It's not often we agree with liberals. But, when the topic is Liberty versus stronger centralized government controls, we tend to agree with whoever is on the side of Liberty.

For instance, the grossly misnamed Patriot Act is about to get totally shredded by the courts as unconstitutional. Even so, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others are going forward with it as if it were something Americans would actually respect. Fact is, the only ones who want that stupid Patriot Act are those who love big government control of everything in our lives -- and we already have too much of that. Part of the problem is the Operation TIPS program.

It was interesting, then, that in an editorial last month on TIPS, The Boston Globe wrote: "This is not an updating of George Orwell's '1984.' It is not a satire on the paranoid fantasies of right-wing kooks who see black helicopters swooping across their big sky. It will be a nationwide program run by Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department. If it is allowed to start up and gather steam, it will begin in 10 cities and then expand everywhere, enrolling millions of Americans to spy on their neighbors. ''

Exactly! The new Citizens Corps has the potential to turn every obnoxious neighborhood busybody and jerk into a government informant. Anyone with a grudge against someone would then have a method of causing them endless hours of grief with federal officials. Check out the protocol.(1) There is opportunity for all sorts of serious mischief there.

To his credit, House Majority Leader Dick Armey -- Chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security -- realized this. So, in his markup of legislation to create a Homeland Security Department, Armey rejected both the proposed national identification card and deleted the program that would use volunteers for domestic surveillance. Then, the Committee included language in the legislation to prohibit the Justice Department from initiating Operation TIPS.

The Committee also inserted language that would create a "privacy officer" in the Homeland Security Department -- the first ever established by law in a Cabinet agency. Rep. Armey said this person would "ensure technology research and new regulations from the department respect the civil liberties our citizens enjoy."

Then came some bad news. Air Force Gen. Ralph E. Eberhardt -- Bush's choice to lead the military's new Northern Command to run military flying patrols over American cities and respond to major terrorist attacks -- told the New York Times that he favors changes in existing law to give increased domestic law enforcement powers to the military. "We should always be reviewing things like Posse Comitatus and other laws if we think it ties our hands in protecting the American people," Gen. Eberhardt said.

On a Fox interview, terrorist czar Tom Ridge called Gen. Eberhardt's remarks about the need for such a review "very appropriate."

In another interview on CNN's Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer, Ridge tried to tone it down some by saying that the discussion is an academic one. "There's been absolutely no discussion with regard to giving military authorities the ability to arrest in their support of civilian authorities." Asked whether he believes the military should have the power to arrest U.S. citizens, he replied: "No."

Then, Ridge made another about-face: "We need to be talking about military assets, in anticipation of a crisis event," Ridge said last week on Fox News Sunday. "And clearly, if you're talking about using the military, then you should have a discussion about posse comitatus."

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., that resident socialist- fascist the people of Delaware keep inflicting on the rest of us, strongly endorsed giving the military the power to arrest American civilians. In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Biden -- who, unfortunately is still a member of the Judiciary Committee -- said the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prevents the military from exercising police powers in this country, should be re-examined and "has to be amended."

Biden, we should remember, is the one who agreed with Janet Reno that ignorance of the law, for civilians, is no excuse. No person in government knows all federal law, rules and regulations. But, Biden thinks we must. Yet, he is always willing to give a free pass to anyone in government, usually saying things like "they probably just did not understand all points of the law."

Now comes Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Levin called the Posse Comitatus Act a "solid law" that "has served us well." He continued: "We should not assume that we're going to have to change it. On the other hand, I don't fear looking at it to see whether or not our military can be more helpful than they've been up to now" in providing training, equipment and other assistance in disaster situations. But the military should not be arresting people.

That same week on Late Edition, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), who is the ranking Republican on the Governmental Affairs Committee, said he believes military troops could be useful for tasks such as "surveillance along the borders thousands of miles that are very difficult for law enforcement to deal with."

Thompson makes a good point. As organized now, the INS is damn near useless. They will not even deport illegal aliens when they are delivered to them by other police agencies. Let the kids in the war-suits watch the borders. But, give them bullets this time. Maybe that will help some.

