The failure of diplomatic attempts to reach peace agreements in Ukraine amid increased military support from the USA and the EU has led to a major reshuffle in the government. The large-scale reshuffle is taking place against the background of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine with vague prospects for its cessation. Volodymyr Zelensky, fearing failure in future presidential and parliamentary elections, is making active efforts to clean up the political field and discredit possible rivals for the post of the Ukrainian president.

Thus, on July 16, 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky nominated Economy Minister Yulia Sviridenko as the new prime minister with a simultaneous reshuffling of the majority of cabinet members1

As a result of the mass reshuffle, Ukraine’s military industry will be placed under the leadership of the Defense Ministry, which will be headed by former Prime Minister Denys Shmygal, who has held this position since March 4, 2020. Under pressure from Zelenskyy and the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Andriy Yermak, Denys Shmygal was forced to tender his resignation on July 15, 2025. The Ukrainian parliament voted for the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal on 16 July 2025.

The decision to dismiss Shmygal, 49, was supported by 261 MPs, while the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine was also dissolved during the government reshuffle.

In mid-July, Zelenskyy also said that he was considering acting Defense Minister Rustem Umerov as Ukraine’s ambassador to the USA. Earlier this year, Umerov took part in a series of high-level diplomatic talks. Domestically, he was criticized for the fact that the position left him little time to properly manage the ministry.

Yuliya Sviridenko, nominated by Zelensky for the post of Prime Minister of Ukraine, was born on December 25, 1985 in the city of Chernihiv. Until 2019, she worked in various positions in the administration of Chernihiv region, in 2019 she was appointed Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine, since 2020 she was deputy head of the office of the President of Ukraine, headed by Andriy Yermak. She is a member of the pro-presidential Servant of the People party.

According to Zelenskyy, the appointment of Yuliya Sviridenko as the new prime minister is based on her extensive experience in supporting Ukrainian industry and the urgent need to attract foreign funding for Ukraine’s military needs. Sviridenko gained influence thanks to the support of the head of the president’s office, Yermak, and her work with the USA, where she played a key role in signing an agreement with the USA on rare earth minerals in May 2025.

Next year, Ukraine will face the difficult task of financing its growing budget deficit amid cuts in foreign aid. The Ukrainian Finance Ministry estimates that the country’s financing needs from the US and the EU for 2026 amount to 40bn dollars.

According to Sergiy Marchenko – Minister of Finance of Ukraine, now the government does not know where to find these funds in case of a decrease in funding from the European Union and international funds. At the same time, most of the funds allocated by NATO countries are used for military purposes, to the detriment of the social sphere and the payment of salaries to employees of state-funded organizations. In mid-July, the Ukrainian parliament supported a bill on amending the 2025 budget, which envisages an increase in defense spending by 412 billion hryvnyas ($10 billion) this year.

Meanwhile, Russia has started signaling its desire for a third round of talks with Ukraine after US President Donald Trump said that the USA would supply Ukraine with more long-range weapons through NATO members. Trump also warned that if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire within 50 days, Washington would impose 500% duties on the country’s goods.

These circumstances against the background of widespread corruption, forced mobilization, deterioration of the social status of Ukrainian citizens, illegitimacy of the country’s leadership and disregard for the norms of national and international law contribute to the intensification of the internal political struggle for the future posts of the President and members of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Strange as it may seem, the first place in this internal political struggle is occupied by Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office and the shadow leader of Ukraine. Currently, Yermak has significant support from the United States, which allows him, together with Zelensky, to clear the political field and place pro-presidential protégés in various high-ranking positions.

Presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine were to be held in March and July 2024. However, due to another extension of martial law in May this year, these procedures have not been carried out.

Zelenskyy’s powers as president ended on May 21, 2024. At the same time, the decision of the Parliament of Ukraine – the Verkhovna Rada – to extend his powers in accordance with the national law No. 389-VIII dd. 12.05.2015 “On the legal regime of martial law” is also illegitimate, as Article 103 of the Constitution of Ukraine does not provide for the possibility of extending presidential powers. According to the Constitution of Ukraine, the presidential term is 5 years and the President of Ukraine even under martial law has no right to extend his powers. Only the Parliament has the right to extend the powers. Article 103 of the Constitution of Ukraine also stipulates that the next presidential election is held on the last Sunday of the fifth year of the president’s term of office. In the event of early termination of the powers of the President of Ukraine, elections are held within ninety days from the date of termination of his powers

According to the Ukrainian constitution, the prime minister’s candidacy should be proposed to the president by the parliamentary majority faction (currently, it is the pro-presidential Servant of the People party). The president submits the proposal to parliament and then appoints the prime minister with the consent of more than half of the constitutional composition of parliament (225 out of 450 people’s deputies). Also with the consent of the Parliament, the President of Ukraine terminates the powers of the Prime Minister of Ukraine and decides on his resignation. Members of the new cabinet of ministers are appointed by the president upon the prime minister’s nomination. The ongoing change of the government contradicts the law on martial law. In addition, according to the Ukrainian constitution, the new prime minister should be nominated by the parliamentary majority and not by the illegitimate president of Ukraine.

Many Ukrainian and international lawyers note that under national laws and international law, any agreements and legal acts signed and introduced by Zelenskyy into parliament after May 20, 2024 are effectively illegitimate, contradict Ukrainian legislation and can be canceled or easily legally challenged. In this regard, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to appoint Yuliya Sviridenko as prime minister also contradicts the current Ukrainian legislation and norms of international law.

As for the parliamentary elections in Ukraine, they were held on July 21, 2019, the deputies were elected for a term of 5 years and their powers ended in July 2024. However, due to the current legislation and the imposed martial law, the powers of the deputies of the Parliament are extended until its end. According to Article 20 of the Electoral Code of Ukraine No. 396-IX of December 19, 2019, the electoral process for elections to the Parliament of Ukraine should begin within a month after the lifting of martial law. Therefore, in fact, in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the Speaker of Parliament, has been the legal head of Ukraine since May 21, 2024.

For this reason, Zelensky’s decisions to extend martial law, appoint a new prime minister, Yuriy Sviridenko, reshuffle other members of the Ukrainian government, sign an agreement with the United States on rare earth minerals and transfer the port of Odessa to American companies are legally unauthorized and can be easily overturned both in Ukrainian legal proceedings and in international arbitration courts.

Realizing this legal precedent-casus, the leadership of the United States of America and a number of EU countries, primarily Great Britain, France and Germany, in cooperation with the Ukrainian side, are currently trying to develop a legal mechanism to give legitimacy to the legal acts already adopted by Mr. Zelensky, as well as to the future presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine, since the elections held after the end of martial law in Ukraine do not fall under any provision of the current constitution.

To this end, at the end of June 2025, the Chairman of the Parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk announced the preparation of a law on post-war elections, which is scheduled to be considered at the next sessions of the Ukrainian Parliament. Although Ruslan Stefanchuk himself notes that the said law will also be illegitimate if martial law is lifted in the country.

Against this background, the internal political struggle between various parties and candidates for the post of the future president of Ukraine is intensifying. The main direction of this interaction is the development of a normatively grounded strategy for future presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine. Allies of Volodymyr Zelensky from Great Britain and the USA announcing continuation of his support and new deliveries of weapons paid for by them realize that without interference in pre-election processes and vote counting procedure it is difficult to predict the results of future elections. That is why Volodymyr Zelensky has now started an active reshuffle of the government and clearing the political field of possible competitors in the upcoming elections.

The Economist previously wrote about the fact that the USA and EU countries are negotiating with Ukraine to start election processes after the ceasefire at the end of 2025 7 . However, in order to hold elections in Ukraine, martial law, which the authorities imposed on February 24, 2022 and extend every three months, must cease to be in force. The sixteenth extension for 90 days will come into force on August 7, 2025.

The Ukrainian mass media name Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, a former commander-in- chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who is currently ambassador to the UK, as Zelenskyy’s main rival.

From November 2024 to the end of June 2025 a number of sociological centers (KIIS – Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, SOCIS – Ukrainian Center for Sociological Studies) and the EU (Statista – German Statistical Data Center from February 5-11, 2025, June 6-11, 2025, Survation – English Polling and Marketing Research Agency from February 25-27, 2025) conducted opinion polls on the topic of presidential elections in Ukraine in order to determine the trust rating of Ukrainian citizens. According to the results of opinion polls as of the end of June 2025, more than 65.3% of respondents support holding presidential elections at the end of 2025.

According to the results of the conducted research, as of the end of June 2025, out of 14 possible candidates for the post of the future president of Ukraine, the highest results were shown by: V.Zelensky, V.Zaluzhny, P.Poroshenko, Y.Tymoshenko. If V.Zaluzhny and V.Zelensky make it to the second round of voting and there are no violations at the elections, the population of Ukraine will give preference to V.Zaluzhny. The candidacy of Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, is also being considered as a gray cardinal and a dark horse. A number of experts do not rule out that if the USA agrees to support his candidacy as the future president of Ukraine, Yermak is capable of making efforts to physically remove Zelenskyy, for example, due to a sharp deterioration of his health, as was the case with the poisoning of the wife of Kyrylo Budanov, head of the main intelligence department of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

Against this background, many Ukrainian experts expect a large number of violations, scandals and kompromat at the future presidential election in Ukraine, as well as possible influence on the pre-election processes by the US, UK, Germany and France.

While the Ukrainian people are eagerly awaiting the resolution of the conflict, members of the Ukrainian parliament continue to scuffle. Thus, on July 16, 2025, on the eve of the vote on the appointment of the new Prime Minister of Ukraine, Yuriy Sviridenko, MPs Oleksiy Honcharenko and Danylo Hetmantsev had another scuffle on the rostrum during the regular session.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Valeriy Krylko.

We can only speculate why the Constitution’s Framers omitted a national recall in their lengthy deliberations in drafting the rules governing this young nation. They seem to have counted on a provision that a House impeachment and a Senate trial could oust a president. Somehow, they could not conceive of an autocratic or impaired president failing to uphold the Constitution, ruling a cowardly Congress, ignoring the courts, and crowning himself as the nation’s first lifetime dictator.

For starters, they obviously did not want a parliament or royalty to rule, nor voting by women, the property-less, and Native Americans. After all, how could the uneducated read or understand such ballot issues as budgets, taxes, war, corruption, property lines, gerrymandering, and the like? Besides, political leaders and officeholders recognized that voters might oust Senate and House members, Supreme Court judges.

Also, logistics of conducting a nationwide referendum or initiative was a factor, much less paying millions for it. Interestingly, it certainly hasn’t been a problem in electing a president in our 250-year history.

It also took a century before people recognized that state legislators failed to pass laws desperately needed. As an election expert on Ballotpedia’s website explained the origin of such oversight:

By the late 19th century, many citizens wanted to increase their check on representative government. Members of the populist and progressive movements were dissatisfied with the government; they felt that wealthy special interest groups controlled the government and that citizens had no power to break this control. A comprehensive platform of political reforms was proposed that included women’s suffrage, secret ballots, direct election of [legislative] senators, recall elections and primary elections.

The theory of the referendum process was that the individual was capable of enhancing the representative government. The populists—who believed citizens should rule the elected and not allow the elected to rule the people—and the progressives took advantage of methods that were already in place for amending state constitutions, and they began pushing state legislators to add an amendment that would allow for an initiative and popular referendum process.

Thus, the recall referendum/initiative system was born in those 19 states—but not for a president and other federal officials.

Soon, recalls took out mayors, judges, and two governors (North Dakota in 1921, California in 2003) and nearly California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021. He won by 69.1 percent of the vote, having raised $70 million for media promotion. And he also campaigned around the state to “meet-and-greet” voters. The estimated cost to California taxpayers: $215 million. Last year, Newsom faced yet another recall by opponents who then failed to get the required 1,311,963 petition signatures in time to make the state ballot.

A presidential recall referendum would require a Constitutional Amendment by passage from Congress and state legislators—and approval by 38 states with a seven-year deadline to gather signatures. So prospects for expelling Trump do seem bleak. But all the 27 Amendments once had the same challenges and met them despite geographic distances and lacking today’s electronic communication systems.

But the majority of states passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) within the first year. Trump has three and a half years left to continue wreaking havoc on the American public and exchanging democracy for a dictatorship. If his first six months is any indication of peoples’ reaction to his rule, it brought at least five million angry protesters to the streets in a “No Kings” demonstrations against him a day before his 79th birthday. So consider what his continuing violations of the Constitution and democracy will do to destroy both during this term.

However, a new factor about election numbers can now foretell favorable outcomes if a recall movement gets started:

If the political marker of 3.5 percent of a nation’s voters opposes a dictator, the regime will fold, according to extensive long-term quantitative research noted recently by Harvard University professor Erica Chenoweth . America’s electorate was 154,000,000 in 2024, so 3.5 percent means it would take only 5.4 million voters to win a Constitutional Amendment referendum for recalling Trump.

Another factor is that far more millions would be voting in a Trump recall election than in 2024. For example, those five million No Kings protesters have family and friends who vote. So do those who couldn’t or wouldn’t participate. Then, add Trump’s social and healthcare victims affected by his “Big, Beautiful” budget-cutting bill he just signed into law. Like the 71, 258, 215 currently enrolled in Medicaid who will lose its benefits. Not to mention recipients’ families and friends. The 41 million on Trump’s chopping block for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) certainly would vote for a recall Amendment. So would the 73.9 million receiving Social Security benefits he is threatening. Include, too, the tens of thousands of federal employees (plus family/friends) who have just been fired/laid off by Trump’s hatchet man Elon Musk.

Multiply the total by 3.5 percent.

Republicans in Congress who voted for that bill because of Trumpian and donor threats can count that percentage. If they can’t or won’t, furious and outspoken constituents in town halls or at campaign rallies will awaken them in the months before the 2026 mid-term elections. So will public confrontations of state legislators.

In such a hostile constituent climate, it would seem to be fairly easy for them to ignore heavy pressure by Trump and donors to pass a recall Amendment. He will, of course, veto it, but Congress can override the veto with a two-thirds affirmative vote in both houses (House: 290; Senate: 67). Apply that 3.5 percent to those totals.

Another supportive factor for a recall Amendment is the historical precedent of success by people finally ridding their countries from years of repressive and rapacious rulers. The French did it with revolution and guillotine, beginning in 1789. Our revolution began brewing in 1775 and took eight years of war to free us from Britain’s mad King George III. Both bloody uprisings were inspired and patterned by the achievement of democracy and people’s rights, first won 800 years ago in England. That’s when its barons forced King John to apply the royal seal approving Magna Carta (the Great Charter) June 15, 1215 on Runnymede meadows.

That monumentally important document ended immunity for imperious, narcissistic kings under the centuries-old “Divine Right” policy, starting with the feckless King John’s tyrannical reign (1166-1216). Most of its 63 clauses set out the rights of subjects and kings, established British law, and influenced the authors of both the U.S. Constitution and France’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

John was a pampered, favored youngest son of Henry II and one of four brothers. He inherited a fortune, vast taxable properties in England and whole sections of France. With a lascivious nature, he married twice and had numerous mistresses despite often being away with the army to fight the French from stealing his holdings. His early struggle to seize the throne revealed deviousness, murderous ambition, insecurity, paranoia, physical cowardice—and greed. As a king, he jailed opponents, bullied absolute loyalty from his officials and the army, stole lands from the nobility. Worst of all, he never ceased extorting excessive taxes from the elite, commoners, and the English church.

Sound like a president we know?

The bad years began for King John in 1209. He was briefly excommunicated for opposing Pope Innocent III’s choice of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury. He suspected the candidate’s involvement with the growing unrest of barons and the people. After an attempted assassination in 1212 in the 14th year of his reign of terror, John went after the barons he suspected of the deed. But they had banded together, began drafting Magna Carta (chiefly protecting themselves from future kings), and raised an army against him for a civil war.

Only fear of certain defeat by the barons and a near-empty treasury could have brought a humbled King John to use negotiation to escape Magna Carta’s clauses. He had no intention of obeying them—especially the security clause (61) permitting 25 barons to seize his property and “distrain” him if he disobeyed the charter. He even got the Pope to annul the document a month later. The war ended with John’s death from dysentery the following year. By 1225, Magna Carta was in force.

This extraordinary historical event could now be repeated almost exactly 810 years later, lacking only the same solution: a final uprising of the high and low classes to strip Trump of his office and fortunes by a recall Amendment. It’s not so wild a dream at all.

We don’t have the vast organizational obstacles of the 13th century that took 17 years to put Magna Carta in place. But we do have the same furious energy and zeal of King John’s outraged public to oust a dictator and save the Constitution and democracy.

Consider that some 500 national organizations exist—MoveOn, Indivisable, and SEIU to Win Without War, Greenpeace, Patriotic Millionaires, and ACLU—to set up a nationwide alliance for such a cause.

The speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of the recent No Kings protest against Trump’s dictatorial regime shows what’s possible when a coalition is galvanized for a great historical cause. Its organizers in the 50-50-1 group (“50 states, 50 protests, one movement”), American Opposition, and Indivisible linked 193 powerful progressive “partners” driven by a singleness of purpose: to depose Trump and his regime.

So why not a repeat of this astonishing logistical success for a national recall referendum? Millions of volunteers would be more than willing to knock on doors, do teach-ins and phone-banking, lead rallies and marches, design signs and flyers, write articles, stuff envelopes, send emails and other electronic “reach-outs,”—and contribute funds large and small for expenses.

Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors against the American people will only get worse if we do nothing in the next few weeks. Let’s get to it!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

The United States has an impeachment problem. Impeachment was put into a Constitution that made no mention of, allowance for, or plans to survive the existence of political parties. Presidents are now generally not impeached for any abuse or outrage unless there is one party that doesn’t itself engage in that same abuse or outrage and that party is in the majority in the House. The use of a sex scandal for the impeachment of Bill Clinton was part of the process of destroying the impeachment power, but we’re now probably past sex scandals, for better or worse. We’re reduced to obscure or even fictional offenses, or physical attacks on Congress Members. And even those can be impeachable only when the non-presidential party has a House majority. And even then, the same party would have to have a two-thirds majority in the Senate to get a conviction, since a president’s party’s members will do virtually anything a president commands.

This impeachment problem, unless it is solved, effectively means that a popular nonviolent movement to oust a lawless dictator from the throne on Pennsylvania Avenue must turn out the entire government and start over. The reason the proper course is not the one everyone has been conditioned to mindlessly follow, namely waiting for a distant election, is the same reason impeachment was put into the Constitution: some abuses and outrages should never be tolerated. They do too much massive damage, and they set precedents that are very hard to undo. When Bush-Cheney and then Obama were allowed to finish out and not be removed, warmaking became more acceptable than ever, as did warrantless spying, lawless imprisonment, torture, murder by missile, etc. Criminal thuggery became firmly a policy choice, not an impeachable or prosecutable offense — unless of course you’re not the president. The top impeachable offenses by Bush are in this list of 35. Partway into the Obama presidency, I documented his continuation of 27 of those 35.

The Trump-Biden-Trump era has iced the cake of acceptable and legalistic monstrosities.  In 2019, RootsAction put together a list of 25 articles of impeachment for Trump:

Violation of Constitution on Domestic Emoluments
Violation of Constitution on Foreign Emoluments
Incitement of Violence
Interference With Voting Rights
Discrimination Based On Religion
Illegal War
Illegal Threat of Nuclear War
Abuse of Pardon Power
Obstruction of Justice
Politicizing Prosecutions
Collusion Against the United States with a Foreign Government
Failure to Reasonably Prepare for or Respond to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria
Separating Children and Infants from Families
Illegally Attempting to Influence an Election
Tax Fraud and Public Misrepresentation
Assaulting Freedom of the Press
Supporting a Coup in Venezuela
Unconstitutional Declaration of Emergency
Instructing Border Patrol to Violate the Law
Refusal to Comply With Subpoenas
Declaration of Emergency Without Basis In Order to Violate the Will of Congress
Illegal Proliferation of Nuclear Technology
Illegally Removing the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
Seeking to Use Foreign Governments’ Resources Against Political Rivals
Refusal to Comply with Impeachment Inquiry

One could go on piling up the articles of impeachment or documenting their continuation and expansion. But what’s missing is not the documentation. Here’s a guy who incited violence at his campaign events prior to his first stint on the throne. RootsAction proposed his impeachment for open financial corruption on his first inauguration day. The case was beyond solid, and has been built up ever since. Every weapons shipment for genocide by Biden, Trump, or a harmoniously bipartisan Congress violates numerous U.S. laws. The corruption is gradiose, fantastic, megalithic. The wars, the lies, the kidnappings by masked thugs, the environmental destruction, the promotion of bigotry and hatred — it’s a festival of flagrantly overly justified grounds for removal from office. But what’s missing is the will to make removal happen. On June 24, a huge, happy, bipartisan majority voted not to impeach Trump for making himself a king, just 10 days after huge demonstrations all across the country denouncing Trump for having made himself a king.

I’m afraid of what will happen instead of impeachment. President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. And there is nobility in that idea. But there is no such thing as making nonviolent revolution impossible. And the powers of nonviolent action are virtually unknown in U.S. culture. Mildly objecting to mass murdering foreign people is a lot for us. The notion that we might actually learn from the successes of foreign people could be asking too much. And so the vast panoply of options between demanding impeachment and hitting Capitol Police officers with flag poles may be lost on too many of us. It may be lost on us beyond our ability to recognize the absurd insufficiency of choosing between two disastrous candidates every four years. We may realize what a scam this so-called democracy is, but not realize our latent power to take it over without counterproductive violence. That does not bode well.

• First published at DavidSwanson.org.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by David Swanson.

When a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.

—Declaration of Independence (1776)

We are now struggling to emerge from the wreckage of a constitutional republic, transformed into a kleptocracy (government by thieves), collapsing into kakistocracy (government by the worst), and enforced by a police state algogracy (rule by algorithm).

This week alone, the Trump administration is reportedly erecting protest barricades around the White House, Congress is advancing legislation that favors the wealthy, and President Trump is grandstanding at the opening of a detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Against such a backdrop of government-sponsored cruelty, corruption and shameless profiteering at taxpayer expense, what, to the average American, is freedom in an age when the government plays god—determining who is worthy of rights, who qualifies as a citizen, and who can be discarded without consequence?

What are inalienable rights worth if they can be redefined, delayed, or revoked by executive order?

Frederick Douglass posed a similar challenge more than 170 years ago when he asked, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?”

His question was a searing indictment not just of slavery but of a government that proclaimed liberty while denying it to millions—a hypocrisy that persists in a system still governed by institutions more committed to power than principle.

