Martial Law, troops coming to Chicago?

 

 

     For the second time in as many years, state and local public servants are discussing the possibility of calling in the National Guard in response to high levels of violent crime on the streets of Chicago. Could it be that a fully disarmed public are easy targets for thugs and organized criminals of all types? Well, we can be sure that the mayor will never put two and two together. Fortunately, there seems to be some healthy hesitation by the Chief of Police and the Governor. Read up on the Rand Corporations "Stability Police Force" for America. There are those in this country who seek to permanently destroy the barrier between the military and local law enforcement, in the name of quelling riots, mass demonstrations, and civil unrest. Indeed, as we all lose our jobs and our homes to the banking superclass- people are going to be angry! Will the police and military come to realize they are among the robbed, or will they ensure the wholesale looting of American wealth, the undermining of US sovereignty, and the destruction of our civil liberties?

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Video Aired April 26, 2010 - MSNBC Nightly News

Homeland Security VIPER Teams Hit Tampa Florida Bus, Train Stations

Listen to the dumb@ss they picked out to tow the government line: "I feel safe, that I'm gonna get on the bus, and I'm not gonna blow up." DHS, TSA, ICE, and the Tampa PD team up to bring airport security out on the streets. It's the new normal in Amerika, and I reject it. We don't want or need federal agents teaming up with local cops. It started in the airports, went to court houses and government buildings, is now at the bus and train stations, and next they'll come to the local mall. In a way it's already on the streets. Cops will stop and frisk you without probable cause in big cities across this nation! No thanks, I'll keep my 4th Amendment, thank you very much...

Barack Obama and the Sucker's Revolution

     How could Americans have been so stupid? We empowered the media and the Democrat party to push an obscure State Senator from Illinois into the office of President of the United States in a mere four years, needing only a teleprompter and some broad promises of "hope" and "change". During the course of the 2008 campaign, several questions arose regarding Obama's past associations, including Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Saul Ulinsky, to name a few. The significance of those relationships were never truly explained, only scoffed at by the mainstream media. The truth is, following the huge bailout that was the TARP banker takeover (and eight years of the Bush administration being perceived as in the pockets of multinational corporations), Americans didn't mind hearing then candidate Obama talk about "spreading the wealth around." Understandably, the workforce has seen their wages stagnate, their jobs shipped overseas, and the income gap become the largest since the age of the robber barons at the dawn of the 20th century. I would contend that the power elite had their man exactly where they wanted him when the fateful Joe-the-plumber controversy unfolded. For every American who knew what "spreading the wealth around" actually entailed, there likely stood two who were all-too-willing to opt for the idea of a free lunch.  

     Socialism-inclined Americans should have raised their eyebrows when Obama ran back to Washington in the midst of the campaign, to prod the Congress into bailing out the so called "too big to fail." But there were innumerable reasons to be skeptical of the junior Senator from Illinois. The most obvious being his absolute lack of any relevant experience. The man had only been in the US Senate for two years prior to his presidential campaign, and voted "present" many times so as not to take a firm stand on controversial issues. This should have been a startling red flag for anyone even remotely concerned with the issues that face our country. Just as troublesome was the fact that most all of the man's records- academic, medical, etc.- had been sealed, as if we were supposed to just read his book and take it all at face value. No, this man seems to be a nearly complete fabrication! Who knows if he is an naturalized American citizen or not? It should not matter, because anyone with a brain should never have voted for the man. Americans have allowed the globalist political establishment to install their man at a crucial point in the history of world civilization.

     And what about the police state? Surely, the professor of constitutional law would roll back the Bush administration's assault on the Bill of Rights. Undoubtedly, the civil rights attorney would put America back on the path to social justice. Indeed, Obama had campaigned against the most egregious sections of the Patriot Act, calling the bill "shoddy and dangerous." He also rightly decried President Bush's use of executive orders and signing statements, calling it: "a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability." Well, throw all that out of the window. After struggling to get his administration's agenda through the Congress in his first year (it's those pesky constituents), "President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities."

