I don’t know…I think that is a Scottish slur to put a Mc in front of names to refer to facist tendencies.
Are you, or have you ever been an Arab or a Muslim?
I am more inclined to agree with John Mace, its McAshcroft and McRidge that we have to worry about.
Loosing our liberty to terrorism is not as much of a threat as loosing our liberty to these two.
Actually I believe that McDonalds has copyrighted the Mc prefix. We are actually violating the McDonalds copyright.
I believe this shows a great ignorance of what reality was like in the early 50s. Let’s see: The Soviet Union had just enslaved half of Europe, in China the communists had won and allied themselves with the soviets, in Korea the USA and the communists were fighting a war and the USA did not dare going all out because that would draw China into the war which would extend the war uncontrollably, the communists were exporting the revolution all around the world subverting regimes all over the third world, and the tension was so high the USA had bombers with nuclear weapons up in the air and ready to strike 24h/365d. A war with the SU was a real possibility for many years and it would have meant millions and millions of dead on both sides. To say the terrorist threat today comes anywhere near the Soviet threat then is just ludicrous.
And yet, McCarthy did not send a single person to jail and today it is admitted it was a gross overreaction. I think people in the future will see the present administration has overreacted to the terrorist threat by blowing it out of proportion. And some people are buying it.
I can’t believe that you actually believe that in your heart.
So as long as the number of people who’s lives are destroyed is very small, then it’s alright to go ahead and destroy their lives, even if there is no evidence that they are guilty of anything.
Nice.:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
sailor–yes , you are right that that the world was different in the 1950’s.The Soviets had enslaved half of Europe, and looked intent on conquering the whole world. But we had a strong army with nuclear weapons to prevent them from reaching their goals.It was a classic military conflict.
My point about McCarthy is that the damage he did to society was illogical. The specific people he destroyed were in no way connected to that world-wide military conflict. They were private individuals working as teachers, actors,etc.They had no access to military secrets.They were harmless.
But the damage done on Sept 11th is very real. And it could happen again.
And , FranticMad–I did not just “smear an entire ethnic group with no evidence”. The evidence is right there, at ground zero. It wasnt Eskimos that attacked us.
Civil rights are the most vital part of America’s greatness. But there are limits.Freedom of speech doesnt include the right to burn a cross while wearing white pointy hats. And freedom of religion shouldn’t include the right to work for jihad.
Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but if you’re doing it on your own damn property, I don’t think there’s much anyone can do.
See, when you start telling yourself it’s okay to oppress just a few people to protect the majority-you’ve already lost.
shakes head sadly
These people are not even serving prison “terms.” They (some of them are American citizens) are being imprisoned indefinitely without any charges against them and without access to attorneys. I’m not even certain that there names have been released.
We can’t just trample on the Constitution of our country and expect to remain free. I don’t want my freedom based on that – it is the ultimate anti-American attitude.
And as for the Soviet Union being rational, does anyone remember Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the UN and shouting “We will bury you”? Was Stalin rational?
Well, close but no cigar.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1048518258780
It is state by state. Not all states have a law against cross burning.
You are missing one of the most fundamental pillars on which western civilization is based and that is that the government is not above the law but the government is in fact the keeper of the law. The government does not get to decide who is bad and whio is good, who is dangerous and who is not, except by due process of law. The fact that you think the victims of McCarthy were not dangerous and some guys today may be dangerous is totally and completely irrelevant. It is not up to you to decide who is good or bad, dangerous or not. It is the responsibility of the government to protect every last individual’s rights to due process. The government is charged with protecting people and instead they are trampling on people’s rights. I do not know if those being held are guilty of anything or not, and frankly, it does not matter. What matters is that the US government is holding people and denying them their rights. Their most basic human rights. This is worse than the McCarthy hearings any way you look at it.
So, which is worse? The fact that an unknown group of sparsely organized fanatics has taken it upon themselves to destroy an entire civilization, or the fact that the only thing we’ve done to stop it is trample and override that very civilization’s own citizens?
The only threat the we actually face today is the administration allowing another attack to occur as a pretext to war or to limit more civil liberties. We got to invade 2 countries on the pretext of 9/11 - and neither country sent a single hijacker into the air. In some ways, I’d love to see a McCarthy-style inquisition into who in the administration allowed the attack to happen. Or start an inquiry about constitutional-subversion - mainly the Patriot Act or the ever-so extra-constitutional Executive Orders. Screw the balance of powers - just order something into law. And most of the Executive Orders are secret.
The scary part is that he’s not alone – I have a co-worker who feels exactly the same way. And I believe this feeling comes largely because they believe they’ll never be one of the “inconvenienced” ones – e.g., “I’m a white, Anglo-Saxon Christian male, ain’t no way I’m gonna get mistaken for a terrorist, so what do I have to worry about?”
(Not to say chappachula is or isn’t a white, Anglo-Saxon Christian male, but I’ll wager good money that she/he isn’t an olive-skinned immigrant with a name like Mohammed al-Jazzah… 
)
So at this point who’s been imprisoned without being accused of anything?
**
The damage being done by the anti-terrorism and military crowd is just as illogical. Most of the people being held without charges are not connected in any way to terrorist activity. If they were, they’d have been charged already!
