Rick Reuben wrote:When you say 'system can work', are you talking about the system responding to the will of the people??

Rick Reuben wrote:don't the media and lobbyists belong in the category of people we blame for the failures of the system?

Rick Reuben wrote:Name that entity, if it is not your fellow citizens.

Rick Reuben wrote:Figuring out how we get such a government if the people don't make it happen is apparently too much for you.

Rick Reuben wrote:They know they can't make a veto-proof majority to block war funding or troop deployments, so it's all for show.

Earwicker wrote:Comfort.

Naomi Wolf wrote:Does this affect the strength of our democracy? Look at how history shows thug groups have been directed at intimidating voters. Americans need to be reminded that both Italy before Mussolini and Germany before Hitler were working, if fragile, parliamentary democracies. Thugs were used in both countries to intimidate voters exercising their rights. Mussolini’s fascists stood menacingly near voting booths to make sure citizens ‘voted responsibly’; William Shirer wrote that the Austrians voted 99% in favor of their country’s annexation by Germany -- not surprising, he observed, since intimidating groups of brownshirts looked through a wide slit in the voting booth where the election committee did its work. The oddly specific scene of groups of identically dressed young men -- later identified as Republican staffers -- crowding and shouting at the vote counters in Florida in 2000 has strong historical precedents.

The Founders knew from their own experience of standing armies, responsive only to a tyrant, how dangerous such a situation was; King George’s men -- armed with blanket warrants -- invaded the colonists’ homes, trashed their possessions, and even raped Colonial women. It was that bitter experience that led them to insist on the second amendment -- ‘a well regulated militia’ that was responsive to the people and could not be deployed against the people of the United States by would-be despots. The founders knew that American tyranny was not only possible, it was likely, in the event of weakened checks and balances; and they knew a mercenary army was the advance guard of despots.

(According to `the blueprint' described in my book, unless people wake up in time, we in America are likely to see a call for a `security requirement' for Blackwater to be deployed to `protect' Congress and to be deployed around voting areas `to maintain public order', and, unless we intervene, we will see them start to do crowd control when there are antiwar marches or other demonstrations. Then, again according to historical models, protesters will increasingly start to get hurt for `resisting arrest' or for `provocations.')

Because, to my sorrow, I know `the blueprint', I was sad but not at all surprised when a horrified friend who works in downtown New York City told me that armed private contractors -- who look like members of the NYPD but who are not answerable to any government entity -- have been placed around the U.S. stock exchange. I went down to check it out. Indeed, Wall Street and the entire periphery of the Stock Exchange was like a militarized zone in the hands of what was not evident to onlookers as being in fact a private army: there were barricades; three immense trucks parked to deter and investigate pedestrians; armed dog handlers with their big dogs on tightly held leashes -- all of this looks like government security but it isn't. The company, which according to the guards was hired by the stock exchange itself, is neutrally called `T & M.' (This appears to be this company.)