Every branch of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—has, in one way or another, abandoned its duty to uphold the Constitution. And both parties have prioritized profit and political theater over justice and the rights of the governed.

The founders of this nation believed our rights come from God, not government. That we are born free, not made free by bureaucrats or judges. That among these rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—none can be taken away without destroying the very idea of government by consent.

And yet that is precisely what’s happening.

We now live under a government that has become judge, jury, and executioner—writing its own laws, policing its own limits, and punishing those who object.

This is not what it means to be free.

When presidents rule by fiat, when agencies strip citizenship from naturalized Americans, when police act as both enforcers and executioners, and when courts rubber-stamp the erosion of basic protections, the distinction between a citizen and a subject begins to collapse.

What do inalienable rights mean in a country where:

• Your citizenship can be revoked based solely on the government’s say-so?
• Your freedom can be extinguished by surveillance, asset seizure, or indefinite detention?
• Your property can be taken, your speech censored, and your life extinguished without due process?
• Your life can be ended without a trial, a warning, or a second thought, because the government views you as expendable?

The answer is stark: they mean nothing—unless we defend them.

When the government—whether president, Congress, court, or local bureaucrat—claims the right to determine who does and doesn’t deserve rights, then no one is safe. Individuals become faceless numbers. Human beings become statistics. Lives become expendable. Dignity becomes disposable.

It is a slippery slope—justified in the name of national security, public safety, and the so-called greater good—that leads inevitably to totalitarianism.

Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this devil for far too long, and now, the mask has come off.

This is what authoritarianism looks like in America today.

Imagine living in a country where government agents crash through doors to arrest citizens merely for criticizing government officials. Where police stop and search you on a whim. Where carrying anything that resembles a firearm might get you arrested—or killed. Where surveillance is constant, dissent is criminalized, and loyalty is enforced through fear.

If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong.

But this scenario isn’t new. It’s the same kind of tyranny that drove American colonists to sever ties with Great Britain nearly 250 years ago.

Back then, American colonists lived under the shadow of an imperial power and an early police state that censored their speech, surveilled their movements, taxed their livelihoods, searched their homes without cause, quartered troops in their towns, and punished them for daring to demand liberty.

It was only when the colonists finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant’s fetters.

The Declaration of Independence—drafted by Thomas Jefferson and signed on July 4, 1776, by 56 men who risked everything—was their response. It was more than a list of grievances. It was a document seething with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens, a call to arms against a system that had ceased to represent the people and instead sought to dominate them.

Labeled traitors, these men were charged with treason, a crime punishable by death, because they believed in a radical idea: that all people are created to be free. For some, their acts of rebellion would cost them their homes and their fortunes. For others, it would be the ultimate price—their lives.

Yet even knowing the heavy price they might have to pay, these men dared to speak up. They understood that silence in the face of tyranny is complicity. So they stood together, pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to the cause of freedom.

Even after they had won their independence from Great Britain, these new Americans worked to ensure that the rights they had risked their lives to secure would remain secure for future generations.

The result: our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant to enshrine the liberties they fought for: due process, privacy, free speech, the right to bear arms, and limits on government power.

Now, nearly two and a half centuries later, those freedoms hang by a thread.

Imagine the shock and outrage these 56 men would feel were they to discover that almost 250 years later, the government they had risked their lives to create has been transformed into a militaristic police state in which exercising one’s freedoms—at a minimum, merely questioning a government agent—is often viewed as a flagrant act of defiance.

In fact, had Jefferson and his compatriots written the Declaration of Independence today, they would almost certainly be labeled extremists, placed on government watchlists, targeted by surveillance, and prosecuted as domestic threats.

Read the Declaration of Independence again, and you’ll see the grievances they laid at the feet of King George—unjust laws, militarized policing, surveillance, censorship, and the denial of due process—are the very abuses “we the people” suffer under today.

Had Jefferson written the Declaration about the American police state in 2025, it might have read like a criminal indictment of the crimes perpetrated by a government that:

Polices by fear and violence:

• raiding family homes in the dead of night with SWAT teams that shoot pets and traumatize children;
• targeting vulnerable individuals—including the disabled and neurodivergent—for arrest under pretexts of noncompliance;
• killing unarmed citizens for not complying quickly enough;
• using roadside cavity searches and rectal probes as tools of humiliation and control.

Surveils and represses dissent:

• spying on its own citizens, reading private messages, tracking movements, and mining personal data;
• collecting DNA from innocent Americans and compiling biometric databases without consent;
• tracking drivers with license plate scanners and red-light cameras without due process;
• detaining protesters, journalists, and whistleblowers without trial, often labeling them as domestic threats;
• jailing veterans for criticizing the government;
• placing ordinary Americans on watchlists and labeling dissent as terrorism.

Strips away rights:

• seizing property through civil asset forfeiture without charges or due process;
• building secret prisons and detention centers shielded from judicial oversight;
• stripping citizenship from those it deems disloyal, making constitutional rights conditional;
• criminalizing homelessness, dissent, and disloyalty as pretexts for exclusion and punishment;
• criminalizing routine behavior under vague laws that fuel mass incarceration and overcriminalization.

Concentrates unchecked power in the executive:

• bypassing Congress with executive orders, sidelining the courts, and ruling by decree;
• weaponizing federal agencies to suppress opposition and silence critics;
• treating constitutional limits as optional and the presidency as a personal fiefdom.

These are not isolated abuses.

They are the logical outcomes of a government that has turned against its people.

They reveal a government that has claimed the god-like power to decide who gets rights—and who doesn’t. Who counts as a citizen—and who doesn’t. Who gets to live—and who becomes expendable.

All along the spectrum of life—from the unborn child to the elderly—the government continues to treat individuals endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights as if they are criminals, subhumans, or enemies of the state.

That is not freedom. It is tyranny.

And it must be called by its true name.

The truth is hard, but it must be said: the American police state has grown drunk on power, money, and its own authority.

The irony is almost too painful to articulate.

On the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—a document that rebuked government corruption, tyranny, and injustice—we find ourselves surrounded by its modern-day equivalents.

This week’s spectacle—protest barricades, legislation to benefit the rich, and Trump’s appearance at Alligator Alcatraz, a.k.a. “Gator Gitmo”—shows how completely we have inverted the spirit of 1776.

That a president would celebrate the Fourth of July while inaugurating a modern-day internment camp—far from the reach of the courts or the Constitution—speaks volumes about the state of our nation and the extent to which those in power now glorify the very forms of tyranny the Founders once rose up against.

This is not law and order.

This is political theater, carceral cruelty, and authoritarianism in plain sight.

It is what happens when a nation that once prided itself on liberty now builds monuments to its own fear and domination.

The spectacle doesn’t end with detention camps and barricades. It extends into commerce, corruption, and self-enrichment at the highest levels of power.

President Trump is now marketing his own line of fragrances—a branding exercise so absurd it would be laughable if it weren’t a flagrant violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. His investments are booming. And all across his administration, top officials are shamelessly using public office to line their pockets, even as they push legislation to strip working-class Americans of the most basic benefits and protections, while claiming to be rooting out corruption and inefficiency.

This is not governance. This is kleptocracy—and it is happening in plain sight.

In the nearly 250 years since early Americans declared their independence from Great Britain, “we the people” have worked ourselves back under the tyrant’s thumb—only this time, the tyrant is one of our own making.

The abuses they once suffered under an imperial power haven’t disappeared. They’ve evolved.

We are being robbed blind by political grifters and corporate profiteers. We are being silenced by bureaucrats and blacklists. We are being watched by data miners and digital spies. We are being caged by militarized enforcers with no regard for the Constitution. And we are being ruled by presidents who govern not by law, but by executive decree.

Given the fact that we are a relatively young nation, it hasn’t taken very long for an authoritarian regime to creep into power.

Unfortunately, the bipartisan coup that laid siege to our nation did not happen overnight.

The architecture of oppression—surveillance, militarism, censorship, propaganda—was built slowly, brick by brick, law by law, war by war.

It snuck in under our radar, hiding behind the guise of national security, the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on immigration, political correctness, hate crimes and a host of other official-sounding programs aimed at expanding the government’s power at the expense of individual freedoms.

The building blocks for the bleak future we’re just now getting a foretaste of—police shootings of unarmed citizens, profit-driven prisons, weapons of compliance, a wall-to-wall surveillance state, pre-crime programs, a suspect society, school-to-prison pipelines, militarized police, overcriminalization, SWAT team raids, endless wars, etc.—were put in place by government officials we trusted to look out for our best interests.

The result is an empire in decline and a citizenry under siege.

But if history teaches us anything, it’s that the power of the people—when awakened—is stronger than any empire.

For decades, the Constitution has been our shield against tyranny.

But today, it’s under siege. And now we must be the shield.

Surveillance is expanding. Peaceful dissent is being punished. Judges are being targeted. The presidency is issuing decrees and bypassing the rule of law.

Every institution meant to check power is being tested—and in some cases, broken.

This is the moment to stand in front of the Constitution and defend it.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the fight for freedom is never over. But neither is it lost—so long as we refuse to surrender, refuse to remain silent, and refuse to accept tyranny as the price of safety.

It is time to remember who we are. To reclaim the Constitution. To resist the march toward authoritarianism. And to reassert—boldly and without apology—that our rights are not up for negotiation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

When a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.

—Declaration of Independence (1776)

We are now struggling to emerge from the wreckage of a constitutional republic, transformed into a kleptocracy (government by thieves), collapsing into kakistocracy (government by the worst), and enforced by a police state algogracy (rule by algorithm).

This week alone, the Trump administration is reportedly erecting protest barricades around the White House, Congress is advancing legislation that favors the wealthy, and President Trump is grandstanding at the opening of a detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Against such a backdrop of government-sponsored cruelty, corruption and shameless profiteering at taxpayer expense, what, to the average American, is freedom in an age when the government plays god—determining who is worthy of rights, who qualifies as a citizen, and who can be discarded without consequence?

What are inalienable rights worth if they can be redefined, delayed, or revoked by executive order?

Frederick Douglass posed a similar challenge more than 170 years ago when he asked, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?”

His question was a searing indictment not just of slavery but of a government that proclaimed liberty while denying it to millions—a hypocrisy that persists in a system still governed by institutions more committed to power than principle.

Every branch of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—has, in one way or another, abandoned its duty to uphold the Constitution. And both parties have prioritized profit and political theater over justice and the rights of the governed.

The founders of this nation believed our rights come from God, not government. That we are born free, not made free by bureaucrats or judges. That among these rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—none can be taken away without destroying the very idea of government by consent.

And yet that is precisely what’s happening.

We now live under a government that has become judge, jury, and executioner—writing its own laws, policing its own limits, and punishing those who object.

This is not what it means to be free.

When presidents rule by fiat, when agencies strip citizenship from naturalized Americans, when police act as both enforcers and executioners, and when courts rubber-stamp the erosion of basic protections, the distinction between a citizen and a subject begins to collapse.

What do inalienable rights mean in a country where:

• Your citizenship can be revoked based solely on the government’s say-so?
• Your freedom can be extinguished by surveillance, asset seizure, or indefinite detention?
• Your property can be taken, your speech censored, and your life extinguished without due process?
• Your life can be ended without a trial, a warning, or a second thought, because the government views you as expendable?

The answer is stark: they mean nothing—unless we defend them.

When the government—whether president, Congress, court, or local bureaucrat—claims the right to determine who does and doesn’t deserve rights, then no one is safe. Individuals become faceless numbers. Human beings become statistics. Lives become expendable. Dignity becomes disposable.

It is a slippery slope—justified in the name of national security, public safety, and the so-called greater good—that leads inevitably to totalitarianism.

Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this devil for far too long, and now, the mask has come off.

This is what authoritarianism looks like in America today.

Imagine living in a country where government agents crash through doors to arrest citizens merely for criticizing government officials. Where police stop and search you on a whim. Where carrying anything that resembles a firearm might get you arrested—or killed. Where surveillance is constant, dissent is criminalized, and loyalty is enforced through fear.

If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong.

But this scenario isn’t new. It’s the same kind of tyranny that drove American colonists to sever ties with Great Britain nearly 250 years ago.

Back then, American colonists lived under the shadow of an imperial power and an early police state that censored their speech, surveilled their movements, taxed their livelihoods, searched their homes without cause, quartered troops in their towns, and punished them for daring to demand liberty.

It was only when the colonists finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant’s fetters.

The Declaration of Independence—drafted by Thomas Jefferson and signed on July 4, 1776, by 56 men who risked everything—was their response. It was more than a list of grievances. It was a document seething with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens, a call to arms against a system that had ceased to represent the people and instead sought to dominate them.

Labeled traitors, these men were charged with treason, a crime punishable by death, because they believed in a radical idea: that all people are created to be free. For some, their acts of rebellion would cost them their homes and their fortunes. For others, it would be the ultimate price—their lives.

Yet even knowing the heavy price they might have to pay, these men dared to speak up. They understood that silence in the face of tyranny is complicity. So they stood together, pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to the cause of freedom.

Even after they had won their independence from Great Britain, these new Americans worked to ensure that the rights they had risked their lives to secure would remain secure for future generations.

The result: our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant to enshrine the liberties they fought for: due process, privacy, free speech, the right to bear arms, and limits on government power.

Now, nearly two and a half centuries later, those freedoms hang by a thread.

Imagine the shock and outrage these 56 men would feel were they to discover that almost 250 years later, the government they had risked their lives to create has been transformed into a militaristic police state in which exercising one’s freedoms—at a minimum, merely questioning a government agent—is often viewed as a flagrant act of defiance.

In fact, had Jefferson and his compatriots written the Declaration of Independence today, they would almost certainly be labeled extremists, placed on government watchlists, targeted by surveillance, and prosecuted as domestic threats.

Read the Declaration of Independence again, and you’ll see the grievances they laid at the feet of King George—unjust laws, militarized policing, surveillance, censorship, and the denial of due process—are the very abuses “we the people” suffer under today.

Had Jefferson written the Declaration about the American police state in 2025, it might have read like a criminal indictment of the crimes perpetrated by a government that:

Polices by fear and violence:

• raiding family homes in the dead of night with SWAT teams that shoot pets and traumatize children;
• targeting vulnerable individuals—including the disabled and neurodivergent—for arrest under pretexts of noncompliance;
• killing unarmed citizens for not complying quickly enough;
• using roadside cavity searches and rectal probes as tools of humiliation and control.

Surveils and represses dissent:

• spying on its own citizens, reading private messages, tracking movements, and mining personal data;
• collecting DNA from innocent Americans and compiling biometric databases without consent;
• tracking drivers with license plate scanners and red-light cameras without due process;
• detaining protesters, journalists, and whistleblowers without trial, often labeling them as domestic threats;
• jailing veterans for criticizing the government;
• placing ordinary Americans on watchlists and labeling dissent as terrorism.

Strips away rights:

• seizing property through civil asset forfeiture without charges or due process;
• building secret prisons and detention centers shielded from judicial oversight;
• stripping citizenship from those it deems disloyal, making constitutional rights conditional;
• criminalizing homelessness, dissent, and disloyalty as pretexts for exclusion and punishment;
• criminalizing routine behavior under vague laws that fuel mass incarceration and overcriminalization.

Concentrates unchecked power in the executive:

• bypassing Congress with executive orders, sidelining the courts, and ruling by decree;
• weaponizing federal agencies to suppress opposition and silence critics;
• treating constitutional limits as optional and the presidency as a personal fiefdom.

These are not isolated abuses.

They are the logical outcomes of a government that has turned against its people.

They reveal a government that has claimed the god-like power to decide who gets rights—and who doesn’t. Who counts as a citizen—and who doesn’t. Who gets to live—and who becomes expendable.

All along the spectrum of life—from the unborn child to the elderly—the government continues to treat individuals endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights as if they are criminals, subhumans, or enemies of the state.

That is not freedom. It is tyranny.

And it must be called by its true name.

The truth is hard, but it must be said: the American police state has grown drunk on power, money, and its own authority.

The irony is almost too painful to articulate.

On the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—a document that rebuked government corruption, tyranny, and injustice—we find ourselves surrounded by its modern-day equivalents.

This week’s spectacle—protest barricades, legislation to benefit the rich, and Trump’s appearance at Alligator Alcatraz, a.k.a. “Gator Gitmo”—shows how completely we have inverted the spirit of 1776.

That a president would celebrate the Fourth of July while inaugurating a modern-day internment camp—far from the reach of the courts or the Constitution—speaks volumes about the state of our nation and the extent to which those in power now glorify the very forms of tyranny the Founders once rose up against.

This is not law and order.

This is political theater, carceral cruelty, and authoritarianism in plain sight.

It is what happens when a nation that once prided itself on liberty now builds monuments to its own fear and domination.

The spectacle doesn’t end with detention camps and barricades. It extends into commerce, corruption, and self-enrichment at the highest levels of power.

President Trump is now marketing his own line of fragrances—a branding exercise so absurd it would be laughable if it weren’t a flagrant violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. His investments are booming. And all across his administration, top officials are shamelessly using public office to line their pockets, even as they push legislation to strip working-class Americans of the most basic benefits and protections, while claiming to be rooting out corruption and inefficiency.

This is not governance. This is kleptocracy—and it is happening in plain sight.

In the nearly 250 years since early Americans declared their independence from Great Britain, “we the people” have worked ourselves back under the tyrant’s thumb—only this time, the tyrant is one of our own making.

The abuses they once suffered under an imperial power haven’t disappeared. They’ve evolved.

We are being robbed blind by political grifters and corporate profiteers. We are being silenced by bureaucrats and blacklists. We are being watched by data miners and digital spies. We are being caged by militarized enforcers with no regard for the Constitution. And we are being ruled by presidents who govern not by law, but by executive decree.

Given the fact that we are a relatively young nation, it hasn’t taken very long for an authoritarian regime to creep into power.

Unfortunately, the bipartisan coup that laid siege to our nation did not happen overnight.

The architecture of oppression—surveillance, militarism, censorship, propaganda—was built slowly, brick by brick, law by law, war by war.

It snuck in under our radar, hiding behind the guise of national security, the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on immigration, political correctness, hate crimes and a host of other official-sounding programs aimed at expanding the government’s power at the expense of individual freedoms.

The building blocks for the bleak future we’re just now getting a foretaste of—police shootings of unarmed citizens, profit-driven prisons, weapons of compliance, a wall-to-wall surveillance state, pre-crime programs, a suspect society, school-to-prison pipelines, militarized police, overcriminalization, SWAT team raids, endless wars, etc.—were put in place by government officials we trusted to look out for our best interests.

The result is an empire in decline and a citizenry under siege.

But if history teaches us anything, it’s that the power of the people—when awakened—is stronger than any empire.

For decades, the Constitution has been our shield against tyranny.

But today, it’s under siege. And now we must be the shield.

Surveillance is expanding. Peaceful dissent is being punished. Judges are being targeted. The presidency is issuing decrees and bypassing the rule of law.

Every institution meant to check power is being tested—and in some cases, broken.

This is the moment to stand in front of the Constitution and defend it.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the fight for freedom is never over. But neither is it lost—so long as we refuse to surrender, refuse to remain silent, and refuse to accept tyranny as the price of safety.

It is time to remember who we are. To reclaim the Constitution. To resist the march toward authoritarianism. And to reassert—boldly and without apology—that our rights are not up for negotiation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

— Justice Louis D. Brandeis

While the U.S. wages war abroad—bombing Iran, escalating conflict, and staging a spectacle of power for political gain—a different kind of war is being waged here at home.

This war at home is quieter but no less destructive. The casualties are not in distant deserts or foreign cities. They are our freedoms, our communities, and the Constitution itself.

And the agents of this domestic war? Masked thugs. Unmarked vans. Raids. Roundups.

Detentions without due process. Retaliation against those who dare to question or challenge government authority. People made to disappear into bureaucratic black holes. Fear campaigns targeting immigrant communities and political dissenters alike. Surveillance weaponized to monitor and suppress lawful activity.

Packaged under the guise of national security—as all power grabs tend to be—this government-sanctioned thuggery masquerading as law-and-order is the face of the Trump Administration’s so-called war on illegal immigration.

Don’t fall for the propaganda that claims we’re being overrun by criminals or driven into the poorhouse by undocumented immigrants living off welfare.

The real threat to our way of life comes not from outside invaders, but from within: an unelected, unaccountable enforcement agency operating above the law.

President Trump insists that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is focused on violent criminals, but the facts tell a different story (non-criminal ICE arrests have surged 800% in six months)—and that myth is precisely what enables the erosion of rights for everyone.

By painting enforcement as narrowly targeted, the administration obscures a far broader dragnet that sweeps up legal residents, naturalized citizens, and native-born Americans alike.

What begins with immigrants rarely ends there.

According to the Cato Institute, 65 percent of people taken by ICE had no convictions, and 93 percent had no violent convictions at all.

This isn’t targeted enforcement—it’s indiscriminate purging.

What ICE—an agency that increasingly resembles a modern-day Gestapo—is doing to immigrants today, it can and will do to citizens tomorrow: these are the early warning signs of a system already in motion.

The machinery is in place. The abuses are ongoing. And the constitutional safeguards we rely on are being ignored, dismantled, or bypassed entirely.

When legal residents, naturalized citizens, and native-born Americans are swept up in ICE’s raids, detained without cause, and subjected to treatment that defies every constitutional protection against government overreach, this isn’t about immigration.

It’s not about danger. It’s about power—unchecked and absolute.

This is authoritarianism by design.

Here are just a few examples of how ICE’s reach now extends far beyond a criminal class of undocumented immigrants:

• In Los Angeles, ICE agents detained U.S. citizens Jason Gavidia and Javier Ramirez during mass raids at flea markets—actions condemned by local officials as racial profiling.
• In New York City, ICE arrested mayoral candidate Brad Lander at a courthouse after he questioned the legitimacy of an enforcement action.
• In Arizona, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen with developmental disabilities was held for 10 days without charges.
• In Virginia, naturalized citizen Jensy Machado was handcuffed at gunpoint until officers reviewed his REAL ID.
• In Oregon, ICE agents arrested Moises Sotelo Casas—beloved vineyard manager and community member—outside a church.
• In Tennessee, teen soccer player Emerson Colindres was deported without warning, despite having no criminal background. His community was left reeling.
• ICE has even conducted raids at churches—sanctuaries meant to offer refuge—violating not just constitutional rights but community trust and religious protections.

This pattern of abuse is not accidental.

It reflects a deliberate strategy of fear and domination by ICE agents acting like an occupying army, intent on intimidating the population into submission while the Trump Administration redraws the boundaries of the Constitution for all within America’s borders, citizen and immigrant alike.

