The Patriot Act must be repealed. It allows the total invasion of privacy into every aspect of a person’s personal life. It allows a person to be arrested without specific charge, taken to any location, and held incommunicado indefinitely without the benefit of legal counsel. To make matters worse, the most odious aspects of the act that were supposed to sunset are now being made permanent.

Consider the case of American citizen Jose Padilla who is now languishing in a military prison. Jose was arrested at O’Hare airport and according to newspaper articles was charged with meeting with terrorists planning to set off a dirty bomb. There was no mention in the newspaper that any attempt had been made to set off a bomb, or build a bomb, or even any attempt to acquire the ingredients for a bomb. No formal charges have been filed and no trial has been scheduled, but citizen Padilla remains behind bars. Perhaps Padilla is guilty of attempted terrorism, but he is still a citizen just like you. If Padilla has no citizen rights under the provisions of the Patriot Act, neither does anyone else.

Just take a look around at what is going on in America. We see platoons of door-smashing militarized police with combat helmets carrying machine guns wearing body armor and face masks to hide their identity. We see atrocities such as the Waco Massacre where 80 plus men, women, and children were shot, gassed, bombed, and incinerated using tanks and helicopters with no accounting for this horrible atrocity. We see personal indignities inflicted on citizens at airport security while our borders remain open to invading illegal aliens.

It would appear at first glance that the United States has become an insane asylum run by its worst inmates. On more careful examination the situation becomes far more sinister. Just as the Reichstag fire was used as the reason to pass the Enabling Act making Hitler a dictator, so it is with the attack on 9/11 being used as the reason to pass the Draconian Patriot Act. To make matters worse the evidence in both attacks point to the attacks being self inflicted by their own government, and for the same reason, to establish a totalitarian government.

The good citizens of Elko and Elko county as well as the states of Montana and Hawaii and numerous other counties and municipalities throughout the nation have passed resolutions against the enforcement of Patriot Act. It is time for other counties of Nevada to do likewise. It is time for the state of Nevada to join with Montana and Hawaii in this fight against federal government tyranny. When the president proclaims, “You’re either with us or with the terrorists,” it leaves little room for any dissent, particularly with a president who said his job would be easier if he were a dictator.

Alan C. Edwards
Carson City, NV

February 7, 2011

The author is a long-time listener and contributor to the publishers former radio program ,’Perspectives on America.’