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Title: John Kelly Was President Trump's Top Authoritarian Fearmonger. Good Riddance.
Source:
Reason
URL Source: https://reason.com/blog/2018/12/10/ ... umps-top-auth?utm_medium=email
Published: Dec 10, 2018
Author: Scott Shackford
Post Date: 2018-12-11 09:32:14 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 777
Comments: 7
President Donald Trump announced to reporters on Saturday that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly will step down by the end of the year, ending months of speculation about Kelly's potential exit date. The popular narrative around Kelly, a retired Marine general, is that he brought military-minded discipline to a chaotic White House. It's not clear that Kelly's influence ever extended outside his own person. One likely candidate to replace him—Nick Ayers, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence—is instead leaving the administration. As Kelly heads for the exits, let's take a moment to shove aside the content-free beltway obsession with who holds the cards in this feckless administration and deal with the realities of the man. Kelly was an authoritarian merchant of fear whose policy prescriptions revolved around using the government to monitor and control the behavior of the populace, citizens and immigrants alike. While their demeanors may differ, his exit is not a result of any genuine political disagreements with Trump. Much like former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Kelly and Trump clashed over means, not ends. Anybody who loves liberty should be glad to see Kelly go, irrespective of who may replace him. Before Kelly was elevated as chief of staff, he was installed as Trump's head of the Department of Homeland Security. In that role, he told Americans we should all thank our lucky stars for poorly trained Transportation Security Administration employees and their crotch-fondling ways. In an April 2017 speech, he told legislator critics of TSA behavior to either change the law or "shut up and support the men and women on the front lines." He was more than happy to scare Americans with fears of terrorists coming to kill us all to justify government intrusions into our privacy. Perhaps it would be easier for Congress to support the TSA if it weren't a hotbed of corruption and scandal and lawmakers weren't being stymied by attempts to investigate retaliation against workers who blow the whistle on misconduct at the agency. Kelly's a massive drug warrior, again using fear (this time, of opioid overdoses and drug lords) to try to sell us all on massive, expensive, and ultimately fruitless drug interdiction efforts. As a military man, he tended to see the drug war as something that just needed more troops. Reason's Jacob Sullum noted back in 2016 that "Kelly thinks a determined government can overcome economics." He simply believes that more money and more drug seizures would win the drug war, despite everything we've learned about that approach after four decades and a trillion dollars in spending. He brought that attitude to DHS and then into the White House and turned it into a justification for the administration's cruel immigration enforcement tactics. Kelly, like Trump, is a big believer in the myth that illegal immigrants are crime magnets, going so far as to instruct staff of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to try to track down examples of egregious cases in order to sell a crackdown. And he was a full supporter of separating children of illegal immigrants from their families in order to deter people from coming to the U.S. To the extent that Kelly brought "discipline" and "professionalism" to the White House, it was in support of policies that deprived people of liberty. His role was to find the correct levers of power to pull so that Trump could pursue his authoritarian agenda through the proper government channels instead of by diktat or angry tweet. When Sessions was shown the door, Sullum noted that his replacement might not be any better than him (a prediction that is shaping up to be true), but could hardly be worse. We don't know who Kelly's replacement is going to be, but the cause of liberty is most certainly better off without him in the White House.
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
Reason lol.
Your kind of guy!
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. Your kind of guy who wrote this article is a faggot lover. He thinks it was discrimination to not pretend faggots are married. Anyone who thinks faggots have some special rights is not really an American.
You should kill him if that's what you think. Nice job of gaying up the thread though with your obsessiveness. Man, you sure do love that PATRIOT ACT and those who champion it, don't you? That doesn't surprise me, with your psychotic authoritarian streak constantly on display for all to see.
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. I don't support the Patriot act buddy
Isn't that a good thing? I mean, like, dude, most Americans are sick to their stomaches over the queers and their eternal seeking of approval and pedestalizing their lifestyle of shoving their pee pee up another guy's poo poo and lusting after young Boy Scouts. Instead they should be stoned and run out of town on tarred rails with feathers flowing out behind them. Ingesting fecal matter is bad for one's health. You don't lick the dipstick when you check your oil.
Liberals are like Slinkys. They're good for nothing, but somehow they bring a smile to your face as you shove them down the stairs.
Terrorists ARE coming to kill us! They DID come to kill us, remember? If we do nothing and pretend that we don't have to check people going onto airplanes, they will do it again. Nobody wants to live in a police state. Nobody wants to die screaming in an airplane either. Between those two extremes there are reasonable intermediate steps. Those we have taken since 2001 seem to be working. They are annoying, yes, but what's the alternative? Go back to sleep and pretend that radical Islam has ceased to exist and that they don't want to kill us? That's the effect of doing away with the measures you complain about. How about NO. You go right on expressing your disagreement with the security measures we have taken. It's a free country, you have the right to complain. And we have the right to ignore the complaints and keep doing what we reasonably think is necessary to protect us. 'Cause that's how it's going to be.
#2. To: A K A Stone (#1)
Kelly was an authoritarian merchant of fear whose policy prescriptions revolved around using the government to monitor and control the behavior of the populace, citizens and immigrants alike.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#3. To: Deckard (#2)
#4. To: A K A Stone (#3)
Your kind of guy who wrote this article is a faggot lover
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#5. To: Deckard (#4)
#6. To: Deckard (#4)
That doesn't surprise me, with your psychotic authoritarian streak constantly on display for all to see.
#7. To: Deckard (#0)
He was more than happy to scare Americans with fears of terrorists coming to kill us all to justify government intrusions into our privacy.
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