Friday, October 26, 2012

Welcome to the Slaughterhouse!: Civil Liberties and the Election!


"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." George Washington
Welcome to the Slaughterhouse, America!!

By Nicholas Meyeres 


It wasn't so long ago that liberals were denouncing President George W. Bush for his administration's complete violation of constitutional liberty and endless illegal wars waged. It wasn't that long ago that panic gripped civil liberties advocates about the possibility of the president eroding our freedom like never before.


Where are you now!?

Anyone who votes for President Barack Obama is also voting for the Patriot Act taking our privacy away which was ramped up under his watch, NDAA killing legal citizens without due process of the law, drones flying over America and spying on her people, the TSA molesting us at airports which was also escalated under this president, Guantanamo Bay still open and expanded under the current administration, the government listening in on phone conversations between people of this country and  those of other countries identified as “terrorists” without a warrant, endless unconstitutional wars where American troops now fight and die in nearly a dozen other countries Bush never invaded, the fact that the Department of Homeland Security under Obama now actively monitors social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to uncover “Items of Interest”, and at the current president’s request, the passing of HR 347, making it illegal to protest federal officials “visiting any facility” who have Secret Service protection where penalties for doing so include up to 10 years in federal prison effectively repealing your right to “petition for redress of grievances”.

And then there’s Presidential Directive 51, which the Obama administration has expanded upon after the last administration put it into effect.  It states, among many other things, that the President has the power to completely cancel any and all elections in the United Sates for an undisclosed period of time of his own choosing in the event of a "catastrophic emergency".

The moral of this story is this: If you do care about civil liberties and the Constitution the one person whom you do NOT want to vote for is Obama! 

Who does that leave us with? Mitt Romney? Now, after all of this, if you still can’t bring yourself to vote for Mitt Romney, that’s fine- I don’t plan to, either. There are other very qualified people running for the highest office in the land on November 6th who do deserve your support, and who will not erode civil liberties and destroy the Constitution as we know it. Libertarian Gary Johnson comes to mind right away.

But is that a vote you just throw away since your candidate of choice likely won’t even be elected? Is it effectively a spoiler vote for one party or the other rather than for your own third party candidate? Is it simply a waste of time? It is if you believe voting your conscience, principals and for the best person for the job is indeed a waste.

After all, just ask yourself this one simple question when you vote this year: “Is there any way to solve the issues I care most about with more freedom instead of less?” If the answer is less freedom, then vote for our current Commander-In-Chief once again or for Mitt Romney who holds near-identical positions on these very same issues, and remember this: The lesser of two evils is still evil.


In fact, if you do vote for Barack Obama you have only yourself to thank when every future president from here on out knows he or she can do the very same thing or worse since it doesn’t provoke even the slightest bit of backlash from the left. And if Mitt Romney is elected and liberals finally speak out on these same issues you will be regarded as the hypocritical phony we all know you already are.


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