The late, great newspaper publisher, William Randolph Hearst, is commonly quoted as having said during the Spanish-American War, "Truth is the first casualty of war." If truth is war's first casualty, it certainly is not the last. Just look at what has transpired since the attacks of September 11.
*The White House has created a vast new police agency known as the Office of Homeland Security. This new federal bureaucracy will dwarf all other federal police agencies in scope and power. It has the capacity to become America's version of Nazi Germany's SS.
*The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have granted broad, new (unconstitutional) police powers to the federal government, powers that would not have had a "snowballs chance" of becoming law before September 11.
*A provision in a Department of Defense appropriations bill that just passed the Senate would require millions of gun owners to render certain personal weapons inoperable or become criminals of the state. It is called "demilitarization" and is contained in Section 1062 of S. 1438. Remarkably, the bill passed 99-0, proving once again that our elected Senators and Representatives do not read the bills on which they vote. Either that or they really do want to criminalize people (including millions of veterans) simply because of the type weapon they own. (The weapons targeted by this new law are ones that were formerly used by our military. This would include the beloved M-1 Garand and M-1 Carbine, the popular Model 1911, even military surplus ammunition, etc.)
*World Net Daily quotes the San Francisco Chronicle as reporting that President Bush now wants "to use a secret federal Court to override very constitutional protections that make our country so great." The report further says, "If Bush gets his wish, due process will be suspended as these cases are expanded to include criminal cases against American citizens and no one will be allowed to even see the evidence used against them."
All these things are being done in spite of the fact that myriad federal regulations and restrictions already in place failed to protect a single human life that dreadful September morning. Twenty thousand existing gun control laws did nothing to protect a single person on board any one of those four airplanes or in those buildings. In fact, one could make the argument that those twenty thousand gun control laws helped doom those thousands of victims as it rendered much of our citizenry defenseless.
However, a small group of private citizens did manage to thwart the plans of those terrorists on board one airliner, resulting in the crash of that plane in a field in Pennsylvania saving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives at the White House or another targeted building. That small group of American citizens did what all of the federal police agencies combined could not do; it actually saved human lives!
Yet, the brilliant response of our President and elected representatives in Washington, D.C. to the events of September 11 is to take away even more rights and freedoms from private American citizens and give even broader authority to the federal government. It appears that, by the time this war is over, the real casualties (besides truth) will be constitutional government and God-given liberties.
© Chuck Baldwin
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