Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Oh, Well, It's Just The Bus...


One day you will wake up with the vague  nostalgia of longing to know what it meant to be free. 
This is a video earlier this week from Tampa, FL.
Janet Napolitano said last month that we should expect to soon see tighter restrictions at bus, train, and marine transportation centers, too. Here's a report about TSA, Border Patrol, and local police setting up a checkpoint at a Greyhound station in Tampa. Note how quickly preventing a possible terrorist attack expands to include catching illegal immigrants, and preventing drug and what sounds like "cash smuggling." (It's hard to tell from the audio.) Note also the complete and utter reverence the local news report bestows on these government agencies, who after all are merely "teaming up to keep your family safe."
Libertarians who call the TSA pat-downs a violation of their civil liberties do a disservice to actual violations of civil liberties. It's not difficult to envision the day where anyone wishing to take mass transportation in this country will have to first submit to a government checkpoint, show ID, and answer questions about any excess cash, prescription medication, or any other items in his possession the government deems suspicious. If and when that happens, freedom of movement will essentially be dead. But it won't happen overnight. It'll happen incrementally. And each increment will, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectly reasonable.

9 comments:

Laci the Chinese Crested said...

Yeah, but they'll have loads of guns to fight "tyranny".

Whatever the fuck Tyranny happens to mean to them.

Anonymous said...

Yeah Laci, we DO have plenty of guns to fight tyrany. That is the main reason why our country has a second amendment. It's one of the checks and balances afforded to us in order to keep our government from becomming the very thing our founders fought to escape from.

The 2nd amendment of the constitution is the last line of defense Americans have to protect all the other amendments and rights we have FROM the government and from self-serving people within the government who seek power OVER the people.

I DO call it incrementalist tyrany when I book a private flight between ME and a PRIVATE business and, have to show my pecker to a functionary as a requirement to do my business and the PRIVATE airline is now required to tell my personal data, origin and, destination and return flight to the government!

I also call it tyrany when I'm required to pull into a police checkpoint and questioned as to where I've been, where I'm going, who is this in the car with me, where do they live, prove I own the car, prove I'm insured, prove I have a license, be checked for warrants, asked if I have anything in the car illegal or, anything the cop "should know about"...yeah, THAT IS an infringement of my fucking rights! Maybe not in that Soviet fantasyland you'd like to see everyone stuck in but, gadammit, it IS in the country I'm living in!

BTW, you DO have the "right" to refuse to answer all those questions but, then you're simply arrested for "suspicion"..."suspicion of what" they don't tell you but, ALL that information you have a "right" to refuse to give them ALL comes out while they're searching your car and patting you down...because people who have nothing to hide just STFU, answer the questions and just take that shit because the cop has been given the power to do this shit in the name of "safety"!
At first it was to keep DRUNKS off the roads. Now, after the cop can easily determine that you're NOT drunk or, have been drinking, it's come to all the other shit because we tolerated it to make it "easier on ourselves".

I'm sure you've seen those old war movies where the Nazi always asks to "Zee za papers"...well, it's NOT just old war movie cliche' anymore...it's reality!

Whats funny though is the fact that all the Democrats who keep trying to eliminate the right to own firearms are the same self-described "progressives" who keep pushing for greater government power OVER the people! Now why would they want to eliminate the people's last line of defense against tyrany if they were not planning to remove other rights too?
We either defend them all, or, be prepared to lose them all and, live at the mercy of whatever some group of assholes decides we need to live with.

-Sepp

microdot said...

