PrintApril 16, 2009
Enemy of the State?
According to the notorious recent government report, I am a "radical right wing extremist."
If you didn't vote for Barack Obama, if you're unhappy with our tanking economy and the government's complicity in said tanking, or perhaps more odiously, you are a war veteran - you are, for all intents and purposes, an enemy of the state, subject to surveillance by law enforcement and security officials, who have been officially advised of the danger you represent.
So let's see: I didn't vote for Obama. I am unhappy with the government's complicity in our economic decline and the power grab that is the ultimate goal of the Fed's fiddling. But, I am not a veteran. Well, two out of three ain't bad.
If you went to a tea party, you might be an enemy of the state. If you have a bumper sticker on your car that is unflattering to Obama, you might be an enemy of the state. (I find it particularly interesting that the post-racial president is now stoking the fires of racism in order to discredit his critics.) If you are concerned about the government's attempt to radically curb your Second Amendment rights - whether or not you own a gun - you might be an enemy of the state. If you want to revive the true meaning of the Tenth Amendment, you too might be an enemy of the state.
Do you see a trend here? Obama and his fellow travelers are what Mark Levin calls Statists, defined below in part from his current bestseller Liberty and Tyranny:
For the Statist, liberty is not a blessing but the enemy. It is not possible to achieve Utopia if individuals are free to go their own way. The individual must be dehumanized and his nature delegitimized. Through persuasion, deception and coercion, the individual must be subordinated to the state. He must become reliant on and fearful of the state. His first duty must be to the state - not family, community, and faith, all of which have the potential of threatening the state. Once dispirited, the individual can be molded by the state. (p. 16)
Speaking of Statists, remember the Borg from Star Trek? "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." Gene Roddenberry and his cohorts might have been on to something.
"Giving away your freedom is easy. Taking it back is hard. One thing politicians are good at is humiliating people who dare to challenge them." - Christopher Chantrill
Within the DHS report there is the admission that there is
"no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues."
In other words, we've got nothing on you but we're watching your every move. Considering that Obama and some of his closest advisors come from the Chicago political machine, where seek and destroy missions are the way things are done, we really shouldn't be surprised at a report which has no hard evidence of anything, but seeks to discredit - even destroy - anyone who doesn't toe the Statist line.
Such is the state of political life in America today. When President Bush was in the Oval Office, the left celebrated "disgruntled war veterans" who spoke out against the war in Iraq - in fact, so eager were they to find veterans with anything bad to say that could be connected to Bush and Iraq, they sometimes didn't bother vetting their sources and touted tales that ended up being bogus.
But now that the Great American Healer is in power, the number of the wrong kind of disgruntled war veterans is suddenly on the rise. And of course, what is the best example they can come up with in this report? "After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans - including Timothy McVeigh - joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups."
Let me see if I have this right: one crazy vet blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City with a little help from his friends and suddenly all war veterans are suspect? How insulting to our men and women in uniform can you get?
During the Bush years, we were told that dissent was patriotic. Wasn't it Hillary Clinton who famously screeched,
"I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration"?
But today, dissent has become, well, if not unpatriotic, unfair and downright mean, to quote Michelle Obama. We have to give Barack Obama a chance. A chance to do what? Good question.
Our framers intended for the government to serve its citizens, not the other way around. As our government seeks more control over the markets and other segments of American society, average Americans are seeing the light and getting fed up with it. And if my not being afraid to say so makes me a "radical right wing extremist," then so be it.
The only thing I ask is that my cell has a clean mattress.
Pam Meister is editor for FamilySecurityMatters.org. She also contributes to Pajamas Media and Big Hollywood. The opinions expressed here are her own.