This is how you dismantle a constitutional republic: not in one dramatic moment, but through the steady erosion of rights, accountability, and rule of law—first for the marginalized, then for everyone.

When constitutional guarantees become conditional and oversight is systematically evaded, all Americans—regardless of status—stand vulnerable to a regime that governs by fear rather than freedom.

We’ve seen this playbook before.

It’s the same strategy used by fascist regimes to consolidate power—using fear, force, and propaganda to turn public institutions into instruments of oppression.

ICE raids often occur without warrants. Agents frequently detain individuals not charged with any crime. Homes, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and courthouses have all become targets. Agents in plain clothes swarm unsuspecting individuals, arrest them without explanation, and separate families under the pretense of national security. In many cases, masked agents refuse to identify themselves at all—creating a climate of terror where the public cannot distinguish lawful enforcement from lawless abduction.

This is not justice. It is intimidation. And it has become business as usual.

ICE has even begun deputizing local police departments to carry out these raids.

Through an expanded network of partnerships, ICE has turned routine traffic stops into pipelines for deportation. According to the Washington Post, immigrants stopped on the way to volleyball practice, picking up baby formula, or heading to job sites have been detained and, in some cases, sent to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

This is what politicizing and weaponizing local police looks like.

Even members of Congress attempting to exercise constitutional oversight have been turned away from ICE facilities. As the New York Times reported, ICE now claims the authority to “deny a request or otherwise cancel” congressional visits based on vague “operational concerns”—effectively placing its operations beyond democratic scrutiny.

Beyond the high-profile arrests, the abuse runs deeper.

Julio Noriega, a 54-year-old American citizen, was snatched up off the street and detained in Chicago for 10 hours without explanation. Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S.-born citizen, was detained because ICE dismissed his REAL ID as fake. Cary López Alvarado, a pregnant U.S. citizen, was handcuffed and arrested for challenging ICE agents who had followed her fiancé to work. Children, veterans, and immunocompromised individuals have all suffered under ICE’s dragnet.

These are not outliers. They are the product of a system that operates without meaningful checks.

ICE agents are rarely held accountable. Internal investigations are ineffective. Congress has abdicated oversight. Directives from the Trump administration—including those authored by Stephen Miller—have turbocharged deportations and loosened any remaining restraints.

From boots on the ground to bytes in the cloud, ICE’s unchecked power reflects a broader shift toward authoritarianism, fueled by high-tech surveillance, public indifference and minimal judicial oversight. The agency operates a sprawling digital dragnet: facial recognition, license plate readers, cellphone tracking, and partnerships with tech giants like Amazon and Palantir feed massive databases—often without warrants or oversight.

These same tools—hallmarks of a growing surveillance state—are now being quietly repurposed across other federal agencies, setting the stage for an integrated surveillance-policing regime that threatens the constitutional rights of every American.

This isn’t about safety. It’s about control.

These tools aren’t just targeting undocumented immigrants—they’re laying the digital scaffolding for a future in which everyone is watched, scored, and subject to state suspicion.

Quotas over justice. Algorithms over rights.

ICE’s operations have little to do with individualized threat assessments. What drives these raids is not public safety but bureaucratic performance. Field offices are under pressure to meet arrest quotas, creating a system that incentivizes indiscriminate sweeps over focused investigations.

As Jennie Taer writes for the NY Post:

“The Trump administration’s mandate to arrest 3,000 illegal migrants per day is forcing ICE agents to deprioritize going after dangerous criminals and targets with deportation orders, insiders warn. Instead, federal immigration officers are spending more time rounding up people off the streets… Agents are desperate to meet the White House’s high expectations, leading them to leave some dangerous criminal illegal migrants on the streets, and instead look for anyone they can get their hands on at the local Home Depot or bus stop.”

Predictive algorithms and flawed databases replace constitutional suspicion with digital hunches, turning enforcement into a numbers game and transforming communities into statistical targets.

Constitutional safeguards are being replaced by digital suspicion.

We now live in a nation where lawful dissent—especially from immigrants or those perceived as outsiders—can place someone under state suspicion. The line between investigation and persecution has been erased.

Fear needs fuel.

And ICE finds it in propaganda: just as the Gestapo used propaganda to justify its cruelty, ICE relies on the language of fear and division. When the government labels people “invaders,” “animals,” or “thugs,” it strips them of humanity—and strips us of our conscience.

This rhetoric serves to distract and divide. It normalizes abuse. And it ensures that, once targeted, no one is safe.

The construction of a new ICE mega-prison in Florida—nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” for its proposed moat and remote location—serves as a grotesque symbol of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation agenda: out of sight, beyond accountability, and surrounded by literal and bureaucratic barriers to due process.

And Trump’s shifting stance on industries that rely on migrant labor—one moment threatening crackdowns, the next signaling exemptions for hotels, farms, and construction—reveals what this campaign is really about: not security, but political theater.

It’s not about danger; it’s about dominance.

But the crisis isn’t just rhetorical. It’s systemic. Agents are trained to obey, not to question. Immunity shields misconduct. Whistleblowers are punished. Watchdogs are ignored. Courts too often defer to executive power.

This is not law enforcement—it is authoritarian enforcement.

And it’s not limited to immigrants. It’s creeping into every corner of American life.

When a government can detain its own citizens without due process, punish political dissent, and target individuals for what they believe or how they look, it is no longer governed by law. It is governed by fear.

The Constitution was designed to prevent this. But rights are meaningless when no one is held accountable for violating them.

That is why the solution must go beyond the ballot box.

We must dismantle the machinery of oppression that enables ICE to act as judge, jury, and jailer.

Congress must ban warrantless raids, end predictive profiling, and prohibit mass surveillance. It must enforce real oversight and revoke the legal shields that insulate abusive agents from consequences.

We must reassert the rule of law, not just through legislation, but through a cultural recommitment to constitutional values. That includes transparency, demilitarization, and equal protection for all—citizens and non-citizens alike.

This is not just a fight over immigration policy. It’s a battle for the soul of our nation.

ICE is not the exception. It is the prototype.

As I make clear in my books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the same blueprint is being applied across the federal landscape: to protest monitoring, dissent suppression, and data-mined predictive policing.

If we fail to dismantle the ICE model, we normalize it—and risk reproducing it everywhere else.

ICE has become the beta test—perfecting the merger of technology, policing, and executive power that could soon define American governance as a whole.

Make no mistake: when fear becomes law, freedom is the casualty.

If we don’t act soon, we may find that the Constitution is the next to be detained.

James Madison warned that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

When ICE acts as enforcer, jailer, and judge for the president, those fears are no longer theoretical—they are the daily reality for countless people within U.S. borders.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Let us be very clear: the Trump Administration does not want citizenship to be a right. They want it to be a reward for the loyal, the rich, or the compliant.

To this end, President Trump’s bid to unilaterally end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants is a modern-day Trojan horse masquerading as a concern for national security.

This is not about protecting America, but redefining America from the top down.

That redefinition is already underway.

The Trump Administration’s plans to sell $5 million “gold cards” to wealthy investors as a path to citizenship and consideration of a pitch for a reality show that would “pit immigrants against each other for a chance at a fast-tracked path to citizenship” are not just absurd—they’re obscene.

They reveal a government willing to reduce constitutional rights to commodities, auctioned off to the highest bidder or trivialized for ratings.

This governing by performance turns a constitutional guarantee into a privilege for sale or spectacle. It’s part of a calculated effort to recast citizenship as conditional, transactional, and exclusionary. Whether by wealth, loyalty, or ideology, this emerging framework decides who is “deserving” of rights—and who is not.

It is fear-based nationalism that disguises a deeper threat: the normalization of government power to decide who is entitled to rights and who is not.

We see this in action with the Trump Administration’s stance on childbirth and citizenship.

It’s a contradiction: while the Trump Administration decries falling birthrates and offers financial incentives for childbirth, it demonizes birthright citizenship for the very communities that are actually having children and contributing significantly to the economy without any guarantee of anything in return.

Yet this brazenly hypocritical double standard is just a distraction, part of the political theater designed to pit Americans against each other while the power brokers rewrite the rules behind closed doors.

The real power play rests in the Trump Administration’s efforts to gut the Fourteenth Amendment, sidestep the courts, and redefine who qualifies as American—all by executive fiat.

Redefining citizenship by executive order is not governance. It is a bloodless coup—one that overthrows a constitutional republic founded on the rule of law—to reconfigure the face of the nation in the image of the unelected Deep State and its machinery of control.

Enacted in the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to ensure that all persons born on U.S. soil would be recognized as full citizens—a direct rebuke to the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, which held that Black Americans could not be citizens. Its language is unambiguous: all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens.

This principle was upheld by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which affirmed that children born in the U.S. to foreign nationals are entitled to citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.

That precedent still stands.

Yet that legacy—of constitutional protections prevailing over prejudice—is now at risk.

Some have recently argued—including the Trump Administration in legal filings—that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended solely to grant citizenship to the children of former slaves after the Civil War, and thus no longer applies to children born to undocumented immigrants. But if that logic is taken seriously, it undermines the citizenship of everyone born in America.

After all, if the government—not the Constitution—gets to decide who qualifies as a citizen, then no one’s status is secure.

If your citizenship depends on government approval, your rights aren’t inalienable—they’re transitory privileges.

That’s not just bad law. It’s tyranny in the making.

Despite Trump’s attempts to rule by fiat and executive order, presidents cannot pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they will honor.

Yet perhaps even more concerning than Trump’s war on birthright citizenship itself is the administration’s underlying legal strategy to test the limits of judicial authority—specifically, to restrict the power of federal district courts to issue nationwide injunctions against unconstitutional actions.

You see, this is not just an immigration battle, nor is it only a challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment.

It is a calculated attempt to strip the judiciary of its ability to check executive abuse and a full-frontal assault on the judiciary’s role as a co-equal branch of government entrusted with interpreting the law and defending individual rights against majoritarian overreach.

If successful, it would mark a seismic shift in the balance of powers, subordinating the courts to the whims of the executive branch.

As James Madison wrote, the accumulation of all powers in the same hands may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

The same unchecked power used to deny citizenship to the children of immigrants today could just as easily be turned against you to strip you of your citizenship, based on your political beliefs, religious views, or failure to toe the party line.

This is the danger the Founders warned against: a government that grants rights only to the loyal, the favored, or the compliant.

And make no mistake: what we’re witnessing is another point along the slippery slope of the effort to recast birthright citizenship—not as a right—but as a privilege, subject to political approval and ideological purity tests.

In this emerging framework, being born in America is no longer enough—you must also prove your worth, allegiance, and compliance.

Worse still, this would set a precedent that constitutional rights can be rewritten by executive whim, paving the way for even greater erosions of liberty.

If we do not hold the line here, this erosion of liberty will only accelerate.

Birthright citizenship is more than a legal technicality. It is a cornerstone of American democracy and equality. The attempt to destroy it through executive power is a direct threat to the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, and the future of liberty in America.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if the government can erase one constitutional right today, it can erase another tomorrow.

This is exactly why the Founders drafted a Constitution that limits power and protects individuals, not just the popular or the powerful.

Once we allow the government to decide who is “deserving” of rights, we’ve already surrendered the rule of law. What remains is not a constitutional republic, but an empire of arbitrary rule.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Let us be very clear: the Trump Administration does not want citizenship to be a right. They want it to be a reward for the loyal, the rich, or the compliant.

To this end, President Trump’s bid to unilaterally end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants is a modern-day Trojan horse masquerading as a concern for national security.

This is not about protecting America, but redefining America from the top down.

That redefinition is already underway.

The Trump Administration’s plans to sell $5 million “gold cards” to wealthy investors as a path to citizenship and consideration of a pitch for a reality show that would “pit immigrants against each other for a chance at a fast-tracked path to citizenship” are not just absurd—they’re obscene.

They reveal a government willing to reduce constitutional rights to commodities, auctioned off to the highest bidder or trivialized for ratings.

This governing by performance turns a constitutional guarantee into a privilege for sale or spectacle. It’s part of a calculated effort to recast citizenship as conditional, transactional, and exclusionary. Whether by wealth, loyalty, or ideology, this emerging framework decides who is “deserving” of rights—and who is not.

It is fear-based nationalism that disguises a deeper threat: the normalization of government power to decide who is entitled to rights and who is not.

We see this in action with the Trump Administration’s stance on childbirth and citizenship.

It’s a contradiction: while the Trump Administration decries falling birthrates and offers financial incentives for childbirth, it demonizes birthright citizenship for the very communities that are actually having children and contributing significantly to the economy without any guarantee of anything in return.

Yet this brazenly hypocritical double standard is just a distraction, part of the political theater designed to pit Americans against each other while the power brokers rewrite the rules behind closed doors.

The real power play rests in the Trump Administration’s efforts to gut the Fourteenth Amendment, sidestep the courts, and redefine who qualifies as American—all by executive fiat.

Redefining citizenship by executive order is not governance. It is a bloodless coup—one that overthrows a constitutional republic founded on the rule of law—to reconfigure the face of the nation in the image of the unelected Deep State and its machinery of control.

Enacted in the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to ensure that all persons born on U.S. soil would be recognized as full citizens—a direct rebuke to the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, which held that Black Americans could not be citizens. Its language is unambiguous: all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens.

This principle was upheld by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which affirmed that children born in the U.S. to foreign nationals are entitled to citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.

That precedent still stands.

Yet that legacy—of constitutional protections prevailing over prejudice—is now at risk.

Some have recently argued—including the Trump Administration in legal filings—that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended solely to grant citizenship to the children of former slaves after the Civil War, and thus no longer applies to children born to undocumented immigrants. But if that logic is taken seriously, it undermines the citizenship of everyone born in America.

After all, if the government—not the Constitution—gets to decide who qualifies as a citizen, then no one’s status is secure.

If your citizenship depends on government approval, your rights aren’t inalienable—they’re transitory privileges.

That’s not just bad law. It’s tyranny in the making.

Despite Trump’s attempts to rule by fiat and executive order, presidents cannot pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they will honor.

Yet perhaps even more concerning than Trump’s war on birthright citizenship itself is the administration’s underlying legal strategy to test the limits of judicial authority—specifically, to restrict the power of federal district courts to issue nationwide injunctions against unconstitutional actions.

You see, this is not just an immigration battle, nor is it only a challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment.

It is a calculated attempt to strip the judiciary of its ability to check executive abuse and a full-frontal assault on the judiciary’s role as a co-equal branch of government entrusted with interpreting the law and defending individual rights against majoritarian overreach.

If successful, it would mark a seismic shift in the balance of powers, subordinating the courts to the whims of the executive branch.

As James Madison wrote, the accumulation of all powers in the same hands may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

The same unchecked power used to deny citizenship to the children of immigrants today could just as easily be turned against you to strip you of your citizenship, based on your political beliefs, religious views, or failure to toe the party line.

This is the danger the Founders warned against: a government that grants rights only to the loyal, the favored, or the compliant.

And make no mistake: what we’re witnessing is another point along the slippery slope of the effort to recast birthright citizenship—not as a right—but as a privilege, subject to political approval and ideological purity tests.

In this emerging framework, being born in America is no longer enough—you must also prove your worth, allegiance, and compliance.

Worse still, this would set a precedent that constitutional rights can be rewritten by executive whim, paving the way for even greater erosions of liberty.

If we do not hold the line here, this erosion of liberty will only accelerate.

Birthright citizenship is more than a legal technicality. It is a cornerstone of American democracy and equality. The attempt to destroy it through executive power is a direct threat to the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, and the future of liberty in America.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if the government can erase one constitutional right today, it can erase another tomorrow.

This is exactly why the Founders drafted a Constitution that limits power and protects individuals, not just the popular or the powerful.

Once we allow the government to decide who is “deserving” of rights, we’ve already surrendered the rule of law. What remains is not a constitutional republic, but an empire of arbitrary rule.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Let us be very clear: the Trump Administration does not want citizenship to be a right. They want it to be a reward for the loyal, the rich, or the compliant.

To this end, President Trump’s bid to unilaterally end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants is a modern-day Trojan horse masquerading as a concern for national security.

This is not about protecting America, but redefining America from the top down.

That redefinition is already underway.

The Trump Administration’s plans to sell $5 million “gold cards” to wealthy investors as a path to citizenship and consideration of a pitch for a reality show that would “pit immigrants against each other for a chance at a fast-tracked path to citizenship” are not just absurd—they’re obscene.

They reveal a government willing to reduce constitutional rights to commodities, auctioned off to the highest bidder or trivialized for ratings.

This governing by performance turns a constitutional guarantee into a privilege for sale or spectacle. It’s part of a calculated effort to recast citizenship as conditional, transactional, and exclusionary. Whether by wealth, loyalty, or ideology, this emerging framework decides who is “deserving” of rights—and who is not.

It is fear-based nationalism that disguises a deeper threat: the normalization of government power to decide who is entitled to rights and who is not.

We see this in action with the Trump Administration’s stance on childbirth and citizenship.

It’s a contradiction: while the Trump Administration decries falling birthrates and offers financial incentives for childbirth, it demonizes birthright citizenship for the very communities that are actually having children and contributing significantly to the economy without any guarantee of anything in return.

Yet this brazenly hypocritical double standard is just a distraction, part of the political theater designed to pit Americans against each other while the power brokers rewrite the rules behind closed doors.

The real power play rests in the Trump Administration’s efforts to gut the Fourteenth Amendment, sidestep the courts, and redefine who qualifies as American—all by executive fiat.

Redefining citizenship by executive order is not governance. It is a bloodless coup—one that overthrows a constitutional republic founded on the rule of law—to reconfigure the face of the nation in the image of the unelected Deep State and its machinery of control.

Enacted in the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to ensure that all persons born on U.S. soil would be recognized as full citizens—a direct rebuke to the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, which held that Black Americans could not be citizens. Its language is unambiguous: all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens.

This principle was upheld by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which affirmed that children born in the U.S. to foreign nationals are entitled to citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.

That precedent still stands.

Yet that legacy—of constitutional protections prevailing over prejudice—is now at risk.

Some have recently argued—including the Trump Administration in legal filings—that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended solely to grant citizenship to the children of former slaves after the Civil War, and thus no longer applies to children born to undocumented immigrants. But if that logic is taken seriously, it undermines the citizenship of everyone born in America.

After all, if the government—not the Constitution—gets to decide who qualifies as a citizen, then no one’s status is secure.

If your citizenship depends on government approval, your rights aren’t inalienable—they’re transitory privileges.

That’s not just bad law. It’s tyranny in the making.

Despite Trump’s attempts to rule by fiat and executive order, presidents cannot pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they will honor.

Yet perhaps even more concerning than Trump’s war on birthright citizenship itself is the administration’s underlying legal strategy to test the limits of judicial authority—specifically, to restrict the power of federal district courts to issue nationwide injunctions against unconstitutional actions.

You see, this is not just an immigration battle, nor is it only a challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment.

It is a calculated attempt to strip the judiciary of its ability to check executive abuse and a full-frontal assault on the judiciary’s role as a co-equal branch of government entrusted with interpreting the law and defending individual rights against majoritarian overreach.

If successful, it would mark a seismic shift in the balance of powers, subordinating the courts to the whims of the executive branch.

As James Madison wrote, the accumulation of all powers in the same hands may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

The same unchecked power used to deny citizenship to the children of immigrants today could just as easily be turned against you to strip you of your citizenship, based on your political beliefs, religious views, or failure to toe the party line.

This is the danger the Founders warned against: a government that grants rights only to the loyal, the favored, or the compliant.

And make no mistake: what we’re witnessing is another point along the slippery slope of the effort to recast birthright citizenship—not as a right—but as a privilege, subject to political approval and ideological purity tests.

In this emerging framework, being born in America is no longer enough—you must also prove your worth, allegiance, and compliance.

Worse still, this would set a precedent that constitutional rights can be rewritten by executive whim, paving the way for even greater erosions of liberty.

If we do not hold the line here, this erosion of liberty will only accelerate.

Birthright citizenship is more than a legal technicality. It is a cornerstone of American democracy and equality. The attempt to destroy it through executive power is a direct threat to the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, and the future of liberty in America.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if the government can erase one constitutional right today, it can erase another tomorrow.

This is exactly why the Founders drafted a Constitution that limits power and protects individuals, not just the popular or the powerful.

Once we allow the government to decide who is “deserving” of rights, we’ve already surrendered the rule of law. What remains is not a constitutional republic, but an empire of arbitrary rule.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

So: on the taxes side, Trump wants increases on the poor and decreases on the rich; and, on the spending side, he wants spending increases on the military, and spending decreases on everything else.

If you want to see the MSNBC News report, click here; and, if you want to see the analysis that I did on Trump’s proposed federal budget, click here.

A further indication of Trump’s priorities as to how he intends to spend U.S. taxpayers’ dollars was provided also on May 17, at The Arab Weekly, headlining “US said to be developing ‘a plan’ to move one million Palestinians to Libya: In exchange for resettling the Palestinians, the administration would release to Libya billions of dollars of funds.” Some important background on why Palestinians refuse to relocate out of Palestine, is that any who do, will thereby lose their legal right of return because that territory will then be taken by Israel and resettled by Zionist Jews, so that the result would then be a total defeat of the Palestinians by Israel — all of their legal rights will have been lost. And whatever they might ‘gain’ would be at gunpoint — NOT as part of any authentic deal that they had participated in. (And, indeed, the recipients of those American taxpayers’ billions of dollars will have been NOT any Palestinians, but, instead, whatever Libyan ‘government’ would be agreeing to accept the Gazans.) And then, that would be a million Gazans whom Netanyahu won’t need to slaughter in order for Trump and his friends to be able to build their hotels and resorts on the Mediterranean Sea, at the sandy beaches which had formerly been the Gaza beachfront of Palestine.

According to the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2), all proposed international agreements, or “treaties,” that the U.S. Government joins, have first been passed by a two-thirds majority of the U.S. Senate. However, ever since 1974, that provision of the U.S. Constitution has routinely been violated. (It’s done on the theory that if the Executive and the Legislative branches both want to violate it, then the treaty will be simply relabeled a “congressional-executive agreement” — CEA) — which is negotiated between those two Branches and approved not by any two-thirds vote, but only by a 50% majority in both Houses, just like any regular law does that gets to a President’s desk for his/her signature. This verbal trick against the Founders’ intention when they wrote the Constitution, makes far easier for America’s billionaires to get the treaties that they want. The U.S. has had a traitorous Government like this ever since 1945, when the Declaration-of-War clause became no longer functional — and thus the military-industrial complex started to rule the U.S. Government — which also was achieved by means of a form of CEA.)

