Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Chris Hedges: Revolt Is Our Only Option

Chris Hedges worries that outright revolt may soon be the only option available to those fighting against the despotism of the Establishment.

This sentiment seems consistent with the following statement of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence:

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.

Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, knows something of the abuses and usurpations by those in power.

Hedges has sued the Obama administration fearing that as a result of his work in the Middle East, the specter of indefinite detention loomed within the shadows of vagueness cast by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The principal allegation made by Hedges and his co-plaintiffs is that the vagueness of critical terms in the NDAA could enable the federal government to interpret the law in a way that authorizes them to label journalists and political activists who interview or support outspoken critics of the Obama administration’s policies as “covered persons” who have given “substantial support” to terrorists or other “associated groups.”