Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Sep. 2nd, 2008 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumWe do, each and every one of us. Jefferson said the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed, from time to time with blood. The blood it takes is that of patriots and tyrants.
Ben Franklin, when asked what the Constitutional Convention had delivered said, "A republic madam, if you can keep it."
Abraham Lincoln, in the course of a struggle which we are still, in some ways, struggling, said Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are engaged today in just such a struggle. The powers of reaction, and authoritarianism will use whatever tools they can get away with.
One of the questions about the unrest in St. Paul is about the role of those who are instigating the reactions. Police forces, and others, have used agents provacateur in the past. There really is no reason to think the idea is part of the dim and dusty past.
We know, from the reports of the raids, that informants were inserted into the groups. What we don't know (and probably won't) is how many of the alleged plots were the result of those agents saying, "what if" and so sparking discussion.
For those who care... I have a link to the RNC Welcoming Committee Search Warrant
Read it, and think about your kitchen, your laundry room, your garage, your shed.
Ben Franklin, when asked what the Constitutional Convention had delivered said, "A republic madam, if you can keep it."
Abraham Lincoln, in the course of a struggle which we are still, in some ways, struggling, said Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are engaged today in just such a struggle. The powers of reaction, and authoritarianism will use whatever tools they can get away with.
One of the questions about the unrest in St. Paul is about the role of those who are instigating the reactions. Police forces, and others, have used agents provacateur in the past. There really is no reason to think the idea is part of the dim and dusty past.
We know, from the reports of the raids, that informants were inserted into the groups. What we don't know (and probably won't) is how many of the alleged plots were the result of those agents saying, "what if" and so sparking discussion.
For those who care... I have a link to the RNC Welcoming Committee Search Warrant
Read it, and think about your kitchen, your laundry room, your garage, your shed.
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st-paul-cop-dragging-protester-jumped-sprays-crowd
Date: 2008-09-04 02:31 am (UTC)On one forum I was reading, a poster claiming to be Irish,
was calling the American Left cowards for not fighting back.
Re: st-paul-cop-dragging-protester-jumped-sprays-crowd
Date: 2008-09-04 03:19 am (UTC)It may come to a point where fighting is needful, God forbid.
Right now standing still and taking the abuse is the braver, and harder course of action.