     It's not looking good, America. You already know that the President has ordered the continuation of rendition, claims the authority to assassinate US citizens, and has his own enemies list. I suppose it does little good now to browbeat my fellow Americans who fell for the old "hope" and "change" cliches. But, please, let this be a lesson: Demand real vetting of candidates, and if you're not getting it from the media, do some research on your own. Check the record before voting for your public servants, and if it's hard to come by, move on to another candidate. It would not be a bad idea to vote against whoever is getting the most media coverage and the most corporate donations. To illustrate just what I am talking about, the establishment candidate was clear months before Election Day. According to the New York Times' David Brooks,

"When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google. At many of these workplaces, Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain."

     As most of us will admit, big money is everything in Washington. The special interests effectively are the government, and most of the regulators come directly from high positions within the companies they are now charged with overseeing. Barack Obama is a yes-man for the corporate and banking elite, just go back and read from the Brooks' article above. It is well documented that after the TARP banker takeover was passed, the Federal Reserve decided not to spend the money on the home mortgage crisis. Rather, they passed out the money to the bankers, who had mountains of worthless assets due to rampant and irresponsible derivative speculation. As a result, 2.9 million American homes have been lost to foreclosure in 2009 alone, and the banks continue to make record profits. You wanted socialism, you got it! The liberal way to do things appears to be a type of reverse wealth redistribution: you lose your job and go broke, Wall Street celebrates with record bonuses. The mainstream media refuses to cover our economic situation using these simple terms, and as a result, the President retains a 49 percent approval rating. Despite that sharp pain you feel in your back, you just can't help but like the guy.

Socialism: the People's Tyranny

    The United States and the world are in the midst of the most volatile economic climate since the end of the second world war. Just as in those postwar years, today's elitists are delicately laying the groundwork for future generations. It is a sick vision, where humanity's mortal enemy is: humanity itself. The globalists have brilliantly created and manipulated the current economic crisis, and the general public (with a nudge from the corporate media) have focused their anger towards capitalism.

   Now, I am no apologist for the status-quo! Over the last decade or two in particular, crony-capitalism has become more the rule than the exception and much of the new wealth created is little more than accounting trickery and ponzi schemes (and so I would like to coin a term for today's American economy as Poni Capitalism). The average Joe (if he still has a job) has become more productive at work year after year, has had a stagnant real wage since 2001, and his employer pockets a larger percentage than at any time in the last fifty years (thanks for that increased productivity!). The wealth has stopped trickling down, and we shouldn't be surprised: what with tens of millions of illegal immigrants flooding the ranks of the workforce, formerly middle-class jobs being shipped to India, Malaysia, etc, and the wholesale selling-off of America's industrial capacity.

     The important thing to remember is that if we had the will, we could actually make some people accountable for this! (Please research Maurice Strong, Club of Rome, and the UN's "Agenda 21") These control freaks (and the politicians they bought off) were planning the demise of free humanity and the dismantling of the self-sufficient industrial base of the United States over forty years ago. With the passing of the Patriot Act, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the debt incurred by the US government has doubled many times over since the end of the Cold War. There has been no peace dividend for the American people, as the corporate fascistic empire swallows up the entire planet.

The middle class is indeed contracting, and the income gap between the rich and poor increases year over year. Middle class manufacturing jobs that just a few years ago paid $25 to $30 an hour aren't just being shipped overseas. Large corporations who as of yet are forced to keep their manufacturing jobs in the US, due to FCC regulations and the like, hire no new employees. Rather, they hire a permanent temporary work force for $10 an hour from the multitude of staffing companies who have sprung up as middle-men between the employee and the employer. For example, Motorola owns a virtual monopoly on the mobile and portable radio systems used by government and law enforcement agencies across America, and less than 25 percent of factory workers are full-time Motorola employees. I know, because I spent 18 months there hoping to prove myself worthy of full-time employment with the company. The enormous profits made off of that communications equipment, almost exclusively subsidized by the taxpayer, provide negligible levels of employment to the community in which it resides. Self-touted good corporate citizenship is usually proclaimed in terms of workforce diversity and environmental stewardship, not in providing people with good jobs and livable wages. We all know that business today is about the bottom line; not even "are we profitable," rather "are we above or below quarterly projections." With the exception of those of highly specialized degree fields, being a member of today's American workforce makes it difficult to desire to fight for the cause of capitalism. Unfortunately, that is exactly how the globalists want the people to feel: lacking confidence in individual liberty and the free market.

