The Morphing of Amrerica:

Good or Evil?

Chapter 8

Are we living in a country that is good and righteous, promoting liberty, freedom and democracy around the world?  On inauguration day, George W. Bush said,

“America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home - the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty…

In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence…

In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character - on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives….

In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak…

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom….

When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength - tested, but not weary - we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.”

Does America have a mission from God to bring liberty and freedom to the world?  Or are the seeds of tyranny already planted and taking root in America? In this section, we will look at “liberty and freedom” in America.  In many respects, one could argue historically that America was a “light on the hill” to the rest of the world.  That is why the rest of the world is so perplexed by our recent actions.  That is also why so many good and patriotic Americans are beginning to question what is happening.

Like our friend the frog in the pot, from the previous section, laws are quietly being changed, and few seem to notice.  The point of this section isn’t to be an American “basher” but to point out subtle and not so subtle changes in laws, court interpretations and enforcement that has essentially gutted the Bill of Rights and put our “freedom” at jeopardy.

Of course, the caveat here for Christians is that this world isn’t our home.  “The whole world lies in the evil one.”  We have no hope or are looking for justice in the world or our government.  Yet, many sincere Christians have a foot in both worlds and are being deceived because they so want to believe the best about their country.

Background

Historically America has known no enemies that could reach her soil until after World War II and the beginning of the Cold War – kind of a nuclear “Mexican stand off” with Russia that lasted for the next 45 years.  As we pointed out in Part 2 of this series, this gave the American government a reason to establish bases throughout the world in order to defend themselves against the threat of Communism.  But once that threat faded, America needed a new enemy to justify the expansionist policy and military build up.  At first that enemy became the drug traffickers which justified the RICO and other money laundering laws, but that was hardly a worthy enemy to justify a massive military. 

It wasn’t until 9/11 that America discovered the perfect enemy – the terrorist!  A terrorist could be anywhere – on an airplane, in a shopping mall or the house next door.  The American government could justify tapping anyone’s phone line or checking their computer, bank or library records, breaking into their home, arresting citizen and non-citizen alike on suspicion or an accusation and set aside the usual Constitutional protections accorded to the accused.  Americans embraced the RICO laws, the Patriot Act I and II, the CAPPS and finally the organization of a new intelligence super agency.  In the process, they had no idea how this could affect them personally.  The fall of the “twin towers” and subsequent hype about terrorist threats somehow justified any and all measures taken by the government to “protect” their citizens.   These draconian measures are of obvious importance to any prophetic scenario that includes an apparently wonderful ruler (the antichrist) who turns on his people.  And yet, convinced the potential of terrorism is great, Americans are willing to make the trade off – security in exchange for freedom.

Before we explore the implications of these changes, let us listen to the warnings of our forefathers:

James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson "Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provision against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." 

“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security”.  (Benjamin Franklin)

” When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.” (Dorothy Thompson)

And here is the rub, “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.”  (H.L. Mencken)

Things were not the same after the end of the Cold War in 1989.  We failed to find a worthy enemy.  In the decade of the ‘90s, the best we could do was declare war on narcotics trafficking and money laundering.  RICO laws were initially designed to combat organized crime.  Over time RICO was expanded to include all kinds of suspicious activity and thousands of innocent people found their homes and bank accounts confiscated and the burden of proof was on them to prove their innocence – not on the government.  “In reality, RICO acts as an arbitrary penalty enhancer and prosecutorial bargaining tool. A violation of RICO is a crime of convenience—for prosecutors, that is.”  RICO laws have been expanded to use against abortion protestors, internet spammers, and the Catholic Church.  Although no one would object to its use against true criminals, all too often they are aimed against innocent people. 

In an attempt to combat money laundering, several times in the last four years of the Clinton administration, the “know your customer laws” for banks were soundly rejected by Congress as an intrusion of privacy.  Within a month after 9/11, those provisions previously rejected by Congress quietly passed into law. 

I am not an alarmist or into conspiracy theories.  The following information comes from “mainstream” sources or the government itself – not conspiratorial fringe sources.