**
Nope, it was a handful of highly educated Saudi Arabians and Egyptians belonging to a fanatical strain of Islam that bear as much resemblance to most Muslims as the Branch Davidians did to baptists.
And the damage done in Oklahoma was done by a couple of good ol’ boys.
And the anthrax mailed across the country was proably sent by more American citizens.
The target should not be muslims. It should be terrorists, and the feelings of cultural inferiority that breed terrorists. Slamming people into jail for pathetic reasons is stupid, and a waste of effort.
chula:
Yet another similarity is that both then, and now, decriers of the policies used the abuses of a few men to ridicule the idea that any sort of threat even existed. Communism? Psh, that old thing? Not a problem. Terrorism? Bah, it’s hardly an issue, just a boogeyman to scare us at night.
chappachula:
Speaking more generally, McCarthy’s fears were that communists would infiltrate sections of the government, and access areas of national security, for the purposes of relaying information to the USSR. In that sense, his fears were very much not fantasy, though you’ll rarely see him get credit for this.
But he also unfairly targeted innocent people with whom he had a personal vendetta, and just generally carried his crusade too far. For that, of course, he deserves immense scorn.
Cite? I find it hard to believe that many, much less most, of the detainees “are not connected in any way to terrorist activity.” Needless to say, if there was no connection, they would not have been detained to begin with. The government doesn’t go door-to-door, arresting any Muslims they find. Now the connections to terrorist activities or organizations may not be substantial enough to warrant a crime, but there has to be some connection for the government to find the people to begin with.
Very true. However, the biggest problem right now is not from Southern White Baptist terrorists, or Beanie Baby Collector terrorists, but Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists. And Islamic fundamentalists tend to be Muslim (funny how that works). Now, this is certainly not an excuse to condemn all Muslims, but the fact remains that posting surveillance outside a Presbyterian church to monitor terrorist activites would be pretty stupid. If we want to find Islamic terrorists, we should probably pay close attention to Muslims, no?
Jeff
the 600+ in Gitmo for example, Jose Padillo, American Citizen for another.
Then there were the unknown numbers of people held post 9/11 incommunicado. Unknown because the government specifically refused to release details like, number, where they were held, names etc.
and before you point it out, they have been ‘accused’ of stuff, however, they’ve not been brought before any legal authority charged w/committing any specific crime. IOW, while the administration releases statements to the press etc regarding what they think these folks have done, they’ve not presented any evidence in a legal setting establishing same. and that’s a pretty basic tenant of our law, that we cannot be held (especially incommunicado) w/o a charge being levied against us. (material witness exception, but AFAIK, even in those cases, some evidence needs to be established that they may in fact know something relevant).
I’m sure that many people don’t care about the 600+ in Gitmo.
I’m also fairly certain that if another country came into the US and snatched up 600 folks and held them in a prison camp thousands of miles away, we’d have a problem w/it.
>> I find it hard to believe that many, much less most, of the detainees “are not connected in any way to terrorist activity.” Needless to say, if there was no connection, they would not have been detained to begin with.
We keep going around in circles. You trust the government blindly. Good for you but that is not the way a democratic, free country is run. We have laws and we are ruled by those laws. We have rights as humans which guarantee us a judicial process to determine whether we are indeed guilty or not. The idea that a government can jail someone indefinitely without any justification or due process is an abomination and very contrary to the basic principles of all civilised nations.
I agree that jailing civilians without their Consitutionally-granted rights is a bad thing (non-civilians is a whole 'nother can of worms). Further, I never argued whether or not the government was right to jail these people, so take your high-and-mighty “you trust the government blindly” clap-trap and kindly cram it. My assertion was simply that if the government has jailed someone, there has to be a reason for it. It may not be a good enough reason to jail them, and the person may well be innocent, but to claim otherwise is to claim that the government is going around blindly, jailing people at random. Even if a person is jailed because they were using the bathroom at a place where terrorists meet, that is still a connection to a terrorist organization, if admittedly a lousy and tenuous one.
This doesn’t amount to “blindly” trusting the government. It amounts to not blindly accusing the government of wrongdoing by virtue of the fact that the current president happens to be of the wrong party. Of course, if you can demonstrate some examples where the government has jailed someone who had not even the appearance of ties to terrorism, but was simply a random Muslin sitting at home watching Oprah when the fed busted down his door, I’ll happily reconsider my assertion.
Jeff
My response was to those in this thread who said that the US was currently detaining people without accusing them of anything- you might call it a difference of semantics, but I think there’s a big difference between “accused” and “charged”. I’ll admit that there were people being held immediately after 9/11 who weren’t accused of a crime but to the best of my knowledge they’ve either been freed or charged by this point. I don’t like the situation with Padilla and I think he should be charged if they have the evidence.
As for those in Gitmo, since they’re not US citizens I don’t think they apply to the charges of “McCarthyism/McRumsfeldism” that spawned this debate. I think that they are prisoners of war and if we were to release them tomorrow they’d head to Saudi Arabia/Pakistan/wherever to hook up with Al Qaeida again. Just to let you know where I’m coming from, if there was a terrorist group that was attacking Canada from inside the US and the US gov’t wasn’t doing anything about it, I think Canada would be justified to come in and grab them. Since this is a hypothetical I’ll add that it would really depend on the circumstances but this is assuming it was cut and dried.