     In the West, as in all of the industrialized nations, socialism has led to an overwhelming bureaucratic tyranny, unfunded entitlement obligations that number in the tens of trillions of dollars, and an erosion of the personal freedom that created the conditions for the prosperity of the past. Today, the debt is (for all practical purposes) too large to pay back. The system of fiat currency and central economic planning has put the world's wealthiest interests firmly in control of the future of humanity. Although the New World Order agenda was well in the works before 9/11, the attacks were essential for convincing Americans that it was necessary to give up their liberties for the sake of security. The DHS is the mechanism for tracking, tracing, and surveilling the final resistance against the NWO, namely: American patriots, libertarians, veterans, and Constitutionalists, as listed in the MIAC and Homeland Security documents of the Spring of 2009. The political establishment set up Barack Obama to bring the United States into socialism; however, thanks to omnipotent corporate greed, even the liberal Democrats realized that bailing out the banks, brokerage firms, and the insurance industry was not socialism as they knew it- it was a reverse wealth redistribution! 

     Unsurprisingly, from socialists in Congress to the member of the worker's party in the street, "real socialism"- as opposed to Stalinism - is a utopian ideal that cannot exist in reality. Society, and mankind as a whole, will not progress as a species without the animating contest of freedom. Limited government is a key to an innovative and motivated people. Socialism is the exact opposite; a huge welfare state requires a bloated bureaucracy to spend and distribute the wealth. Those at the top of the hierarchical pyramid, such as the long sought benevolent dictator, will never accept being of equal wealth as the commoner. Moreover, those members of the socialist bureaucracy will always leverage their position for personal gain. It is but human nature, and so it should be understood that any benefit provided by the social safety net of the modern welfare state is far outweighed by the cost of losing the creativity and innovation present in the soul of the free human being. In America today, after working 40 to 60 hours a week for $30-$35k per year, you are taxed at all levels of government to the point where, although you do not qualify for any public aid, you will not live sufficiently better than someone else living solely on welfare!

     The globalists are in constant contention that American's standard of living is unsustainable; that we are decadent, gluttonous, and vastly over consume the planet's precious resources. Of course, I have never heard one of them state that they are giving up any of the luxuries of which they are accustomed. And so, the New World Order is not significantly different from the murderous tyrants of the 20th century. Given the debt the bankers have heaped on future generations, we will go into some form of socialism unless the American remnant can push off the yoke of tyranny. They will do away with the Bill of Rights under the guise of progressivism, tolerance, and equality. They will erase the sovereignty of national borders, turn all of the world's security forces against the pockets of resistance, and create a global middle class of subsistence-level peasants. Even if we can arrest and prosecute the leaders of the globalist cabal, the economic foundations of the entire planet will take decades to restore. It's certainly worth the fight; if we have the will.

Framing their Argument: Civil Unrest and the Push Towards Martial Law

Hopefully we can all agree that a peace officer's primary duty should be to protect the people's rights, and secondly to protect the people's property within their jurisdiction.

NOTE: IF AN OFFICER READS THIS AND FEELS DIFFERENTLY, PLEASE COMMENT BELOW, AND PREPARE TO ARGUE YOUR POINT.

As the process of global interdependence unfolds, the prime beneficiaries of this system are eroding the legal safeguards against totalitarian government. The Patriot Act has severely undermined the freedoms of the American people, and the banker bailout of late 2008 has funneled trillions of dollars into the hands of the global financial elite. Despite public optimism at the onset of the Obama administration, it is evident that government continues in the direction of secrecy, cronyism, and widespread corruption. As it becomes clear that real economic recovery is not in the cards, and that Americans are in for a serious decrease in their standards of living, the oligarchs are looking at ways of maintaining their social order.

As this blog has covered in the past, there is a serious risk of civil unrest in the coming years. The question is, will law enforcement generally demand that the people (themselves and their families included) see that justice is done, no matter how high up the corruption goes, or will they simply follow orders from criminals? Being that the globalist elite have their agents deep within all relevant levels of government, it is in their interests to oversee a federal takeover of state and local police. The intellectual framework for this consolidation is being lain as we speak; the old Hegelian Dialectic: problem, reaction, solution.

