If terrorists ‘hate us for our freedom,’ U.S. politicians are their best allies

By David McElroy · December 15, 2011

As soon as Barack Obama signs the legislation passed by Congress, you can be arrested by the government on mere suspicion of “terrorist” wrongdoing and sent to a military prison — with no rights and no ability to demand a trial. Is there any more certain signal that we’ve become a police state?

The people who supported the bill claim that it won’t do anything other than formalize what is already recognized as a president’s power to detain people on mere suspicion. They claim this power is somehow needed in the “war on terror.” (Have you ever noticed that the things the government does starting with “war on” never end? There was the “war on poverty,” the “war on drugs,” the “war on terror.” Maybe the real target of these wars is us.)

The White House has said that Obama will sign the legislation, even though he claims he doesn’t want the expanded power to detain people without trial. In fact, he claims he won’t use the power. I assume he has good intentions on that point. But what happens when the next terror attack happens and there’s political pressure on a president to “do something”? It will be too late then.

Unlike many people, I don’t see this as a secret plot by Obama or anyone else to bring about a police state. I think it’s the work of people who believe they’re doing the right thing and don’t understand the unintended consequences that can come from their reckless and irresponsible actions. Their good intentions aren’t going to help you, though, when you’re being arrested and sent to prison indefinitely without trial — simply because someone made a mistake and thought you did something wrong.

The fact that the Democratic-controlled Senate passed the bill and a Democratic president will sign it tells you everything you need to know about the difference between Democrats’ rhetoric about civil rights and the reality when it suits their purposes. I’ve talked before about the hypocrisy of Republicans who talk about smaller government at election time, but increase the size of government. This is the corresponding indictment of the other mainstream party.

To their credit, the major civil liberties groups aren’t going along with their party and president on this one. The executive director of Human Rights Watch placed a major portion of the blame on a president who is a hypocrite:

“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law. In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side.”

Although it’s two weeks old now, it’s worth watching again as U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) explains to the Senate the real problem with the bill it was passing. And if you’re one of those people who believe the government doesn’t make stupid errors when arresting Americans on terror charges, remember again the case of Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon attorney who was arrested in connection with bombings in Spain in 2004 — although he never had anything even vaguely to do with the case.

As I said when the Senate passed this monstrous piece of legislation, this is eerily reminiscent of the German parliament passing the Enabling Act in 1933, the law which allowed Adolph Hitler to legally rule as he pleased. This legislation obviously doesn’t go that far, but it seems like the next step down a very dark road that leads to prison camps in Nazi Germany and in the former Soviet Union.

Even though it’s a gross oversimplification and gross misunderstanding of recent world history, we’ve been told for a decade that “the terrorists hate us for our freedom.” If that’s so, the terrorists have definitely won, because they’re succeeding in stampeding U.S. politicians into destroying those freedoms one by one — while most Americans blissfully avoid the painful duty of thinking for themselves.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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