If you don't think this relentless assault on our individual rights

[WCGreen]

will ever effect you or your loved ones...

Think again.

It always start harmlessly, in little niggling ways.

Let's make people have photo id's to vote...

Well, you say, that doesn't have any affect on me at all. I have a drivers license.

Let's make women submit to a sonogram and make them look at it before they have an abortion.

Well, that sounds reasonable enough...

Let's use public money to finance private education. Let the market dictate who gets educated and how they get educated.

That sounds reasonable to me...

When and where do you draw the line?

If we don't stand up for the little stuff now, what will happen when the big stuff comes our way?

A Corporate based theocracy via a million little cuts...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. It's a lot like the story of the frog and the water coming slowly to a boil.

It's so gradual, you hardly notice...

And when you do?

It's too late.

Death by a million little cuts, indeed.

[sethgrogen]

3. it sounds reasonable.....

How do you respond to-

You have to have ID to buy beer?
You have to pass a drug test to get hired?

I keep hearing the same lines.

[WCGreen]

5. The beer purchase is a privilege and not a right...

Passing a drug test for a private job is not the same as requiring a drug test to receive food stamps. Many jobs require keen awareness and involve apt attention at all times.

Collecting a public benefit in order to survive is quite another thing yet.

If there was a history of drug or alcohol abuse, then I could perhaps see substance screening via drug tests, per the individual.

But to just condemn a whole class of people as being drug abusers until they are proven not guilty flies in the face of what I consider a free and just society.

If you're okay with that, fine.

But when they start in on other test that intrude upon your rights or your privacy just remember that I, and those who agree with me, warned you...

[sethgrogen]

11. thanks!

[HowHasItComeToThis]

6. REPUBS CAN'T WINI

[midnight]

2. K&R

[spanone]

4. k&r

[Javaman]

7. most of the time, the little stuff has very long range implications.

the little stuff is the big stuff.

until citizens united is overturned, not a whole lot will change.

[dgibby]

8. You are so right.

Unfortunately, I have come to the sad conclusion that it's already too late. Most of this stuff has been happening under the radar for years. The fact that it's so "in your face" now indicates to me that so much damage has been done that there's no longer any reason to hide what's going on.

[kctim]

9. The problem is

that people only see it as an assault on individual rights only when its rights they care about.

[Quantess]

10. I'll wager all of us have been personally affected in one way or another.

[sarcasmo]

12. The Plutocracy we now live in will only get worse.