1.I said central banking but meant the Federal Reserve System. You are correct about central banking. Care to talk about the evils of the FED?

2.Again you are correct, states do not have rights. I was referring to the rights of the citizens of the states. What I actually meant is that the federal government coerces states to impose its dictates on the citizens of the state, thereby denying rights to those citizens.

3.I am going to have to disagree with you on this one. The powers may not be the exact same powers, but the courts have increasingly given more power to law enforcement over the years. I would also argue that you do need governmental authorization to travel since you are screened and searched before you can travel and a now federalized TSA agent may detain you or stop you from taking a flight. I call that governmental authorization.

4. My argument here is that if just one person is held, the justice system has failed and we are all vulnerable as evidenced by your example of the internment camps. How many Muslims were picked up on no charges after 9/11?

5.Using Bovard’s term, “Freedom in Chains” is slavery. The examples of us working for the Master are more numerous than I care to get into now.

You seem to resent my term police state in reference to this government. I do not mean that we are in a full-fledged (such as the examples you gave) police state, but that we are in the infancy stages of BECOMING a full-fledged police state. What are neighborhood watch programs, community-policing, and DARE programs other than spying and snitching on neighbors and family?

I hope this is more clear and I apologize for my imprecise language and terminology earlier.

Second, to the best of my knowledge, prisoners held at Gitmo are already subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and other military regulations regarding holding prisoners. They are not subject to civil law, nor should they be. Prisoners of war can, and should, be held for the duration of the war. This is not unusual, nor out of the norm. Nor a violation of the Consitution. What is a violation of the Constitution is for the President to assume war powers without a declaration of war.

Third, I don’t know enough about the alleged CIA secret prisons to comment knowledgeably. Nor do I think most of us do.

I can’t avoid flying, unfortunately.

Interesting word parsing there. Check the Bill of Rights and you’ll find no suggestion that the rights of the accused apply only to citizens. Change the word “citizen” in your statement to “person” and all of a sudden you’re dead wrong. Anyone who’s not horrified by Gitmo Bay and the secret prisons just isn’t thinking. We’re supposed to be the good guys, not the gulag operators and torturers.

On the main subject, I just avoid flying because I don’t care to be jailed for objecting to an unreasonable search of my person and property, and I know most people have been brainwashed to believe they’ll be safer if they let someone mug them and browse through their belongings. Why insist on my freedom to travel unimpeded when the majority of people on board don’t want that freedom? Driving is much less stressful and more rewarding anyway. Of course I fear that my reluctance to put up a fight on this score will one day result in state-border checkpoints along the highways. I’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

1. Centralized banking began in 1791 with the First Bank of the United States, chartered by the Congress. Alexander Hamilton argued that the Federal Government had all powers not denied it by the Constitution under the “necessary and proper” clause. John Marshall, Chief Justice, wrote a unanimous decision in the 1830′s upholding the power of the Federal government to run a central bank under the “necessary and proper” clause.

2. States do not have rights, nor do any other government entities. States have powers. The Federal Government has usurped the powers of the state governments, but they have not lost any rights. Arguing that states have lost rights indicates a view that is inconsistent with actual classic liberal theory.

3. You have insisted that the US Government has not given up powers, once it acquires them. This is factually incorrect. In fact, the worst police powers were given up, including central industrial planning, secret police powers (trust me, the NSA and FBI today have very limited power compared to the OSS and FBI during WWII and the Secret Service and military intelligence during WWI), enforced civilian jobs, inabiltiy to negotiate pay and benefits with employers, inability to travel by train, plane or ship without government authorization, and more. Today, our government no longer holds, or claims to hold, these powers.

4. Holding significant portions of the American population without a writ of habeas corpus, as occurred in the Civil War and WWII. If you think Gitmo is bad, you ought to take a look at Andersonville and the many Union prison camps. The Japanese internment camps were no joke either. And there, hundreds of thousands of American citizens were imprisoned by the Federal government for an indefinite period of time, without habeas corpus, a trial or any other sort of due process. There is a vast difference between a few people held that way while a massive debate rages over whether it is legal, or not and hundreds of thousands held that way with the rest of the population backing it.

5. Slavery. Both the Federal and State governments of the United States recognized chattel slavery as legal, and tens of millions were held in a state of involuntary servitude for their entire life, as were their children. This is definitely no longer the case and the government no longer allows chattel slavery.

