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Judging by his prime-time speech last week, the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency will be marked by increased militarism abroad and authoritarianism at home. The centerpiece of the president’s speech was his demand for a new law forbidding anyone on the federal government’s terrorist watch list from purchasing a firearm. There has never been a mass shooter who was on the terrorist watch list, so this proposal will not increase security. However, it will decrease liberty.
Federal officials can have an American citizen placed on the terrorist watch list based solely on their suspicions that the individual might be involved in terrorist activity. Individuals placed on the list are not informed that they have been labeled as suspected terrorists, much less given an opportunity to challenge that designation, until a Transportation Security Administration agent stops them from boarding a plane.
Individuals can be placed on the list if their Facebook or Twitter posts seem “suspicious” to a federal agent. You can also be placed on the list if your behavior somehow suggests that you are a “representative” of a terrorist group (even if you have no associations with any terrorist organizations). Individuals can even be put on the list because the FBI wants to interview them about friends or family members!
Thousands of Americans, including several members of Congress and many employees of the Department of Homeland Security, have been mistakenly placed on the terrorist watch list. Some Americans are placed on the list because they happen to have the same names as terrorist suspects. Those mistakenly placed on the terrorist watch list must go through a lengthy “redress” process to clear their names.
It is likely that some Americans are on the list solely because of their political views and activities. Anyone who doubts this should consider the long history of federal agencies, such as the IRS and the FBI, using their power to harass political movements that challenge the status quo. Are the American people really so desperate for the illusion of security that they will support a law that results in some Americans losing their Second Amendment rights because of a bureaucratic error or because of their political beliefs?
President Obama is also preparing an executive order expanding the federal background check system. Expanding background checks will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals or terrorists. However, it will make obtaining a firearm more difficult for those needing, for example, to defend themselves against abusive spouses.
Sadly, many who understand that new gun control laws will leave us less free and less safe support expanding the surveillance state. Like those promoting gun control, people calling for expanded surveillance do not let facts deter their efforts to take more of our liberties. There is no evidence that mass surveillance has prevented even one terrorist attack.
France’s mass surveillance system is much more widespread and intrusive than ours. Yet it failed to prevent the recent attacks. France’s gun control laws, which are much more restrictive than ours, not only failed to keep guns out of the hands of their attackers, they left victims defenseless. It is thus amazing that many American politicians want to make us more like France by taking away our Second and Fourth Amendment rights.
Expanding government power will not increase our safety; it will only diminish our freedom. Americans will have neither liberty nor security until they abandon the fantasy that the US government can provide economic security, personal security, and global security.
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Freedom and liberty are mankind’s attempt to escape the animal world. To embrace them is to reject not what nature is, but how it works.
Alien concepts to man and animal alike.
True freedom and liberty comes with responsibility which the western government and their client states are the world cannot practice due to their powers based on their existence on corruption.
Ron Paul had as congressman tried to apply that principal and finally got kicked out of politics after earning the titles of “Israel-hater, antisemitie, 9/11 denier, pro-Iran, etc”.
In 2002, Ron Paul, made a few predictions about the US and Americans in the future. Surprisingly, many of them have come true.
1. During the next decade, the American people will become poorer and less free while they become more dependent on the government for economic security.
2. If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for US sanctions boycotting Iranian oil, oil prices would skyrocket and you could count this one, too.
3. Agitation for more class warfare will succeed in dividing us domestically.
4. The Karzai government will fail and the United States will be forced to leave Afghanistan.
Watch full predictions below:
http://rehmat1.com/2012/01/23/ron-paul-did-not-i-warn-you/
If You Want Security, Pursue Liberty.
Ideological claptrap. Liberty and security are pretty divergent. One area of substantial overlap is legitimacy, which liberty feeds into. That aside, it’s pretty obvious that security is easier in places with less liberty. Soviet agents had a much easier time gathering intelligence in USA than American agents had in Soviet territory. It’s obviously much easier for clandestine Islamists to operate in our territory than it is for us to secretly operate in theirs.
The pendulum of the west has swung so far into the libertine, that pursuing security will do more for liberty now than the reverse will. Of course, the regime is going about it in all the wrong ways, because security is far down their real list.
It’s impossible to guarantee liberty with porous borders; the liberty-haters are a majority of the world’s population, so importing them willy-nilly will inevitably erode liberty, as the imported work to impose their preferences.
This is the sort of thing countries can’t come back from. Security measures can be repealed. An alien majority cannot.
Thanks Ron, and Daniel too, for being the voices of logic and sanity in the matters of peace, freedom, security and the real basis for economic sufficiency for all.
The Soviet government had an extensive security apparatus to protect itself, not to protect the Soviet people. Ron’s whole point is that the intrusive (by American standards) security laws in France did not prevent the attacks. That is a sign that the real function of these draconian laws is to protect the government, not the people. So the siren calls to give the government ever more powers to police its own people should be recognized for the dangerous and self-serving notions they are.
This is different from the question of border control. In that realm, it is indeed the prerogative of government to exercise vigilance.
Intent is really beside the point, no?
We could dramatically increase our security by deporting all the non-whites out of our country immediately. This would drive the libertarians ape. I don’t think they care much about security.
And how much damage to current citizens would that cause, given how dependent our economy is on those immigrants? Do you care about that at all? Extremist solutions of either variety are not the answer.
https://mises.org/library/tragedy-immigration-enforcement
I’d guess no more damage than the Black Plague, which was followed by an unprecedented rise in wages. Of course, it would cause the oligarchs problems, just as the BP did for the nobility. So it would drive the libertarians ape twice over.
From your link:
They say that like it’s a bad thing. Oh noes! Good wages for manual labor! The horror!
Funny, the libertardian open-borders shills tell the same lies as the leftist open-borders shills. There will be plenty of employers for them back in Mexico, or from whence they came. See, that’s how migration works – people come for the incentives, and then leave when they dry up.
More lies. They came here because opportunity. They will leave because no more opportunity.
But if you want liberty, pursue security.
There has to be security first before there is liberty.
The problem is diversity makes security more difficult, and then it affects liberty as well.
To be sure, too much security and liberty can lead to naivete mixed with radical decadence, and that can lead to Swedenization.
Sweden, a nation that is now puritanical with perversion. Pervertanical.
Laws work on the law-abiding, morals work for the moral, and government works for the government’s controllers.
Laws don’t work on criminals, morals don’t apply to the immoral, and government is used against the governed.
The solution is to separate the good apples from the bad apples and let the bad apples rot all by themselves.