Now, we all know that a cop's job is not easy. But at a time when our culture is spiritually sick, our savings is in the midst of destruction, and for millions the future looks quite bleak, it isn't about to get any easier. By nearly any measure, the general public is mentally/spiritually ill. Hope is on the decline, and violence is on the rise. At a time when government is roundly mistrusted and utterly irresponsible in fiscal matters, the police are being used as the state's enforcer, taxman, and bill collector. Moreover, the police (by default) stand as a separation between the government and the people. It is the American political establishment that has put law enforcement officers (LEOs) in this position, and their manipulation is plain to see in the media and on the web.

The trio of articles below lay out this version of the Hegelian Dialectic. Although I doubt that there was any intentional collaboration between the authors of the following pieces, these ideas are rampant on the intellectual outlets for the Law Enforcement community. Each article has been published within the last six-to-eight weeks, and intentionally promotes an antagonistic view of the current societal landscape, and the steps the authors deem necessary to confront it.


PROBLEM: "Are America's officers at war?" - Joel F. Shults, Ed.D.


As if the precarious situation that LEOs have been shoved into isn't problematic enough, Chief Joel Schultz of Alamosa, Colorado highlights the recent spike in police homicides. Schultz ties the pain of losing his comrades to the angry taunting of minorities who were on the scene following the shooter's execution, and anonymous message board posts after the well-publicized deaths of three Oakland police officers:

    "They will say the officers “got what they deserved” and that the public has lost confidence, that police are a violent racist occupying force. One blog said, “As the police and media work to defame and slander Lovelle Mixon [the murderer], we express our total solidarity.”"

It is not difficult to find hate-laced tirades against anyone, on any subject in the anonymous world of internet message boards (police officers not excluded). Surprisingly, Schultz seems most concerned about "a perfect storm of social factors" leading to widespread public criticism of heavy-handed police actions. In the wake of the recent rash of police murders, Schultz is just as concerned with media and public criticism of law enforcement agencies. He uses rhetoric that intends to anger fellow officers, and then attempts to psychologically profile those who are critical of the police; suggesting that anyone tired of police using brutal force against fellow citizens have some dangerous larger agenda. Rather than performing any self-evaluation, particularly regarding attitudes within minority populations, Schultz determines "we need to take the kind of connect-the-dots examination of patterns of violence that we have learned to do with terrorism." Like many posts on LEO forums like policeone.com,officer.com, and policelink, the article sends a powerful (if not subconscious) message to the casual reader: You are at war! It's you against the world! And that's a dangerous precedent to set.

REACTION: "SWAT options for multiple shooter terrorist attacks" - Lt. Andrew Esposito

If we are to accept the thesis of Mr. Schultz, then the officer on the beat is no longer a public servant, but a soldier in a war zone against a determined enemy. The predictable recommendation is that the police are too lightly armed against potential crises like those in Beslan and Mumbai in recent years. Lieutenant Andrew Esposito, Commander of Rockland County, NY's (REACT) anti-terror unit, warns of the need to investigate "how to deal with terrorism, whether it is domestic or foreign." Lt. Esposito bemoans the restraint that Posse Comitatus puts onto law enforcement in these United States:

    "We, on the other hand, follow the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (meaning “the power of the county”), which was passed following the civil war after the federal government used troops to uphold the law, or “occupy”, the south in an effort to stabilize the country. Due to this statue, which was passed over one hundred years ago, our country is now more vulnerable."

Well, Lieutenant, the Bill of Rights is a couple of centuries old. Has it become outdated? Common Law has served as our legal framework for a half of a millennium, should we get rid of it, too? This article serves as an attempt to justify a return to an ugly period in American history, the Reconstruction era, which effectively diluted our republican form of government. Those state boundaries represent the people's only safeguard from a tyrannical federal government. We are not Cuba or Pakistan, and we do not want soldiers in our streets. Lt. Esposito believes that "due to Posse Comitatus, [law enforcement] response will be slow, and too late." The Lieutenant spends the rest of the article laying out the shortfalls of police capability to handle mass hostage-type attacks, and the lacking capacity for LEOs to serve as infantryman in an emergency. This piece serves to illustrate the perceived necessity for the army to be able to operate as another asset of law enforcement inside the US.      

