The Noose Is Growing Tighter

Trey Smith

Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, wrote an alarming column on Tuesday. It concerns the expected passage in the US Senate of the National Defense Authorization Act. As is all too typical in federal legislation of this kind, some sections of the proposed law are written in very broad terms. The upshot, according to Rothschild and the ACLU, is that, in the future, it may become legal to send American citizens to the gulag (prison) at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely.

The Act is gussied up to appear to target "terrorism," but because of the overly broad language, it could easily be utilized to target individuals critical of the government...you know...people like those involved in the Occupy movement or even progressive commentators like Rothschild himself!

Bills of this nature offer clear examples of how freedom and democracy are stealthily dismantled piece by piece. If you will remember how it went in Nazi Germany, Hitler didn't abolish most freedoms in one fell swoop. It wasn't like one day democracy reigned supreme and then the next day it vanished. It was stolen incrementally -- always dressed up as law aimed at dangerous others.

Before most of the German people figured out what was REALLY going on, it was too late. They already had acquiesced to giving up their freedoms in order to ensure their continued "security."

It looks like the United States is poised to tread down a similar path. Generations from now, when future historians look back to this bygone era, they will ask the very same question many of us ask today about the German people of the 1930s: How could they let this happen?!