[Peace-discuss] We thought we were free

[Carl G. Estabrook]

President Obama will sign the "National Defense Authorization Act,"  
which is evidently unconstitutional and codifies the right that Obama  
has already claimed (and exercised) to imprison even American citizens  
indefinitely, without charge or trial, if he suspects them of  
"terrorism." Remember, he has already killed at least two American  
citizens (and their teen-aged children) without charge or trial.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little  
by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions  
deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so  
complicated that the government had to act on information which the  
people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people  
could not understand it, it could not be released because of national  
security...

"Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to  
win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’  
which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not  
even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the  
knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who  
thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong..."

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
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