Democrats? Schmemocrats? WTF?
There is a big difference it takes an idiot not to see the difference in the struggle to control gun violence and the over reaching of authorities to extend "terrorist" paranoia manipulation to all aspects of freedom of movement.
I find myself agreeing with Sepp on many of his points, but to say this is a symptom of Progressive thought and behaviour is a ridiculous attempt to push his pseudo libertarian jihad against his Liberal bogeymen is more than a little bit crazy.
If we were now living under a Republican (and who would that have been if the last election hadn't gomne the way it had?) I can guarantee you, Sepp, the guys at the check ponts qwould want to jiggle more than just your (ahem) private parts...
If you are not an American citizen and you want to just take a plane trip to point a to point b and that plane happens to cross some ethereal boundary of "American" airspace...you had better be ready to apply for permission a month before you intend to take the trip.
This did not happen under the Progressive socialist liberal Obama administration...and this was just the tip of the iceberg...of what was being planned for your private parts, your privacy etc.....
We have to fight the power...but hopw can we do so if we keep playing these same divisive stupid games over and over again?

mud_rake said...

"...his pseudo libertarian jihad against his Liberal bogeymen..."

Well stated. I wonder if he or that big red undies fundamentalist is higher on the 'jihad' list?

-Sepp said...

The "struggle to end gun violence" sits right there with "We have to search your car, run you for warrants and I.D your passengers to make sure you're not drunk" excuse for disarming those who AREN'T violent.
The laws they keep creating target the law abiding. Most of the people who are involved in gun related crime are already prohibited from having a firearm in the first place!

The reason I mentioned the democrats is because they have a long history of enacting anti-second amendment laws that have nothing whatsoever to do with reducing crime.

The reason we have our freedoms taken from us...and allow it...is because our leaders know that we'll accept tiny bites of it taken away in small increments without much noise as opposed to decreeing it all at one time.

It's a political theory called the Overton window.
Politicians spend a lot of time having people gage public reaction to ideas and laws and degrees of acceptance to them.

Overton's theory is in practice right now at the airports. They want you to use the backscatter devices...or...you can have a TSA agent place his hands all over your wife, children and your own private areas.
The idea is that they know that being felt up is repugnant to most people and even more angering to see their children subjected to it...so eventually the backscatter device will appear as a more acceptable option.

Look at our congress. One party comes up with an outragous idea with plenty of repugnant crap inside the bill as "filler".
The "filler" isn't what they want in the bill, the filler is added as a negotiation ploy.
The other party rants and raves about the extreme fillers added to the bill...and as a "comprimise" the party who introduced the bill gets exactly what they actually intended to get in the first place...while party "B" pats themselves on the back for "stopping" a bad bill.

microdot said...

Well for someone who claims to not watch FOX or listen to Glenn Beck, Sepp, you seem to be just another little puppet getting jerked around by forces you obviously just don't understand....
Didn't the Rodeo Clown just have a book ghost written for him called "The Overton Window"?
Don't worry, I understand the concept, I read about it extensively....wake up bud before you are defenestrated through the very window you allude to by the puppet master who deigns to pull your little strings.

-Sepp said...

I never said that I never listened to Beck. He actually IS a good source of information and implores his listeners to NOT just take HIS word for anything but, to get off their asses and research it themselves...and you bet your ass I DO look into anything he says before using it as a source of any kind.
Just because you hate the messenger, does NOT mean the messege isn't true MD!

And yes, Beck DID write a book called the Overton window but, the Overton window wasn't his concept at all, he merely borrowed the theme.
And MD, I assure you, I'm very awake and in tune with whats happening...It's an Emminence front!
It's a put on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APgC6XYcmSY

microdot said...

Thanks for the Who Link....It was pretty nice to see Townsend playing those tasty lead licks. He is really under rated as a intelligent musical technical player...
Very strange because I was watching some early Who stuff today after lunch...before I had to go split wood in the snow storm....
I love Can't Explain.... still pop perfection even after almost 45 years....
I remember being ostracized by my "hippie" friends when Who's Next came out. I loved it and they hated it.
Won't Get Fooled Again was the flash point....
I was never a hippie, I was never duped....
I never trusted a politician.
That's why I think Wikileaks is the beginning of the end of business as usual!

-Sepp said...

Love The Who too! Just aced all the songs I have for them on the kid's Rock Band game!