7/29/2019 America is Veering Towards Dictatorship, Supreme Court Justices and Top Government Officials Warn

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naturalnews.com printable article

Originally published March 11 2013

America is veering towards dictatorship, Supreme court justices and top government

officials warnby J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) When you hear some pundit or historian compare the loss of democratic

republican rule currently taking place in the United States with how it happened in ancientRome, you may be tempted to shrug it off as hyperbole or over dramatization.

When you hear a U.S. Supreme Court Justice and other top government officials use thecomparison, it should alarm you tremendously because they are, in essence, firing a warning

shot.

In a recent Q & A with students of the University of New Hampshire, former Justice David

Souter made the comparison above, along with several other observations that he says all addup to a potential loss of democratic government - and freedom - for Americans at some point inthe future.

When a former Supreme Court Justice is worried about our loss of democracy...

Souter made his comments during a lengthy response to a student's question: "My question

tonight is really around where we started this conversation, which was really around theschools... And, I've heard a lot this evening about democratic principles, civic engagement, and

I guess I'm wondering...if you could share with us your thoughts about what the appropriaterole and, probably, responsibility as well of our schools to produce civically engaged students?"

Here are some excerpts of that response:

I don't believe there is any problem of American politics and American life, which is more

significant today, than the pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and

the structure ofgovernment. (This response earned Souter a round of applause)

We know, with pretty reliable evidence, that two-thirds of the people of the United States do

not know that we have three separate branches of government. I remember...a survey back

four or five years ago in which a substantial percentage of Americans believed that the Supreme

Court... was a committee of the Congress. It didn't used to be this bad.

Starting about 1970, the teaching of "Civics" went into decline from which it has never

significantly recovered... The reason I said it is the most significant problem that we've got is

that I think some of the aspects of current American government that people on both sides find

frustrating are in part a function...of the inability of people to understand how government can

and should function. It is a product of civic ignorance.

And what worries Souter the most about America's future?

I don't worry about our losing a republican government in the United States because I'm afraid

of a foreign invasion. I don't worry about it because of a coup by the military, as has happened

in some other places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed people will

not know who is responsible, and when the problems get bad enough - as they might do for

example with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown

- some one person will come forward and say: "Give me total power and I will solve this

roblem."

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That is how the Roman republic fell. Augustus became emperor not because he arrested the

Roman senate. He became emperor because he promised that he would solve problems that

were not being solved.

Sound familiar?

Others are equally concerned, and with good reason

Souter's not the only former Supreme Court Justice to warn of a coming dictatorship. In a 2006speech at Georgetown University, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the right wing of

U.S. politics was endangering the country's future, following a warning by then-GOP Houseleader Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who said some justices could be impeached:

We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary. ... It takes a lot of

degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by

avoiding these beginnings.

Former Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, who chaired the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committeeand convened the famous "Church Committee," which scrutinized an unlawful

counterintelligence operation run by the FBI, said this in 1975:

The [National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American

eople, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor

everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to

hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there

would be no way to fight back.

It should be noted that, as Natural News has reported, the NSA is currently completing amassive $2 billion facility in Utah that will give the agency the capacity to intercept, decipher,analyze, and store incredible amounts of data gathered from the world over, grabbing

communications as they beam down from satellites and race through underground andundersea cables domestically and overseas. (http://www.naturalnews.com

/035386_NSA_data_center_spying.html)

That program, codenamed Stellar Wind, was described as patently unconstitutional by a former

NSA official, William Binney, who left the agency in 2001, shortly after the NSA launched itswarrantless wiretapping program.

"They violated the Constitution setting it up," he told Wired.com in an interview. "But theydidn't care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood

in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn't stay."

Sources:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rWcVtWennr0#!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/13/usa.topstories3

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

http://www.naturalnews.com/035386_NSA_data_center_spying.html

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