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.

Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.

Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.

Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.

Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.

Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.

Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.

Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.

Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.

Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.

Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.

In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.

Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?

For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.

“We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.

Trump may have contributed to this revival in constitutional awareness, but as we warn in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the challenge isn’t just knowing our rights—it’s defending them, before they’re gone for good.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.

Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.

Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.

Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.

Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.

Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.

Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.

Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.

Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.

Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.

Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.

In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.

Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?

For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.

“We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.

Trump may have contributed to this revival in constitutional awareness, but as we warn in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the challenge isn’t just knowing our rights—it’s defending them, before they’re gone for good.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Kristen Welker: Your secretary of state says everyone who’s here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr. President?

President Donald Trump: I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.

Kristen Welker: Well, the Fifth Amendment says as much.

President Donald Trump: I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials. We have thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.

Kristen Welker: But is — 

President Donald Trump: Some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth. And I was elected to get them the hell out of here and the courts are holding me from doing it.

Kristen Welker: But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?

President Donald Trump: I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said. What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said. They have a different interpretation.

Kristen Welker: Is anyone in your administration right now in contact with El Salvador about returning Abrego Garcia to the United States?

She abandoned the matter, though it is the most important matter that any U.S. citizen ought to consider regarding the President; and, so, continuing any further with her canned list of questions there, was displaying her incompetence. For example, she could have asked him, “What did you twice swear to as you took the Presidential Oath of Office?,” but chose not to. She could have asked him “Why do you need to be told this by your lawyers, though it’s right there in the Oath that you twice swore to?” But she chose not to.

On May 11 (exactly a week later), Politico headlined “Hill leaders question Trump’s attempted Library of Congress takeover.” It IS the library of Congress; it is part of the Legislative Branch, not of the Executive Branch; and, so, it is controlled by the Congress if America still has a Constitutional Government. But, according to Politico’s report, this is merely a political squable between all Democrats, on the one hand, versus almost all Republicans, on the other. “Congressional Democrats have castigated Trump’s moves at the library and have called for Congress to end the president’s power to nominate the top librarian.” However, the real question here is not “the president’s power to nominate the top librarian.” It is instead whether the Congress will uphold the Constitution by slamming down, with at least near unanimity, the President’s ability to hire or fire anyone to act in that capacity WITHOUT A PRIOR congressional vote on any such decision.

Maybe it is not ONLY the President who is spitting upon the U.S. Constitution, but the members of Congress also. The congressional oath of office is:

“I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, …”

Is “mental reservation or purpose of evasions” what the people who voted for such traitors had voted for? This is why America has been proven, time and again (at least after 1980) to be a dictatorship, ruled by its political megadonors, who always get their ways, while the public do not.

Has the rot in Washington reached so deep that it IS the Government? Apparently so.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

Listen now · 8:03

Never forget the evil done to the United States when Biden pardoned an accomplice to mass murder deeply involved in both the creation of the COVID-19 virus and bio-weapons development. Speculations surround his most likely profiteering from the various “pandemics” over the years, and the sudden jump in his family net worth after leaving Federal employment.

To quote:

“A pardon for ANY OFFENSES AGAINST THE UNITED STATES.”

Think about that. The actual text of the pardon reads:

I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, …

HAVE GRANTED UNTO DR. ANTHONY S. FAUCI A FULL AND UNCONDITIONAL PARDON FOR ANY OFFENSES against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President.”

Although many scholars believe that President Biden’s autopen signature and lack of cognitive function make the document invalid and that President Trump could invalidate the pardon with an executive order, I am not so sure that it would stand up in a court of law. Presidents signing with autopens or delegating the signing to subordinates has long been an accepted practice since Thomas Jefferson.

Biden was never declared unfit for office while serving, so this is also unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny. It’s worth a try, though, I suppose.

The big legal issue with this pardon is that it is for crimes not named.

The Constitution addresses presidential pardons in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, known as the Pardon Clause. The exact wording is:

“Article II, Section 2, Clause 1:

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

Does the wording above mean that a president can give a blanket pardon for any offenses against the United States, or do the offenses have to be named?

The most notable example of a blanket pardon is President Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford granted Nixon “a full, free and absolute pardon… for all offenses against the United States which he… has committed or may have committed or taken part in” during his presidency. This pardon did not enumerate particular offenses. This blanket pardon was never challenged in a court of law. Therefore, a precedent was not set by the courts.

Some like to point to President Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon for Vietnam-era draft evaders as a precedent. However, that pardon specified a category of offense and was not a blanket pardon for crimes not enumerated. That said, this pardon was also never challenged in a court of law.

As neither case was challenged in a court of law, many legal scholars still debate whether a pardon must specify offenses in detail. It seems to me that now is the time to question whether a blanket pardon for all crimes not enumerated reflects the framers’ intent when they wrote the Constitution. Of course, another, more straightforward solution would be for Congress to pass a law articulating what that phrase actually means. However, it is still up to the Supreme Court to determine the literal meaning of the Constitution.

This principle was solidified in Marbury v. Madison (1803), which affirmed that “it is the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is”. While Congress’s interpretations can shape constitutional discussions and legislative actions, when the Constitution lacks clarity, the courts—particularly the Supreme Court—ultimately determine the meaning of constitutional phrases.

That said, there may be an easier route to prosecute Anthony Fauci.

The DOJ can work with state prosecutors to uncover crimes. If the DOJ, during a joint investigation, finds evidence of a crime that has been pardoned federally, that evidence can still be shared with state prosecutors. State authorities may use that evidence to pursue state charges, as the presidential pardon does not extend to state offenses.

So, even if a presidential pardon blocks federal prosecution for the pardoned acts but does not shield the person from state prosecution, the DOJ can share evidence with state prosecutors if the conduct violates state law.

The DOJ can investigate and acquire federal documents related to monetary misconduct, ethical breaches, and even manslaughter, which can then be shared with state attorneys general and prosecutors.

Furthermore, that evidence could be shared with other governments.

A final note: the COVIDcrisis made many people rich; they used psychological bioterrorism to scare government officials into reacting in ways that benefited those parties significantly.

Yes, there is no debate that the COVID-19 crisis triggered what many analysts and organizations describe as the largest upward transfer of wealth in modern history.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States saw a dramatic upward transfer of wealth, primarily benefiting billionaires and the wealthiest households:

• Billionaire Wealth Surge: U.S. billionaires’ combined wealth jumped from $2.9 trillion in March 2020 to $4.7 trillion by July 2021-a gain of $1.8 trillion, or about 62% 1, 2, 3. By early 2023, this growth reached $1.7 trillion, with the nation’s roughly 700 billionaires holding more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans combined 4.
• New Billionaires: The number of U.S. billionaires increased, with dozens joining the ranks during the pandemic 5.
• Wealth Gap: While the typical American household’s net worth increased (partly due to stimulus payments and higher home values), richer households gained far more-adding about $172,000 to their net worth from 2019 to 2021, compared to just $500 for poorer households 6. The richest 25% of households still held over 80% of the nation’s wealth 6.
• Inequality Worsened: The share of national wealth owned by the top 1% continued to rise, reaching around 45%, while the bottom 50% received just 10% of total income 7.

In summary:
The pandemic accelerated and magnified existing inequalities, with America’s wealthiest corporations, individuals, and households capturing a disproportionate share of the economic gains while millions faced job losses and hardship. This dramatic shift was driven by rising asset prices, stock market gains, and policy responses that disproportionately benefited those who already held significant wealth, deepening the divide between the richest Americans and everyone else.

Conclusion:
The pandemic increased billionaire and millionaire wealth at unprecedented rates and deepened inequality in the United States, marking it as a period of historic upward wealth transfer.

Fauci is the figurehead; he must be brought to justice, as must the other public officials, scientists, and physicians who profited enormously from the lies and half-truths.

But in the end – many people and institutions need to be brought to justice for the damages done to the American people. It is the job of the FBI and the DOJ to determine how this upward money transfer happened in the United States during the COVIDcrisis and who benefited via illegal means. This includes government officials, politicians, scientists, big pharma, and hospital systems that have profited enormously. Which government officials wrote the policies that aided and abetted this upward transfer of wealth and why?

This can not be swept under the rug as just another F/U by big government.

We, the people, deserve answers.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Malone.

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle.
—James Otis, Revolutionary War activist, on the Writs of Assistance, 1761

What the Founders rebelled against—armed government agents invading homes without cause—we are now being told to accept in the so-called name of law and order.

Imagine it: it’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is asleep. Suddenly, your front door is splintered by battering rams. Shadowy figures flood your home, screaming orders, pointing guns, threatening violence. You and your children are dragged out into the night—barefoot, in your underwear, in the rain.

Your home is torn apart, your valuables seized, and your sense of safety demolished.

But this isn’t a robbery by lawless criminals.

This is what terror policing looks like in Trump’s America: raids by night, flashbangs at dawn, mistaken identities, and shattered lives.

On April 24, 2025, in Oklahoma City, 20 heavily armed federal agents from ICE, the FBI, and DHS kicked in the door of a home where a woman and her three daughters—all American citizens—were sleeping. They were forced out of bed at gunpoint and made to wait in the rain while agents ransacked the house, confiscating their belongings.

It was the wrong house and the wrong family.

There were no apologies. No compensation. No accountability.

This is the new face of American policing, and it’s about to get so much worse thanks to President Trump’s latest executive order, which aims to eliminate federal oversight and empower local law enforcement to act with impunity.

Titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” the executive order announced on April 28, 2025, removes restraints on police power, offers enhanced federal protections for officers accused of misconduct, expands access to military-grade equipment, and nullifies key oversight provisions from prior reform efforts.

Trump’s supporters have long praised his efforts to deregulate business and government under the slogan of “no handcuffs.” But when that logic is applied to law enforcement, the result isn’t freedom—it’s unchecked power.

What it really means is no restraints on police power, while the rest of us are left with fewer rights, less recourse, and a constitution increasingly ignored behind the barrel of a gun.

This isn’t just a political shift. It’s a constitutional unraveling that hands law enforcement a blank check: more weapons, more power, and fewer consequences.

The result is not safety; it’s state-sanctioned violence.

It’s a future in which no home is safe, no knock is required, and no officer is ever held accountable.

That future is already here.

We’ve entered an era in which federal agents can destroy your home, traumatize your family, and violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity. And the courts have said: that’s just how it works.

These rulings reflect a growing doctrine of unaccountability enshrined by the courts and now supercharged by the Trump administration.

Trump wants to give police even more immunity, ushering in a new era of police brutality, lawlessness, and the reckless deployment of lethal force on unarmed civilians.

This is how the rights of ordinary Americans get trampled under the boots of unchecked power.

There was a time in America when a person’s home was a sanctuary, protected by the Fourth Amendment from unlawful searches and seizures.

That promise is dead.

We have returned to the era of the King’s Writ—blanket search powers once used by British soldiers to invade colonial homes without cause. As James Otis warned in 1761, such writs “annihilate the privilege” of privacy and due process, allowing agents of the state to enter homes “when they please.”

Trump’s new executive order revives this tyranny in modern form: armored vehicles, night raids, no-knock warrants, federal immunity. It empowers police to act without restraint, and it rewards those who brutalize with impunity.

Even more alarming, the order sets the stage for future legislation that could effectively codify qualified immunity into federal law, making it nearly impossible for victims of police violence to sue.

This is how constitutional protections are dismantled—not in one dramatic blow, but in a thousand raids, a thousand broken doors, a thousand courts that look the other way.

Let’s not pretend we’re safe. Who will protect us from the police when the police have become the law unto themselves?

The war on the American people is no longer metaphorical.

Government agents can now kick in your door without warning, shoot your dog, point a gun at your children, and suffer no legal consequences—so long as they claim it was a “reasonable” mistake. They are judge, jury, and executioner.

With Trump’s new order, the architecture of a police state is no longer theoretical. It is being built in real time. It is being normalized.

Nowhere is this threat more visible than in the unholy alliance between ICE and militarized police forces, a convergence of two of the most dangerous arms of the modern security state.

Together, they’ve created a government apparatus that acts first and justifies itself later, if at all. And it runs counter to everything the Bill of Rights was designed to prevent: punishment without trial, surveillance without suspicion, and power without accountability.

When ICE agents armed with military-grade equipment conduct predawn raids alongside SWAT teams, with little to no accountability, the result is not public safety. It is state terror. And it’s exactly the kind of unchecked power the Constitution was written to prevent.

The Constitution is intended to serve as a shield, particularly the Fourth Amendment, which safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures. But in this new reality, the government has nullified that shield.

All of America is fast becoming a Constitution-free zone.

The Founders were aware of the dangers of unchecked power. That’s why they gave us the Fourth Amendment. But rights are only as strong as the public’s willingness to defend them.

If we allow the government to turn our homes into war zones—if we continue to reward police for lawless raids, ignore the courts for rubber-stamping abuse, and cheer political leaders who promise “no more handcuffs”—we will lose the last refuge of freedom: the right to be left alone.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Constitution cannot protect you if the government no longer follows it—and if the courts no longer enforce it.

The knock may never come again. Just the crash of a door. The sound of boots. And the silence that follows.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The Supreme Court’s  unanimous ruling April 10, however, supported a lower court’s order that the Trump regime must facilitate Garcia’s “release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”  And to report “the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.” Part of that ruling, added by three justices , was providing Garcia with the U.S. Constitution’s due-process right to determine his innocence by trial. They dismissed Trump’s legal team’s two arguments as “plainly wrong.”

Added to the mix was El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, visiting Trump, who chimed in to state he didn’t “have the power to return him to the United States.” A preposterous claim for a dictator.

Such Trump-type arguments also fly in the face of presidential precedents set in American history, beginning with George Washington  in dealing with the Barbary pirates in the 1790s off the North African coast. They would capture merchant ships carrying American goods and imprison the crews unless “tributes” were paid by the young U.S. government.  Washington had learned his lesson. So early in his second term, he sent a three-man diplomatic delegation to negotiate tribute amounts to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli to successfully free 83 American sailors. Such bribery certainly was presidential interference in foreign-country affairs. In different ways, it still is.

How does that differ in principle from U.S. interference in foreign countries and Trump paying a $6 million tribute  to Bukele to imprison 238 men , mostly Venezuelans , all denied due process about gang membership? He plans to send more, even U.S. citizens .

A legal reprise of the Garcia case reveals why he never should have been among those—also denied due process—thus, illegally flown to El Salvador imprisonment.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was never a gang member in his native El Salvador or the U.S. In sworn testimony and documentary evidence given to a Maryland federal court, he and his family were constantly targeted for extortion by a Barrio-18 gang in El Salvador because of their successful food business in Los Nogales. When its leaders tried to recruit Kilmer’s older brother, the family sent him to relatives in Maryland and to eventual U.S. citizenship. When the gang then demanded their 16-year-old Kilmar or they would harm the entire family. They paid up—but sent him to the Maryland family to seek asylum from that gang.

Garcia was never in trouble in either country. He began working in construction with an eye to eventually joining the sheet-metal industry as a journeyman and joining its union. He was 24 when he decided to change jobs and in 2019 went to Home Depot seeking one. So did three suspects of MS-13 membership. The county police swooped in and collared all four, but in fairness never included Garcia in the arrest records.

Meantime, Garcia married a citizen with two children and a third on the way. His wife sued the government about the false arrest. The judge did heavy interrogation about criminal conditions in Nogales as justification for Garcia’s fears for his life from Barrio-18 retaliation. Strong evidence convinced the judge to bar his removal to El Salvador “due to a credible fear of persecution.”

The lawsuit triggered ICE’s attention, however. Its agents seized and detained Garcia for weeks to deport him through the “removal” procedure, but were stymied by the previous judge’s protection ruling. By that time, he applied for asylum and did the annual check-ins with immigration officials.

Interestingly in the Garcia case, for all the remarks about non-interference in El Salvador’s affairs, in April 2017 when Trump  was just inaugurated as president, he wangled the release from Egypt’s dictator president Abduel-Fattah el-Sissi’s of an Egyptian-born woman who became an American. She did three years of “confinement” on bogus charges of child abuse at her charity agency before finally being acquitted. Trump seemingly taking credit for her release, grandly chartered a U.S plane to Cairo to bring her home. A year later he was triumphant about winning release of three Americans  from North Korea.

Yet it was sour grapes from him in December 2022 when President Joe Biden wrested  national women’s basketball star Brittney Griner  in a prisoner exchange from a nine-year sentence in Russia for carrying a cannabis compound into the country. Or in August 2024 when Biden succeeded in getting three Americans—one was a Wall Street Journal reporter—released from Russia in another prisoner exchange.

Trump insinuated on his social media that cash  had been exchanged by Biden and added: “Our ‘negotiators’ are always an embarrassment to us!”

In other words, Trump was certainly well aware that foreign interventions for prisoners is nothing new to American presidents using either cash or President Teddy Roosevelt ‘s foreign policy of “speak softly, but carry a big stick,”

The Supreme Court’s  April 7 unanimous ruling that the Trump’s administration had to get Garcia’s release from El Salvador has been awakening the public about the laws protecting us individually and the three separate powers of Constitutional government. That Congress, not presidents, make the laws. The Supreme Court determines their constitutionality, and the president must “faithfully” carry out its orders.

In its handling of this case, the high court ruled that Trump’s administration must:  “comply with its obligation to provide Abrego Garcia with due process of law, including notice and an opportunity to be heard, in any future proceedings. It must also comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture.” The court mainly agreed with a previous U.S. District court ruling that the government must “facilitate” Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador. That judge had ordered Trump’s legal team to report daily about their progress.

The only news about Garcia, has been from the U.S. embassy  in El Salvador which on April 12 reported: “…Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center….He is alive and secure in that facility.”

Now, unlike Washington’s Day, the 1997 federal Leahy Law  forbids using taxpayer revenue for “assistance to foreign security forces that have credible allegations of human rights such as torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, or rape.” A State Department report of 2023 cited El Salvador prisons’ for guards’ regular beatings of inmates and electric shock treatments, and other abuses.

Upon learning Trump’s people had done nothing about Garcia by April 15, that district judge ordered four of his officials “to provide documentation and answer questions under oath about what steps they had done to comply” with her previous order by April 28. Penalty for non-compliance would be a contempt of court ruling and fines or imprisonment. A Trump pardon would add yet another charge in impeachment proceedings and this time an ouster by a Senate trial.

Ignoring the rulings supporting Garcia’s Constitutional due-process rights and the power of the courts’ branch of government, Trump’s plan is more of the same—for all American citizens who also would be denied those rights. After all, he urged Bukele to build five more mega-prisons  (capacity: 40,000 ) to house them. He obviously expects American taxpayers to foot the bills for construction, staff salaries, and maintenance.

Moreover, his counterterrorism adviser  just announced that supporters of Garcia were aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists” and, thus, committing a federal crime?

That, of course, would include Supreme Court members, the judges involved in the Garcia opinions, his Maryland Senator, several House members —and eventually all who support Constitutional rights such as due-process trials in this country.

Since then, yet another instance of wrongful seizure for the El Salvador prison has come to light about a 20-year-old Venezuelan brought into the U.S. as a child. A Maryland federal judge’s opinion  on this asylum lawsuit was that it violated “a legally binding, court-approved settlement last year of a lawsuit against the summary deportation of migrants who arrive as children.”

On Inauguration day, Trump swore to obey the oath of office —“and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Unless a new Amendment is passed to limit due process to U.S. citizens or to delete it, that right is included for all residents of this country illegal or not. But his towering rage  at due-process appeared in late April both on his social media page and the next day in a White House press conference. It furnishes prime evidence for another impeachment—and this time a Senate trial for his ouster. Or, as in the case of former president Nixon facing that fate, key Republicans march to the Oval Office and successfully demand Trump resign.

Said he on record about the 21 million illegals he intends to deport:

“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take…200 years.” His false assumption is, of course, that in future all those kidnapped and dispatched to his five taxpayer-funded El Salvador prisons—including his political enemies—are “violent criminals and terrorists.”

Fortunately, the 4th District Appeals court just agreed unanimously to quash an emergency appeal by his administration against the contempt of court rulings for not returning the kidnapped and given due-process rights. The longtime (1983) Reagan-appointed judge, Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote the court’s ringing opinion about Trump’s snatching Garcia without those due-process rights. It also sets precedent to protect those Trump regards as “home-grown” enemies:

“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

No money in politics. Zero! First, people should stand up and declare unequivocally they will not vote for anyone who takes ANY money from corporations, lobbyists and PACs. Then, down the road, by having elections 100% financed out of public funds, we can build a democracy where our legislators might actually have some time to legislate. It is common knowledge, most federal office holders spend enormous amounts of time raising funds and worrying about winning the next election, instead of doing the job we voted them in office to do. Let’s end this right now!

Second Commandment: THOU SHALT HONOR CHOICE AT THE POLLS

It’s time to institute instant run-off, approval or range voting. This will allow minor party candidates to run at all levels of government without the understandable fear that a voter is throwing away her or his vote. Our current system has, as Ralph Nader has been saying all along, become a choice between Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Without real choice, meaning a range that covers the entire spectrum of political opinion, democracy becomes a sham, and purely an exercise in futility.

Third Commandment: THOU SHALT RESPECT THE COMMONS

Right off, we need to re-establish a commons. So much of what constitutes the foundation for a functioning society has been privatized — prisons, education, utilities, mail, roads, bridges. And it hasn’t worked out well, has it? The nation’s infrastructure is a shambles. There are some basic things we should all be able to have free and open access to, facilities and services which should not be at the mercy of the so-called free market: education, clean air and water, energy, health care, retirement security, the INTERNET, police, fire and ambulance services, nutrition and mental health counseling. This is not socialism. It’s having a country that works.

Fourth Commandment: THOU SHALT PUT MONEY CREATION AND THE CONTROL OF THE NATION’S CURRENCY BACK INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

The control and issuance of currency must be returned to the federal government. The Federal Reserve is no more “federal” than Federal Express, and as a result America is now hostage to private banks and we rapidly becoming their serf-slaves. Either nationalize or abolish the Federal Reserve and return creation of our fiat currency to the people of America, regulated by a legitimate, functioning system of representative government.

Fifth Commandment: THOU SHALT LIVE BY RULE OF LAW

We have a two-tiered legal system, a gentle one for the privileged, a brutal one for the rest of us. The oligarchs do what they want unfettered by pesky legal restraints. Sometimes the same laws which should apply are used to oppress and incarcerate the rest of us. Same thing on an international level. Two tiers. The U.S. bullies the world, ignoring treaty obligations and international law, treating other countries as vassal states. But it uses the same legal instruments as a bludgeon, holding every other nation’s feet to the fire with sanctions, UN resolutions, trade agreements — whatever — when it serves our interests, or more accurately, the interests of corporations and Wall Street banks, which are really setting the agenda. This gross hypocrisy is creating enemies everywhere. We are long overdue to again respect the law, apply it equally and fairly across the board, both at home and around the world.

