[R-G] Death of the First Amendment: The Nazification of the United States

[Romi Elnagar]

   Death of the First Amendment 
The Nazification of the United States
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS 


Chuck Norris is no pinko-liberal-commie, and Human 
Events is a very conservative publication. The two have come together to
 produce an important article, “Obama’s US Assassination Program.” 


It seems only yesterday that Americans, or those 
interested in their civil liberties, were shocked that the Bush regime 
so flagrantly violated the FlSA law against spying on American citizens 
without a warrant. A federal judge serving on the FISA court even 
resigned in protest to the illegality of the spying.  


Nothing was done about it.  “National security” placed
 the president and executive branch above the law of the land. Civil 
libertarians worried that the US government was freeing its power from 
the constraints of law, but no one else seemed to care. 


Encouraged by its success in breaking the law, the 
executive branch early this year announced that the Obama regime has 
given itself the right to murder Americans abroad if such Americans are 
considered a “threat.”  “Threat” was not defined and, thus, a death 
sentence would be issued by a subjective decision of an unaccountable 
official. 


There was hardly a peep out of the public or the 
media. Americans and the media were content for the government to 
summarily execute traitors and turncoats, and who better to identify 
traitors and turncoats than the government with all its spy programs. 


The problem with this sort of thing is that once it 
starts, it doesn’t stop. As Norris reports, citing Obama regime security
 officials, the next stage is to criminalize dissent and criticism of 
the government.  The May 2010 National Security Strategy states: “We are
 now moving beyond traditional distinctions between homeland and 
national security. . . . This includes a determination to prevent 
terrorist attacks against the American people by fully coordinating the 
actions that we take abroad with the actions and precautions that we 
take at home.” 


Most Americans will respond that the “indispensable” 
US government would never confuse an American exercising First Amendment
 rights with a terrorist or an enemy of the state. But, in fact, 
governments always have. Even one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams 
and the Federalist Party, had their “Alien and Sedition Acts” which 
targeted the Republican press. 


Few with power can brook opposition or criticism, 
especially when it is a simple matter for those with power to sweep away
 constraints upon their power in the name of “national security.” Deputy
 National Security Adviser John Brennan recently explained that more 
steps are being taken, because of the growing number of Americans who 
have been “captivated by extremist ideology or causes.” Notice that this
 phrasing goes beyond concern with Muslim terrorists. 


In pursuit of hegemony over both the world and its own
 subjects, the US government is shutting down the First Amendment and 
turning criticism of the government into an act of “domestic extremism,”
 a capital crime punishable by execution, just as it was in Hitler’s 
Germany and Stalin’s Russia.  


Initially German courts resisted Hitler’s illegal 
acts. Hitler got around the courts by creating a parallel court system, 
like the Bush regime did with its military tribunals. It won’t be long 
before a decision of the US Supreme Court will not mean anything. Any 
decision that goes against the regime will simply be ignored. 


This is already happening in Canada, an American puppet state. Writing for CounterPunch,
 Andy Worthington documents the lawlessness of the US trial of Canadian 
Omar Khadr. In January of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 
that the interrogation of Khadr constituted “state conduct that violates
 the principles of fundamental justice” and “offends the most basic 
Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.” 

According to the Toronto Star, the Court instructed the government to 
“shape a response that reconciled its foreign policy imperatives with 
its constitutional obligations to Khadr,” but the puppet prime minister 
of Canada, Stephen Harper, ignored the Court and permitted the US 
government to proceed with its lawless abuse of a Canadian citizen. 


September 11 destroyed more than lives, World Trade 
Center buildings, and Americans’ sense of invulnerability. The event 
destroyed American liberty, the rule of law and the US Constitution.

  

    Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08272010.html