Flagg wrote:SancheztheWhaler wrote:Flagg wrote:It was public after the fact, IIRC. It was only announced by Ashcroft to score some political points and amp up the fear. I don't necessarily believe that the Bush administration had or has plans for actively engaging in putting American citizens in concentration camps, but I don't dismiss the possibility because that seemed to be the way things were heading.
But in order to make that statement on this board, you need proof, not "I don't dismiss the possibility because that seemed to be the way things were heading."
I don't think anyone actually made the statement that they were actually definitely going to do that. Aside from the batshit article, anyway. I just don't dismiss the possibility, because all of the actions (that we know about at this point) show that they don't consider themselves to be under the rule of law. Everything from blatantly outing a covert CIA agent over an op-ed to violating federal law by listening in to everyone phone conversations points to that.
The only reason they haven't gone to even more extremes of abuse of power seems to be because there are still too many obstacles in the way for them to do it. I have no doubt that if their little "Permanent Republican Majority" had been solidified and built upon that we would have seen, and would still be seeing, more and more blatant abuses against our civil liberties.
Part of the reason I took issue with LOTA's post was that the "Permanent Republican Majority" required a great deal of Democratic collusion. Does anyone really believe that the Democrats were going along with Republican power grabs, or were they just pussies who went where the political winds were blowing?
Moreover, while many Democrats were slandered and slimed, if the Republicans were serious about entrenching their power base, I would have fully expected McCarthy-like hearings accusing Democrats of collusion with Islamic terrorists. Since we never saw anything of that sort, it seems more likely that Republicans weren't willing to completely discard the Constitution and were simply pushing as far as they could reasonably push to maintain their control of the government.
SanchestheWhaler wrote:Flagg wrote:Lord of the Abyss just claimed that a government that would do what the Bush Administration has done and sought to do would have no qualms about rounding up dissenters and putting them in camps. Something I find hard to disagree with. The NYPD was rounding up protesters and holding them in mass detention centers during the RNC Convention in 2004. IIRC almost every single person detained was not charged with anything, or had charges dismissed in short order.
Remember the Democratic convention in 1968? Was that an example of the Democrats planning to lock up protesters in concentration camps?
Again, you need some proof, and that's not a good example.
You mean the riot in Chicago? Were there riots at the 2004 GOP convention in New York?
But you want more examples? OK. There's the "free speech zones" enforced by the secret service. There's the infiltration of peaceful anti-war groups by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. There's thelocking out of people who aren't already supporters at campaign rallies. There's the rendition and black site prisons programs. There's issuing terror alerts and raising the threat levels at politically opportune moments for Republicans. There's removing Habeas Corpus. There's attempting to retroactively legalize waterboarding and other torture. There's having a political litmus test for the hiring and firing of US Attorneys. There's the illegal deletion of White House emails.
Need I go on? There is incident after incident of this administration blatantly violating federal law and the US Constitution as well as the civil rights of it's citizens with seeming impunity. And you think it's
really all that much a stretch that they would continue that and not take even more bold and authoritarian steps as their grip on power solidified into a one party state? Because by their own admission, that was the goal. A one party state and a permanent Republican majority.
But you
are correct that we have no clear evidence that this would happen or that they were planning on
making it happen. That's why I never stated it that way.
And sorry for responding to this so late, I didn't see it until I was reading over the thread this morning.[/quote]
The Chicago riots started after the police were ordered by Mayor Richard Daley (a Democrat) to disperse the protesters.
Also, the the examples you cite are egregious examples of abuse of power and disregard for the Constitution, but remember that many of these laws and bills were passed with Democratic support. If the Democrats believed they were in danger of extinction (being arrested, for example), I doubt they'd have voted in favor of the bills.
In any case, while suggestive and (to quote John Stewart) "bad for America," you're right that none of these actions prove concentration camps were in the works.