Assassination of Americans

No one should be happy that Anwar al-Awlaki is dead.  He's an American citizen who was assassinated for exercising his right to Freedom of Speech.  One might even say he was exercising it in the most important way possible - advocating for violence against what he saw as a tyrannous government.  If the US government can assassinate its citizens for speaking out against it, how long before every one of us is afraid to do so?

Notable countries that imprisoned or executed their citizens for speaking against them:

• Germany under Hitler
• Spain under Franco
• Italy under Mussolini
• USSR
• China
• North Korea
• Cuba
• Iran
• Iraq under Saddam
• Egypt under Mubarek
• Lybia under Gadaffi
• Saudi Arabia

Are we proud to be added to this list of fine, upstanding governments?  Washington under Obama has now done away with due process, one of the most fundamental protections of our Constitution.  Just one more feather in the cap for the President, who appears to have made it his personal mission to trample our civil liberties.  Where are the protestors who urged the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for the very things they stand silent on when they are committed by Obama?  Your hypocrisy does not go unnoticed, but it may well end up dooming this country. 

Authoritarian governments don't always come into power overnight - often it is by degree.  That is what we've been seeing for the last decade. They grab power incrementally, often by stirring up fear and hysteria and using those heightened emotions to whip the citizenry into a nationalist frenzy. This is used to divert the attention of the people away from domestic policy and towards foreign enemies, usually manfuactured threats.  If they can't do it with war, they will do it with nature. 

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- H.L. Menken

What's the point of my story?  Simply this - you are being manipulated by your government.  You are being pointed towards imaginary enemies and coaxed into letting go of your liberties.  It's happening under the guise of national security.  In other words, in order to protect you from the boogie man, they must take away all of these freedoms that protect you from the government.  Open your eyes.

Read my followup here.