WHY AMERICA, WHY?

The fine line between the nanny state hypothesis of the Left and the police state of the Right was drawn even fuzzier today. The Big Round-up appears closer than ever. But to some of us, this is no surprise. Clinging to the last shreds of constitutional glory left to us by this modern state, we tremble even as this shred is melting away from our clutches with every despicable new sway of the three branches representing "we the people" not so much by the book as off the books, preparing this century for the lures of warfare, chaos, much bloodshed and weeping.

POLCE STATE ALERT—Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced to the House of Representatives a new bill, H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six national emergency centers for corralling civilians on military installations.

The proposed bill, which has received little mainstream media attention, appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.

Heed the warning of a former Hitler Youth who sees America on the same path as pre-Nazi Germany in "Defeating the Totalitarian Lie" by Hilmer Von Campe.

The bill also appears to expand the president's emergency power, much as the executive order signed by President Bush on May 9, 2007, that gave the president the authority to declare an emergency and take over the direction of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments without even consulting Congress.

World News Daily has also reported that DHS has awarded a $385 million contract to Houston-based KBR, Halliburton's former engineering and construction subsidiary, to build temporary detention centers on an "as-needed" basis in national emergency situations.

According to the text of the proposed bill, the purpose of the National Emergency Centers is "to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster." Three additional purposes are specified in the text of the proposed legislation:

To provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of federal, state and local first responders;

To provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response and recovery efforts of government, private, not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations;

To meet other appropriate needs, as defined by the secretary of homeland security.

The broad specifications of the bill's language, however, contribute to concern that the "national emergency" purpose could be utilized by the secretary of homeland security to include any kind of situation the government wants to contain or otherwise control.

Rep. Hastings created controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign with his provocative comments concerning Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. "If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," Hastings said, as reported by ABC News. "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."

H.R. 645, which seeks to allocate $360 million for developing the emergency centers, has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and to the Committee on Armed Services.

ON THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

A couple of years ago I watched a roundtable on television celebrating the work of Friedrich Hayek. It changed my life, by putting a mathematical equation to the test by postulating very simply that a centralized government can't possibly move as quickly or react with as much practicality to untold and unforeseen market forces as can thousands and even millions of self-seeking individuals each with an expertise specific to his niche. Finally the scales fell. It al made sense to me after all these years of struggling against the Left with regards to working capitalism versus idealized communism. Yes, capitalism creates its own set of problems, but these can be remedied within a free and bustling democratic system, whereas communism will always tend to stagnate into a totalitarian regime.

Here's a quick introduction in pictures to the groundbreaking and influencial book, The Road To Serfdom by F.A. Hayek, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974.

Hayek’s central thesis is that all forms of collectivism lead logically and inevitably to tyranny, and he used the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of countries which, in his view, had gone down “the road to serfdom” and reached tyranny. Hayek argued that within a centrally planned economic system the distribution and allocation of all resources and goods would devolve onto a small group which would be incapable of processing all the information pertinent to the appropriate distribution of the resources and goods at the central planners’ disposal.

Disagreement about the practical implementation of any economic plan combined with the inadequacy of the central planners’ resource management would invariably necessitate coercion in order for anything to be achieved. Hayek further argued that the failure of central planning would be perceived by the public as an absence of sufficient power by the state to implement an otherwise good idea. Such a perception would lead the public to vote more power to the state, and would assist the rise to power of a “strong man” perceived to be capable of “getting the job done”.

After these developments Hayek argued that a country would be ineluctably driven into outright totalitarianism. For Hayek “the road to serfdom” inadvertently set upon by central planning, with its dismantling of the free market system, ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom.

Hayek argued that countries such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had already gone down the "road to serfdom", and that various democratic nations are being led down the same road. In The Road to Serfdom he wrote: "The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule."