Oppose Enemy Expatriation Act That Strips Citizenship
The most egregious legislation negatively affecting our once constitutionally guaranteed liberties lately seems to come via a “national security” rationale. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its “indefinite detention” clause is a classic example of liberty-robbing legislation that ignores constitutional restraints put in place to protect against tyranny. Our current leaders seem content to cooperate with these assaults on freedoms, or haven’t the courage to stand up against the encroaching tyranny because they continue to offer excuses for voting for such abuses.
To quote The New American’s Joe Wolverton II, J.D., on the NDAA’s indefinite detention, “Under the provisions of Section 1021, the President is afforded the absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States.” This provision gives the President “absolute power to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected (by him) of being ‘belligerents,'” Wolverton added, for those who had any doubt about the effect of the bill.
To add insult to constitutional injury, along comes S. 1698, the Enemy Expatriation Act introduced by lame-duck Independent Senator Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). A companion bill, H.R. 3166, has been introduced in the House by Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.). The EEA is a blatant facilitator for new authority that would grant the president the ability to arbitrarily strip citizenship from Americans for “engaging in or supporting hostilities against the United States.” The term “hostilities” means, according to the text of the legislation, “any conflict subject to the laws of war.”
Notice there is no mention of a trial or conviction. A simple whim or accusation may suffice. Perhaps "bitter clingers,” those who don’t support the current regime, differing in their interpretation of the requisites of this Constitutional Republic, may soon find themselves atop a list of those considered hostile.
It simply must be pointed out that in Nazi Germany the second of the Nuremberg Laws stripped certain Germans of their citizenship. Next, eugenics laws were embraced, and from there on the floodgates of incarceration and extermination were let loose. A young German lawyer wrote in 1933 that many were helpless to stop the dictatorial advance as the people had “collectively and limply collapsed, yielded, and capitulated.” “The result of this millionfold nervous breakdown is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world.” Is this what the United States is becoming?
If you’re not angered over this situation, you should be. If your Senators and Representative aren’t angered by this proposal for the destruction of so basic a founding principle of a free society, they should be. Contact them immediately about opposing S. 1698 and H.R. 3166. Remind them that this kind of legislative proposal was made possible by the passage of the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the National Defense Authorization Act, a slippery slope many of these same elected officials failed to comprehend.
Thanks,
Your friends at The John Birch Society
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