The “Patriot Acts”

The ACLU reports, “Just 45 days after the September 11 attacks, with virtually no debate, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act. Many parts of this sweeping legislation take away checks on law enforcement and threaten the very rights and freedoms that we are struggling to protect. For example, without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now has the power to access your most private medical records, your library records, and your student records... and can prevent anyone from telling you it was done.”

The US Patriot Act expands terrorism laws to include “domestic terrorism” which could subject political organizations to surveillance, wiretapping, harassment, and criminal action for political advocacy.  Expands the ability of law enforcement to conduct secret searches, gives them wide powers of phone and Internet surveillance, and access to highly personal medical, financial, mental health, and student records with minimal judicial oversight.  Allows FBI Agents to investigate American citizens for criminal matters without probable cause of crime if they say it is for intelligence purposes.”  Permits non-citizens to be jailed based on mere suspicion and be denied re-admission to the US for engaging in free speech. Suspects convicted of no crime may be detained indefinitely month increments without meaningful judicial review.

What rights are being threatened? 

First Amendment - Freedom of religion, speech, assembly, and the press.

Fourth Amendment - Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Fifth Amendment - No person to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

Sixth Amendment - Right to a speedy public trial by an impartial jury, right to be informed of the facts of the accusation, right to confront witnesses and have the assistance of counsel.

Eighth Amendment - No excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment shall be imposed.

Fourteenth Amendment - All persons (citizens and non-citizens) within the US are entitled to due process and the equal protection of the laws.

The Patriot Act was so bad that in September 2004, the courts ruled key provisions unconstitutional.  “"Under the mantle of secrecy, the self-preservation that ordinarily impels our government to censorship and secrecy may potentially be turned on ourselves as a weapon of self-destruction," Marrero wrote. ". . . At that point, secrecy's protective shield may serve not as much to secure a safe country as simply to save face." "This is a wholesale refutation of the administration's use of excessive secrecy and unbridled power under the Patriot Act."  The article quotes a 1972 Supreme Court ruling that the government has a tendency to abuse its powers in the name of domestic security.

Patriot Act II was so bad they had to break it up into pieces and slip it through in other legislation.  “The "Domestic Security Enhancement Act," which opponents have dubbed "PATRIOT II," is designed to further expand federal law enforcement's powers to limit alleged terrorist suspects' access to the protections afforded to criminal defendants. “According to a "Confidential...Section-by-Section Analysis" of the proposal, it would allow the Justice Department to declare a person suspected of somehow being involved with international terrorism as a "foreign power," making the individual subject to the reduced judicial oversight and lower thresholds of proof required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)”.

Patriot Act II removes the sunset provisions of the original law.  It expands wire-tapping authority and, some provisions of PATRIOT II have been introduced separately as the "Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations" or VICTORY ACT. 

Banks, automobile dealers, realtors, yacht and motor home dealers, jewelers, etc., all are required to report suspicious activity.  An amount as low as three thousand dollars can trigger a suspicious activity report (SAR) and banks are not allowed to even let you know they filed one.  A bank employee may be fined and imprisoned for not filing a SAR. 

The facts are that terrorists don’t need much money.  They use credit cards and ATMs just like we do.  They also use major U.S. banks rather than obscure offshore banks.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that, “The Know Your Customer proposal regards every bank patron as a potential suspect and eliminates financial privacy by inspecting all banking transactions and establishing customer profiles.”  The real reason for all of this red tape is to gain control over every aspect of the financial system (with the eventual goal of the “mark of the beast” – necessary to buy or sell)

The ACLU says the technology is here to turn us into a “surveillance society”.

In addition, there are plans to

·        Track all foreigners.

·        Profile all air passengers.

·        Track all financial transactions.

·        Use Biometric passports

·        Set aside the Bill of Rights

·        “Reform” the intelligence apparatus

·        Carnivore is retired but the government still snoops the internet.

·        Do a pilot “eye scan” program at JFK airport

·        Require a national ID in the form of a Driver’s License (with biometric data)

·        Coming soon – internal check points!

The New York Times reported yesterday (1/25) in an article titled, “Nonstop Scrutiny – as Orwell Foretold.” 