Sixth Commandment: THOU SHALT REIN IN CAPITALISM

A nice breeze on a clear spring day — good! . . . A level 5 hurricane that destroys vast swaths of dwellings and kills countless people — bad! . . . Surfer and swimmer-friendly waves lapping up on a sandy beach — good! . . . A tsunami crushing whole towns with a 100 foot wall of terrifying force — bad! . . . Sunlight from hydrogen fusion nurturing our planet with gentle rays of light and warmth — good! . . . An inferno of hydrogen fusion raining down on cities across the world as mammoth nuclear bombs, destroying the entire human race — bad! We mostly tend to agree that capitalism provides a powerful engine to drive development and progress. But too much of it and societies are crushed, democracies destroyed, vast numbers of people are relegated to serf status. Other countries have strict regulation and state control to check the ravaging effects of unfettered capitalism. Now it’s America’s turn. Either we rein it in or we can kiss good-bye our once-great country as it descends into the dustbin of history. And if the capitalist monster cannot be tamed, then it’s high time we eliminated it completely, replacing it with a system which more incentivizes noble and sustaining human traits than no-holds-barred competition, sociopathic greed, and ruthless exploitation.

Seventh Commandment: THOU SHALT MAKE CORPORATIONS SERVANTS OF THE GREATER GOOD

It will be tough but the whole bogus concept of corporate personhood must be expunged. Totally voided. It was put in place by devious methods and now must be rooted out. In general, it’s way past time to drastically restrict the charters of corporations, such that the interests of people are balanced with the pursuit of profit. This is the way it used to be in the early days of our nation. Back then, corporations were set up for specific and usually public-spirited projects, assigned a very narrowly defined charter and a fixed duration. When whatever was supposed to get done got done, the corporation was dissolved. Maybe we don’t have to return to such a limited implementation in our modern world, but we do have to require that corporations serve the common good. It is entirely legal to dictate that corporations act responsibly and take into account the needs of the community they serve, especially the communities where they reside. We have to elect individuals who are not in the pockets of the corporations and have them re-write the laws for doing the business of America. If the multinational behemoths don’t like it, let them set up in China, Vietnam or Bangladesh. That’s where they already have their factories anyway. Ultimately this will not harm the economy, it will create a society which is healthy and prosperous for everyone.

Eighth Commandment: THOU SHALT PROMOTE PEACE AND BE LOVED AGAIN

America must be taken off its war footing. The high-alert status both at home and around the world is nothing more than highly destructive fear-mongering. It is used to promote a belligerent self-sabotaging approach to international relations. It’s the product of a grossly delusional neocon imperialistic agenda which Americans don’t support — “exceptionalist” chest-beating which fills the coffers of the defense contractors but bankrupts the rest of us both financially and spiritually. We’ve meddled and bombed enough. It has accomplished nothing and created more problems and more enemies than we had before we decided that military force was the only way to deal with disagreements and crises in the world. It has also subjected the American people to unprecedented and unconstitutional levels of surveillance and a gross abrogation of our rights as citizens. Time to try peace and cooperation instead of threats and bullying.

Ninth Commandment: THOU SHALT RESPECT MOTHER EARTH

Enough silly arguing and tiptoeing around climate change. It’s happening, it could destroy the human race. It will without a doubt reduce civilization to a shell of its former glory and sophistication. Let’s get to work. Global warming and resource depletion represent the greatest threats to mankind in recorded history. Responsible use of resources and creation of sustainable sources of energy are not only necessary, but could be the greatest unifying force ever! Brainstorming and planning will create a monumental paradigm shift and the subsequent implementation of our collective ingenuity will create jobs and bring together behind a common purpose, a world which is torn by divisiveness, fear, suspicion, anger. Though time is quickly running out, the challenge of a planet in crisis doesn’t have to end in total disaster. On the contrary, this could be a historic opportunity for a massive global initiative — one of renewal and fellowship.

Tenth Commandment: THOU SHALT LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD

The rich and powerful have had a good run. The party is over. The wealthy should start paying back the country which gave birth to their monumental success. Inherited wealth does not give back to the community, the social and political environment that supported the accumulation of all that money. Tax it at 95% above $5 million. The heirs of the Koch brothers will just have to squeak by on their $5.2 billion. Capital gains? Capital gains is income. Tax it at the same rate as personal income. Speaking of which — time to return to the progressive tax rates of the 60s and 70s. You know them. The ones which resulted in a thriving economy! Massive tax reform across the board is in order, closing of all loopholes, penalizing off-shoring of profits, and the complete elimination of corporate welfare. Do I hear screaming of ‘SOCIALISM!’ out there? Get a life! Yes, this is redistribution of wealth. It’s been going on for thousands of years. It’s what makes a functioning society possible.

I confess, I’m not up to speed on my Bible studies. But I remember hearing at some point, there were originally twenty commandments. I guess our good guy, Moses, lost a tablet or two on his way down from the mountain.

I take this as meaning there’s room on my list for even more. So let’s come up with some ideas for Commandments 11-20. All reasonable and constructive ideas are welcome.

I’ll bet there’s a little Moses in everyone just hankering to bust out.

Come on. Go for it!

Let’s make America serve all its citizens, not just the rich and powerful.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Rachel.

Sweeping powers claimed in the name of “security” and “efficiency.”

One president acting as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge.

No debate. No oversight. No limits.

This is how the Constitution dies—not with a coup, but with a pen.

The Unitary Executive Theory is no longer a theory—it’s the architecture of a dictatorship in motion.

Where past presidents have used executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements to circumvent Congress or sidestep the rule of law, President Trump is using executive orders to advance his “unitary executive theory” of governance, which is a thinly disguised excuse for a government by fiat.

In other words, these executive orders are the mechanism by which we finally arrive at a full-blown dictatorship.

America’s founders established a system of checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power in any single branch. To this end, the Constitution establishes three separate but equal branches of government: the legislative branch, which makes the law; the executive branch, which enforces the law; and the judicial branch, which interprets the law.

And yet, despite this carefully balanced structure, we now find ourselves in a place the founders warned against.

Despite Trump’s attempts to rule by fiat, the president has no unilateral authority to operate outside the Constitution’s system of checks and balances—no matter how urgent the crisis or how well-meaning the intentions.

This is what government by fiat looks like.

Where Congress was once the nation’s lawmaking body, its role is now being eclipsed by a deluge of executive directives—each one issued without public debate, legislative compromise, or judicial review.

These executive orders aren’t mere administrative housekeeping. They represent a radical shift in how power is exercised in America, bypassing democratic institutions in favor of unilateral command. From trade and immigration to surveillance, speech regulation, and policing, the president is claiming broad powers that traditionally reside with the legislative and judicial branches.

Some orders invoke national security to disrupt global markets. Others attempt to override congressional control over tariffs, fast-track weapons exports, or alter long-standing public protections through regulatory rollbacks. A few go even further—flirting with ideological loyalty tests for citizenship, chilling dissent through financial coercion, and expanding surveillance in ways that undermine due process and privacy.

Yet here’s where these actions run into constitutional peril: they redefine executive authority in ways that bypass the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution. They centralize decision-making in the White House, sideline the legislative process, and reduce the judiciary to an afterthought—if not an outright obstacle.

Each of these directives, taken individually, might seem technocratic or temporary. But taken together, they reveal the architecture of a parallel legal order—one in which the president acts as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge. That is not how a constitutional republic operates. That is how a dictatorship begins.

Each of these orders marks another breach in the constitutional levee, eroding the rule of law and centralizing unchecked authority in the executive.

This is not merely policy by another name—it is the construction of a parallel legal order, where the president acts as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge—the very state of tyranny our founders sought to prevent.

This legal theory—the so-called Unitary Executive—is not new. But under this administration, it has metastasized into something far more dangerous: a doctrine of presidential infallibility.

What began as a constitutional interpretation that the president controls the executive branch has morphed into an ideological justification for unchecked power.

Under this theory, all executive agencies, decisions, and even enforcement priorities bend entirely to the will of the president—obliterating the idea of an independent bureaucracy or impartial governance.

The result? An imperial presidency cloaked in legalism.

Historically, every creeping dictatorship has followed this pattern: first, undermine the legislative process; then, centralize enforcement powers; finally, subjugate the judiciary or render it irrelevant. America is following that roadmap, one executive order at a time.

Even Supreme Court justices and legal scholars who once defended broad executive authority are beginning to voice concern.

Yet the real danger of the Unitary Executive Theory is not simply that it concentrates power in the hands of the president—it’s that it does so by ignoring the rest of the Constitution.

Respect for the Constitution means obeying it even when it’s inconvenient to do so.

We’re watching the collapse of constitutional constraints not through tanks in the streets, but through policy memos drafted in the West Wing.

No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes. Even the most principled policies can be twisted to serve illegitimate ends once power and profit enter the equation.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

We are approaching critical mass.

The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen.

What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

In effect, you will disappear.

Our freedoms are already being made to disappear.

This is how tyranny arrives: not with a constitutional amendment, but with a series of executive orders; not with a military coup, but with a legal memo; not with martial law, but with bureaucratic obedience and public indifference.

A government that rules by fiat, outside of constitutional checks and balances, is not a republic. It is a dictatorship in everything but name.

If freedom is to survive this constitutional crisis, We the People must reclaim our role as the ultimate check on government power.

That means holding every branch of government accountable to the rule of law. It means demanding that Congress do its job—not merely as a rubber stamp or partisan enabler, but as a coequal branch with the courage to rein in executive abuses.

It means insisting that the courts serve justice, not politics.

And it means refusing to normalize rule by decree, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

There is no freedom without limits on power.

There is no Constitution if it can be ignored by those who swear to uphold it.

The presidency was never meant to be a throne. The Constitution was never meant to be optional. And the people were never meant to be silent.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the time to speak out is now.

As our revolutionary forefathers learned the hard way, once freedom is lost, it is rarely regained without a fight.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Nearly 250 years after our nation’s founders rebelled over abused property rights, Americans are once again being subjected to taxation without any real representation, all the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little concern for the plight of its citizens.

Nothing has changed for the better with Donald Trump. Indeed, it’s getting worse by the day.

Having inherited one of the strongest economies in the world, President Trump—whose credentials as a businessman include multiple failed business ventures, bankruptcies, and a mountain of debt and unpaid bills—has managed to singlehandedly torch the economy with his misguided tariffs and self-serving schemes, which are being carried out without any oversight or checks from Congress.

Yet it is Congress, not the president, that holds the authority to control government spending.

This is spelled out in the Appropriations Clause, found in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution, which establishes a rule of law about how the monies paid to the government by the taxpayers are to be governed, and in the Taxing and Spending Clause of Article I, Section 8, Clause 1. In a nutshell, Congress is in charge of accounting for those funds and authorizing how those funds are spent (or not spent).

The founders intended this regulatory power, referred to as the “power of the purse” (to determine what funds can be spent and what funds can be withheld) to serve as a potent check on any government agency that exceeds its authority, especially the executive branch.

As law professor Zachary Price observes, “Given how strong this check is, it may not be surprising that presidents have sought ways to get around it.”

Yet while past presidents have sought to expand their authority under the guise of national emergency declarations, Trump has taken this executive overreach to unprecedented extremes.

Price explains how various presidents from Obama to Biden to Trump have attempted to subvert that same congressional power to press their own agendas, whether by funding the Affordable Care Act, advancing student debt, or as in Trump’s case, by dismantling and defunding agencies funded by Congress.

Executive orders and national emergencies have become a favored tool by which presidents attempt to govern unilaterally. As the Brennan Center reports, presidents have access to 150 such emergency powers, which essentially allow them to become limited dictators with greatly enhanced powers upon declaration of an emergency.

Because the National Emergencies Act does not actually define what constitutes an emergency, presidents have an incredible amount of room to wreak constitutional mischief on the citizenry.

While presidents on both sides of the aisle have abused these powers, Trump is attempting to test the limits of these emergency powers by declaring a national emergency anytime he wants to sidestep Congress and quickly impose his will on the nation.

Trump’s liberal use of emergency powers to sidestep the rule of law underscores the danger they pose to our constitutional system of checks and balances.

Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has used his presidential emergency powers in a multitude of ways in order to mount brazen power grabs thinly disguised as concerns for national security, thereby allowing him to justify tapping into the nation’s natural resources, rounding up and deporting vast numbers of migrants (both documented and undocumented), and imposing duties and tariffs against longtime allies and trade partners.

Thus far, the Republican-controlled Congress, which has the power to terminate an emergency with a two-thirds vote, has done nothing to rein in Trump’s dictatorial tendencies.

These unchecked powers aren’t just a threat to the balance of government—they have immediate, devastating consequences for the economy and working Americans.

Economists fear the ramifications of Trump’s latest national emergency, which he claims will usher in “the golden age of America” through the imposition of heavy tariffs on foreign nations, could push the U.S. and the rest of the world into a major recession by inciting a global trade-war, isolating America economically from the rest of the world, and flat-lining businesses that had expected to boom.

Fears of a recession are growing stronger by the hour.

In addition to sabotaging the economy, laying off tens of thousands of federal employees and dismantling those parts of government which serve the interests of working-class Americans, as well as its aging, disabled and homeless populations, Trump and his cabal of billionaire buddies are dismantling the few remaining checks on public and private corruption—fueling corporate greed at every turn.

This is how the man who promised to drain the swamp continues to mire us in the swamp.

Meanwhile, taxpayers—whose retirement savings have taken a nosedive—are expected to foot the bill to the tune of tens of millions of dollars for Trump’s frequent golf trips to his own golf courses (he’s also charging exorbitant rates to Secret Service to stay at his properties while protecting him), his multimillion-dollar photo ops at the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500, his desire to redo the White House gardens and build a $100 million ballroom, and his latest demand for a costly military parade in honor of his 79^th birthday.

While President Trump may talk a good game about his plans for making America richer, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the only person he’s making richer—at taxpayer expense—is himself.

This fiscal insanity, coupled with Trump’s imperialistic and tyrannical ambitions, echoes the very abuses that drove America’s founders to rebel against King George III.

In other words, the government is still robbing us blind.

Trump hasn’t reined in the government’s greed—he’s just been using a different playbook to get the same result: beg, borrow or steal, the government wants more of our hard-earned dollars any way it can get it.

Indeed, Trump, the self-proclaimed “debt king,” has presided over one of the most reckless expansions of government spending in modern history while posturing as a fiscal conservative.

This isn’t governance. It’s looting—by legislation, debt, and design.

We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.

This is financial tyranny.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if you have no choice, no voice, and no real say over how your money is used, you’re not free.

You’re being ruled.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

I haven’t changed, but America certainly has.

America has become anti-American!

The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. Yet reporters are now being intimidated and threatened with arrest and incarceration. Whistleblowers who try to expose fraud, corruption, and waste in government by making available in public news media forums information of value to American citizens, are likewise harassed and prosecuted.

The Constitution requires the government to promote the general welfare. Yet the benefits of our economic wealth are accruing to a tiny elite while poverty is still pervasive and the majority of the population scrambles to make ends meet. Among the 34 highly developed nations in the world, America ranks 17th in terms of life satisfaction — happiness — the key factors for its low ranking being massive income inequality and excessively long hours spent on average in the work place. In terms of health care and life expectancy, for the richest country in the world, America ranks abysmally low, with longevity actually declining.

The Constitution guarantees equal representation of its citizens. Yet, the electoral system has become corrupted by unverifiable e-voting, grotesque gerrymandering of districts, and torrents of money in politics, which only guarantees the voices of average voters will be drowned out and their participation in our democracy marginalized.

The Constitution guarantees the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, and right of trial by jury before peers, yet starting in 2001 by using the endless War on Terror as an excuse, patently unconstitutional legislation has been effected — Patriot Acts I and II, FISA, and the NDAA which Obama signed into law on New Years Eve 2011 while America was preoccupied with celebrating the holidays, which have regularly been renewed ever since — now placing every citizen at risk for arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention with no access to legal counsel.

The Constitution guarantees equality before the law. Yet rich elite white collar criminals wreak havoc on our economy breaking countless laws and go free, while petty crimes by regular citizens — especially people of color — result in harsh and disproportionate prosecution and punishment.

The Constitution guarantees the right of free speech, including dissent against questionable policies. Yet, we see individuals protesting the cruel, malevolent and systematic killing of Palestinians by Israel, harassed, persecuted, and prosecuted by establishment authorities, who apparently consider the slaughter of between 50,000 and 200,000 mostly innocent Palestinians, including women and children — horrific war crimes which those in power indisputably support — necessary and laudable. U.S. support for this genocide mocks the principles we hold dear and have at least until now defined us as a people.

The Constitution specifies that the power to wage war is exclusively the responsibility of Congress. Yet the president as Commander-in-Chief as often as not ignores the constitutional limits as well as those contained in the War Powers Act, using the military purely at his own discretion. This wanton abuse of military power results in the unnecessary deaths of our citizens in uniform, while at the same time counter-productively foments enormous animosity and mistrust across much of the planet.

Our legal framework via the Posse Comitatus Act has long barred the use of the military for law enforcement but vast and sophisticated surveillance by federal security agencies, the militarization of local police forces, and their handshake agreements with federal agencies, puts us all under the iron fist of enforcement agencies like the NSA and operatives of the Pentagon itself.

I could go on. But that might offend some people.

Sometimes the truth can be so anti-American.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Rachel.

These attacks come as the Trump administration target students who’ve spoken out against the genocide in Gaza. Secretary Rubio and President Trump are extrajudicially revoking student visas and attempting to deport any student they wish, without any due process. Their crime? Disagreeing with the U.S. government’s support for genocide. Students are being kidnapped by masked officers in broad daylight – that should sound the alarm for every American who might openly disagree with President Trump.

These gestapo-like tactics and McCarthyist smears of peace organizations are leading the country down a dark path of unchecked fascism and dictatorship. Between the intimidation of peace groups and blatant attacks on students,every person in the U.S. should stand against this repression – or prepare to face it themselves down the line. Individuals may not like CODEPINK or our messaging around Palestine or China, but that doesn’t exclude them from repression if they let the Trump Administration set this precedent. If they disagree with him on anything at all, they may face the same smears and repression we have. After the groundwork is laid, it’s only a matter of time.

To be clear: CODEPINK is not funded by any foreign government. Protesting war and genocide is not supporting terrorism. Not only are they lying, they are defying the U.S. Constitution to muzzle the burgeoning student movement.

The slanderous statements made by elected officials can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those being lied about, as well as their friends and family. It appears that the United States government is not only committed to waging war abroad, but it is also intent on waging war domestically against U.S. citizens and non-citizens, both of which are also protected by the Constitution.

It is not a coincidence that both Senator Cotton and Secretary Rubio referred to peace activists and students as “lunatics” – they have clearly received their talking points. However, what is actual lunacy is how those elected to serve the American people are ignoring the fact that a majority of Americans do now want wars or war crimes being carried out in our name.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Codepink.

If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you.

—Robert Reich

The war on due process is here.

No trials. No hearings. No rights. Just indefinite detention and secret deportations.

This is the fate that awaits every one of us, not just immigrants (legal or otherwise), if the government’s war on the Constitution remains unchecked.

More than two decades after the U.S. government in its post-9/11 frenzy transported individuals, some of whom had not been charged let alone convicted of a crime, to CIA black sites (secret detention centers located outside the U.S. authorized to torture detainees) as a means of sidestepping legal protocols, the Trump Administration is using extraordinary rendition to make those on its so-called “enemies list” disappear.

The first round of arrests and deportations to a mega-prison in El Salvador supposedly targeted members of the infamous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Carried out with little evidence and without court hearings or due process, these roundups reportedly may also have swept up individuals with no apparent connection to gang activity apart from common tattoos (firearms, trains, dice, roses, tigers and jaguars) and other circumstantial evidence.

In a particularly Kafkaesque explanation for why some of the Venezuelan migrants who have no criminal records were targeted for arrest and deportation, government lawyers argued in court that their lack of a criminal record is in itself cause for concern.

In other words, the government is prepared to preemptively arrest and make people disappear, without any regard for legal protocols or due process, based solely on the president’s claim that they could at some point in the future pose a threat to national security.

This takes pre-crime and preemptive arrests to a whole new sinister level of potential abuses.

Are you starting to sense how quickly this could go off the rails?

This is how democracies collapse. This is how rights disappear overnight.

As lawyers challenging the government’s overreach warned, “If the President can designate any group as enemy aliens under the Act, and that designation is unreviewable, then there is no limit on who can be sent to a Salvadoran prison, or any limit on how long they will remain there.”

Also among those in danger of being made to disappear without any legal record or due process are individuals who have not been charged with or convicted of any crimes.

The most egregious of these incidents involve college students, scientists and doctors, all of them legal permanent residents of the U.S. who, while never having been charged with a crime, are accused of threatening national security by taking part in anti-war protests over the growing death toll in Gaza as a result of the Israeli-Hamas war, or sympathizing with the Palestinians, or being associated with someone who might sympathize with the Palestinians.

When merely exercising one’s right to criticize the government in word, deed or thought is equated to an act of domestic terrorism, we are all in trouble.

The mass arrests and roundups thus far have been so haphazard that there is a very real likelihood that innocent individuals have also been swept up and deported.

American citizens could very well be next in line for this kind of treatment.

This is the danger of allowing any president to use expansive wartime powers to bypass the Constitution’s prohibitions against government overreach and abuse: suddenly, everything that challenges the government’s authority becomes a national security threat and every dispute a national emergency.

Through his use of executive orders, proclamations and so-called national emergencies, President Trump has essentially declared war on the rule of law.

Make no mistake: while immigrants, illegal and legal alike, have largely been the first victims of the Trump administration’s efforts to circumvent the Constitution in order to make them disappear, it’s our very freedoms that are being made to disappear.

At the heart of these freedoms is the right of habeas corpus.

Translated as “you should have the body,” habeas corpus requires the government to either charge a person or let him go free.

While the Constitution allows the writ of habeas corpus to be suspended in cases of rebellion or invasion when public safety is imperiled, the Trump Administration’s efforts to keep the nation in a permanent state of emergency in order to justify its power grabs leaves “we the people” subject to the kinds of arbitrary mass round-ups, arrests and deportations that have been favored by despots and dictators.

