Jane Harman's mouthful of balderdash, the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," (no kidding, that's what its called) has passed the House 404-6 and is set to pass in the Senate, as reported in an article at Common Dreams by Ralph Shaffer and William Robinson. The authors point out some of the insidious effects of the bill.
The Act "creates a commission with investigative power and a mandate to propose laws prohibiting whatever the commission labels 'homegrown terrorism.'" The commission has the power to hold hearings, take testimony and administer oaths.
Harman's proposal includes an attack on the internet, "criticizing it for providing Americans with 'access to broad and constant streams of terrorist related propaganda and legalizes infiltration of targeted organizations.'" That last part means they can slip a spy into our organization, we the people, to report back on our nefarious plans to demonstrate in support of the Constitution.
Harman thinks she has to protect us poor, weak-minded, feckless, susceptible to every whim, Americans, from the obviously insane ideology of the raving lunatic terrorists.
Well, speak for yourself, Jane Harman. You may be weak-minded enough to be susceptible to terrorist propaganda and need to be protected from it, but I damn sure am not. I, unlike you, am too old, to experienced, too smart and too knowledgeable to be in the least affected by that kind of propaganda. I can recognize and reject it without your help in protecting me from it. How insulting it is to be told that we don't have the intelligence to know bullcrap when we see it, and be told that we're too stupid to not be converted to bomb throwing terrorists just by looking at it.
Harman's Act defines homegrown terrorism as planned or threatened use of force to coerce the government or the people in the promotion of political or social objectives, and defines violent radicalization as promoting an extremist belief system.
We don't have to do anything, we can be investigated for sitting around thinking about a planned march on Congress to coerce the government to uphold the Constitution to promote political and social objectives. This fits exactly with the definitions of Harman's Act. When her Act passes the Senate, we will no longer be able to do that without being investigated. Well, she's got a hell of a job ahead of her. She's going to have to investigate most of the people in the United States, about 76% of them.
Harman is not aware that our Constitution is the result of violent radicalization of the people by a government that tried to impose the same kind of oppression that Harman is trying to impose. Nor is she aware that our Constitution, in light of history, is an extremist belief system that provides for the radical innovation that the people have control of their government. The oppression that Harman proposes didn't work then and it won't work now. The Declaration of Independence put an end to it then, and its necessary to reiterate that document to regain what we have lost. It can be applied now, verbatim, and be current by just replacing George III with George Bush.
The applicable part of the Declaration of Independence is:
"But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Objective evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,"
It could just as well have been referring to the abuses and usurpations of the despots Bush and Cheney, along with Harman. Constitutional government worked pretty good up until George Bush. He has perverted it beyond redemption. His usurpation of the Constitution has been so pervasive that we'll never be able to de-contaminate our government to get the Bush taint and stench out of it. He has set illegal precedents that future despots will use as an excuse for their despotism.
Harman's Act is aimed at we the people. It provides that we are, and associates us with, terrorists when we use our right to dissent with our government's policies and take action to demonstrate for the upholding of the Constitution (promoting political and social objectives). Her Act says that we can't do that, its promoting terrorism.
Had Harman wanted to do something to save the United States, she would have designed an Act that is aimed at the single most dangerous thing to the United States, far more dangerous than any terrorist could ever be: the Bush regime.