I agree that other powers have been usurped by the US Government and not given up. I agree that many things are happening today that, according to a strict interpretation, are not constitutional. You will see this theme throughout my writing here, and on Eric’s Grumbles. What I will not agree with, because you are flat out wrong, is that we are a Police State, or that our government, today, is worse than it was in the past. Historically, it has been much worse in this country than now. The abuses of the Clinton administration at Waco and Ruby Ridge, for a modern example, or the coverup of Islamic terrorist involvement in the Oklahoma City bombings, for another. The entirety of the New Deal and WWII, for yet another. We were, in fact, a fascist country during those years, without any doubt. FDR actively modelled his programs after Mussolini’s, and publicly said so, until it became a problem because he was on “the other side”.

Your points are good, in some cases, but your understanding of the reality of life in the US compared to life in a real police state is wildly off target. The truth is, you don’t walk the street in fear that secret police will toss you in an unmarked car, whisk you off to a secret location, torture you, hold a secret trial and then either hold you in a concentration camp or execute you. You don’t worry that a government official will pick your daughter up off the street and rape her and you will be killed if you try to complain. One out of three of your family and neighbors are not secret police informers. You are not put in prison for speaking out against the politics and policies of the President.

You do not live in a police state and saying that you do is over the top rhetoric that does not help to make the case that there are problems that need fixing and detract from liberty. I disagree with the major points that Brad makes in this article, but that doesn’t mean that I agree with you either.

If we truly lived in a police state, this blog would be censored. Consider what is happening with blogs in China, or recently to Iranian and Egyptian bloggers. Some perspective would be helpful. You might spend some time reading what Michele posted on Eric’s Grumbles. Or, check out this post that I wrote about my personal experiences with totalitarian societies.

Having to defend the government at all leaves a foul taste in my mouth, everything considered. But agreeing with your wildly inaccurate characterization of the United States would be intellectually dishonest.

When the Bill of Rights are no longer applicable to the citizen, in my opinion that is a police state compared to Constitutional Republic. You can put another name on it, but that is what I call it. So, I’ll ask you again, what would Jefferson call it?

Many of the things you are complaining about were happening long before 9/11. Many much worse things happened during other wars and time periods. If you think this is bad, you really, really ought to consider how hundreds of thousands of Americans felt in 1942 when they were rounded up and interred because of their ethnicity. Or how millions of Americans felt as they were kept in a state of chattel slavery for their entire lives.

Or, perhaps you ought to consider the incredibly dramatic lack of freedom brought on by conscription, by centralized industrial planning. Anyone holding a job critical to the war effort was forbidden, by law, from leaving their job. Civilians were required, by law, to take jobs, whether they wanted to, or not. Mail was opened, read and censored during WWI and WWII. Phone lines were tapped, people of German descent were investigated by the Secret Service, the FBI, the OSS and military intelligence during both WWI and II.

The United States was nearly as fascist during the Depression and WWII as our enemies were. Our President actively modelled the New Deal after Fascist Italy, and said so publicly.

Let’s try this again. Yes, there are problems right now that challenge liberty. Yes, our government is, and has been, doing things that are unconstitutional. But, to act as if this is somehow something new, and that it only came about since 9/11, is silly. Most of what the TSA is doing was law on the books prior to 9/11. That doesn’t mean I agree with it or think it is right, or necessary. But, it’s not new. And it isn’t nearly as bad as the situations citizens faced during earlier periods of our history.

You state that we were in more of a police state under Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR than we are now. My question then is, what were the police state tactics they used that are not now in use?

There’s a pretty good discussion going on over at The Liberty Papers around the whether the government has a “right” to impose security measures for air travel. The discussion is moving into whether the US is a police state, or…

Now, add government back into the picture. The choices and conditions of access remain the same, so I still don’t have a complaint with highly invasive security measures. Until, that is, I consider that the government has law enforcement abilities that the private companies would not have. Even though air travel is still purely voluntary, the conditions of access are unacceptable because that is giving a law enforcement agency information they should not have without a warrant.

Between that stumbling block and the fundamental wrongness of public enterprises such as the TSA and government airport ownership, I have to conclude that the problem is not the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the security measures, it’s the government operation of what should be a purely private enterprise.