Freedom Under Fire | The Rutherford Institute

What started as a movement to denounce police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of killer cops has become a free-for-all campaign to rid the country of any monument, literal or figurative, to anyone who may have at any time in history expressed a racist thought, exhibited racist behavior, or existed within a racist society. Censoring speech—toppling monuments—kowtowing to political correctness—is not the answer to what ails this nation. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out, what we need is more speech, more discourse, and a greater understanding of history and the evils perpetrated in the name of conquest, profit and racial supremacy. Because if we bury the mistakes of the past under a sanitized present, if we fail to at least provide context to the past, we risk allowing the government to repeat those past mistakes—rewritten for a new age—and no one will be the wiser.

The system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court—the so-called “people’s court”—has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, ensuring there will be little if no consequences for the cops who brutalize and no justice for the victims of police brutality. This is how unarmed Americans keep dying at the hands of militarized police. By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it this term that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.” As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

What is unfolding before us is not a revolution. The looting, the burning, the rioting, the violence: this is an anti-revolution. The protesters are playing right into the government’s hands, because the powers-that-be want this. They want an excuse to lockdown the nation and throw the switch to all-out martial law. They want a reason to make the police state stronger. It’s happening faster than we can keep up. This is how it begins. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, the architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.

From 9/11 to COVID-19, this year’s crop of graduates have spent their entire lives in a state of emergency. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, those coming of age right now were born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks; raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including our own) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents. Until now, the police state has been more circumspect in its power grabs, but this latest state of emergency has brought the beast out of the shadows. We are on a slippery slope to outright despotism. This road we are traveling is paved with lockdowns, SWAT team raids, mass surveillance and forced vaccinations. It is littered with the debris of our First and Fourth Amendment freedoms. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, this is what we have to look forward to in the months and years to come unless we can find some way to regain control over our runaway government.

Yes, COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, but there are still greater dangers on the horizon. As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better. It’s already worse. Now there’s talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities. If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention. These may seem like small, necessary steps in the war against the COVID-19 virus, but they’re only necessary to the police state in its efforts to further undermine the Constitution, extend its control over the populace, and feed its insatiable appetite for ever-greater powers. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, nothing is ever as simple as the government claims it is.

Welcome to the age of technofascism. Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother. While on paper, we are technically free to speak—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—in reality, however, we are only as free to speak as the government and its corporate partners such as Facebook, Google or YouTube may allow. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, that’s not a whole lot of freedom. Especially if you’re inclined to voice opinions that may be construed as conspiratorial or dangerous or if you merely want to think for yourself.

Grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions have become synonymous with the U.S. government, which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike. For instance, did you know that the U.S. government has been buying hundreds of dogs and cats from “Asian meat markets” as part of a gruesome experiment into food-borne illnesses? The cannibalistic experiments involve killing cats and dogs purchased from Colombia, Brazil, Vietnam, China and Ethiopia, and then feeding the dead remains to laboratory kittens, bred in government laboratories for the express purpose of being infected with a disease and then killed. It’s not just animals that are being treated like lab rats by government agencies. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, “we the people” have also become the police state’s guinea pigs: to be caged, branded, experimented upon without our knowledge or consent, and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.

We still have choices. Just because we’re fighting an unseen enemy in the form of a virus doesn’t mean we have to relinquish every shred of our humanity, our common sense, or our freedoms to a nanny state that thinks it can do a better job of keeping us safe. Whatever we give up willingly now—whether it’s basic human decency, the ability to manage our private affairs, the right to have a say in how the government navigates this crisis, or the few rights still left to us that haven’t been disemboweled in recent years by a power-hungry police state—we won’t get back so easily once this crisis is past. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, the government never cedes power willingly. Neither should we.

You can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured. This coronavirus pandemic is no exception, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast. Not only are the federal and state governments unraveling the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that are sending the economy into a tailspin and wreaking havoc with our liberties, but they are also rendering the citizenry fully dependent on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance. Unless we find some way to rein in the government’s power grabs, the fall-out will be epic. Everything Whitehead has warned about for years—government overreach, invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers, militarized police, weaponized technology used to track and control the citizenry, and so on—has coalesced into this present moment. The government’s shameless exploitation of past national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes pales in comparison to what is presently unfolding. It’s downright Machiavellian.