SOLUTION: A Stability Police Force for the United States - RAND     Corporation

Right on cue, the infamous Rand Corporation has released their plan for a hybrid Army/civilian high-end policing outfit; the Stability Police Force (SPF) for America. Amazingly, this report outlines just the type of force, with the type of capabilities, called for in Lt. Esposito's article. In their introduction, they skirt around the fact that the unit is intended for domestic operations. But in contemplating the current strategy options, Rand concludes that the current status of forces is:

    "constrained by the limits placed on its ability to perform civilian policing functions by the Posse Comitatus Act. Without relief from this constraint, it could not take advantage of the opportunities provided the hybrid staffing option to develop and maintain the needed skills."

Those who had been tasked to put this report together almost certainly had a primary objective of justifying an end to Posse Comitatus, a frightening thought for any liberty concerned historian. The authors skillfully frame the debate around the need for an effective police force with availability for rapid foreign deployment. The SPF "can perform law enforcement functions and so contribute to domestic tranquility and homeland defense when not deployed" p105 (anyone else thinking 'enemy combatant status'?). Ah, yes, they will contribute to domestic tranquility and receive vital training; RAND has it all figured out. They envision something of a European model of deployment, and lay it out as such:

    "forces perform civilian functions when they are not deployed abroad. For instance, Carabinieri officers perform a range of civilian tasks in Italy, such as countering organized crime and conducting crowd and riot control. Gendarmerie officers are deployed under the Ministry of Interior in France, and routinely perform such tasks as criminal investigations and highway patrol. We concluded that this practice of engaging in civilian tasks on a routine basis was extremely useful preparation for when the organizations deployed abroad during stability operations. Such experience is difficult to get only through training."

The report touted that SPF soldiers "working as police officers would greatly contribute to the state of training and readiness of SPF personnel." Although the authors admit that the hurdles are "probably insurmountable," RAND does submit "the issue of contractors performing law enforcement functions."

Much of the document centers around high-end policing, or police that

    "fill a critical gap between military forces and civilian police. They are trained to deal with higher levels of crime and violence than regular civilian police, and are able to perform such tasks as high-end criminality identification, criminal investigation, special weapons and tactics (SWAT), crowd and riot control, and intelligence collection and analysis."

It is troublesome that intelligence agencies and non-governmental organizations have forecast an increase in civil unrest. The ongoing tea-party movement is likely the beginning of a popular uprising against the status-quo. Rather than to investigate government corruption and imprison the perpetrators of Wall St. fraud, articles such as these suggest that the military-industrial-complex is gearing up to face down those who demand justice on behalf of those who have perpetrated the criminal conspiracy.

Three Key Lies of Big Government and the National Security State

Perception is NOT Reality

 This falsehood is pushed by the elitist, social Darwinian. The phrase reeks of corporate public relations propaganda and the Madison Avenue peddlers of personal insecurity. On an individual level, deciding to perceive our own life in a positive and optimistic light can have its shallow benefits, if only temporarily. Of course, the reality of a person's circumstances, if viewed by an impartial and unattached set of eyes, is what it is. In a digital media age, governmental and corporate leaders use human psychology against the passive viewer, with slick talking heads to spin ideas, filter out uncomfortable truths, and shape their desired perceptions. Indeed, it requires an active (if not rebellious) mind to withstand the perpetual motion of the corporate PR machine. Remember the hubris of former White House chief-of-staff Karl Rove, who admitted:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." 

 Ignorance is NOT Bliss

Unfortunately, a large number of us subconsciously live with the original statement as a kind of personal philosophy. Society is run for the benefit of a very few, the government is corrupt, our birthright is being stolen, and civil society is breaking down. People know this, but it scares them and they simply do not want to deal with it. Ignorance is Slavery! This is the context in which English poet Thomas Gray wrote Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College:

 "Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise."

Gray's statement is a satirical warning to his countrymen. Ironically, we formerly free and democratic people have come to live in a world in which we delegate our just and sovereign authority to the bureaucratic state, Law Enforcement, and distant panels of experts. In the post-democratic West, the global elite are happy to oblige in running every facet of our lives.

The Ends DO NOT Justify the Means

The quintessential Machiavellian notion tends to be the foundational idea for tyrants and control freaks, big and small. Wrapped in visions of a Utopian society, the oligarchs sadistically believe in their right to power at the expense of all other interests. The leadership in domestic law enforcement agencies accept this concept wholeheartedly. For them, better some innocent men be imprisoned than any "criminal" live free. Similarly, their actions prove that they believe they should be above the law to more effectively enforce that law upon civilians. Our rights have become a serious obstruction to the will of the strong arm of the law. Of course, if we lose our liberties, there is no society worth protecting; only the local warlords who repress their fiefdom so that the powers that be can better rob their victims.