This is usually where the self-righteous defenders of Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional tactics insist that the protections of the Constitution only apply to U.S. citizens.

They are wrong.

At a minimum, as the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed, the rights enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution apply to all people in the United States, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. Those rights include free speech, peaceful protest and criticism of the government, assembly, religious freedom, equal protection under the law, due process, legal representation, privacy, among others.

Then again, what good are rights if the government doesn’t respect them?

What good are rights if the president is empowered to nullify them whenever he wants?

For that matter, what good is a government that betrays its own citizens?

History has shown us that when governments operate without checks and balances, tyranny follows. The question is not whether mass arrests and indefinite detentions could be expanded to American citizens—it’s how long before they are.

If we allow the erosion of due process, if we accept that a president can unilaterally decide who is a threat without oversight, then we have already lost the freedoms that define us as a nation.

We must demand accountability. We must challenge policies that violate constitutional protections. We must support organizations fighting for civil liberties, educate ourselves on our rights, and refuse to be silenced by fear. Because when the government starts making people disappear, the only way to stop it is by making our voices impossible to ignore.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, freedom does not die in a single act of repression—it dies when the people surrender their rights in exchange for false security.

The Constitution can’t protect us if we don’t protect it.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Since Maia Sandu’s Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) came to power in 2021, political pluralism and freedom of speech in the country have essentially ceased to exist. Against the backdrop of rapidly rising prices and poverty levels, the Moldovans began to hold mass protests demanding the government resignation. The authorities responded by shutting down a number of television channels and electronic media outlets under the pretext that they allegedly were spreading pro-Russian propaganda and provoking contradictions within the state. Later, a “hunt” for undesirable politicians and a fight against opposition parties began in the republic. Thus, in 2023, at the request of the government, Moldova’s Constitutional Court declared the Șor Party unconstitutional, and in May 2024, the country’s Justice Ministry asked a Chisinau court to place restrictions on political activities by the Chance Political Party.

After the constitutional referendum was held on the same day as the presidential election in 2024, tensions within the country grew even deeper. Sandu was accused of intending to use the plebiscite to save her declining popularity amid the economic crisis and protests. According to the results of the referendum on EU membership, 50.35% supported the amendments; however, some opposition parties did not recognize the results of the vote. The dissatisfaction of Sandu’s opponents was also facilitated by the results of the presidential elections, which Party of Socialists of Moldova(PSRM) called dishonest and undemocratic, pointing to the unreasonable reduction of polling stations, blocking voters’ access to ballot drop boxes, as well as cases of falsification.

Moldova is currently positioning itself as a democratic and liberal country. However, is this actually true? Numerous arrests of activists, the suspension of broadcasting of television channels as well as blocking of dozens of information sources that have opinions different from those of the government – does not all this indicate a complete elimination of freedom of speech and pluralism in the country? Moreover, the presence of a single “correct” opinion within the divided Moldovan society could lead to a situation where part of the population begins to turn towards a more extreme and radical opposition, prepared to engage in conflict with the current authorities. Thus, with its actions, Sandu’s team is paving the way for the emergence of far-right political parties in the country, similar to Alternative for Germany and Freedom Party of Austria. Increase in the number of such parties could lead to instability not only at the local level, but could also completely undermine the already fragile political situation within the EU. In this scenario, the prospects for cooperation between Europe and the United States would become even more dim.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Rom Cretu.

This is what it means to weaponize the government.

When the government turns its power against its own people—through surveillance, retaliation, censorship, and intimidation—it ceases to serve the public and instead becomes a weapon of oppression.

According to the Political Dictionary:

The term ‘weaponize’ refers to the strategic manipulation or transformation of information, institutions, or social issues into tools for gaining political advantage. This could involve exploiting existing laws, harnessing social media algorithms for disinformation campaigns, or turning otherwise neutral or benign elements of governance into divisive issues for the purpose of delegitimizing opponents or rallying a base.

Time and again, leaders have stretched—or outright shattered—the limits of power, weaponizing government power through unjust laws, surveillance, or outright suppression.

Each power grab is a step toward the erosion of liberty.

John Adams used the Alien and Sedition Acts to prosecute journalists and political opponents.

Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, allowing the military to detain individuals without trail and suppressing Confederate sympathizers and political dissenters.

Under Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage and Sedition Acts were used to crack down on anti-war activists, socialists, and labor organizers, including Eugene V. Debs, who spoke out against World War I.

Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that led to the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, based on suspicions of disloyalty, despite little to no evidence.

Richard Nixon harnessed the power of the FBI, CIA, and IRS, to harass, spy on and sabotage his political opponents and perceived enemies.

Spanning numerous presidential administrations, from FDR to Nixon, the FBI’s covert intelligence program COINTELPRO was used to infiltrate, discredit and disrupt civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and other political dissidents.

In a bid to fight so-called disinformation, Biden pressured social media companies to censor and suppress individuals expressing views perceived as conspiratorial or extremist, especially as they related to COVID-19.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who is setting new records for how far he’s willing to go to retaliate against his perceived enemies and sidestep the rule of law.

Indeed, Ken Hughes, an investigative journalist who spent two decades listening to Richard Nixon’s Secret White House Tapes, has concluded that Nixon’s abuses of presidential power—which included weaponizing the government to “sabotage Vietnam peace talks to damage the Democrats’ 1968 presidential campaign, to time his withdrawal from Vietnam to help his 1972 reelection campaign, and to spring former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa from prison in return for the union’s political support”—pale beside Trump’s abuses.

Trump, who once vowed to end government overreach and the weaponization of the federal government, now openly uses its full force against his critics, dismantling democratic norms, consolidating power in ways that defy the Constitution, and directing an all-out weaponization of the federal government against his perceived enemies, which translates to anyone who dares to oppose him.

If Trump were just a petty blowhard, that would be one thing.

Unfortunately, having populated his administration with individuals more loyal to him than to the Constitution, Trump is getting drunk on power.

The danger is not so much Trump as it is his enablers-to-abuse, the many minions within his administration and beyond who are eager to carry out unlawful orders, defy the courts, ignore Congress’ mandate, trample rights, and butcher the Constitution, all in the so-called name of putting America first.

If this keeps up, America, once looked upon as a bastion of freedom and economic opportunity, will be the last place anyone ever thinks of when they hear the words freedom, justice and equality.

Every action taken by the Trump administration in defiance of the rule of law—whether or not that action is motivated by a legitimate concern for national security—pushes us that much closer to the complete dismantling of our constitutional republic.

Don’t be so carried away by fear-inducing tales of rapists and foreign invaders and corruption that you let the government get away with murder… the painful execution of our rights.

That way lies tyranny.

You can see the pattern forming already.

When anti-war protesters are made to disappear—snatched up late at night by plain-clothes men who refuse to identify themselves and then transported thousands of miles away, to a private prison in a state more favorable to dubious detentions—we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When Venezuelan migrants are rounded up and deported out of the country, heads shaven and in chains, without any due process—without being identified, without being charged formally with a crime, without getting a chance to plead their innocence against those charges and, if found guilty, then convicted—we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When major law firms are barred from interacting with federal agencies or entering federal buildings—an outright attempt to chill First Amendment activity and hamstring businesses that challenge government overreach—we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When huge swaths of our nation’s history (including the Constitution and Bill of Rights) are being erased from websites, government buildings, archives, educational curriculum—in the so-called name of combatting discrimination—we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When Trump administration sycophants from the vice president on down are openly deriding and defying the courts while proclaiming the imperial supremacy of their exalted leader, we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When the president of the United States threatens other nations militarily, talks openly about seizing foreign lands, stirs up international tensions, and rattles the war drums, we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

Trump, adept at twisting facts and spinning lies, is working hard to insist that these end-runs around the rule of law are for our safety.

Don’t believe him. Words are cheap.

More importantly, don’t trust him. Bind him down with the chains of the Constitution.

The only real protection we have against tyranny is the rule of law, provided that you have a populace and a system of government that holds the rule of law as inviolable.

That is our real power: the extent to which we hold fast to the Constitution and demand that the government and its agents do so, as well.

The moment that we relent in that commitment—the moment that we look the other way and let first a few encroachments slide, then ever more and more—is the moment that the Constitution loses its power to protect us against tyranny.

That is what is unfolding right now.

This is the devil’s bargain that we are being asked to enter into with Trump: empty promises and a one-way street to a dictatorship in exchange for our freedoms.

Watch out.

When any politician claims to be saving you money by imposing tariffs that ramp up inflation and cutting government programs aimed at educating the masses, feeding the hungry, and helping the poor, disabled and elderly, all the while spending taxpayer money on his own lavish lifestyle and self-serving government programs, you’d better beware. Your hard-earned dollars will be next in line to be seized, spent and squandered.

When any politician suggests that you relinquish your freedoms—of speech, assembly, due process, association, etc.—in exchange for promises of greater security, you’d better beware. Your freedoms will be next on the chopping block.

When any politician persuades you to look the other way while innocent individuals are rounded up alongside suspected criminals just because they look a certain way or talk a certain way or belong to a particular demographic, you’d better beware. Your right to due process will be next.

When any politician comes up with a vast array of reasons why he doesn’t need to obey court rulings—because they were issued verbally, because his power trumps that of the courts, because he doesn’t need to follow the law outside America’s borders—you’d better beware. This shifty reasoning for breaking the law could be used against you next.

There can be no doubt about the nature of what is taking place right now.

This is war.

President Trump’s justification for defying the courts and doing whatever he wants in pursuit of his political agenda (arresting protesters, carrying out mass arrests and deportations, muzzling critics, seizing funds, dismantling agencies, usurping congressional powers) is that “this is war.”

Here’s the thing, though: Trump may be using his war powers as commander-in-chief to bypass the Constitution at every turn, but the only war being waged is a war against the Constitution and the rule of law and the American people.

Congress, which has the sole power to declare war under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, has yet to do so. And still Trump is using the emergency wartime powers of the presidency to sidestep accountability and due process.

In ruling after ruling, the courts, which have the judicial power to rein in overreach and misconduct, are repeatedly declaring unconstitutional the Trump administration’s steady dismantling of the government and refusal to stay within the purview of his official powers. And still Trump is unilaterally hacking away at the very foundations of our system of government.

If the president refuses to be held accountable, if he insists that his power is supreme, if he abuses the power of his office to wreak havoc and revenge, if he reduces our republic to rubble and tramples over the Constitution and disregards the rule of law, he is aligning himself with every despot, dictator and tyrant to have walked the earth.

We’ve been here before. We know how this story ends.

It takes time and effort and a willingness on the part of “we the people” to look beyond our differences and stand united in opposition to oppression, but when we do that, freedom prevails in the end.

Next year will be the 250th anniversary of the birth of this country, when America’s founders declared their independence from King George’s tyranny. What’s just as important, however, is what came before that: the small steps of rebellion, resistance and outrage that said, “enough is enough.”

What we are now experiencing is a civil war, devised and instigated in part by the Deep State.

The objective: compliance and control.

The strategy: destabilize the economy, polarize the populace, escalate racial and political tensions, intensify the use of violence, and then, when all hell breaks loose, clamp down on the nation for the good of the people and the security of the nation.

The outcome for this particular conflict is already foregone: the Deep State wins.

The Deep State wins by ensuring that we are censored, silenced, muzzled, gagged, zoned out, caged in and shut down. It wins by monitoring our speech and activities for any sign of “extremist” activity. It wins by ensuring that we are estranged from each other and kept at a distance from those who are supposed to represent us. It wins by saddling us with taxation without representation and a government without the consent of the governed.

It wins by terminating the Constitution (or rewriting the Constitution).

So where does that leave us?

“We” may have contributed to our downfall through our inaction and gullibility, but we are also the only hope for a free future.

After all, the Constitution begins with those three beautiful words, “We the people.”

Those three words were intended as a reminder to future generations that there is no government without us: our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land.

When we forget that, when we allow the “Me” of a self-absorbed, narcissistic, politically polarizing culture to override our civic duties as citizens to collectively stand up to tyranny and make the government play by the rules of the Constitution, that is when tyranny rises and freedom falls

Remember, there is power in numbers.

Not the kinds of numbers that Trump likes to spout about landslide victories and electoral mandates, but the most powerful numbers of all: the sheer, overwhelming mass of humanity that is “we the people” of these United States of America.

If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it rests with us.

Ultimately, that’s what the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution is all about: it affirms that “we the people” have all the power, and what powers we do not explicitly give to the federal government or the states, we retain. We may appoint government representatives to act in our stead, but we never relinquish that power altogether.

That’s where Trump and his Deep State handlers get it wrong. Speaking through him and his administration, they claim that this dismantling of the federal government is a bid to return power to local communities and state governments, but it’s not their government to dismantle, nor is it their power to return.

We are the government, and we are the power, and it’s time “we the people” reminded the government and its henchmen of that important fact.

The power still lies with us.

We must resist every attempt to erode our freedoms, demand accountability, and uphold the Constitution—before it’s too late.

It’s time to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

Nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the Constitution.

Flood your representatives’ phone lines, inboxes and townhall meetings with your discontent.

Protest everything that tramples on the Constitution.

Stand up for your own rights, of course, but more importantly, stand up for the rights of those with whom you might disagree.

Defend freedom at all costs. Defend justice at all costs. Make no exceptions based on race, religion, creed, politics, immigration status, sexual orientation, etc.

Don’t play semantics. Don’t justify. Don’t politicize it.

If it carries even a whiff of tyranny, oppose it.

Demand that your representatives in government cut you a better deal, one that abides by the Constitution and doesn’t just attempt to sidestep it. That’s their job: make them do it.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together. They fall together, as well.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Once the principle is established that the government can arrest and jail protesters… officials will use it to silence opposition broadly.

— Heather Cox Richardson, historian

You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

There’s always a boomerang effect.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

Arresting political activists engaged in lawful, nonviolent protest activities is merely the shot across the bow.

The chilling of political speech and suppression of dissident voices are usually among the first signs that you’re in the midst of a hostile takeover by forces that are not friendly to freedom.

This is how it begins.

Consider that Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-war protester and recent graduate of Columbia University, was arrested on a Saturday night by ICE agents who appeared ignorant of his status as a legal U.S. resident and his rights thereof. That these very same ICE agents also threatened to arrest Mahmoud’s eight-months-pregnant wife, an American citizen, is also telling.

This does not seem to be a regime that respects the rights of the people.

Indeed, these ICE agents, who were “just following orders” from on high, showed no concern that the orders they had been given were trumped up, politically motivated and unconstitutional.

If this is indeed the first of many arrests to come, what’s next? Or more to the point, who’s next?

We are all at risk.

History shows that when governments claim the power to silence dissent—whether in the name of national security, border protection, or law and order—that power rarely remains limited. What starts as a crackdown on so-called “threats” quickly expands to include anyone who challenges those in power.

President Trump has made it clear that Mahmoud’s arrest is just “the first arrest of many to come.” He has openly stated his intent to target noncitizens who engage in activities he deems contrary to U.S. interests—an alarmingly vague standard that seems to change at his whim, the First Amendment be damned.

If history is any guide, the next targets will not just be immigrants or foreign-born activists. They will be American citizens who dare to speak out.

If you need further proof of Trump’s disregard for constitutional rights, look no further than his recent declaration that boycotting Tesla is illegal—a chilling statement that reveals his fundamental misunderstanding of both free speech and the rule of law.

For the record, there is nothing illegal about exercising one’s First Amendment right of speech, assembly, and protest in a nonviolent way to bring about social change by boycotting private businesses. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) that nonviolent boycotts are a form of political speech which are entitled to First Amendment protection.

The problem, unfortunately, when you’re dealing with a president who believes that he can do whatever he wants because he is the law is that anyone and anything can become a target.

Mahmoud is the test case.

As journalists Gabe Kaminsky, Madeleine Rowley, and Maya Sulkin point out, Mahmoud’s arrest for being a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States” (note: he is not actually accused of breaking any laws) is being used as a blueprint for other arrests to come.

What this means is that anyone who dares to disagree with the government and its foreign policy and express that disagreement could be considered a threat to the country’s “national security interests.”

Yet the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.

Indeed, 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.

Unfortunately, the Deep State doesn’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power.

This is nothing new, nor is it unique to any particular presidential administration.

Throughout history, U.S. presidents have used their power to suppress dissent. The Biden administration equated the spread of “misinformation” with terrorism. Trump called the press “the enemy of the people” and suggested protesting should be illegal. Obama expanded anti-protest laws and cracked down on whistleblowers. Bush’s Patriot Act made it a crime to support organizations the government deemed terrorist, even in lawful ways. This pattern stretches back centuries—FDR censored news after Pearl Harbor, Woodrow Wilson outlawed criticism of war efforts, and John Adams criminalized speaking against the government.

Regardless of party, those in power have repeatedly sought to limit free speech. What’s new is the growing willingness to criminalize political dissent under the guise of national security.

Clearly, the government has been undermining our free speech rights for quite a while now, but Trump’s antagonism towards free speech is taking this hostility to new heights.

The government has a history of using crises—real or manufactured—to expand its power.

Once dissent is labeled a threat, it’s only a matter of time before laws meant for so-called extremists are used against ordinary citizens. Criticizing policy, protesting, or even refusing to conform could be enough to put someone on a watchlist.

We’ve seen this before.

The government has a long list of “suspicious” ideologies and behaviors it uses to justify surveillance and suppression. Today’s justification may be immigration; tomorrow, it could be any form of opposition.

This is what we know: the government has the means, the muscle and the motivation to detain individuals who resist its orders and do not comply with its mandates in a vast array of prisons, detention centers, and concentration camps paid for with taxpayer dollars.

It’s just a matter of time.

It no longer matters what the hot-button issue might be (vaccine mandates, immigration, gun rights, abortion, same-sex marriage, healthcare, criticizing the government, protesting election results, etc.) or which party is wielding its power like a hammer.

The groundwork has already been laid.

Under the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the President and the military can detain and imprison American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a terrorist.

So it should come as no surprise that merely criticizing the government could get you labeled as a terrorist.

After all, it doesn’t take much to be considered a terrorist anymore, especially given that the government likes to use the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is what happens when you not only put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police but also give those agencies liberal authority to lock individuals up for perceived wrongs.

It’s a system just begging to be abused by power-hungry bureaucrats desperate to retain their power at all costs.

Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.

This is not just about one administration or one set of policies. This is a broader pattern of governmental overreach that has been allowed to unfold, unchecked and unchallenged. And at the heart of this loss of freedom is a fundamental misunderstanding—or even a deliberate abandonment—of what sovereignty really means in America.

Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

In other words, as the preamble to the Constitution states, in America, “we the people”—sovereign citizens—call the shots.

So, when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”

This is how far our republic has fallen and how desensitized “we the people” have become to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

If we are to put an end to this steady slide into totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none, we must begin by refusing to allow the politics of fear to shackle us to a dictatorship.

President Trump wants us to believe that the menace we 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.

Don’t believe it. That argument has been tried before.

The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence and illegal immigration have all been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.

We are walking a dangerous path right now.

Political arrests. Harassment. Suppression of dissident voices. Retaliation. Detention centers for political prisoners.

These are a harbinger of what’s to come if the Trump administration carries through on its threats to crack down on any and all who exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and protest.

We are being acclimated to bolder power grabs, acts of lawlessness, and a pattern of intimidation, harassment, and human rights violations by government officials. And yet, in the midst of this relentless erosion of our freedoms, the very concept of sovereignty—the foundational idea that the people, not the government, hold ultimate power—has been all but forgotten.

“Sovereignty” used to mean something fundamental in America: the idea that the government serves at the will of the people, that “we the people” are the rightful rulers of this land, and that no one, not even the president, is above the law. But today, that notion is scarcely discussed, as the government continues its unchecked expansion.

We have lost sight of the fact that our power is meant to restrain the government, not the other way around.

Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, derailed or desensitized.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the moment these acts of aggression becomes the new normal, authoritarianism won’t be a distant threat; it will be reality.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

This should be non-negotiable.

Winning an election does not give President Trump—or any politician—the authority to sidestep the Constitution and remake the government at will.

That’s not how a constitutional republic works, even in pursuit of the so-called greater good.

Thus far, those defending the Trump administration’s worst actions, which range from immoral and unethical to blatantly unconstitutional, have resorted to repeating propaganda and glaring non-truths while insisting that the Biden administration was worse.

“They did it first” and “they did it worse” are not justifications for disregarding the law.

For that matter, omitting the Constitution from the White House website—pretending it never existed—does not give the president and the agencies within the Executive Branch the right to circumvent the rule of law or, worse, nullify the Constitution.

Mounting a populist revolution to wrest power from the Deep State only to institute a different Deep State is not how you make America great again.

How you do something is just as important as why you do something, and right now, the means by which the Trump administration is attempting to accomplish many of its end goals are antithetical to every principle on which this nation was founded: natural rights, popular sovereignty, the rule of law, the rejection of monarchical law, the need for transparency and accountability, due process, liberty, equality, and limited government, to name just a few.

Whether the concerns driving this massive overhaul of the government are legitimate is not the question. We are certainly overdue for a reckoning when it comes to our bloated, corrupt, unaccountable, out-of-control bureaucracy.

So far, however, the Trump administration’s policies have exacerbated government dysfunction, undermined constitutional rights, and deepened public distrust.

Trump is not making America great again. In fact, things are getting worse by the day.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the erosion of fundamental freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights. Government officials are muzzling the press, threatening protesters, and censoring online speech. Due process is being ignored altogether.

The government’s haphazard, massive and potentially illegal firing spree is leaving whole quadrants of the government understaffed and unable to carry out the necessary functions of government as it relates to veterans, education, energy, agriculture, and housing.

Rather than draining the swamp of corrupt, moneyed interests, Trump has favored the oligarchy with intimate access to the halls of power.

Rather than reducing the actual size of the government, it appears that the groundwork is being laid by Trump’s administration to replace large swaths of the federal workforce with artificial intelligence-powered systems, expanding automation rather than shrinking bureaucracy.

Despite claims of saving the country billions through massive layoffs and terminations, cancelled leases and contracts, and the discovery of wasteful or corrupt spending, the supporting documentation provided by DOGE, the so-called department of efficiency headed up by Elon Musk, has been shown to be riddled by errors and miscalculations.

While claiming to cut back on wasteful government spending in order to balance the federal budget, Trump is pushing to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion while adding at least that much in tax cuts to benefit corporations and billionaires, all of which would be paid for by the already overburdened middle- and lower-classes.

Despite campaign promises to bring down prices “on Day One,” inflation is on the rise again and financial markets are tumbling on fears that Americans will be the ones to pay the price for Trump’s threatened tariffs.

