Freedom isn’t free, so they say, but at what cost are you willing to pay for a bit of security? Would you allow others to be arrested for thought crimes, or insinuations of guilt, only to have them arrested without due process and thrown into a Guantanamo style jail? This is one of the new measures that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would allow the president and the government to do. According to the document, it allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens. The documents vague wording allows for a variety of interpretations, which poses the question “why a document that is meant to sustain the country’s defense against the bad guys is worded with such loose language?” A perfect example of this is a direct exert from the bill itself, “substantially supported Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” Several congressmen, senators and other representatives fear that this open interpretation could lead to a complete disregard to due process, meaning that since there is no real definition of a terrorist, anything we do that speaks out against the government can be called terrorism. The document also seems to change the definition of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to any group, including organizations and protest groups that go against the will of the “Super State.”

There are no police officers allowed in the detainment; it’s all military. It goes against the constitution, which states our military would not be used to enforce laws on American soil. It allows for the military to use military force to arrest anyone. So what does the “anyone terrorist” have to do? What this bill also does not define properly is the word “hostility;” it leaves it open to meanings that would allow many people to be detained. They could be remotely affiliated to a person who is in a group who speaks against the government, who protest the government and anyone in it. I am not talking about the fabricated terrorist like the shoe bomber, who it was admitted later in court hearings that the government allowed onto the plane without a passport. I am talking about American citizens being labeled the new threat, now that the old enemies are no longer an issue.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a prime fear mongerer, who openly commented on the senate floor about American citizens being picked up under this section of the NDAA: “When they say ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.” Ron Paul, along with his son Ran, is a staunch supporter of removing these vague wordings from the NDAA. Ron Paul has drafted a new amendment to the NDAA called H.R. 3758, which would make it much more difficult for the government to arrest citizens. He is quoted saying that this bill and Graham’s mentality is “precisely the kind of egregious distortion of justice that Americans have always ridiculed in so many dictatorships overseas.” Now to say you are guilty until proven innocent is the same thing we allegedly went to war with Iraq for, not to mention the “WMD” and the oil. So how can we possibly be OK with a bill being passed, signed by Obama, that says basically at any time any place you are considered a threat?

Now some supporters of Obama and this law say that the president already has the authority to do this. Under the War Time Act, that is true. His previous powers came with limits and more detailed restrictions, so why not sign a bill that gives you an open letter to arrest whoever you don’t like? Andrea Prasow, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, commented that “This law codifies indefinite detentions of American citizens for the first time since the McCarthy era,” referring to the McCarran Act of 1950 that allowed the summary jailing of certain suspected Communists. The government even rounded up Asian Americans during the World War because of mindless fear mongering. They rounded these poor souls up, many actually native citizens, and shoved them into American concentration camps. Some were shot, others used as cheap labor for the camps needs.

This new power given to the government, coupled with H.R. 645, a law which develops FEMA Emergency camps to be set up to hold American dissidents in times of civil unrest, the current administration and future administrations can pretty much arrest, detain and kill anyone they want under military powers. A senior administration official said that the added NDAA laws should be changed so that they were “Demonstrating, unequivocally, that we can protect the American people without violating our laws or compromising our values is almost as powerful a constraint on [future administrations] as almost anything you could write into legislation.”

The problem is not that the American citizens are the enemy, sorry Janet Reno, the problem is the law makers and the government seems to be forgetting their one real duty. Their job is to serve the American people to the best of their ability and not to serve themselves and their constituents first. When you openly say that our actions will be considered unlawful if they threaten the hold the government has over the people, then you are saying that our constitution is useless. When you have a bill that isn’t read by the majority of the signers, simply because it’s the trend to sign the law, then you have lawmakers that need to be removed from office. We the people are not the threat, when you take into consideration what is really threatening the country; the real threat is the invasion of the corporate government. Who actually has the money to buy votes and who can lean on their employee lawmakers to pass bills that would protect them when the country finally collapses? Those who give up liberty for freedom will receive and deserve neither, that is a quote from Ben Franklin and it holds credence today. Our freedoms are at stake here and the only ones feeling secure about the NDAA is the status quo and the corporate governments.