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How the State confiscates rights
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
How the State confiscates rights
Posted: February 27, 20021:00 a.m. EasternBy Tal Brooke & Lee Pennc 2002 WorldNetDaily.com Sept. 11 came crashing in on me (Tal Brooke) at the halfway point of a round-trip airline journey from the West Coast to the East Coast. Before the 9-11 disaster, I felt like a traveler with dignity during a calm, hassle-free flight from San Francisco to Savannah. But the return flight after the tragedy reminded me of the half day that I spent marooned in the Moscow airport in the early 1970s: I saw incredibly long lines of people being herded like livestock into longer lines and waiting areas. Armed police authorities were everywhere. Stoic and grim faces reflected the relentless control of the Soviet State - to me a fearful omen of what could befall the West, which I go into extensively in "One World." My post-9-11 return trip to the West Coast in late September reflected the changed atmosphere in America. Panic in the Atlanta airport closed it for much of the day, which in turn paralyzed the Savannah airport, among others. Almost all flights in the region were cancelled. The problem? One man at the Atlanta airport ran through a security gate to get his camera which he had left at an airport snack bar. Alarms went off. Tens of thousands of travelers were told to wait outside the Atlanta terminals for hours. Waves of flights were cancelled. Thus at the counter of the Savannah airport I was told that my flight was cancelled and was sent to a seedy motel to try again the next day. The next morning, I was given repeated security checks as armed soldiers stood by the screening areas. Grim faces stood in long unmoving lines - a repeat vision of Moscow - but in America. Midway through the trip, at the connecting gate in Dallas, before entering the plane, some were told to step aside for a "random" personal search. Note, they had already been screened getting in. I privately wondered how much people would put up with this invasion of privacy. During a more recent flight, because of one man - the tennis shoe terrorist - my shoes now had to be x-rayed along with those of millions of other people traveling since the incident. One solitary example, a single precedent, becomes the new benchmark, affecting millions of lives in a relentless subtraction of rights through single precedents. A truly dangerous trend. The Unibomber became an earlier model of this process, of one man abusing a "freedom" or "right," and in turn enabling the State to confiscate those same rights from millions. Consider the precedent. After the Unibomber, it was no longer possible to mail a package weighing over a pound simply by dropping it into the mailbox as Americans had done for over a hundred years. By Christmas, lines stretched half a block and more from post offices, eating up countless hours of wait time. An already inefficient system was stretched to the limit. Again, like Moscow. These attacks on liberty - inconceivable before Sept. 11 - are being accepted by the general public. Poll ratings for the president remain high, as is approval - 70 percent or more - for the new federal laws. In mid-December, the publisher of the Sacramento Bee was driven off the stage by hecklers when she delivered a mid-year graduation address to 17,000 people at California State University in Sacramento. Her offense was to criticize limits on civil rights due to the war. The flying public accepts the new airline security regulations - even when these involve long lines, intrusive random searches and groping by guards (a congressman was recently strip-searched because his hip implant set off the metal detectors), arbitrary confiscation of property (including nail clippers, pocket knives, and some jewelry), and arbitrary arrest (a man carrying a book by Edward Abbey with a picture of dynamite on the cover was kicked out of the airport in Philadelphia, with the aid of the National Guard and the state police.) When the middle class and the rich - those who fly - tolerate these measures, abandoning their usual assertiveness, a critical barrier has been crossed. Americans are being - coincidentally or not - "softened up" to accept a police state.
Tal Brooke is the president of SCP, Inc., a Berkeley research group, and has authored nine books of which his most recent is "One World." His work has been recognized in Marquis Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in America. Tal is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Princeton. Lee Penn, a convert out of atheistic Marxism, attended Harvard university, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1974 and graduated * laude 1976. Lee works in health care information systems and financial analysis. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26623
Posted: February 27, 20021:00 a.m. EasternBy Tal Brooke & Lee Pennc 2002 WorldNetDaily.com Sept. 11 came crashing in on me (Tal Brooke) at the halfway point of a round-trip airline journey from the West Coast to the East Coast. Before the 9-11 disaster, I felt like a traveler with dignity during a calm, hassle-free flight from San Francisco to Savannah. But the return flight after the tragedy reminded me of the half day that I spent marooned in the Moscow airport in the early 1970s: I saw incredibly long lines of people being herded like livestock into longer lines and waiting areas. Armed police authorities were everywhere. Stoic and grim faces reflected the relentless control of the Soviet State - to me a fearful omen of what could befall the West, which I go into extensively in "One World." My post-9-11 return trip to the West Coast in late September reflected the changed atmosphere in America. Panic in the Atlanta airport closed it for much of the day, which in turn paralyzed the Savannah airport, among others. Almost all flights in the region were cancelled. The problem? One man at the Atlanta airport ran through a security gate to get his camera which he had left at an airport snack bar. Alarms went off. Tens of thousands of travelers were told to wait outside the Atlanta terminals for hours. Waves of flights were cancelled. Thus at the counter of the Savannah airport I was told that my flight was cancelled and was sent to a seedy motel to try again the next day. The next morning, I was given repeated security checks as armed soldiers stood by the screening areas. Grim faces stood in long unmoving lines - a repeat vision of Moscow - but in America. Midway through the trip, at the connecting gate in Dallas, before entering the plane, some were told to step aside for a "random" personal search. Note, they had already been screened getting in. I privately wondered how much people would put up with this invasion of privacy. During a more recent flight, because of one man - the tennis shoe terrorist - my shoes now had to be x-rayed along with those of millions of other people traveling since the incident. One solitary example, a single precedent, becomes the new benchmark, affecting millions of lives in a relentless subtraction of rights through single precedents. A truly dangerous trend. The Unibomber became an earlier model of this process, of one man abusing a "freedom" or "right," and in turn enabling the State to confiscate those same rights from millions. Consider the precedent. After the Unibomber, it was no longer possible to mail a package weighing over a pound simply by dropping it into the mailbox as Americans had done for over a hundred years. By Christmas, lines stretched half a block and more from post offices, eating up countless hours of wait time. An already inefficient system was stretched to the limit. Again, like Moscow. These attacks on liberty - inconceivable before Sept. 11 - are being accepted by the general public. Poll ratings for the president remain high, as is approval - 70 percent or more - for the new federal laws. In mid-December, the publisher of the Sacramento Bee was driven off the stage by hecklers when she delivered a mid-year graduation address to 17,000 people at California State University in Sacramento. Her offense was to criticize limits on civil rights due to the war. The flying public accepts the new airline security regulations - even when these involve long lines, intrusive random searches and groping by guards (a congressman was recently strip-searched because his hip implant set off the metal detectors), arbitrary confiscation of property (including nail clippers, pocket knives, and some jewelry), and arbitrary arrest (a man carrying a book by Edward Abbey with a picture of dynamite on the cover was kicked out of the airport in Philadelphia, with the aid of the National Guard and the state police.) When the middle class and the rich - those who fly - tolerate these measures, abandoning their usual assertiveness, a critical barrier has been crossed. Americans are being - coincidentally or not - "softened up" to accept a police state.
Tal Brooke is the president of SCP, Inc., a Berkeley research group, and has authored nine books of which his most recent is "One World." His work has been recognized in Marquis Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in America. Tal is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Princeton. Lee Penn, a convert out of atheistic Marxism, attended Harvard university, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1974 and graduated * laude 1976. Lee works in health care information systems and financial analysis. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26623