This is a test. This is not a test of our commitment to basic hygiene or disaster preparedness or our ability to come together as a nation in times of crisis, although we’re not doing so well on any of those fronts. No, what is about to unfold is a test to see how well we have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly we’ll march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance we offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security. Most critically of all, this is a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

How will the government’s War on the Coronavirus impact our freedoms? For a hint of what’s in store, you can look to China—our role model for all things dystopian—where the contagion started. In an attempt to fight the epidemic, the government has given its surveillance state apparatus, which boasts the most expansive and sophisticated surveillance system in the world, free rein. The problem is what happens after: once the outbreak is controlled, it’s unclear whether the government will retract its new powers. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, the lesson for the ages is as follows: once any government is allowed to expand its powers, it’s almost impossible to pull back.

Two years after President Trump announced his intention to “harden” the schools, our nation’s children are reaping the ill effects of gun-toting, taser-wielding cops in government-run schools that bear an uncomfortable resemblance to prisons. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead explains in this week's podcast, the fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.

Mark my words: gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, push us that much closer towards a society where everyone must be preemptively rendered harmless. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead explains in this week's podcast, these laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts. Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which further normalize the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.

It’s getting harder by the day to reconcile John Lennon's dream of peace with the reality of the American police state. Indeed, those who dare to speak up are being labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and being tagged for surveillance, censorship, involuntary detention or, worse, even shot and killed in their own homes by militarized police. Yet as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, all of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc.—were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.

Think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one. Especially if that person is autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffering from dementia, disabled or might have a condition that hinders their ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order. Particularly if you value that person’s life. At a time when growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, police—trained in the worst case scenario and thus ready to shoot first and ask questions later—increasingly pose a risk to anyone undergoing a mental health crisis or with special needs whose disabilities may require more finesse than the typical freeze-or-I’ll-shoot tactics employed by America’s police forces. In fact, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, over the course of six months, police shot and killed someone who was in mental crisis every 36 hours.

There can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force. What is this language of force? Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is martial law masquerading as law and order.

Take heed, America. Our losses are mounting with every passing day. What began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse. The rights embodied in the Constitution, which have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded, are now on life support. Since the towers fell on 9/11, the U.S. government has posed a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist, extremist or foreign entity ever could. Indeed, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out, the U.S. government—the government that was supposed to be a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—has become the enemy of the people.

The U.S. government is working hard to destabilize the nation. No, this is not another conspiracy theory. Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes. Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. An overt embrace of domestic surveillance tactics if Congress goes along with the Trump Administration’s request to permanently re-authorize the NSA’s de-activated call records program. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, the seeds of chaos are being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.

If the government is consistent about any one thing, it is this: it has an unnerving tendency to exploit crises and use them as opportunities for power grabs under the guise of national security. Cue the Emergency State, the government’s Machiavellian version of crisis management that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security. The government’s proposed response to the latest round of mass shootings—red flag gun laws, precrime surveillance, fusion centers, threat assessments, mental health assessments, involuntary confinement—is just more of the same. It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power. Be warned, however, when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police. After all, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

Despite the finger-pointing and outcries of dismay from those who are watching the government discard the rule of law at every turn, the question is not whether Donald Trump is the new Adolf Hitler but whether the American Police State is the new Third Reich. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, the warning signs are unmistakable for those who can view the present and past political landscape without partisan blinders: the Deep State’s love affair with totalitarianism began long ago.

We are in desperate need of a populace that can stand united against the government’s authoritarian tendencies. So disagree all you want about healthcare, abortion and immigration—hot-button issues that are guaranteed to stir up the masses, secure campaign contributions and turn political discourse into a circus free-for-all—but surely we can manage to stand united on certain principles that should be non-negotiable in the midst of the destructive, disrupting, diverting, discordant babble being beamed down at us by the powers-that-be? As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny go on for too long.

