Texas Representative and 2012 Presidential candidate Ron Paul warns in a new video published on YouTube and in his weekly blog that a lack of oversight from Congress, the media and the American people is enabling the rise of a dictatorship in the US.
“It would be incredibly naive to think a dictator could not or would not wrest power in this country,” he wrote in his weekly Texas Straight Talk column.
“Americans who are not alarmed by all of this are either not paying close attention, or are too trusting of current government officials to be concerned.” Paul writes,
“Our Presidents can now, on their own: order assassinations, including American citizens; operate secret military tribunals; engage in torture; enforce indefinite imprisonment without due process; order searches and seizures without proper warrants, gutting the 4th Amendment; ignore the 60 day rule for reporting to the Congress the nature of any military operations as required by the War Power Resolution; continue the Patriot Act abuses without oversight; wage war at will; and treat all Americans as suspected terrorists at airports with TSA groping and nude x-rays. ” Paul urges.
Pointing to last weeks passage by Congress of a National Defense Authorization Act containing an alarming worldwide war provision, Rep. Paul explains that it “explicitly extends the president’s war powers to just about anybody.” “Would it be so hard for someone in the government to target a political enemy and connect them to al Qaeda, however tenuously, and have them declared an associated force?” he asks.
Paul warns that future leaders will ” inherit all the additional powers we cede to the current position holders.”