In defiance of states’ rights and in a complete about-face given his own past statements about the authority of state and local governments, Trump is increasingly attempting to browbeat the states into compliance with the dictates of the federal government. Historically, legal precedent has tended to favor the states, whose sovereignty rests in the Tenth Amendment.

All appearances to the contrary, Trump is not so much scaling back the nation’s endless wars as he appears to be genuflecting to authoritarian regimes in the hopes of building an international authoritarian alliance with fascist governments, while announcing plans to seize other countries’ lands, a clear act of military provocation.

Trump’s eagerness to expand the U.S. prison system and impose harsher punishments, including the death penalty, would inevitably result in more American citizens being locked up for nonviolent crimes. The Trump administration has also floated the idea of imprisoning American “criminals” in other countries.

Then you have Trump’s frequent references to himself as an imperial ruler (the White House even shared images of Trump wearing a royal crown), coupled with his repeated trial balloon allusions to running for a third term in contravention of the 22nd Amendment, which bars presidents from being elected more than twice.

Nothing adds up.

Not the numbers, not the policies, not the promises.

If Trump continues to put into power people who are more loyal to him than they are to the Constitution, the consequences will be dire.

Nullifying the Constitution is not how you make America great again.

Trump may not have been given a mandate to act as a dictator or a king, but he was given a mandate to rein in a government that had grown out of control.

That mandate came with one iron-clad condition, which Trump swore to abide by: the U.S. Constitution.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, no government official should be allowed to play fast and loose with the rule of law.

So where does that leave us?

The job of holding the government accountable does not belong to any one person or party. It belongs to all of us, “We the people,” irrespective of political affiliations and differences of race, religion, gender, education, economics, social strata or any other labels used to divide us.

No politician, of any party, will save America.

Only the Constitution—and the people who defend it—can do that.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Many of those notables that assembled in the city of Philadelphia in that historic year of 1787 were intent on framing a resilient centralized government that stood in accordance with Adam Smith’s essential maxims which affirmed that “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all;” contending that civil government, “grows up with the acquisition of valuable property.”^[3] Consequently, this analysis will challenge that long-held notion which has described early American thought and society as “egalitarian, free from [the] extreme want and wealth that characterized Europe.”^[4] In fact, as will be demonstrated throughout the work that follows, by an array of noted scholars and academics, this exploration will prove that property, class, and status played a significant, although perhaps not an exclusive, role in the development of that early colony and its nascent nation.

The intricacies of these contradictions will be examined in further detail throughout this study, arguing that, it is impossible to elude the fact that status, class, and race performed a major part in the views and doctrines woven within the principles and legal mechanisms formulated by those luminaries in that early republic. In fact, the following quote extracted from a letter written in 1786 by a French diplomat (positioned as the chargé d’affaires), in communiqué with his government, leading up to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, helps to delineate the top-down attitudes and devices engineered by the men historically known as the “Framers:”

Although there are no nobles in America, there is a class of men denominated “gentlemen.” … Almost all of them dread the efforts of the people to despoil them of their possessions, and, moreover, they are creditors, and therefore interested in strengthening the government and watching over the execution of the law…. The majority of them being merchants, it is for their interest to establish the credit of the United States in Europe on a solid foundation by the exact payment of debts, and to grant to Congress powers extensive enough to compel the people to contribute for this purpose.^[5]

As supported, evidenced, and argued by famed bottom-up historians like Michael Parenti, Charles A. Beard, Michael J. Klarman and others, the concepts of class and ownership and their European legacy greatly contributed to the initial composition of that early American dominion and its proprietorship stratum. In fact, as Professor Parenti demonstrates, “from colonial times onward, ‘men of influence’ received vast land grants from the [English] crown and presided over estates that bespoke an impressive munificence.” Parenti also reveals the stark differentials woven within the colonial class structure through exposing the fact that, “By 1700, three-fourths of the acreage in New York belonged to fewer than a dozen persons.” And, beyond that, “In the interior of Virginia, seven individuals owned 1.7 million acres,” exhibiting a structuralized formulation of wealth concentration from early on. In the run-up to the American Revolution, some twenty-seven years prior to the Continental Congress taking place in that celebrated year of 1787, Professor Parenti additionally notes that, “By 1760, [some] fewer than five hundred men in five colonial cities controlled most of the commerce, shipping, banking, mining, and manufacturing on the eastern seaboard.” Again, Parenti brings to the fore, a clear demarcation between the few and the many, property ownership and capital accumulation in that newly formed land of “equality,” which will be explored and surveyed in further detail within this work.^[6]

Chapter One of this dissertation will do a deep dive, in part, by focusing on documentary evidence penned by the “Framers” themselves. In addition to that, this work will seek to challenge existing historiographical debates, as noted, by displaying both the negative and positive legacy left by the men that articulated the U.S. Constitution in the city of Philadelphia in that momentous year of 1787. Furthermore, a major theoretical element of this retrospective will be working with, and challenging, the classifications and clashes within the so-called American ideals of Independence, Liberty, and Equality through studying an array of viewpoints from historical masterworks by Gordon S. Wood, Woody Holton, and others as mentioned below. Some of the topics brought forth within this research will include Chapter One, “An American Paradox: The Marriage of Liberty, Slavery and Freedom.” Chapter Two, “Cui Bono – Who Benefitted Most from the Categorical Constructs of Race and Class in Early America?” And, finally, in Chapter Three, this work will take a cogent look at “The Atomization of the Powerless and the Sins of Democracy,” historically from antiquity and beyond, by reflecting upon the judgments, attitudes and viewpoints, from a class perspective, of the privileged faction of men that forged that early nation’s crucial founding doctrines and documents. Again, these chapters above mentioned will take a thorough look at the varying constructs of race and class throughout the American experience from the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and early part of the Twentieth centuries, focusing on cui bono, that is, who benefitted most from those racialized constructs of division and how those benefits negatively affected those societies at large socially, politically, and culturally.

Specifically, the chapters summarized above will bring together the importance of understanding just how class, ownership, and status, per race, position, and wealth demarcated the early American experience within governmental and societal structures, rules, and regulations from 1787 forward – surveying the uniqueness of the U.S. Constitution (both pro and con) along with its Amendments (known as the Bill of Rights)  will help provide a nuanced understanding of both said document and the men that formulated it. Which later impacted social movements and social discord from abolitionism to civil rights. This study will deliver not just a structuralized economic and political viewpoint, but a humanistic perspective. Moreover, this research will incorporate historical and scientific classics by such noted scholars as Edmund S. Morgan, Edward E. Baptist, Barbara J. Fields; and Nancy Isenberg – just to name a few. The foundations of racial divisions mentioned above were clearly measured by 16th-century English theorist and statesman Francis Bacon when he penned, “The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men.”^[7] As determined, Bacon defined racism as an innate element of human nature. Hence, this study will challenge that hypothesis, in part, by arguing that divisions of race within the human condition are social constructs that ultimately benefit those that exercise those dictates.

1
The Paradox of Early American Freedom

What were the underlying moral and ideological contradictions woven within that newly birthed land of freedom’s class-stratified slave society?

We believe we understand what class is, that being, an economic social division shaped by affluence and privilege versus want and neglect. “The problem is that popular American history is most commonly told, [or] dramatized, without much reference to the existence of social classes.” The story, in the main, is taught and/or conveyed as a tale of American exceptionalism – as if the early American colonies, and their break with Great Britain, somehow miraculously transformed the constraints of class structuralism – resulting in a greater realization of “enriched possibility.” This conception of America was galvanized by the men that formulated its constitution in the city of Philadelphia in that momentous year of 1787 with great elegance – an image of how a modern nation “might prove itself revolutionary in terms of social mobility in a world traditionally dominated by monarchy and fixed aristocracy.” America’s most beloved myths are at once encouraging and devastating: “All men are created equal,”^[8] for example, which excluded Indigenous Peoples and African Americans, penned by renowned American statesman and philosopher Thomas Jefferson in his landmark Declaration of Independence written in 1776 – was effectively employed as a maxim to delineate, as historian Nancy Isenberg presents, “the promise of America’s open spaces and united people’s moral self-regard in distinguishing themselves from a host of hopeless societies abroad,” but the tale is much darker, more troublesome and abundantly more nuanced than that.^[9]

An elite colonial land-grabbing class, from early on, in that fledgling America, contrived its own attitudes and perspectives – those which served it best. After settlement, starting as early as the seventeenth century, colonial outposts exploited their unfree labor: European indentured servants, African slaves, Native Americans, and their offspring – describing such expendable classes as “human waste.”^[10] When it comes to an early settler-colonial mentality of not only conquest but profitability as an exemplar, “Coined land,” is the term that Benjamin Franklin (noted Eighteenth Century political philosopher, scientist, and diplomat) used to refer to, or celebrate, the intrinsic monetary value woven within the then brutal land acquisition and/or theft from the Indigenous Native American population at the time – appropriated land which was later “privatized and commodified” in the hands of venture capitalists, described as “European colonists.”^[11] These attitudes of hierarchy over “the people out of doors,” as those eminent luminaries that gathered in Philadelphia later referred to them were long held. A phrase, according to noted Professor of History Benjamin Irvin, that was largely defined to incorporate not only “the working poor” that clamored in the streets of Philadelphia during the Convention of 1787, but all peoples who were disenfranchised by that newly formed Continental Congress, “including women, Native Americans, African Americans, and the working poor.”^[12] In fact, as Isenberg demonstrates, notions of superiority from the upper crust of that early society toward, “The poor, [or waste people], did not disappear, [on the contrary], by the early eighteenth century they [the lower classes] were seen as a permanent breed.”^[13] That is, a taxonomical classification viewed through how one physically appeared, grounded in their class and conduct, came to the fore; and, this prejudicial manner of classifying and/or categorizing bottom-up human struggle or failure took hold in the United States for centuries to come – which will be further explored within subsequent chapters.

These unfavorable top-down class attitudes toward the poor or “waste people” emanated from what was known at the time as the mother country, that is, England itself – where as early as the 1500s and 1600s, America was not viewed as an “Eden of opportunity,” but rather a “giant rubbish heap,” that could be converted and cultivated into productive estates, on behalf of wealthy landowners through the unloading of England’s poor and destitute – who would be used to develop that far-off wasteland. Again, as Isenberg contends, “the idle poor [or] dregs of society, were to be sent thither simply to throw down manure and die in a vacuous muck.” That is, before it became celebrated as the fabled “City on a Hill,”^[14] auspiciously described by John Winthrop (English Puritan lawyer and then governor), in his well-known sermon of 1630, to what was then the early settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, “America was [seen] in the eyes of sixteenth-century adventurers [and English elites alike] as a foul, weedy wilderness – a ‘sink-hole’ [perfectly] suited to [work, profit and lord over] ‘ill-bred commoners,’”^[15] clearly defining top-down class distinctions from early on.

Returning to those eminent American men that later devised the doctrines and documents which conceived of a “new nation” built on individual liberty and freedom, under further examination, begs the question: “Freedom for whom and for what?” This study will delve deeper into who those men were and how their overall attitudes toward the general populous as far as class, education, rank, and proprietorship, eventually led to a decisive result known as the U.S. Constitution. To appreciate the U.S. political and economic structure, it is essential to understand its original formulation, starting with said constitution. Those dignitaries that gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were intent on framing a strong centralized government in adherence with (what they believed to be Scottish economist and theorist) Adam Smith’s fundamental dicta and/or revelations, which stated that government was “instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor” and “grows up with the acquisition of valuable property.”^[16] As Political Scientist and author, Robert Ovetz argues below, the mechanisms and/or devices designed and implemented within the U.S. Constitution were contrived from the outset to thwart any and all democratic control. Equally noted, the Framers’ brilliance was in formulating a virtually unalterable system which offered through clever slogans like “We the People” an assurance of participation within the constructs of a Republic, all the while permitting “a few to hand-pick some representatives,” whilst the majority thus surrendered “the power of self-governance.” The U.S., still to this day, lauds itself as a “Democracy,” yet, from the outset, as argued, that illustrious landmark charter mentioned was nefariously intended to “impede democratic control of government” all the while foiling “democratic control of the economy.”^[17]

Under careful observation, no section of the U.S. Constitution is more misconstrued and misinterpreted than its Preamble. Moreover, the term, “We the People,”  for example was, and still is to this day, deliberately employed as a rhetorical device in the form of a “philosophical aspiration,” separating it from the dry legalese that compose most of the rest of the charter. This, perhaps, is why the Preamble . has grasped the attention of the common everyday citizen. It embodies the hopes and values of ordinary people, cunningly expressing what they would ideally like the Constitution to achieve in practice – even though in truth it does something distinctively different. In fact, if we survey the meaning of the doctrines found within the Preamble, we find a set of material relations dating back to the 1700s which were brilliantly devised to deliberately constrain economic and political democracy:^[18]

Figure 1: The original handwritten Preamble to the U.S. Constitution on permanent display at the National Archives.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.^[19]

The “Blessings of Liberty” run amiss. Again, those “Framers,” or group of elite men that gathered in Philadelphia for that historic event in 1787 ideally utilized the inclusive language of “We the People,” .  while at the same time, implementing a complex structural formulation which would stave off the will of the common people at every turn. The fifty-five of the seventy-four delegates that showed up on the scene, were, in fact, a cohort indistinguishable from themselves as “wealthy white men” of whom only a small number were not rich (but nevertheless affluent). They viewed themselves as “the People,” who would not only be provided liberties under that newly devised constitution, but also offered themselves the power to control the authority within that newly formed centralized government.^[20]

Figure 2: The Framers working out the concept of “We the People” by Tom Meyer.

By bringing the term “insure domestic Tranquility” to the fore, an early American top-down class paradigm is made evident by those men of property historically known as the “Framers.” The U.S. Constitution was the result of the repercussions of the American Revolution and decades of class conflict from within. Cogent warnings provided by not only Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence,^[21] which cautioned against “convulsions within” and “exciting domestic insurrections amongst us,” but also forewarnings offered by the man considered “the father of that newly formed nation,” George Washington. In the following statements to the run-up of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, written in correspondence to his then erstwhile comrade-in-arms and chief of artillery, General Henry Knox, George Washington (supreme commander of the American revolutionary colonial forces and hero par excellence) projected clear class distinctions, fears and/or biases which lie at the heart of this study, “There are combustibles in every state, to which a spark might set fire.”^[22] Hence, as Professor of Law, Jennifer Nedelsky asserts, what General Washington believed was necessary was a statutory formulation of control, instituted and devised by the upper crust of society, in the shape of a constitution, “to contain the threat of the people rather than to embrace their participation and their competence,”^[23] or else, as stated in a second letter to Knox, the eminent General warned, “If government shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws … anarchy & confusion must prevail – and every thing will be turned topsy turvey,”^[24] demonstrating an elite fear most pronounced.

Figure 3: George Washington (1732-1799), Supreme Commander of the American Revolution and First President of the United States.

A good exemplar of a “spark that set fire,” which struck fear in the hearts of that elite class of men assembled in Philadelphia, is famously known as Shays’ Rebellion (August 29, 1786 to February 1787), led by former American army officer and son of Irish Immigrants, Daniel Shays, which culminated in a bottom-up armed revolt that took place in Western Massachusetts and Worcester, in response to a debt crisis imposed upon, in large part, the common citizenry; and, in opposition to the state government’s increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their trades – as a remediation for outstanding war debt. The rebellion was eventually put down by Colonial Army forces sent there by George Washington himself – staving off the voice of the people, in that newly formed land of liberty. What “Tranquility” actually meant, as established by the Framers, was a centralized government formulated within the constitution, with the ability to halt and/or suppress conflict or unrest that threatened “the established order and governance of the elite.”^[25] Shays’ Rebellion in combination with the possibility of slave uprisings and native resistance offered the justification for creating, and later expanding, a domestic military force as penned into the Charter by Gouverneur Morris (1752 – 1816), American political leader and contributor to the Preamble outlined above. Morris cleverly emphasized the necessity for a general fiscal “contribution to the common defense” on behalf of his class interests, warning of the possible dangers of both “internal insurrections and external invasions” as outlined in detail in Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.^[26] In summary, by centralizing a military power within a national charter, “the elites got their own protection force against the possibility of the majority’s ‘popular despotism’” as described by Washington himself – thwarting any and all popular resistance to elite rule. In fact, by 1791, just four years after the Constitutional Congress met in the city of Philadelphia, that newly formed nation’s military force tripled its cost and increased its number of troops by fivefold.^[27]

In challenging that ideal of promoting “the general Welfare,” within a class paradigm, William Manning, (1747 – 1814) American Revolutionary soldier, farmer, and novelist, was one of the few voices at the Constitutional Convention that stood up and pushed back against the elite coup that was evidently taking place. After having fought in the Revolutionary War, as a common foot soldier, he began to believe that his military service and sacrifice carried little weight with the elites that surrounded him. He also delineated the fact that those measures which reflected Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and (the first President of the Continental Congress) John Jay’s views, and policies, created a poisonous atmosphere, ideology, and division between the “Few and the Many.” William Manning feared that by locking “the people out of doors,” out of government, the Founders were implementing measures such as Hamilton’s economic vision for that newly formed nation “at the expense of the common farmer and laborer.”^[28] When it came to Shays’ Rebellion, for example, his views were commensurate with those of the uprising, but not with their methods of armed resistance. Based on his staunch democratic values, he called upon the common man to forcefully use new organizational tactics by directly petitioning the government to redress grievances. Manning understood the economic divisions as implemented.^[29] In 1798, he authored his most celebrated work,  The Key of Liberty, in which he displayed what he believed to be the objectives of the “Few” – which were to “distress and force the Many” into being financially dependent on them, “generating a sustained cycle of dependence.” Manning argued that the only chance for the “Many” was to choose those leaders that would battle for those with lesser economic and political authority.^[30] What Manning understood so well was that those early colonial financial interests defined their own class “influence and benefits” as “the general Welfare” which was, in his view, in diametrical opposition to much of the population. 

Figure 5: Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), the First Secretary of the Treasury from 1789 to 1795 during George Washington’s presidency.

Alexander Hamilton’s celebrated financial plan alluded to above, put that early nation on a trajectory of economic growth, through a concentration of wealth in the form of property and holdings which would serve his class best, “…so capital [as] a resource remains untouched.”^[31] Hamilton delivered an innovative and audacious scheme in both his First and Second Reports on the Further Provision Necessary for Establishing Public Credit issued on 13 December 1790. Again, on behalf of his class interests, that newly devised federal government would purchase all state arrears at full cost – using its general tax base. Hamilton understood that such an act would considerably augment the legitimacy of that newly formed centralized government. To raise money to pay off its debts, the government would issue security bonds to rich landowners and wealthy stakeholders who could afford them, providing huge profits for those invested when the time arrived for that recently formed Federal government to pay off its debts.^[32] Charles Beard, Columbia University historian and author, in his famed book, An Economic Interpretation of The Constitution of The United States, succinctly outlines Hamilton’s class bias woven within his strategy per taxation, “[d]irect taxes may be laid, but resort to this form of taxation is rendered practically impossible, save on extraordinary occasions, by the provision that ‘they [taxes] must be apportioned according to population’ – so that numbers cannot transfer the burden to accumulated wealth”^[33] – revealing a significant economic top-down class preference and formulation of control from the outset. Beard summarizes as such, “The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.”^[34] Given the United States’ long history of top-down class biases and bottom-up class struggle, to be further explored within this research, Beard provides a cogent groundwork.

Figure 6: James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the U.S. Constitution and Fourth President of the United States.

James Madison, elite intellectual and Statesman, was and is traditionally proclaimed as the “Father of the Constitution” for his crucial role in planning and fostering the Constitution of the United States and later its Bill of Rights. For many of the Framers, with Madison in the lead, the Articles of Confederation (previously formulated on November 15, 1777, and effectuated on March 1, 1781) were a nefarious compact among the 13 states of the United States, previously the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain, which operated as the nation’s first framework of government establishing each individual State as “Free and Independent” – eloquently encouraged and outlined in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.^[35] From a class vantage point, the phrase “establish Justice” as devised by Madison within the Preamble above, meant in an idealistic sense, that the government would apply the rule of law impartially and consistently to all, irrespective of one’s station in society. But, in fact, the expression, “establish Justice,” explicitly points to the Framers’ “intent to tip the balance of power back in favor of the elites.”^[36] Notably, by early 1783, in his famed “Notes on Debates in Congress Memo” dated January 28^th, 1783, some four years prior to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution on December 12^th, 1787, Madison had well-defined what “justice” had meant to him and his cohorts by asserting that, “the establishment of permanent & adequate funds [in the form of a general taxation] to operate … throughout the U. States is indispensably necessary for doing complete justice to the Creditors of the U.S., for restoring public credit, & for providing for the future exigencies of … war.”^[37] For Madison,  as argued by eminent Professor of History Woody Holton, “establishing Justice” envisioned doing what some of the States were reluctant and/or incapable of achieving – that being, the payment of debts for the elites by “safeguarding their property” whether it be slave, land, or financial.^[38]

How class and race maintained supremacy. In essence, the cleverly devised Three-fifths Compromise outlined in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, conceived by Madison, not only preserved, and reinforced the atrocity of slavery, but it also made stronger “the power of property” produced by the capitalization of all human labor. The minority checks embedded in the constitutional power of taxation ultimately prevented all types of what the Framers referred to as “leveling,” that being a fair and equal redistribution of wealth and resources amongst the general population.^[39] In doing so, the constitution serves in perpetuity to protect wealth from what the Framers feared most: “economic democracy.”^[40] Unambiguously, the Three-fifths clause established that three out of every five enslaved persons were counted, on behalf of their owners, when deciding a state’s total populace per representation and legislation. Hence, before the Civil War, the Three-fifths clause gave disproportionate weight to slave states, specifically slave ownership, in the House of Representatives.

