This is what tyranny looks like
Read, if you dare, the details of the case of Hamza al-Khateeb, a Syrian citizen arrested by his country's security forces, mutilated, and tortured to death during almost a month in custody. He was 13 years old.
This is what the Arabs who are defying their regimes are facing; this is the kind of dangers they are braving.
And this is what real tyranny looks like. The next time you hear some fool blather that universal health coverage, or being prevented from ramming his religion down everybody else's throat under government auspices, constitutes "tyranny", remember what that word really means, and ask yourself how many Americans would have the courage to take to the streets against it in the face of the monsters who enforce it, as so many Arabs are doing.
This is what the Arabs who are defying their regimes are facing; this is the kind of dangers they are braving.
And this is what real tyranny looks like. The next time you hear some fool blather that universal health coverage, or being prevented from ramming his religion down everybody else's throat under government auspices, constitutes "tyranny", remember what that word really means, and ask yourself how many Americans would have the courage to take to the streets against it in the face of the monsters who enforce it, as so many Arabs are doing.
posted by Infidel753 at 7:32 PM
11 Comments:
I wish the cretin who claims I violated the First Amendment for deleting one of his posts to my blog would understand what it really means. It means not being thrown in jail, totured, punished, or killed for saying something the government doesn't like. I'm not a government and having a nastyass blog post deleted isn't violating your right to blather somewhere else. *this* kind of thing is what not having the right to speak your mind is about.
(I promise if you delete this I won't report you to Amnesty International)
I haven't the heart this morning for the article, but I trust your judgement on it--it will put our clowning, embarrassing, scandalous congress right into perspective.
For all of the maneuvering of the ultra-rich and powerful to gain control in America, we still speak and speak and speak. And when that wears on us, we sue. Freedom is a wonderful thing.
Torture of a child!? Disgusting, and definitely a reminder of what the Syrian people are up against. My thoughts are with all those in the Middle East right now, pressing for change.
We really don't know how lucky we are in this country. The people who are accusing the government of tyranny seem to be the very ones who are committing it, or trying to.
I caught most of this off the news and on the tubes.
It is important to factor this...personal liberty deprivation is a long cultural process.
You are correct; to bombastically equate what is happening in America to a tyranny of the scope in some Arabic nations is erroneous, but to ignore the slide towards that would be equally erroneous.
we must be alert... and hold fast, without flaming rhetoric.
It can happen here. It happens slowly. Be A Lert. America needs as many Lerts as we can get.
Reading stuff like this in the news just increases my contempt for conservative Christians. And if some them ever get the theocracy they're looking for, this could be America in the future.
LA: It's amazing how many people misinterpret the right to free speech as an obligation on everyone else's part to provide an open forum. A blog is the blogger's turf, no one else's. As I always say, the First Amendment guarantees you the right to put a political bumper sticker on your car. It doesn't give you the right to put that same bumper sticker on my car, not unless I choose to let you.
Nance: As a general rule, I think if you can denounce the government you live under as "fascist" without anything bad happening to you, it isn't fascist.
Ahab: The horrors are hard for us to imagine. And believe me, Saddam Hussein's regime did things even worse than this.
LP: The people who are accusing the government of tyranny seem to be the very ones who are committing it, or trying to.
Funny how that works, isn't it?
Okjimm & BR: Both worthwhile reminders. We don't have to worry about this kind of thing happening to us here, now. If the Dominionists and their ilk were to succeed in imposing a theocracy, that might well be a very different matter.
Leslie Parsley:
I could not improve on what you have said. When I see the pictures and media rants of the Tea Baggers, all I see are a bunch of fools.
Hey Infidel, how good is the Necroscope series? And how much Lovecraft influence does it have? I saw the first book in an old store, but I hesitated, so now that I've researched the book and found out that it was not a piece of pulpy crap, somebody else has bought it.
RtS: When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag, and carrying a cross, and be spelled wrong.
BR: Since you asked.....
IT'S. SO. AWESOME!!!
Why didn't I buy that book?! WHY?!! Oh, the brutality! Curse you, anonymous buyer! May your flesh be stripped from you bones!!
*rants incoherently for some time*
Sooooo... now I just wait for the inter-library loan to come through.
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