The First Amendment does more than give us a right to criticize our country: it makes it a civic duty. Certainly, if there is one freedom among the many spelled out in the Bill of Rights that is especially patriotic, it is the right to criticize the government. The right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom. Unfortunately, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, those who run the government don’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power. In fact, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. Yet this idea that only individuals who agree with the government are entitled to the protections of the First Amendment couldn’t be further from what James Madison, the father of the Constitution, intended. Indeed, Madison was very clear about the fact that the First Amendment was established to protect the minority against the majority. To take that one step further: the First Amendment was intended to protect the citizenry from the government’s tendency to censor, silence and control what people say and think.

Politics, religion, sports, government, entertainment, business, armed forces: it doesn’t matter what arena you’re talking about, they are all riddled with the kind of seedy, sleazy, decadent, dodgy, depraved, immoral, corrupt behavior that somehow gets a free pass when it involves the wealthy and powerful elite in America. In this age of partisan politics and a deeply polarized populace, corruption—especially when it involves sexual debauchery, depravity and predatory behavior—has become the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused. We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America. Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sex crimes, government corruption, or the rule of law.

How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none? You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution. This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-loving people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, it works the same way every time. The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence and illegal immigration have been convenient ruses used to terrorized the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Those who seek to exercise their First Amendment rights during encounters with the police are increasingly finding that there is no such thing as freedom of speech. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, this is the painful lesson being imparted with every incident in which someone gets arrested and charged with any of the growing number of contempt charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that get trotted out anytime a citizen voices discontent with the government or challenges or even questions the authority of the powers-that-be.

Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will turn deadly. Indeed, the most common reason for a citizen to come into contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic stop. On average, one in 10 Americans gets pulled over by police, who have been given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, traffic stops aren’t just dangerous. They can be downright fatal.

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who know better. Yet as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, the realm of political theater with all of its drama, vitriol and scripted theatrics is what passes for “transparent” government today, with elected officials routinely performing for their audiences and playing up to the cameras, while behind the scenes, those who really run the show are putting into place policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at transparent, accountable, representative government.

Police sexual misconduct is a systemic problem, and the dangers arise every time police are dispatched: traffic stops, domestic abuse calls, minor offenses, drug arrests, police interactions with teenagers, investigations into sex trafficking. Rather than being part of the solution, America’s police forces—riddled with corruption, brutality, sexual misconduct and drug abuse—have increasingly become part of the problem. In a number of cases, victims of sex trafficking report that police are among those “buying” young girls and women for sex. While the problem of cops engaged in sex trafficking is part of the American police state’s seedy underbelly that doesn’t get addressed enough, equally alarming is the number of cops who commit sex crimes against those they encounter as part of their job duties, a largely underreported number given the “blue wall of silence” that shields police misconduct. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, young girls are particularly vulnerable to these predators in blue. When you add sex crimes against grown women into the mix, the picture becomes even more sordid.

Children, young girls—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old. Sex trafficking—especially when it comes to the buying and selling of young girls—has become big business in America, the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns. It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances. On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period of servitude. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is not a problem found only in big cities. It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.

When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals. In the current governmental climate, where laws that run counter to the dictates of the Constitution are made in secret, passed without debate, and upheld by secret courts that operate behind closed doors, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the police state can render you an “enemy of the state.” That list of so-called “enemies of the state” is growing. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is merely the latest victim of the police state’s assault on dissidents and whistleblowers. Indeed, it is fitting that we remember that Jesus Christ—the religious figure worshipped by Christians for his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection—paid the ultimate price for speaking out against the police state of his day.

We’re not living the American Dream. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we’re in the grip of a financial nightmare. “We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America. We get taxed on how much we earn, taxed on what we eat, taxed on what we buy, taxed on where we go, taxed on what we drive, and taxed on how much is left of our assets when we die, and yet we have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used. All the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.

The U.S. government has unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances. These horrors are being meted out against humans and animals alike. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, you don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.

