On October 26, 2001, the Government of the United States Moved Towards Fascism

Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart

Any action taken at the height of emotion will almost always be a mistake. On October 26, 2001, the signing of the Patriot Act was the first step by a Republican President to move our nation away from the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and into a fascist regime. Fear remains the right-wing’s greatest weapon in efforts to control all three branches of our federal government. This is where it all began.

After your government failed to prevent the attacks on September 11, 2001, they reacted to the disaster with fear tactics. Although the Bush Administration was revealed as a group of total incompetents and a great danger to the future of our nation’s people, they responded with actions which were both desperate and unconstitutional, claiming that terrorism remained the greatest danger to our nation’s people. Every speech “W” made contained multiple references to “9/11.”

This is how they passed the Patriot Act. It requires only a cursory examination of the law to learn that this knee-jerk reaction by right-wing politicians was intentional, an effort to use scare tactics for political gain. It did nothing to prevent terrorism, but it did violate the 4^th Amendment and touched on the fourteenth.

Its main component was to increase the government’s surveillance capabilities on every citizen in the United States without probable cause. The very mention of the term “terrorism” allows law enforcement agencies at any level to invade your privacy, confiscate your property, and imprison you and your family for an indeterminate period of time, until they are satisfied that you and yours are not involved in any act which might be related to terrorist activities.

This was the impetus for Trump and Putin’s plans for 2016, the end of democracy, and the beginning of fascism in America.

The Patriot Act is despicable and unconstitutional. Our government can now listen to your phone calls, access information about your bank account, learn about your love life, and even gain information about the books you check out from the library. All this in a thinly veiled lie: “to prevent another 9/11.”

I leave you with one fact. Our leaders were warned about an impending attack on our soil months before 9/11. Bush and Cheney ignored them and went on a long, undeserved vacations.

Op-ed by James Turnage

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Source: https://www.aclu.org/end-mass-surveillance-under-the-patriot-act