I strongly recommend everyone read the entire NR article AbaraXas posted to open this thread. It encapsulates the tactics utilized by the Obama government to intimidate and silence its opponents.
This couple, operating a small manufacturing company in TX, for over a three year period were "audited" and investigated by the IRS, ATF, OSHA, the FBI, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (acting on an anonymous tip). Most amazingly this all came about shortly after the Mrs Engelbrecht became politically active and formed a group called the King Street Patriots.
It's a chilling story made all the more chilling by the realization that all these government agencies have legal authority to do what they did and the citizens, the Engelbrechts, haven't got the time nor the money to effectively fight back. Oh, yeah, they did contact their Congressman. Whoopee!
How I hope someone like Jay Sekulow has taken up their cause and that everyone on here will realize what we are up against.
I completely agree. The fact of the matter is, no one really appreciates just how much unfettered power the government - or, more to the point, the individuals who can use the government's power - has to destroy an individual's life without compunction and with almost complete immunity. The basic fact is this: there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent a government agent from harming you if that government agent wants to harm you, and precious little you can do to fix that harm unless you have lots and lots and lots of money to spend on lawyers.
The only thing that genuinely protected most of us from the depredations of government agents was the institutional belief system that used to exist within the government that created self-imposed limits on what most government agents would do with the power they wielded: that belief system used to emphasize the difference between what one can do and what one should do, with the latter being much more narrow than the former, and that it was only what one should do that was legitimate. It is this belief system that still informs almost everything the US military does vis-a-vis domestic politics and policy: the military know full well that if they so wanted to, they could own this country lock, stock, and barrel, and make other militaries, such as those of Egypt and China, green with envy. But they don't use their power that way, because at the very core of the military's institutional belief system is the belief that the military does not, period, end of discussion, ever get involved in domestic economic or political issues. And thank God for that because, but for that one self-imposed belief, the might that devastated the armies of Saddam Hussein would be turned against us.
With respect to the rest of our governments - state as well as federal - we have not been nearly so lucky. Through a toxic combination of liberalism/progressivism and the reaction to the events of 9/11 (which I believe made many people determined to get "them" - whomever the appropriate "them" is at the time - by whatever means necessary), that institutional belief system is fading fast, and we will soon, I fear, get to experience first-hand the raw exercise of government power with the velvet glove stripped from the iron fist. The KGB and the Stassi were terrifying in their time, but they are now punters compared to the resources available to your average federal government agent, and once our government learns to relish the taste of its citizens' own blood, I do not think the consequences will be pleasant.
If we don't manage to reinvigorate the institutional customs and beliefs that heretofore restrained our own government from consuming us - even if imperfectly - we will soon come to regret it sorely.