The absurd cruelties of the American police state keep reaching newer heights. Consider that if you kill a police dog, you could face a longer prison sentence than if you’d murdered someone or abused a child. If a cop kills your dog, however, there will be little to no consequences for that officer. Not even a slap on the wrist. In this, as in so many instances of official misconduct by government officials, the courts have ruled that the cops have qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that incentivizes government officials to engage in lawless behavior without fear of repercussions. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is the heartless, heartbreaking, hypocritical injustice that passes for law and order in America today.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs. As John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, it’s all a ruse. In one month alone, government agencies—including the Department of Defense—went on a $97 million shopping spree that included $670,000 for golf carts, $1.7 million for musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones, $4.6 million for lobster tail and crab, almost $8 million for iPhones and iPads, and nearly $10 million for workout and recreation equipment.

You think you’ve got rights? Think again. All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will. Our so-called rights have been reduced to technicalities in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs. Consider a case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Mitchell vs. Wisconsin) in which Wisconsin police officers read an unconscious man his rights and then proceeded to forcibly and warrantlessly draw his blood while he was still unconscious in order to determine if he could be charged with a DUI.

With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer’s, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store—and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we’re helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time. Yet it’s not just the surveillance and the buying and selling of your data that is worrisome. The ramifications of a government—any government—having this much unregulated, unaccountable power to target, track, round up and detain its citizens is beyond chilling.

Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence. Even so, I’m not breaking up with America this Valentine’s Day, and neither should you. Instead, get outraged at what has been done to our country. What has been done to our freedoms. Get off your duff, get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.

Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid. These raids are one more vivid example of how the government’s short-sighted use of immoral, illegal and unconstitutional tactics become dangerous weapons turned against the American people.

Get ready, folks, because the government—helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—is embarking on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

Every decade or so, the government makes the case for expanding its wartime powers and curtailing the citizenry’s freedom—in the war on terrorism, war on drugs, war on communism, war on foreigners, war on extremism, war on dissidents, war on peace activists, war on anti-government speech, etc.—all for the sake of national security, of course, and as expected, the American people fall in line. This time around, the government wants us to buy into the fiction that this war on illegal aliens is so necessary for national security that we should be grateful when roving bands of border patrol agents, flexing their muscles far beyond the nation’s borders, exercise their right to disregard the Constitution at every turn. Except these border patrol cops aren’t just disregarding the Constitution. They’re trampling all over the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the government from carrying out egregious warrantless searches and seizures without probable cause.

President Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency in order to build a border wall is more manufactured political theater, a Trojan Horse intended to camouflage the real threat to our freedoms: yet another expansion of presidential power exposing us to constitutional peril. This is not about illegal immigration or porous borders or who will pay to build that wall. This is about unadulterated power and the rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

We are approaching critical mass, the point at which all hell breaks loose. The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis. What makes the outlook so much bleaker is the utter ignorance of the American people—and those who represent them—about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.

To a nation of snowflakes, Christmas has become yet another trigger word. The latest Christmas casualties in the campaign to create one large national safe space are none other than the beloved animated classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (denounced for promoting bullying and homophobia) and the Oscar-winning tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (accused of being a date rape anthem). Also on the endangered species Christmas list are such songs as “Deck the Halls” (it supposedly promotes “gay” apparel), “Santa Baby” (it has been denounced for “slut shaming”), and “White Christmas” (perceived as being racist).

Yes, You Have the Right to Talk Back to the Government, But It Could Get You Killed by John W. Whitehead

Fixing what’s wrong with this country is not going to happen overnight, but there are things we can all do right now to make this world (or at least our small corners of it) a little bit kinder, a lot less hostile and more just.

"The Freedom Crisis in America": A lecture by John W. Whitehead

Mark my words: red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, will only add to the government’s power. These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace. Thirteen states now have red flag laws on their books. That number is growing.

The government’s efforts to wage war on military veterans, especially those who speak out against government wrongdoing, is downright appalling. The government even has a name for its war on America’s veterans: Operation Vigilant Eagle.