Read "Brickbats" and "Balance Sheet" and other parts of Reason Magazine, in the back issues. You'll see all sorts of stories just as bad going back long before Bush.
While I would oppose the idea of banning people from a plane because of what a t-shirt says, that's a far cry from real tyranny or oppression. A real police state doesn't say "you can't get on the plane with that t-shirt", it roughs up the wearer or sends him to a jail cell or a gulag. This action is more along the lines of political correct speech codes at universities, just from a different direction.
Huh? The Senate just tried to pass a bill banning the burning of the American flag.
An empty symbolic gesture that will never become active law.
the circumvention of laws
Every type of government does that.
Really? If true, then its unacceptable. Its esp true in a democracy when there is a violation of individual freedoms.
Unacceptable? Well it would probably be nice if government always strictly followed its own laws, and when there is a clear, definite, and important violation of the law, than there should be consequences to government officials for violating the law. OTOH moving in to the gray areas of the law, or getting around the law without clearly violating it in a specific actionable way, is rarely noticed, and if noticed often has no consequences.
And many of the accusations against this administration amount more to a battle between the executive and the legislature as to defined limits of power rather than any clear violation of or circumvention of laws.
That too is not a minor battle. Checks and balances is an integral part of this gov't
And they would be under the ideas the Bush administration proposes to, they would just be shifted a bit. I'm not saying I support the shift. You might even convince me to directly oppose it, but there is a difference between the normal tension between the branches of government and their battle of spheres of influence in the constitutionally gray areas on one hand, and an outright and clear violation of the constitution on the other.
Huh? Think Muslims and gays.
Neither has been called an unacceptable minority by Bush or by our federal government in general. Neither is subject to the type of actions typically directed by a fascist government against some minorities. Neither has had any new restrictions placed specifically on them by the Bush administration or our current congress that don't apply to the population at large. |
