Bush's War on Civil Liberties

[midcan5]

Legislating Tyranny

By Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton

"The George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon with an assault on U.S. civil liberty that Bush justified in the name of the “war on terror.” The government assured us that the draconian measures apply only to “terrorists.” The word terrorist, however, was not defined. The government claimed the discretionary power to decide who is a terrorist without having to present evidence or charges in a court of law.

Frankly, the Bush administration’s policy evades any notion of procedural due process of law. Administration assurances that harsh treatment is reserved only for terrorists is meaningless when the threshold process for determining who is and who is not a terrorist depends on executive discretion that is not subject to review. Substantive rights are useless without the procedural rights to enforce them."

www.counterpunch.org/roberts06032008.html

[aebersole]

When Liberals speak about Bush and liberty violations I often hear "Hello Pot this is the Kettle..." The most basic civil liberty is the right to earn money i.e Happiness and liberals with their endless array of social programs have slowly ripped this away...There is no greater violator of liberties than a social minded liberal.

politicalchatter.today.com/

[midcan5]

Jun 10, 2008 10:04:08 GMT -5 aebersole said:

When Liberals speak about Bush and liberty violations I often hear "Hello Pot this is the Kettle..." The most basic civil liberty is the right to earn money i.e Happiness and liberals with their endless array of social programs have slowly ripped this away...There is no greater violator of liberties than a social minded liberal.

I have to be honest that makes no sense. Think only for a second on what the right to make money means and where that right or that ability comes from?


"In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.

And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.

Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.

The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself. "


"The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws." Thom Hartmann

www.commondreams.org/views04/0312-08.htm