General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: And Then There Were Three: Third Grand Jury Refuser Goes to Prison [View all]tama
(9,137 posts)Your system is kleptocratic oligarchy turned into totalitarian police state. Occupy movement practices horizontal democracy, and these people are being persecuted because of their participation in Occupy movement and their anarchist convictions.
Who said:
Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. "
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? "
"I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. "
"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others. "
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first. "
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for. "
Same guy who wrote:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."