Forget Constitutional Rights: Long Term Assault On Civil Liberties Means We Live In A Post-Constitutional America

by Monica Davis

Americans have been asleep for so long they don’t know where they live any longer. We keep talking about how our constitutional rights are violated, how stop and frisk is  illegal, how the cops are militarized, and how we are no longer safe from unreasonable searches.

Hey, Americans: i have news for you. While you have been asleep at the wheel, lulled into complacency by the lovng, protective arms of Homeland Security and our paternal, caretakers in Congress, something predictable has happened. Government has expanded, cops have been militarized, your “home guard” trains for national insurection in foreign places and you are still sleepin’.

They say we are in a post-Civil Rights Era, and they are right about that. The rights that we fought for during that era, getting rid of American apartheid, women’s rights, Native American rights, African American rights, poor people’s rights–those rights are being rolled back faster than we can spell Constitution.

Peter  van Buren   writes about the phenomenon in Common Dreams:

Consider, for instance, the rise of the warrior cop, of increasingly up-armored police departments across the country often filled with former military personnel encouraged to use the sort of rough tactics they once wielded in combat zones. Supporting them are the kinds of weaponry that once would have been inconceivable in police departments, including armored vehicles, typically bought with Department of Homeland Security grants. Recently, the director of the FBI informed a Senate committee that the Bureau was deploying its first drones over the United States.  Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security and already flying an expanding fleet of Predator drones, the very ones used in America’s war zones, is eager to arm them with “non-lethal” weaponry to “immobilize targets of interest.”

In these times, we have Texas police officers stopping women on the highway, doing invasive pelvic exams, not changing gloves, which some call rape, for no legal reason. In Pennsylvania, a 7 year old and a 10 year old have been silenced with a lifetime gag order over a fracking injury legal settlement.  

And, from the Obama can’t do anything right crowd:

55 examples of Obama’s war on our liberties, freedoms and American way of life.  I’m sure you’ve heard of a number of these – but some of the stuff on here will surprise (and frighten) you.   Everything on this list is federally related, has been verified and is cited; questionable stuff – like the police force in Hardin, Montana – has been left out. MOREHERE

Does the Constitution matter any more? After all, da gubmint only targets crooks. Speaking of the long-term assault on civil liberties, Fred Naagel wrote:

Perhaps the average American thought similarly about the USA PATRIOT Act, passed within a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Apparently, members of Congress felt that way. The act was over 300 pages long and most did not have time to read it in the rush for passage. They should have. It gives our government the right to secretly investigate individuals and groups if their actions “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population….” Cutting a fence, throwing a stone, crossing a police barrier in pursuit of civil rights, protecting the environment, or protesting the World Trade Organization would certainly qualify. And only one member of a group needs to engage in this type of action for the whole group to be investigated. MOREHERE