“Another company is intent on gaining control of all records - including state and local files, financial information, employee dossiers, DNA data and criminal background checks - that define our identity. In addition to iris scanners, voice analyzers and fingerprint readers, there now exists face recognition machines and cameras that can identify an individual by how he or she walks. One government group is working on infrared detectors that could register heat signals around people's eyes, indicating an autonomic "fight or flight" response; another federal agency has floated a proposal to assess risk by examining airline passengers' brain waves with "noninvasive neuro-electric sensors."

This surveillance state is not a futuristic place conjured in a Philip K. Dick novel or "Matrix"-esque sci-fi thriller. It is post-9/11 America, as described in Robert O'Harrow Jr.'s unnerving new book, "No Place to Hide" - an America where citizens' "right to be let alone," as Justice Louis Brandeis of the Supreme Court once put it, is increasingly imperiled, where more and more components of our daily lives are routinely monitored, recorded and analyzed.”

Management of the Media, Global Empire and Freedom

Essential to taking away our freedom and liberty is to make sure we don’t know what is going on.  Therefore the government and the elites manage the news. 

“Because dissent is often equated with disloyalty, the national security bureaucracy has waged a determined effort to co-opt, intimidate, and exclude the press on foreign policy issues, since members of the news media who question the logic of policy decisions or the veracity of officials raise doubts about the wisdom of U.S. globalist strategy, thereby sowing division among the American people. That is especially true of those individuals who dare to penetrate the veil of secrecy and reveal evidence that might discredit that strategy.”

The globalist intentions of America, personal freedom and the media are intertwined,

“The politics of loyalty, the pervasive cult of secrecy, and governmental attacks on the press all have one thing in common... A strategy of global interventionism, to be effective, requires domestic unity and conformity. Those requirements run directly counter to the values of political pluralism and unfettered debate so essential to the maintenance of a democratic system. An interventionist foreign policy promotes the growth of a centralized and remote political structure, creates economic regimentation, and undermines a variety of civil liberties, especially freedom of expression.”

More than fifty years ago, Garet Garrett observed that

“The adverse domestic consequences of global interventionism raise serious questions about the future of individual liberty in the United States. At the dawn of the Cold War, social commentator Garet Garrett warned that America could not indefinitely remain a republic at home while taking on the trappings of empire abroad. He noted a fundamental contradiction between the desire to play the role of global policeman and the objective of maintaining long-standing American traditions of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty. Garrett’s warning is even more applicable today. Americans are rapidly reaching the point where they must confront a stark choice. Either the United States will adopt a more circumspect role in the world in order to preserve domestic freedom, or that freedom will continue to erode (perhaps beyond the point of recovery) to satisfy the requirements of a globalist foreign policy. That choice will determine not only how the United States is defended but whether this country retains the values and principles that make it worth defending.”  

Remember Garrett wrote this a half century ago!

Analysis

Frankly, I could go on and on but I want to be brief.  I would encourage you to read the links for there is much more material which would make up a huge book if the whole story were told.  You get the idea.  Bad things are happening right now but you seldom hear about it in the media.  The problem isn’t that we are living in a police state today but that this legislation is in place.  Richard Clark, the Administration’s counterterrorism advisor said that Ashcroft “rather than bringing us together, managed to persuade much of the country that the needed reforms of the Patriot Act were actually the beginning of fascism.”  He has shown a willingness to enforce the most onerous parts of the law with a vengeance.  Alberto Gonzales, the new Attorney General, has also shown his willingness to throw out the Geneva Convention and rewrite the rules of war and treatment of prisoners.  In fact, the POWs in Gitmo have no status and fall through the cracks – imprisoned for years on end without a hearing or a trial. 