One point that should be made is that American civilians have the ability to protect their own homeland. We already have police departments for that. There are also millions of well trained prior-military people on our streets every day. If at least half were armed, that becomes a major deterrent against both terrorism and street crime.

Government should be a major part of the fix. Instead, many in our government tend to be part of the problem. So, here's a thought: Let the IRS people run INS and the INS people run IRS. That could quickly become a more productive (and comfortable) arrangement.

1. http://www.citizencorps.gov/watch.html

The conversation was getting kind of deep a few days back when some wag wondered out loud what the daughter would be like had Joseph Stalin and Marie Antoinette married and together raised the child. According to one woman, there is a U.S. Senator with the mean attitude of a Stalin, yet who also demands the shameful personal excesses of an Antoinette.

At first thought, these extrapolations sound silly, of course -- like a cartoon painted in word pictures. Funny, yes. But still silly. Because, the original topic of the conversation was about Hillary admonishing her seniors at the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) a few days previous.

Hillary was apparently just spurting with inaccurate propaganda for that function. For instance, she said that statistics from the 1990s show the creation of 42 million jobs with 7 million people leaving poverty and the elimination of the federal budget deficit.

Clinton compounded the lies by saying that President Bush and congressional Republicans have squandered the economic gains made when her husband was President. She added: "If all of the arrows that were pointing up are now pointing down, and those that were headed down are going back up, blame cannot and should not be placed at the feet of those who led our nation during one of the greatest periods of prosperity and progress in our nation."

Of course, no mention was made of the fact that the Clinton administration used statistics to lie a lot. She also forgot to mention that the administration kept billions of our tax dollars at risk to pump up the stock market. Nor were little matters like the topsy-turvy balance of trade, faulty federal bookkeeping, high inflation, and the pilfering of Social Security money to balance the budget mentioned. They defrauded the American people, in other words -- cooked the books to make things look good. Now, those frauds are jumping out to bite us.

Everything she said was typical Party propaganda. The Democrats know that most American voters do not know any better and they can say just about anything they please. They easily get away with it because most of the liberal corporate media will help by covering up scandals for the far-left Democrats.

For instance, Associated Press, a major media cheering section for the socialist-Democrats, labels the Democratic Leadership Council as "centrist" and "moderate," which is a huge stretch of the imagination.

First, for all practical purposes, the DLC and the "New Democrats" socialist group are one and the same. They even admit it on their web page.(1) Both groups were started by Senator Joe Lieberman. Both support world socialism.

Checking out their web page, we see prominently listed their "Third Way" Fabian Socialist propaganda page. According to the DLC: "The Third Way is a global movement dedicated to modernizing progressive politics for the information age. Third Way politics seeks a new balance of economic dynamism and social security, a new social compact based on individual rights and responsibilities, and a new model for governing that equips citizens and communities to solve their own problems."

That's just baloney. However, the "Progressive Challenge" newsletter(2) often shows with striking clarity just how deeply the socialist movement is entrenched within the Democratic Party. For a real eye opener, check out their "Fairness Agenda." Also note that the Democratic Party supports the Progressive Challenge and the extremely far-left House Progressive Caucus.(3) That's the bulk of the Democratic Party's "useful idiot" base in Congress.

In a 1999 paper written for the Heritage Lectures, Professor Christian Watrin, Ph.D., from the Institute for Economic Policy Research at the University of Cologne, Germany,(4) points out some of the real socialist treachery of this international Third Way movement:

"The social democratic 'third way' model is not a disguised libertarian program. It does not describe a new chapter in social democratic thinking and ideology. In contrast to the views taken by those who favor a free society, the starting point of 'third-way' adherents is not the freedom of the individual but the collectivistic ideas that are alive still in the background of socialist thinking. Therefore, the collective -- not the individual -- is important; the politician -- not the entrepreneur or the wealth-seeking individual -- is at the heart of the socialist design."

