Pre-Crime

Justice Jackson: Protective custody meant that you were taking people into custody who had not committed any crimes but who, you thought, might possibly commit a crime?

Hermann Goering: Yes. People were arrested and taken into protective custody who had not yet committed any crime, but who could be expected to do so if they remained free... the original reason for creating the concentration camps was to keep there such people whom we rightfully considered enemies of the state.

It's often scary to compare Nazi Germany to present day America. That's especially true when examining Goering quotes.

Austine Cline, posting at Jesus' General, looks at how the American justice system incarcerates people on the premise that there is an X percentage chance they may commit the same crime again.

It's all about this false sense of security Americans want to have. That's why it was okay to bomb the fuck out of Iraq. A nation, I might add, that was not threatening to us. It's why we excuse any civil liberty abuse when it carries the "homeland security" label.

Americans, frankly, are cowards.

If you want to live in a free society, then that naturally comes with some risk to life and limb. That's just the way it goes. You just have to play to the odds that it won't be you. That's the way it is the world over. It's all luck.

If you want to be completely "safe" all the time, then I'd suggest moving to an "authoritarian" run government that will give you the illusion that everything is safe. That's generally the type of world the right wingers want. They want a police state where we trust the government to do the "right" thing in all cases, and we don't need to be concerned if the time honored practices of freedom and liberty and trampled.

Personally.. I've seen our "executive" for about 7 years now. He is, by far, one of the biggest idiots I have ever listened to in my life. I wouldn't trust a Harvard scholar to be the "dictator" much less this monkey we've got running the works now.

But everyone needs to know that the right of "due process" does not apply to all American citizens. That used to be a fundamental principal in American justice, but it does not apply anymore.