*cough* habeus corpus *cough* separation of powers *cough* indefinite detainment without conviction *cough*

Flying Mantis Strip, you people have lost the freedoms that make every other freedom possible. Sure, it hasn’t all gone downhill yet, but all the protection is gone. At this point, US politicians are on the honour system not to turn you into a freaking dictatorship. Willing to trust in that? Because the people who invented habeus corpus and separation of powers sure as hell weren’t, from their own personal experience.

The problem with you Americans is that you’ve had too many generations of relative comfort with your political system. Live through a dictatorship, and you’ll see the value of even the freedoms you consider marginal.

That’s a nice argument, Flying, and I’m sure you’d get an A+ in philosophy class, because it has nothing to do whatsoever with observed reality.

Let me explain to you, Flying, the type of dictatorship which is not only the most common in the modern world. The type you’d find in Zimbabwe for example. I’ll use an example I’m familiar with, Salazar-era Portugal.

You see, during the Salazar years, Portugal was a free and open democracy with fair elections, separation of powers, rule of law, and it didn’t even have the death penalty *on paper*. It just happened to be that the same party won the elections always for almost fifty years and there was no opposition except Delgado, and some blacks and Timorenses off-shore.

Of course, just as Bush has given the Administration the power (unused?) to form a ‘council’ controlled entirely by the administration which can detain people indefinitely, in secret, and without trail, Salazar had the PIDE/PVDE. Essentially, like the ‘council’ Bush has given himself the right to create, PIDE existed above all Portuguese law and could freely vanish people. Generally those people weren’t communists and terrorists (from the Colonies, who were fighting a war for independence), as Salazar promised, but newspaper reporters, opposition candidates and regular people who were overhead by the spy network.

Of course, Portugal had a nice dictatorship by world standards. Me and my family are from Brazil. The military regime of my childhood didn’t really need secrets, because the “threat” of communist terrorists was apparently so grim, that it gave them the right to open fire on underage protesters. Everyone was being spied on Constantly, and if you weren’t a famous singer, you were likely to end up who knows fucking where. At one point my Uncle, Aunt, and three cousins all vanished, and their farm land was assumed as Gov. property, later sold at auction. We still haven’t got an explanation for that one. Are they in prison? In some grave. My Grandparents hired a detective after the dictatorship ended, and still no info whatsoever.

But I’m sure your six month tour in Iraq on base was hell and taught you about life.

But no, creating a council controlled directly by the administration which exists above the law could never go wrong. Only hippies from san francisco want to vote. Real freedoms are the freedom to go to monster truck rallies, evangelist churches and nigger lynchings. God bless the american way..