And so it goes. Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, the New Democrats and the Democratic Leadership Council are working to countermand the Constitution of the United States, all of the Original Intent of the Founding Fathers and our Liberty. The real truth is there for anyone who wants to investigate a little. But, our left-leaning corporate media will never relate a word of this to the American people.

1. http://www.ndol.org

2. http://www.ips-dc.org/netprogress

3. http://bernie.house.gov/pc/

4. http://www.heritage.org/library/lecture/hl634.html

For some reason, most in today's liberal corporate media like to refer to liberal politicians as "moderate" or "centrists." That's the media's way, evidently, of softening the blow of their discussions of unconstitutional proposals. It is also usually an obvious lie.

For instance, during his first presidential campaign, the media informed Americans that Bill Clinton was a moderate Democrat. Even after the Clinton administration tried to socialize the whole of the American medical delivery system, the media still referred to him as a moderate, rather than the socialist he is.

My unanswered question to a media honcho was simple: "Moderate as to who, Nikita Khrushchev or Mikhail Gorbachev maybe? What is the criteria for defining a person as a moderate?" The reply was but a blank stare. They had no idea; it was just a tag they liked to use. Which means, It is little more than perpetual socialist propaganda from a meddlesome media.

Moderate is defined as "being within reasonable limits; not excessive or extreme." If our Constitution is our standard of government -- the political center -- "moderate" certainly did not define anyone in the Clinton administration. They were extremely left. Socialists. Control freaks, too.

Centrist is defined as "one who takes a position in the political center; a moderate." So we see, moderate and centrist could be synonyms and so could sometimes be used interchangeably.

In the center of our political spectrum we find our standard: The Constitution as defined by the Founding Fathers. Anyone not adhering to the original intent of the Founding Fathers, therefore, should not be called a "moderate" or a "centrist." Rather, they would be either on the right or left of the political spectrum -- which is where we find 99% of today's federal politicians and bureaucrats.

Those on the left of the political spectrum -- all of the Democrats and many Republicans -- tend to support big government control of just about everything. That is, they sponsor programs to redistribute the wealth, legislate equality even when it is physically impossible, attempt to regulate everything in life through federal law and regulation, and attempt to control the population through a leviathan of very restrictive taxes, social programs and mandates.

Those on the right tend to believe that government should control the morality of the nation and that strict laws are necessary to make people behave as ordered.

There are position overlaps between the far right and far left, of course. Actually, sometimes it seems as though the political spectrum is like a circle, analogous to a clock. And, if twelve o'clock is designated as our center starting point -- the original intent of the Founding Fathers -- some in Congress are so far afield to the right or the left that they are bumping into each other down around 6 o'clock. Consequently, lately they often join together and propose some of the most Constitutionally repugnant bills this country has ever seen.

The avalanche of obnoxious gun bills come immediately to mind. So do the tobacco and campaign finance bills. Even worse yet is FEMA's scheming to take over the country in any type of real or contrived emergency and Congress readying to authorize martial law because the federal officials were either too stupid or too negligent to protect our borders against terrorists and a constant onslaught of illegal aliens.

Some people have started using the term "Republicrat" as a tag for those legislators who totally disregard the Constitution. But, while there may be a lot of truth to that, it does not quite fit the bill, so to speak. We need a term that accurately defines these Members of Congress who propose bills that drastically violate our Constitution and subjugate our Liberty.

What shall we call those who so blatantly disobey our Constitution with nearly every piece of legislation or regulation they propose -- and, at the same time, tag those of us who call for a Constitutional form of government right-wing reactionaries? What's the direct opposite of a centrist?

I leave that for the readers to discuss. However, a descriptive tag is necessary. And, like "centrist" and "moderate," it should be simple and easy to remember.

This web page can NOT be altered or sold, but may be copied intact for reasonable distribution in keeping with the philosophy of uhuh and GR Force, who can assume no liabilities. Please make you own decisions.

The term U-Mail, uhuh and this web page are Copyright 2001 by Forest Glen Durland, subject to Fiedor's rights.

fron281.htm. Revised 9-8-02. uhuh and GR Force are non-profit.