The fact is deception is rampant.  We have no sense of perspective.  While people starve and Christians are slaughtered in countries like Rwanda, Sudan and Indonesia we turn a blind eye and spend hundreds of billions on Afghanistan and Iraq.  Yes, what happened on 9/11 was terrible – 3,000 deaths but 24,000 died of hunger and related causes that same day and every day.  But does that really compare to the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths from the first and second Gulf Wars?  This is not to mention the many hundreds of thousands that died as a result of uranium hardened materials (please read this article).  That not only includes hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq, the radioactive dust has spread throughout the world and is a “gift that keeps on giving.”  This is the real reason for the so-called “Gulf War Syndrome” that afflicts so many of our own troops.  The government keeps insisting it is due to nerve gas and chemicals but that has been completely discredited.  They frankly can’t admit fault and pay the price of their health care.  The fact remains, America has left death and destruction in its wake the past 15 years in the name of bringing freedom and liberty to the world.

A tsunami that kills a few hundred thousand people gets our attention.  Yet we have disasters going on around us all the time.  More than that die every month from AIDS and you can hardly get the U.S. or anyone else that excited about it.  Famine, malaria, dysentery are totally preventable and kill millions every year. 

Since 9/11 there have been no incidents in the U.S. (which the government may say is because they have been doing such a good job).  Look at the causes of death in the U.S. every year.

Tobacco	430,7001
Alcohol	110,6402
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs	32,0003
Suicide	30,5754
Homicide	18,2725
All Licit & Illicit Drug-Induced Deaths	16,9266
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs	7,6007
Marijuana/Entheogens	08

Why don’t we declare war against the tobacco industry or doctors and hospitals for the high rate of infection?  My point here is that the government controls us by fear, by hyping the “terror card”.  Let’s face it, you are statistically far more likely to be killed or injured driving to the store in your car.  But the fear of a terrorist lurking, plotting and scheming to kill you at any moment sells and we pay billions of dollars a year for nothing other than financing the American military presence around the world to protect our economic interests.

There seems to be a concerted conspiracy between the government and the major news organizations.  Listen carefully to Fox News or any of the major networks.  They pass on the government hype and fear.  They rile the people up against not just the terrorists, but all of Islam they claim is out to wage holy war against us.  They convince us we are fighting in the name of God. 

So we willingly wait for hours on end as we pass through the airport security and feel safer.  We hear about people being falsely accused, having their property confiscated and even going to jail but say, “it could never happen to me.”  That’s exactly what the Jews said.

Brothers and sisters, a government doesn’t put together the laws and controls unless it intends to use them.  The water temperature is rising and those of us here in “frogland” don’t even know it!  Where is this leading?  In the early parts we saw the three horsemen of the apocalypse –

·        The first horse, going forth to conquer on a white horse but without arrows in the bow subduing through things such as enticing products,  the promise of a consumer market to buy their products, loans, technology, know how and entertainment.  We saw how America built her commercial empire.  We drew the nations into our web.

·        The second, the red horse, makes war and conquers.  We saw the shift made by America in 2000 when the current Administration came in.

·        The black horse deals with the impoverishment of the earth and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.  We saw the way the American government and elites are not only stealing from the world but from their own people.

And in this one, we have seen how the government has set in motion the laws and mechanisms it will need to establish the most despotic nation the world has ever seen – willing to betray not only the world, but its own citizens.  Revelation 18 describes the end of that great “end times” nation that pollutes the world with her goods and services.

"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird! ³For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury…

^7”In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow; for she says in her heart, "I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow.' ⁸Therefore her plagues will come in one day--death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her…

⁹"The kings of the earth who committed fornication and lived luxuriously with her will weep and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning, ¹⁰standing at a distance for fear of her torment, saying, "Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come.'

    ¹¹"And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise anymore: ¹²merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, every kind of citron wood, every kind of object of ivory, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble; ¹³and cinnamon and incense, fragrant oil and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and bodies and souls of men. ¹⁴The fruit that your soul longed for has gone from you, and all the things which are rich and splendid have gone from you, and you shall find them no more at all. ¹⁵The merchants of these things, who became rich by her, will stand at a distance for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, ¹⁶and saying, "Alas, alas, that great city that was clothed in fine linen, purple, and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls! ¹⁷For in one hour such great riches came to nothing.' Every shipmaster, all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance ¹⁸and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, "What is like this great city?'

    ¹⁹"They threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and wailing, and saying, "Alas, alas, that great city, in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth! For in one hour she is made desolate.”

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