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Name: Dennis Meredith
email: denny195@bellsouth.net
Vote: I would rather comment than vote.
Question: Page 18
Date: Monday, August 02, 2004
Time: 12:54:30 PM
Comments
My Comments Are:
It is a necessity of every totalitarian regime that has ever existed, or will, to silence its critics within.
It was with this knowledge and hard learned experience that the framers of the Constitution added to that document the Bill of Rights, the first of which rights is FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
Jefferson said it best- "I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78 (emphasis added)
What have our leaders to fear from the “free speech” of its citizens, time of war or not?
If they speak the truth they have nothing to fear unless of course what we’re hearing isn’t the truth. The argument that the justification for the declaration of war and the pursuit of that war rests solely on “secret intelligence” that the “bad guys” already know, the government has apparently figured out but the American people are to stupid to hear is a mindless argument.
Perhaps the most ironic part of this is that I found this survey as a result of a link from a page link in your most recent newsletter. The article was on the governments’ new desire to forcibly drug children with psychiatric drugs.
You are clearly in opposition to this governmental power and you have expressed that view freely under your 1st Amendment right but you also espouse the Sedition Act as a way to deny me the same right only on another issue.
You can’t have it both ways. As for the President, if he lied he is a liar. If the usurpation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is treasonous go read through Patriot I and II and you decide if the current regime is guilty of treason and justifiably labeled traitors.
You may find that your opposition to the forced drugging of school children (subtle though it is) is in fact an act of Mental Health Terrorism.
Imagine it, the Patriot Act brought to bear in its full fury. Searches without warrants, arrest without indictment, no habeas corpus protection, special courts in secret without appeal. And all they have to do is figure out a way to tie the word “terrorism” into what you are doing.
Is this Patriot Act great or what? Why would you be interested in the Sedition Act when there is the Patriot Act?
The difference is the difference between a gopher mound and the Rocky Mountains.
Maybe, if you’re lucky, it will be determined that you only suffer from age induced dementia and rather than being “disappeared” to a Gulag Guantanamo the State will settle for some electric shock treatments and some psychiatric drugs to correct the obvious defective thinking patterns that would lead you to question the States authority.
Orwellian, you’d better believe it. Preposterous, you’d better re-read Patriot Act before you laugh it off.
I don’t presume for one minute that tactical war plans should be on public display but the justifications for and the reasoning behind committing the nation to war is a matter for public debate. There should be no censure of the public’s voice or opinion on matters of governmental policy, war included. If the public debate reaches the depth of name calling the president is by no means a saint and it’s like Harry Truman said about the heat in the kitchen, if you can’t take it get out.
It will be our taxes and our blood and the blood of our sons and daughters that will be spent to pursue a war.
It is our right to speak out whether in defense of or against any policy of our government and especially war.
The day that “government” resorts to the usurpation of the Constitution as a means to suppress dissent is the day that our Republic ceases to exist.
In the words of Lincoln in his first inaugural address- “…This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their CONSTITUTIONAL right of amending it, or their REVOLUTIONARY right to dismember or overthrow it…” March 4, 1861 (emphasis added) or in the words of Jefferson- "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them." --Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356
I have worn the uniform and sworn the oath “…that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States…”.
I did so to preserve your right and mine to speak freely, openly and without fear. I did so with the clear understanding that the first priority of the soldier is to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States”. Not Karl Loren’s version of the documents or George Bush’s version or John Ashcroft’s but the documents as framed.
Period. When elected officials, up to and including the President, stand in clear opposition to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in violation of their oath to protect and defend them, it is they, not we, who have chosen to make themselves enemies of the Republic.
It is they who set themselves above the law as tyrants and despots. It is they who commit sedition.
But, if it be sedition to openly question the justification and motives for war and to demand the truth in the accounting then so be it. Or if it is sedition to openly question the methods employed in the pursuit of that war and to demand the truth in the accounting then so be it.
