Thomas Sowell, 20 Aug. 2010:
The Point of No Return
It is not just evil people who would dismantle America. Many people who have no desire to destroy our freedoms simply have agendas of their own that are singly or collectively incompatible with the survival of freedom.
Someone once said that a democratic society cannot survive for long after 51 percent of the people decide that they want to live off the other 49 percent. Yet that is the direction in which we are being pushed by those who are promoting envy under its more high-toned alias, "social justice."
Those who construct moral melodramas — starring themselves on the side of the angels against the forces of evil — are ready to disregard the constitutional rights of those they demonize, and to overstep the limits that the Constitution puts on the powers of the federal government.
Hoo boy...
Thomas Sowell, 7 Feb. 2006:
Point of No Return [ed. same title!!]
Looking back at the history of tragic times often reveals that many -- or most -- of the people of those times were often preoccupied with things that look trivial, or even pathetic, in view of the catastrophe looming over them. Will later generations looking back at our times see a similar blindness, and even frivolousness, in the face of mortal dangers?
Terrorists and terrorist governments are giving us almost daily evidence of their fanatical hatred and violent sadism, as the clock ticks away toward their gaining possession of nuclear weapons. They not only hold a harmless young woman hostage in Iraq, they parade her in tears on television, just as they have paraded not only the terrorizing, but even the beheading, of others on television.
[...]
Yet what are we preoccupied with or outraged about? Whether the American government should intercept the phone calls of these cutthroats to people in the United States.
That question has been sanitized in the mainstream media by asking whether the government should be engaged in "domestic wiretapping," just as the terrorists themselves have been sanitized into "militants" or "insurgents."
The way the question is posed by many in the media and in politics, you would think our intelligence agencies were listening in on you talking on the phone to your aunt Mabel.
[...]
Lawyers may differ on fine legal points about the Constitutional powers of the commander in chief during wartime versus the oversight powers of the courts. But, a Supreme Court Justice once pointed out that the Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact.
The Constitution was meant for us to live under, not be paralyzed by, in the face of death.
Two articles with the same title. One of them tells us that Bush has every right to spy on the phone calls of anyone he wants too. The other tells us that the American republic itself is in mortal danger because of Obama's moderately leftish economic policies.
For the record: Obama has not bombed Fox News, he has not let the Pentagon compile a database on tea party groups, and he has not ordered the assassination of Sarah Palin. However, similar things have been done by both Bush and Obama in the name of the War on Terror.
I think that Mr. Sowell's intellectual dishonesty has reached the Point of No Return.