A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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I'm so old I can remember when anyone who did not agree with the government of Soviet Socialist Russia (or the Soviet Union) 
would be arrested by the government and placed in Soviet mental institutions because, the Soviet government had determined, you see, that anyone NOT agreeing with them was obviously INSANE. Ofttimes the mentally challenged prisoner disappeared into the Gulag system never to be heard from again. So -- where am I going with this?
I'm just trying to give you a heads-up, 'cause it's happening right here in America -- TODAY.
Consider this from The New American.com:
"Readers also may remember the recent shocking case of Brandon Raub. The New American’s Jack Kenny reported on the story last August. Kenny wrote that Raub was:
... held involuntarily as a psychiatric patient at the Salem Veterans Affairs hospital in Virginia over anti-government postings on his Face book page. Raub, a Marine combat veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was visited by FBI and Secret Service agents at his North Chesterfield home on August 16, then taken by police under an emergency custody order to John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was transferred to the veterans hospital on August 20. A medical assessment of his condition at John Randolph described him as paranoid and delusional, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. But after an hour-long hearing in Hopewell Circuit Court August 23, Judge W. Allan Sharrett dismissed an involuntary commitment petition as invalid.
"The petition is so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy," said the release order signed by Sharrett, vacating the order of Special Justice Walter Douglas Stokes to detain Raub for 30 days. Stokes, who presides over commitment hearings, also ordered Raub's transfer to the VA hospital in Salem, about 180 miles from his home. Judge Sharrett said he was shocked to find the commitment order contained no grounds for holding Raub.
The irrefutable fact is that, had the Rutherford Institute not stepped in and defended Raub, the young man would likely still be unconscionably held in a government mental hospital at the mercy of Obama administration bureaucrats."
SOURCE: http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/14629-why-is-the-federal-government-disarming-veterans
It would seem the Obama Administration simply does not recognize the Constitution of the United States. This type of action by the government just blows the Fifth Amendment right out of the water. This is the 5th Amendment, for heaven's sake. It has ties all the way back to the Magna Carta in 1215! It protects Americans against abuse of government authority in a legal procedure. It is fundamental to our freedom.
Just read the text of the 5th Amendment:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Look. Either the Bill of Rights stands as our protection from the government or, it doesn't. There is no in between. And, I must tell you, I am very concerned that the current administration has decided the Bill of Rights is an impediment to their drive to transform America into a socialist dung heap, therefore they have deliberately decided to ignore the amendments and do as they darn well please, making up laws on the fly, and decreeing said laws by way of the Presidential Executive Order.
And it's going to get progressively worse over the next four years. The America of 2016 will bear little resemblance to the America of today. Count on it.
America has become a police state right before our eyes. Americans are now monitored around the clock by our government.
A few of us old mossback conservatives have been screaming at the top of our lungs for somebody to pay attention to our loss of freedom. To no avail.
Little by little, the freedom and liberty Americans have fought and died for is being systematically taken away and America has been, already, transformed into a socialist/communist state.
I wonder, sometimes, whether the conservatives in the US House of Representatives will be able to continue fighting their "holding action" until the elections in 2014 and 2016? (Even King Leonidas and the 300 Spartans were only able to hold the pass at Thermopylae for three days until they were overrun and wiped out by Xerxes and his Persians.)
One by one we are losing our guaranteed freedoms under the constitution. The Obama Administration just tramples all over the constitution with very little, if any, resistance.
The left is taking away our freedom in exactly the same way they have foisted socialism on America -- incrementally -- a tiny bit at a time. Like the frog placed in pot of slowly heating water, we are about to be boiled without ever even TRYING to hop out of the pot.
"A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.” Ben Franklin said that -- and it was and remains true. The political left has been diminishing America little by little at the edges. Now the great cake is nearly eaten away by socialism and that portion of the original cake remaining is so small as to offer only miniscule resistance --or none -- to the threatening forces encircling it.
When I was a high school student, I presented a speech at the University of South Carolina in which I noted how proud I was that here in America we didn't have to dread the loud knock on our door at three in the morning and have one of our parents, or even ourselves, dragged away from our families and marched off to a prison, a gulag, or a mental institution by government authorities.
That was then
This is NOW.
I could not make that statement today. Since I stood on that stage at Russell House, some 60 odd years ago, America has, indeed, become the nation I described in my speech that night that rules its people by fear and intimidation. Had I known then that America would have the rogue government we have today, I would have warned those in the audience of what was in store for them, their children, and their grandchildren.
But I did not know, could not know, how far and how fast America would fall.
A friend mentioned, half jokingly, recently how he eyed with suspicion any black SUV or panel truck parked overly long near his office or home. He told me how he fearfully looked up at the sound of helicopters overhead, and how the tiny hairs on the back of his neck began to tremble every time he uses an ATM machine because he said, he knows those ubiquitous cameras that never grow tired, that never sleep, are everywhere watching, and watching. My friend remarked as to how he pauses every time he is about to tap the "send" button on an e-mail or a blog comment, and, too, every time he produces his credit card to pay for a purchase of any kind.
One word describes the state of being my friend recounted to me above. It is raw, naked, FEAR. It is something Americans have not known - until NOW.
Terrorists did not instill THIS fear in Americans. NO. America's leaders USED the actions and the threats of terrorists to instill this particular fear in their fellow Americans. That fear has been magnified by executive actions creating government agencies with heretofore unheard of powers over the American people.
Little by little, bit by bit, incrementally, America has been fundamentally transformed from a constitutional representative republic to some sort of hybrid socialist society with a government decidedly leaning toward the Marxist principles of governing.
What a mess!
Ben Franklin is given credit for saying the following: “As we must account for every
idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.” Isn't it time to forsake "idle silence" in favor of actively rattling the cages of our elected government in Washington, DC? Of course, we COULD just wait for the knock on our door at three in the morning. Or -- have we waited too long? As John Adams reminded us centuries ago -- freedom, once lost, is almost impossible to regain.
Americans have done the impossible since the nation was founded. But it requires enormous amounts of WILL to do whatever is necessary to accomplish the Herculean task of saving a nation.
Do we have that will? Or, will we simply remain silent and allow the lights to be put out in the once "shining city on a hill?"
© J. D. Longstreet
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