Tyranny!: The Numbers Don't Lie

Attempting to quantify the nature or extent of the existing police state is not an easy task. How does one judge corruption, political repression, domestic surveillance, etc. After all, there is no international index of unjust laws, corrupt cops, paid-off judges and the like. There are a number of projects on the web that look at the raw data and try to do just that. I attempt to collate them here, and, in conclusion, you make your own judgement.

Total Number of Police (by Country)
Source: The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2002) (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention)

1. India 1,032,960
2. United States 941,139
3. Mexico 495,821
4. Italy 322,433
5. Germany 250,104
6. Japan 231,700
7. Thailand 215,450
8. Turkey 165,833
   
9. United Kingdom 152,576
10. France 124,284

Number of Prisons (by Country)
Source:The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2002) (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention)

1. Malaysia 26,294
2. Hong Kong 10,593
3. Papua New Guinea 9,474
4. Latvia 8,110
5. Kuwait 2,566
6. United States 1,558
7. Oman 1,164
8. Russia 739
9. Turkey 504
10. Mexico 448

Number of Prisoners (by Country)
Source: The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2002) (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention)

1. United States 2,019,234
2. China 1,549,000
3. Russia 846,967
4. India 313,635
5. Brazil 308,304
6. Thailand 213,815
7. Ukraine 198,386
8. South Africa 181,944
9. Mexico 172,888
10. Iran 163,526

Number of Prisoner per capita (by Country)
Source: International Centre for Prison Studies - World Prison Brief

1. United States 715 per 100,000 people
2. Russia 584 per 100,000 people
3. Belarus 554 per 100,000 people
4. Palau 523 per 100,000 people
5. Belize 459 per 100,000 people
6. Suriname 437 per 100,000 people
7. Dominica 420 per 100,00 people
8. Ukraine 416 per 100,000 people
9. The Bahamas 410 per 100,000 people
10. South Africa 402 per 100,000 people

The Electronic Police State (by country)
Source: Cryptohippie, Inc.'s report called the Electronic Police State, a 2008 ranking of government high tech mass surveillance against its own people. 52 nations are graded on a scale of 1 to 4 (1=most free, 4=least free), in 17 different pertinent categories.

1. China 3.58/4.00
2. North Korea 3.47/4.00
3. Belarus 3.29/4.00
4. Russia 3.17/4.00
5. United Kingdom 3.17/4.00
6. United States 3.11/4.00
7. Singapore 3.11/4.00
8. Israel 3.05/4.00
9. France 3.05/4.00
10. Germany 3.05/4.00

Erosion of Civil Liberties in Developed, Democratic States (by country) ie. Lowest Scores
Source: Data from the Economist Intelligence Unit's Index of Democracy 2008, Interpreting column V data on Civil Liberties among economically developed Full-Democracies (Rankings 1 to 10, with 10 being most free).

1. South Korea 8.24/10
2. United States 8.53/10
3. Slovenia 8.82/10
4. United Kingdom 8.82/10
5. Italy 9.12/10
6. France 9.12/10
7. Austria 9.12/10
8. Portugal 9.41/10
9. Greece 9.41/10
10. Belgium 9.41/10
    

Now, if you as an American, are comfortable with an 8 out of 10 when it comes to our guaranteed civil rights, well than go in peace. There are many "flawed democracies" and developing nations that receive higher marks than us here in the Land of the Free, and the Home of the brave! For example, India may have a dysfunctional government, but it receives a 9.41 in protecting civil liberties. Amazingly, Mexico receives an 8.82 rating!
Make of it all what you will. If you want to pat yourself on the back, read Freedom House's Freedom in the World (66% funded by the US government). It paints a rosy, if not downright ignorant, picture of personal freedoms in today's United States. The statistics seem to prove that the good old USA has made a big business out of the criminal justice system. Particularly when viewing the stats on prisoners per capita, it would seem as if our huge government is nearly as oppressive as the states it admonishes for human right violations.