Emmanuel=Cheney

Regarding this.

If you’re on that no-fly list, your access to the right to bear arms is cancelled, because you’re not part of the American family; you don’t deserve that right. There is no right for you if you’re on that terrorist list...

Coercive Progressive Corporatism at it's finest. The most offending part of that statement is not the explicit reference to the loss of the right to bear arms, but the larger implication that inclusion in some bureaucratic enemies lists casts you out "the American Family" altogether, which I suppose means you could henceforth become eligible to be black-bagged by the Indefinite Detention Squad. And, frankly, casting the State itself as "Family" just reeks of this:

"It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity[family]."

Google it to find out the author of that above quote, if you don't already know.

I'm sure Rahm Emmanuel gets a hard-on from playing hardball Chicago-style politics, using the organs of the State and/or Party as a means to exact retribution against political enemies. However, when you start extending those tactics to apply to the general populace as means to enforce your authoritarian vision of State as "Family," you crossed the line, buddy. That "No-Fly Terrorist" list is a joke. My five-year old niece is on that bogus list. I suppose in "Rahm Emmanuel's America," or "Family," she should now consider herself ex-communicated from the bill of rights. In "Rahm Emmanuel's America" we should all act like obedient sheep for fear that we end up being subject to the arbitrary whims of some bureaucratic "enemies of the state" list. In "Rahm Emmanuel's America" you apparently have the freedom to obey.

Dick Cheney, a protege of Nixon, and, as it turns out, an inheritor of Nixon's "enemies list" tradition, more or less served in his expanded role of the vice-president as the de facto/shadow chief of staff for Bush for the first 6 years of his two terms. We saw the consequences that little arrangement ending up having for the Repub/conservative brand. Bush/Cheney bought off the conservatives with the "Tax Cut" and the ephemeral promise to "privatize Social Security. But in the end, the effects of Cheney's influence on the conservative movement made it largely irrational at it's core, and certainly not a vehicle for libertarians to latch onto.

I imagine six years of Rahm Emmanuel, who feeds from "enemies list" politics as well, serving in the role of Chief of Staff to the Obama Admin, will have the same effect on "Rational Liberalism" in the Dem Party. Rahm will try to buy off liberals/progressives with "Health Care" and "Cap-n-trade," but in the end, the atrocious record on civil liberties and respect for the bill of rights under the Obama Admin will make defending liberalism vis a vis the Dem Party indefensible. Just point your browser at Glenn Greenwald over at Salon to see the defections already occuring.

Rational liberalism in the Dem Party can't be defended by the logical fallacy of relying on tu quoque arguments against "irrational conservatism" in the Repub Party. And the distraction of beating on the dead horse of Sarah Palin has become a tiresome red herring. I'm certainly no fan of Palin, but last time I checked, she wasn't in a position of power over my daily life. The likes of Rahm Emmanuel, however, are.

I traced this story back to the Cato-At-Liberty post, and have been thinking about what this all means. I'd write a proper blog post if I had time. Anyway...

First, I am comforted that this type of legislation seems to appeal only to the fanatical anti-gun crowd. Aside from Emanual and the Brady Center, the House bill has no co-sponsors while the Senate bill has only one.

Second, it is still troublesome how the no-fly list is seems to be showing mission creep. It started out as an emergency measure to protect against a very specific threat (hijacking), where if focused on a select list of people who were probably considered to be potential hijackers. However, not only has this system survived the original emergency response to the 9/11 attacks, it has grown. It should have been replaced by a formal process of protecting against hijackers, but instead it now seems to include anybody who might possibly have any connection to terrorists. What does it mean if the state denies air-travel to a person who is suspected of funding Hamas?

This continuation and expansion of the program suggests that it is now being used as a day-to-day tool of governance. The state denies travel to potential terrorists as part of a strategy to generally incapacitate them, not to protect against the specific risk that they would hijack a plane. This mentality is clearly demonstrated in the attempts to expand the list to governance of guns. These people want to use the list as a way to make sure that any potentially dangerous person is not capable of causing any harm.

That being the case, why stop at guns and air-travel? Why stop at terrorists? Why not expand the list to include suspected Mafia members? Drug smugglers? How about neighborhood-level drug dealers and users?

Why not extend the prohibition to cell phones and drivers licenses? After all, we don't want potential druggies behind the wheel! The gun-control advocates may argue that gun ownership is not an essential part of day-to-day life. However, air travel is. Many people would be unable to perform their jobs or visit family or friends if they were prohibited from flying. The government continues to subsidize air travel, making it increasingly integral to the American lifestyle, yet they claim the right to arbitrarily control who can use air travel.

Finally, how would we protest this type of restriction? The logical place to protest is at the airport, but I susepct that any protest would quickly be shut down on the basis of no-solicitation rules -- even just handing out sheets of paper. So this brings up another question, are airports public spaces where solicitation/petitioning must be allowed? If not, they represent one more step towards a society without any public spaces -- where crowds only gather in regulated spaces where some authority decides which unsolicited communications are acceptable.

Here's some info: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8747966.html

WASHINGTON June 27, 1992
-- The Supreme Court, sharply divided on what degree of First Amendment protection to provide political and religious activities at public airports, ruled yesterday that airport officials may bar fund-raising in terminals but cannot prohibit leafleting.