And further, if it is sedition to call a liar a liar or a traitor a traitor when the evidence so points or to give voice to opposition or to stand firmly on your right to voice support then seditionist I am and proudly so. And if it is your contention that it is my patriotic duty to remain silent and obedient in the face of despotism, to choose the path of blissful ignorance when my government proposes to conduct “its” business in secret then I will leave you with the words of Samuel Adams- “If you prefer wealth to liberty and the tranquility of servitude rather than the animated contest of freedom then go home in peace. We seek neither your counsel or your arms. But bow down and lick the hand that feeds you and may your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
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Dear Dennis,
what can one say in the face of such emotion!!
Thank you for voting and commenting.
Karl Loren
Name: James Hawkins
email: cotton@digitalpassage.com
Vote: Foreign affairs and war are two areas that must be reserved from debate. Debate on these would generally give aide to some war enemy.
Question: Page 18
Date: Monday, August 02, 2004
Time: 11:42:51 AM
Comments
My Comments Are:
Many should face a firing squad.
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Dear James,
Many "who?"
Thanks for the comment.
Karl Loren
Name: Paul
email:
Vote: Political candidates have a right to know the facts about intelligence and to debate them openly
Question: Page 18
Date: Monday, August 02, 2004
Time: 07:34:28 AM
Comments
My Comments Are:
Dear Paul,
Thanks for the vote.
Karl Loren
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Name: Harrison Stone
email: stone@dvol.com
Vote: I would rather comment than vote.
Question: Page 18
Date: Monday, August 02, 2004
Time: 06:58:28 AM
Comments
My Comments Are:
First:
I noticed with some dismay that the way in which these vote choices was presented, a particular answer was "pre-marked".
To me, that is the moral eqivalent of incidents which have transpired wherein newly-made U>S> Citizens, leaving the court-room, were presented with the "opportunity" to register to vote - with a form already pre-checked to select the party which the volunteer "helping the new citizens get started" had "helpfully" chosen for them.
That may not be "illegal", but it fails my personal tests of ethics, and my belief in what America should stand for.
Second: Presenting choices which represent extreme "poles" of any issue can never validly represent the spectrum of opinions in any sample of human society. Any results are inevitably biased by the wording of the choices presented.
Third: The passage, and the implementation, of "sedition" acts is too easily used as a step in the gradual but inexorable weakening of individual voter power, and concentration of more and more "authority" in the hands of an elite "patriotic" core.
Look at history! The following quotation is significant: "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it reason" Sir John Harrington 1561-1612
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Dear Harrison,
Thanks for more volume.
Karl Loren
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Name:
email:
Vote: Foreign affairs and war are two areas that must be reserved from debate. Debate on these would generally give aide to some war enemy.
Question: Page 18
Date: Monday, August 02, 2004
Time: 05:06:44 AM
Comments
My Comments Are:
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Name: Jean W
email: triana@wi.rr.com
Vote: Foreign affairs and war are two areas that must be reserved from debate. Debate on these would generally give aide to some war enemy.
Question: Page 18
Date: Monday, August 02, 2004
Time: 01:23:13 AM
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Comments
I'd like to see the sedition act used on Bush & Cheney and every government official or corporate CEO supporting them. Unfortunately, they're going to use it on us, so it cannot be allowed.
Dear Jean,
Pretty much emotional? Thanks for expressing yourself.
Karl Loren
Name: bryan dutra
email: dutravich@outdrs.net
Vote: Foreign affairs and war are two areas that must be reserved from debate. Debate on these would generally give aide to some war enemy.
Question: Page 18
Date: Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Time: 07:19:42 PM
Comments
My Comments Are:
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Dear Bryan,
Thanks for the vote.
Karl Loren
Name:
Karl Loren
email: lc
Vote: I would rather comment than vote.
Question: Page 25
Remote User:
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Time: 05:22:13 PM
Comments
My Comments Are:Test message
