See The USA PATRIOT Act: The Story of an Impulsive Bill that Eviscerated America's Civil Liberties at Ammo.com.First two paragraphs:
The USA PATRIOT Act provides a textbook example of how the United States federal government expands its power. An emergency happens, legitimate or otherwise. The media, playing its dutiful role as goad for greater government oversight, demands "something must be done." Government power is massively expanded, with little regard for whether or not what is being done is efficacious, to say nothing of the overall impact on our nation's civil liberties.Read the rest HERE.
No goals are posted, because if targets are hit, this would necessitate the ending or scaling back of the program. Instead, the program becomes normalized. There are no questions asked about whether the program is accomplishing what it set out to do. It is now simply a part of American life and there is no going back....
Some Agitating Leftist Bastard Said::
ReplyDelete"NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE."
Who was it?
Marx?
Engels?
Lenin?
Stalin?
Gramsci?
Marcuse?
Alinsky?
According to this source, Winston Churchill popularized something that Machiavelli said:
DeleteMachiavelli first said, “Never waste the opportunity offered by a good crisis.” Winston Churchill popularized Machiavelli by saying “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
Saul Alinsky, too:
Here is the template. 1) Use a tragedy as a crisis, or create a crisis where none exists. 2) Paint the crisis with as much emotion as possible, and throw logical analysis out the window. 3) Propose the one and only solution to the problem, which just happens to coincide with what you’ve wanted to implement for many years. 4) Paint anyone who opposes your one and only solution as evil, uncaring, not smart enough to understand the nuanced brilliance of your solution, or in the pockets of …. you pick the evil entity. 5) Force the solution on the people by any means, whether legislatively, by executive order, or through the legal system. 6) When the unintended consequences of your solution rear their ugly head, use them as a reason for more brilliant solutions to made up crises.
Note the mention of Rahm Emanuel in that last source.
Thanks! From the tone of HIS remarks I'm sure it was ALINSKY I had in mind. After all Marx basically STOLE from Hegel, so it stnds to reason that Alinsky would have no qualms about STEALNG from both Machiavelli AND Winston Churchill,
DeleteIn the same vein we should acknowledge that the concept of Cultural Marxism conjured up and all-too-successfully promoted with ruinous effect by the infamous Frankfurt School originated as the brainschild of Antonio Gramsci., the Frankfurters effectively STOLE Gramsci's innately pernicious idea and AGAIN, –– as people of a certain ilk that must remain nameless always seem able to do ––, and managed with hideously great success to IMPLEMENT it, expand on it, and make it virtually TAKE OVER the liberal arts curriculum in colleges and universities, and eventually dominate what's taught today in elementary and secondary schools throughout the land.
All of which is to say, "Never underestimate the power of an IDEA –– especially if it's a BAD idea that appeals to humanity's infinite capacity for LAZINESS, SELFISHNESS, COVETOUSNESS, GLUTTONY, LASCIVIOUSNESS, and CUPIDITY."
Satan's over grows exponentially in a mental climate devoid of reverence for Almighty God.
Globalists have turned the US into an international zone.
ReplyDeleteI can't stand Alex Jones (who doesn't even believe his own BS), but Prison Planet is a brilliant neologism.
I don't pay much attention to Alex Jnes for the same reason I stopped listenung to Glenn Beck –– I find their everly- histrionic, hyperbolic STYLES repellent, but that does not mean they are not telling what they they believe to be the truth.
DeleteHow do you KNOW Alex Jones doesn't believe what he's saying?
The essence of what those overly desminstrative guys resonates very well with everything my instincts and perceptiins hve been telling me for well over fifty years.
"Fundamentally transforming" Mother Earth into a virtual PRISON PLANET is EXACTLY what the dreaming, scheming INTERNATIONALISTS such as George Soros and all those Davos Men and members of Skull & Bones and the Bohemian Grove, etc. have been striving towards for over a hundred years.
I believe you prefer a more tepid, sober, calmly rational, intelllectualized, scholarly, level-heads analytical approach. Any display of intense emotion seems to repel you –– a typical, generally admirable manly attitude –– but as David Hume said, "Reason is but the Slave of Passion." –– or something very like it.
I would agree that an hysterical, hyper-emotional attitude is no way to tackle the immense challenges of creating an effective foreign policy and dealing with numerous wily, unprincipled aversaries and outright enemies internationally, but any plan of aation NOT based on PASSIONATE CONVICTION is bound to be lifeless, sterile and ineffectual –– like the soporific blather we get from figures like Mitt Romney and John Kerry.
