and we said no. Thousands of were then killed, many of them innocents, all within the proximity of US troops, and we did nothing.

The funny part is that many leftists consider that to be a failure of US policy, when it would be contrary to a UN mandate and would be a regime change... basically Gulf War '03, which they opposed in record numbers.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[Capt Dizle]

One serious issue is the effect that free trade is having. We are looking at decades of major employment upheaval that potentially could result in the creation of an underclass with extreme bitterness towards the government. This could become a political base for a movement such as Hitler launched in Germany.

Things will have to get really bad and I can't see that happening. Both parties are now willing to expand entitlements to quiet unrest.

Insofar as a terrorist act causing a permanent shift in government, I don't think so. The knee-jeck reaction in the wake of the 9-11 incident will be reigned in as soon as the next Democratic administration takes over.

If perchance a nuclear terror attack materializes, sure, we will lose much of our normal liberties but that would be justified.

[Ramo]

The funny part is that many leftists consider that to be a failure of US policy, when it would be contrary to a UN mandate and would be a regime change... basically Gulf War '03, which they opposed in record numbers.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The situations were clearly different; since we were already there, and since large parts of the country were rebelling against the gov't, we should've finished the job. At the very least, we shouldn't have stood by as the the Shia were slaughtered.

The difference this time around is that we could've waited for the gov't to put out a coherent and just plan subject to public scrutiny regarding the post war Iraq as there wasn't a rebellion going on at the moment.

[Mr. Harley]

Actually, it will not be Nazism but a quasi-religious right-wing state more akin to a Christianized version of Iran. For those of you not in the USA, under the Patriot Act a special court originally intended for special warrants concerning domestic anti-foreign intelligence surveillance warrants can now put you in jail, sift your email, search your house with a secret warrant (while nobody is home), go through your financial, library, heck any records, etc. Plus, the government is trying to claim it can unilaterally strip a US citizen of his rights to due process by claiming they are an enemy combatant (specifically forbidden since the Civil War, Lincoln pulled a similiar stunt, and we've had presidents try to weasel around it in every major conflict since - it actually predates that, but Lincoln's cases were egregious and political, in areas outside the combat zones).

Commercial databases, that have minimal or no accountability for their accuracy, are now being tapped to amass dossiers on all US citizens, and then analyzed using modern data-mining techniques to determine who is a potential terrorist. One of these databases red-flagged peace activists opposed to the intervention in Irag so they couldn't board aircraft flights, it seems they were security risks. How convenient. Of course this was stopped after Congress threw a fuss. Well, sort of stopped, mostly stopped, and we'll get around to telling you when we stop.

The Catholic church in the USA for years has had no problem seperating its religious versus secular functions, i.e. churches versus hospitals. While legal under US law, it does not permit churches to tap the money directly and discriminate in hiring at the same time. I have already written emails, to no avail, to the Republican National Committe, concerning the new "Faith Based Initiative". That will permit churches to take the money and only hire church members to deliver social services. As my wife is Jewish and an Art Therapist/Psychologist, in an area primarily Baptist/Catholic, I wanted to know will she have to convert? Or will she be alright to hire since her husband is Christian?

Our Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health are being required to rewrite their web pages to parrot the propoganda of the Religious Right-Christian Coalition groups. Things including that Condoms don't work against aids, abortion causes breast cancer, etc. I've posted before on these, these positions are distortions and deliberately deceptive, which in my book makes them lies.

Laws are written to deliberately intimidate those who disagree with the Religious Right's position. The new so-called "Partial Birth Abortion" law is so vaguely worded that some clinics have stopped doing second trimester abortions altogether. The law does not use standard medical terminology, and since the Republican leader of our Senate (upper chamber of legislation) is a physician, I cannot believe this is an accident. I am not talking just about the law, or even if the procedure it claimed to eliminate was wrong. I am talking about the deliberately vague wording designed to initimdate beyond the claimed sope of the law. With a prison sentence if you guess wrong and perform a procedure you thought was safe.

Our President, when talking about not granting homosexuals equal dometic rights, talks about them as "sinners." Well, not exactly

Press conference: Question: .... As someone who's spoken out in strongly moral terms, what's your view on homosexuality?
BUSH: Yes, I am mindful that we're all sinners...

He goes on to try to backpeddle on what that means. Context, though context. Question concerning homosexuals - first sentence is we are all sinners. Conclusion - gays are sinners! I have to give him that he then says not to persecute them, just that they are sinnners. Right, and I'm little orphan annie.

We just had a murder conviction in Alabama, over the killing of a man with a turban that a bubba (for non-USA uneducated, deliberately so, narrow-minded resident of the Southern USA usually implying male, overweight, and pro-Confederate flag, but only since the 1950's when they started using this flag to intimdate black voters) thought was one of those dirty arabs. The poor sod was a Sikh, which was ironic because I work in a secure facility and I had just had to explain that to one of our training specialists, who was trying to tell me who to be careful of (THOSE people with TURBANS). Historical and cultural morons. I told him maybe I shoud also be careful of blond haired 30ish Caucasian males, the second worse terrorism attack in the USA (Mr. McVeigh, anyone?). That didn't go over well, but I have a friend whose a Sikh and I just got soooo irritated.

So this is the new USA. Intolerant, religious as defined by a narrow interptation of Christianity. Individual rights only when they are convenient to law enforcement, with a new NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL SECURITY - oops, I meant Homeland Security Mr. Cheka commisar. Don't publicly disagree with the governent, you become a security risk on a secret database and never get to fly again. Since my wife is not a member of any of the recognized religions via the new "Faith-based Initiative" she can't work in her field - though her married Christian name might let he get lucky. Don't wear you're turban if you are a Sikh, don't let anybody know you're moslem, and just remember that Christians get to deliver those social services. Good right-wing Christians.

By the way, I am a domestic libetarian, and do like to quote Franklin: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. .