So You Think Tyranny
Can't Happen Here?

[Ed: Dr. Faria originally published this May 23 at Hacienda Publishing.
It is modestly edited for DRGO.]

When discussing government overreach, which continues unimpeded, or the danger of the monopoly of force concentrated in the hands of government by way of law enforcement, especially from federal police, particularly the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), I'm frequently told that if one has done nothing wrong there is nothing to fear from government. When I describe my first-hand experience in Cuba, or relate events from my studies of communism in the former USSR, China, Cambodia, Venezuela, and the Eastern European Satellite states, I'm told: "But Dr. Faria such cruelty and tyranny can happen in third-world countries, but it cannot happen here. This is America."

I respond, somehow nonplussed: "Really? Have you heard, or rather read, of the story of David Koresh and the Waco, Texas, massacre of innocents by the ATF and the FBI Hostage Rescue Team on April 19, 1993." And I say read, because the victims—men, women and children, along with Koresh himself—are all dead by the hands of the federal police. One only has to look at this issue a bit more closely to ascertain the deadly implications of just such a naive attitude.

Unfortunately, there are many more cases that have been swept under the rug by the media through insufficient or biased coverage. Of course, there was the well-known 1992 case of Vicky and Samuel Weaver (her 14-year-old son) killed at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. .....