The thing that far too many can't or won't understand about President Trump is that his often-blustering, hyperbolic, overly demonstrative, frankly vulgar manner is CAMOUFLAGE for a cool, calculating intellect that knows how to keep at least two steps ahead of everyone else in the field.
His rhetorical style, which I myself, found bordlerline offensive at the outset, appeals DIRECTLY to the Common Man. Trump appears for all intents and purposes to be ONE of THEM. I believe he honesty DOES care about them, but at the same time, however, behind and beneath all the hoopla he really is "a very stable genius."
HA! You should see me on a foul-mouthed emotional tirade, especially if I've had a few blasts.
DeleteAlex Jones admitted in a court deposition that his show is an act and that he does not believe all the kook conspiracies he features on his shows.
Franco,
DeleteThe thing that far too many can't or won't understand about President Trump is that his often-blustering, hyperbolic, overly demonstrative, frankly vulgar manner is CAMOUFLAGE for a cool, calculating intellect that knows how to keep at least two steps ahead of everyone else in the field.
I've come to the same conclusion -- much of the time, anyway.
We can't know for sure, but I have to go with Occam's Razor on this one.
DeleteNobody knows ANYTHNG for sure, Jez. Oh I don't mean basic home truths such as the sun rises in th east and sets in the west, or that fire will burn you and water will make you wet, or it's impossible for any women to be "just a wee bit pregnant," etc. but in addition to those elementary facts of life there's an enormous amount of "THEORY" conjured up by intellectuals that may or may not be true, but gets fobbed off on the general public as "Settled Science" or "The New Normal," and the like.
DeleteI, personally, put the "data" presented as factual in such new-fangled, tendentious, poltically motivated "FIEDS" such as Queer Studes, Transgender Studies, Womens' Studies, Black Studies, Climate Change Studies, et al. in the dubious category of "Forcefully Alleged-but-by-No-Means-Proven Products of Wishful Thinking" deliberately designed to implements a Power Agenda.
That doesn' mean we ought not to think about these things, but to view them with a healthy dose of skepticism and honest curiosity instead of embracing them wholeheartedly as Neo-Orthodox tenets of a relatively new religion fabricated from whole cloth.
I've dubbed thily s relatovnew quasi-religious movement Cultural Marxian-Mandatory Secularism –– it is definitely FAITH-BASED, but instead of OPENING the mind to the possibility that Something Larger, Greater, Higher, Less Homocentric, More Benevolent, Wiser, and Infinitely More Complex than Anything the Human Mind Could Imagine or ever Hope to Grasp has bearing on the Cosmos of which WE are a pathetically small part.
This New Religion closely resembled Mediaeval Catholicism, Calvinism, and Cromwellian-style Puritanism in its harsh, stern demand for rigid, unswerving conformity, avowed public acceptance, and formal exclusion of anything that might challenge or question the validity of the tenets of this frankly tyrannical Neo-Orthodox point of view.
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ReplyDeleteOff topic.
DeleteNotice how useful Patriotism is to those seeking to abuse these crises.
ReplyDelete"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
Delete-- Samuel Johnson
Saying that does not impugn patriotism, but rather the dastardly scoundrel who would use it to justify or cover their malfeasance.
Indeed. And as an englishman, you can add patriotism to the exhaustive list of emotions i'm deeply ashamed of and embarrassed by. But, gun to my head, i can admit to it; i just never want to hear a politician mention it again.
DeleteJez, I understand. I am a God-fearing follower of Jesus Christ, and I never want to hear any politician appeal to religion again. They are shameless panderers.
Delete“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side, my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” -- President Abraham Lincoln
Former Homeland Security Kommissar Chertikoff made many million$ selling the naked scanners to airports
ReplyDeleteNote to mr. ducky:
ReplyDeleteThis one you got right! We all went along with the Patriot Act against your better warnings.
I agree. Thank you for giving credit where its due, even if the one we are crediting is a fetid marxist merganser.
DeleteAt the risk of levity, the PA reminds me of WWI England where they introduced all kinds of laws to help the war effort. For example, all the pubs had to shut at 11 pm so the workers would work harder. That law continued into the 1990s.
ReplyDeletePoint being, the article's right on -- we get accustomed to diminished liberty and grow to accept it as the State grows and increases its power.
On the plus side, England got rid of that stupid law. Let's hope we can do something similar. And Title IV's telling.
Apt analogy, but alas, the Patriot Act has done lasting damage that I fear may be permanent, and its ugly face has launched a thousand bureaucratic fiefs.
DeleteOnly took us 50 years!
Delete