A final element written within the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution worth further mention is the famed idiom “secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and Our Posterity,” a phrase that concisely encompasses the opinions of that band of elites, that amassed in Philadelphia, known as “the Framers” and their historical and material view of the possession of “Private Property” – greatly influenced and inspired by English Enlightenment philosopher and physician John Locke (1632-1704). Locke, in his famed The Two Treatises of Civil Government, argued that the law of nature obliged all human beings not to harm “the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another,” defined as “Natural Rights.”^[41] As a result, the Framers (most of whom were large landowners) were intent on designing a centralized government that would singularly protect and defend “private property.”  The U.S. Constitution fosters this by placing a collection of roadblocks and/or obstacles in the way of majority demands for “economic democracy”  – what, on numerous occasions, James Madison himself described as an oppression, enslavement and/or tyranny of the majority.^[42] In a land without Nobles, Madison declared that “the Senate ought to come from, and represent, the wealth of the nation.”^[43] With Madison’s compatriot John Dickinson of Delaware in full accord, proclaiming that the Senate should be comprised of those that are, “distinguished for their rank in life and their weight of property, and bearing as strong a likeness to the British House of Lords as possible.”^[44] Additionally, Pierce Butler, wealthy land-owning South Carolinian, stood in complete agreement confirming that the Senate was, “the aristocratic part of our government.”^[45] Those elite men, as members of that continental congress, largely on their own behalf, cleverly formulated “a plethora of opportunities to issue a minority veto of any changes by law, regulation, or court rulings,” that might menace their property ownership.^[46] In essence, that charter known as the U.S. Constitution was brilliantly constructed to ensure an elite control and privilege that would last for “Posterity” – forever unchanged and unchangeable.

There is a wealth of evidence, as demonstrated, that the U.S. Constitution was originally designed and implemented not to facilitate meaningful bottom-up systemic change, but to ultimately avert anything that does not serve the benefits of the propertied class. Let us keep in mind that meaningful change from below has always been hard-fought, but not impossible. It took roughly seventy-eight years from 1787; and, a Civil War which lasted from 1861 to 1865, culminating in the loss of nearly 620,000 lives to officially abolish slavery under Amendment XIII (ratified on December 6^th, 1865).^[47] Until then, human bondage was a long held and integral form of property ownership within the United States – to be further examined within this work. Reflecting succinctly on the underlying class interests during and prior to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, two indispensable statements, concerning “human nature,” from two essential minds, per class, which undergird the views here summarized, are as follows: Benjamin Franklin keenly observed that any assemblage of men, no matter how gifted, bring with them “all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interest and their selfish views.”^[48] Which stood ironically in accordance with Adam Smith’s, “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind,”^[49] which demonstrates Smith’s historical view per an innate class perspective of wealth concentration.

2
Cui Bono – Who Benefitted Most from the Categorical Constructs of Race and Class?

The year 1776 is a deceptive starting point when it comes to the ideologies of American freedom and liberty. Independence from Great Britain did not expunge the British class arrangement long embraced by colonial elites that undergirded a social system of division which promulgated “entrenched beliefs about poverty and the willful exploitation of human labor.” An unfavored view of African slaves and poor whites widely thought of as “waste and/or rubbish,” remained a long-held social construct which served American elites well into the modern era.^[50] From the outset, when it came to class dynamics, no one understood the manipulative power of faction and discord sown amongst the masses better than James Madison himself as boldly outlined in Federalist #10. The danger, Madison argued on behalf of his class interests, was not faction itself, but the escalation of “a majority faction” grounded in that “most common and durable source” of conflict: the “unequal distribution of property.”^[51] In that widely celebrated land of “democracy,” Madison revealed not only his class biases anathema to the concept, but his fear of the very idea: “When a majority is included in a faction,” it could use democracy, “to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest the public good and the rights of other citizens” – that is, the privileges of the propertied class.^[52] To his credit, from early on, James Madison laid out clear class distinctions, partialities, and fears woven within that newly formulated American social stratum – which are essential to this study. Within Federalist #10, Madison brilliantly devised a strategy of division which would protect elite interests by suppressing the economic menace of a majoritarian class faction through the encouragement of as many divisions within the populous as possible. Hence, as he outlined, the “greater variety of parties and interests [within class, race, gender, or religion] … make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have common motive.”^[53] Ironically, faction was problematic as stated, yet, at the same time, paradoxically, according to James Madison, more of it was the answer.

From the outset of the American experience, as outlined in his masterwork, American Slavery, American Freedom, Edmond S. Morgan, Yale Professor of History, makes evident the elite class interests and/or dynamics that fortified the use of clever rhetorical devices, such as “freedom and liberty” upon the general populous – all the while devilishly using the cruelty of slavery as a unifying force. During his visit to that early America, an astute English diplomat by the name of Sir Augustus John Foster, serving in Washington during Jefferson’s presidency (1801-1809), keenly observed, “[Elite] Virginians above all, seem committed to reducing all [white] men to an equal footing.” Foster observed, “owners of slaves, among themselves, are all for keeping down every kind of superiority”; and he recognized this pretension of equality used upon the masses as a powerful manipulative tactic. Virginians, he argued, “can profess an unbounded love of liberty and of democracy in consequence of the mass of the people, who in other countries might become mobs, being there nearly altogether composed of their own Negro slaves….”^[54] In that ruthless slave society, as Morgan reveals, “Slaves did not become leveling mobs, because their owners would see to it that they had no chance to. The apostrophes to equality were not addressed to them.”^[55] In clarification, he adds:

…because Virginia’s labor force was composed mainly of slaves, who had been isolated by race and removed from the political equation, the remaining free [white] laborers and tenant farmers were too few in number to constitute a serious threat to the superiority of the [elite white] men who assured them of their equality.^[56]

The ancient Roman concept of Divide and Conquer, which dates to Julius Caesar himself, was effectively implemented by Virginia’s elite propertied class through the skillful use of cooptation. Virginia’s yeoman class comprised of small land-owning farmers were made to believe that they shared “a common identity” with those “men of better sorts,” simply due to the fact that neither was a slave – hence, both were alike in not being slaves.^[57] Ironically, in the mindset of those early American elites that viewed themselves as the founders of a republic, largely inspired by Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the pushing off of monarchy, slavery occupied a critical, if not indeterminate position: it was thought of as a principal evil which free men sought to avoid for society in general through the usurpation of monarchies and the establishment of republics. But, at the same time, it was also viewed as the solution to one of society’s most pressing problems, “the problem of the poor.” Elite Virginians could move beyond English republicanism, “partly because they had solved the problem: they achieved a society in which most of the poor were enslaved.”^[58] In truth, contempt for the poor permeated the age. John Locke, English philosopher and physician (1632-1704), considered one of the most essential of Enlightenment thinkers, commonly read, discussed, and admired by early American elites, famously wrote a classic defense of the right of revolution in his Two Treatises of Civil Government published in 1689 – yet he did not extend that right to the poor. ^[59] In fact, in his proposals for workhouses and/or “working schools,” outlined in his Essay on the Poor Law, published in 1687, the children of the [English] poor would “learn labor,” and nothing but labor, from a very young age, stopping short of enslavement – though it would require a certain alteration of mind to recognize the distinction.^[60] That said, those astute men that assembled in the city of Philadelphia in 1787 took their inspiration from Locke very seriously.

Hamilton and Madison were in absolute accord with Locke’s views per property and ownership, that being, “Government has no other end but the preservation of property.”^[61] Consequently, the U.S. Constitution was designed to both govern the population through limiting its capacity to self-govern; and by protecting all forms of property ownership including the enslavement of human beings. Hence, as historian David Waldstreicher (expert in early American political and cultural history) presents, the Constitution was devised not only to safeguard slavery as a separate economic system, but as integral to the basic right of what he describes as the “power over other people and property (including people who were property).”^[62] As a result, the tensions and/or rivalries that resided in that newly formed nation, which would eventually lead to a bloody Civil War, were not over quantities of land possession between the North and the South, but more focused on how many slaves resided in each. To his credit, Madison presciently admitted as such:

[T]he States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size … but principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. These two causes concurred in forming the great division of interests in the U. States. It did not lie between the large & small States: It lay between the Northern & Southern.^[63]

Slavery was considered insidious by some, and yet fundamental to those that profited from it, both North and South. In fact, John Rutledge, esteemed Governor of South Carolina during the Revolution; and delegate to the Constitutional Convention, spoke on behalf of the Southern planters’ class by supporting slavery, of which, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney also of South Carolina, stood in full agreement. Both men implored their fellow delegates to recognize their common interests in preserving slavery from which they “stood to profit,” not only from selling slave-produced goods, but from carrying the slaves on their ships^[64] – hence, they argued, stood a long-held alliance between Northern “personality” (that is, financial holdings) and “that particular form of property” (slavery) which dominated the South.^[65] Slaves were long held the most valuable asset in the country. By 1860, the total value of all the slaves in America was estimated at the equivalent of $4 billion, more than double the value of the South’s entire farmland valued at $1.92 billion, four times the total currency in circulation at $435.4 million, and twenty times the value of all the precious metals (gold and silver) then in circulation at $228.3 million.^[66] Thus, at the time and thereafter, North American slavery was not just a national or sectional asset, but a global one. As a result of the promise of monetary benefits and values produced by enslaved peoples, “the Framers,” in defense of their own interests, collectively devised a system of fail-safe mechanisms to protect their most cherished resource: human vassalage.^[67] Moreover, in addition to the Three-Fifths Clause described above, the Constitution contained several safeguards with a clear objective of maintaining the vile system as it was. The Foreign Slave Trade Clause as outlined in Article 1; Section 9 of that charter known as the U.S. Constitution stated that Congress could not prohibit the “importation of persons” prior to 1808 – which cleverly excluded the term “slave.”^[68] The intention of said clause, was not to stave off slavery, but was implemented to maintain, if not inflate, the monetary value of those persons already in captivity – when it came to their sale and transport to other slave states outside of Virginia. The Fugitive Slave Clause as written in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, was clearly devised to protect elite proprietorship over individuals forcefully ensconced in a system of chattel slavery:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.^[69]

This Clause, not nullified until the Thirteenth Amendment’s abolition of slavery, considered it “a right” on the part of a slaveholder, to retrieve an enslaved individual who had fled to another state. Finally, as esteemed University of Chicago Professor, Paul Finkelman, contends, the ban on congressional export taxes adamantly argued for by those elite men that gather in Philadelphia, was, for the most part, a concession to southern planters whose slaves primarily produced agricultural goods for export.^[70] Clearly demonstrating and demarcating an upper-class bias based on ownership, race, and wealth from the outset.

How elite capture worked in early America – diversity was implemented and utilized as a ruling class ideology. Privileged landowners, specifically Virginians, being “men of letters,” as they would have thought of themselves, understood very well that all white men were not created equal, especially when it came to property and what they referred to as “virtue,” a much admired “elite attribute” which can be traced back to Aristotle himself, in his classic work, Nicomachean Ethics, who defined the only life worth living as “a life of leisure” – that is a life of study and freedom for the few which rested on the labor of slaves and proprietorship.^[71] As thus revealed, the material forces and benefits which dictated southern elites to see Negroes, mulattoes, and Indians as one, also “dictated that they see large and small planters as one.” Consequently, racism became an essential, if unacknowledged, ingredient woven within that “republican ideology” that enabled Virginians to not only design, but to “lead the nation,” for generations to come. An important question thus addressed: Was the ideological vision of “a nation of equals” flawed from the very beginning by the evident contempt, exhibited, toward both poor whites and enslaved blacks? And beyond that, to be further explored within the final chapter of this research project: Are there still elements of colonial Virginia, ideologically, ethnically, and socially, woven within America today? More than a century after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox (on April 9^th, 1865) – those questions per race and class still linger….^[72]

As Edward E. Baptist, Professor of History at Cornell University, makes clear in his epic work, The Half Has Never Been Told, Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism, attitudes toward race and race superiority in America long remained. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, America’s first generation of professional historians, he argues, “were justifying the exclusion of Jim Crow and disfranchisement” by telling a story about the nation’s past of slavery and civil war that seemed to confirm, for many white Americans, that “white supremacy was just and necessary.” In fact, Baptist proclaims that racism had not only become culturally accepted, but historically and socially grounded within a form of “race science” to be further explored in the final chapter of this study. He states that by the latter part of the nineteenth century, “for many white Americans, science had proven that people of African descent [if not the poor in general] were intellectually inferior and congenitally prone to criminality.” As a result, he argues, that that cohort of racist whites in [Jim Crow] America, “looked wistfully to [the] past when African Americans had been governed with whips and chains.” Confirming the fact that class, race, and racism have long been integral parts of America’s long and difficult history^.[73]

American capitalism, land, cotton, slaves, and profit: by the early nineteenth century, the U.S. Banking system was fundamental when it came to entrepreneurial revenue development in the form of land acquisition, cotton production, and slave labor. Bank lending became the key ingredient that propelled slave owners to greater heights of wealth accumulation, “Enslavers benefited from bank-induced stability and steady credit expansion.” The more slave purchases that U.S. Banks would finance, the more cotton enslavers could produce, “and cotton [at the time] was the world’s most widely traded product.” As mentioned, in this newly devised system of capital, lending, and borrowing, cotton was an essential resource in an unending global market. So, the more cotton slaves produced, the more cotton enslavers would sell, and thus the more profit they would make. In fact, “owning more slaves enabled planters to repay debts, take profits, and gain property that could be [used as] collateral for even more borrowing.”^[74] Early U.S. Capitalism not just undergirded, but bolstered and expanded the harsh and inhumane system of slavery as such, “Lending to the South’s cotton economy was an investment not just in the world’s most widely traded commodity, but also in a set of producers who had shown a consistent ability to increase their productivity and revenue.”^[75] Said differently, American slave owners, throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, had the “cash flow to pay back their debts.” And, the debts of slave owners were secure, given the fact that they had “a lot of valuable collateral.” In fact, as argued by a number of economic historians, enslavers, by mid-century had in their possession the largest pool of collateral in the United States at the time, 4 million slaves worth over $3 billion, as “the aggregate value of all slave property.”^[76] These values embedded themselves in a global system of investment through slave commodification which benefitted mostly the upper crust of society in both the U.S. and the U.K., “this meant that investors around the world would share in revenues made by ‘hands in the field.’” Even though at the time, and to its credit, “Britain was liberating the slaves of its empire,” British banks could still sell, to a wealthy investor, a completely commodified human being in the form of a slave – not as a specific individual, but as a holding or part of a collective investment venture “made from the income of thousands of slaves.”^[77]

Furthermore, as mentioned, the fact that popularly elected governments repeatedly sustained such bond schemes, on both sides of the Atlantic, was therefore not only insidious by its very nature, but at the same time remarkable. Popular abolitionist movements were springing up from one side to the other, and demanding abolition across the board. Beyond that, in the United States, there were many elements of class recognition in the form of an “intensely democratic frontier electorate” of both slaves and poor whites that saw banks as “machines designed to channel financial benefits and economic governing power to the unelected elite.”^[78] By mid-century, the rift and divisions between the North and the South became catastrophic in the form of a bloody Civil War. It took a poor boy from a dirt-floor cabin in Kentucky named Abraham Lincoln, who rose to the prominence of lawyer and statesman becoming the 16^th President of the United States, to write and implement the Emancipation Proclamation brought forth on January 1^st, 1863. As President, Abraham Lincoln issued that historic decree, which served not only as a direct challenge to “property ownership,” in the form of human bondage, but a direct assault on the lucrative southern slaveocracy as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious states are, and henceforward shall be free.”^[79] Although Lincoln’s, contribution has been much contested to this day, by historians both Black and white alike, the fact remains that, his efforts as already presented, were undoubtedly a more active and direct support for the freedom of African slaves than those of all the fifteen previous presidents before him combined – The Emancipation Proclamation would prove to be the most important executive order ever issued by an American president, offering the possibility of freedom to an enslaved people held in a giant dungeon that was the confederacy.^[80] Even though there are those historians that argue that the Proclamation was incomplete due to the fact that it “excluded the enslaved not only in Union-held territories such as western Virginia, but also southern Louisiana” where there were pro-Union factions that were trying not to be antagonistic toward local whites who were hell-bent on maintaining the status quo.^[81]

But facts speak for themselves, Abraham Lincoln had been working diligently to persuade the political class in the border states that were loyal to the Union to agree to a “gradual or compensated” emancipation plan – pushing back against the benefactors of the race and class divide. Even though some within the border states refused to give in and held out for permanent slavery, by April 1862, because of Lincoln’s tenacious efforts, Congress passed legislation “freeing – in return for payments to enslavers totaling $1 million – all 3,000 people enslaved in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky.” After the Union army’s victory at the battle of Antietam, Lincoln felt “he could move more decisively” against the institution of slavery and hence released that historic executive order which he had written months earlier as outlined above.^[82] Undoubtedly, again, the Emancipation Proclamation offered for the first time in American history the unquestioned possibility of freedom to a long-held and enslaved people that were seized in a giant open-air prison which was the American South. The Emancipation did unbar the door. Next, enslaved Africans, due to their own agency, forced it wide open.^[83]

As an exemplar of that heartfelt commitment, stood Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895), former slave in his home state of Maryland, who rose to become a historic social reformer, abolitionist, writer, orator, and statesman. Lincoln was the first U.S. President in a long line, to invite an eminent African American intellectual, such as, Frederick Douglass to the White House to discuss the wonton discrimination within the military ranks cast upon African American men. That well-known meeting between Lincoln and Douglass took place in August 1863, two years after the start of the war on April 12, 1861. Douglass tenaciously argued for the enlistment of Black soldiers in the Union Army based largely on his legendary speech delivered at the National Hall in Philadelphia (on July 6, 1863), a month prior, entitled “the Promotion of Colored Enlistments,” outlined in the well-known publication The Liberator, that same month. Where Douglass stated:

Let the black man get upon his person the brass letters US … a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States.^[84]

Douglass presented the same argument to Lincoln, that “Black men in Blue” would not only swell the ranks of the Union Army but would elevate those former slaves to the status of free men of honor – shifting the course of American history.^[85] Lincoln took decisive action, per Douglass’ request, enlisting nearly 200,000 battle-ready African Americans, understanding that without those Black soldiers, there would be no Union. As a result, Douglass wholeheartedly endorsed the President for his coming reelection on November 8, 1864. “The enlistment of blacks into the Union Army was part of Lincoln’s evolving policy on slavery and race.”^[86] Ultimately, he paid the price. On April 14, 1865, the 16^th President of the United States was brutally slain by an assassin’s bullet for his valiant efforts against the racist slavocracy known as the Confederacy – Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865.^[87] The Civil War ultimately nullified the barbarity of slavery, which was later codified in the 13^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, true, yet prejudicial elements of both race and class remained a fixture in American society for decades to come….

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the coalescing or coming together from a class perspective of the lower ranks in the American South, later revealed itself in the formulation of the “Colored Farmers’ Alliance,” which stood as a direct threat to the established southern regime leading to a brutal and repressive racialized crackdown in the form of the Ku Klux Klan and the implementation of an oppressive social order known as Jim Crow – to be further explored within this study.

3
The Atomization of the Powerless
and the Sins of Democracy

Finally, as alluded to, the appellation and/or utilization of the term “race” was seldom employed by Europeans prior to the fifteen-hundreds. If the word was used at all, it was used to identify factions of people with a group connection or kinship. Over the proceeding centuries, the evolution of the term “race,” that came to comprise skin color, levels of intelligence and/or phenotypes, was in large part a European construct – which served to undergird a strategy of division amongst the masses that helped to maintain a stratified class structure with “elite white land-owning men” placed firmly at the top of the social-ladder in that newly birthed land of “freedom” called America.

As succinctly stated by David Roediger, esteemed Professor of American history at the University of Kansas, who has taught and written numerous books focused on race and class in the United States, “The world got along without race for the overwhelming majority of its history. The U.S. has never been without it.”^[88] Nothing could be further from the truth. As outlined in previous chapters, American society uniquely and legalistically formulated the notion of “race” early on to not only justify, but support its new economic system of capitalism, which rested in large part, if not exclusively, upon the exploitation of forced labor – that is, the brutal enslavement and demoralization of African peoples. To understand how the development of race and its bastardized twin “racism” were fundamentally and structurally bound to early American culture and society we must first survey the extant history of how the notions of race, ethnocentrism, white supremacy, and anti-blackness came to exist.

The ideas that undergirded the notions of “race, a class-stratified stratified slave society, as we recognize them today, were birthed and developed together within the earliest formation of the United States; and were intertwined and enmeshed in the phraseologies of “slave” and “white.” The terms “slave,” “white,” and “race” began to be utilized by elite Europeans in the sixteenth century and they imported these hypotheses of hierarchy with them to the colonized lands of North America. That said, originally, the terms did not hold the same weight they have today. However, due to the economic needs and development of that early American society, the terms mentioned would transform to encompass new racialized ideas and meanings which served the upper class best. The European Enlightenment, defined as, “an intellectual movement of the 17^th and 18^th centuries in which ideas concerning god, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent in the West and that instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and politics,”^[89] would come to underpin and contribute to racialized perceptions which argued that, “white people were inherently smarter, more capable, and more human than nonwhite people – became accepted worldwide.” In fact, from an early American perspective, “This [mode] of categorization of people became the justification for European colonization and subsequent enslavement of people from Africa.”^[90] To be further surveyed.

As Paul Kivel, noted American author, social-justice educator and activist, brings to the fore, the terms “white” or “whiteness,” historically, from a British/Anglo-American perspective, served to underpin class distinctions and justify exploitation through human bondage by providing profit-accumulation to a distinct ownership class, “Whiteness is [historically] a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white.”^[91] Where and how did it begin? The conception of “whiteness”  did not exist until roughly 1613 or so, when Anglo-Saxon forces, later known as the English, first “encountered and contrasted themselves” with the Indigenous populations of the East Indies – through their cruel and rapacious colonial pursuits – later justifying, and bolstering, a collective cultural sense of racial superiority. Up and until that point, roughly the 1550s to the 1600s, within Anglo-Saxon society, “whiteness”  was used to set forth clear class signifiers.

In fact, the word “white”  was utilized exclusively to “describe elite English women,” because the whiteness of their skin indicated that they were individuals of “high social standing” who did not labor “out of doors.” That said, conversely, throughout that same period, the appellation of “white”  did not apply to elite English men, due to the stigmatizing notion that a man who would not leave his home to work was “unproductive, sick and/or lazy.” As the concept of who was white and who was not began to grow, “whiteness” gained in popularity within the Anglo-American sphere, for example, “the number of people that considered themselves white would grow” as a collective pushback against people of color due to immigration and eventual emancipation.^[92] These social constructs centered around race accomplished their nefarious goals – thus, unifying early colonists of European descent under the rubric of “white,” and hence, marginalizing, stigmatizing and dispossessing native populations – all the while permanently enslaving most African-descended people for generations. As acclaimed African American Professor, Ruth Wilson Gilmore (director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at CUNY) contends concerning America’s base history, “Capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it….”^[93] A revelatory statement by John Jay (1745-1829, the first Chief Justice of the United States and signer of the U.S. Constitution) helps make evident, from a class perspective, the entrenched values of those early American elites toward their newly proclaimed democracy, “The people who own the country ought to govern it!”^[94] The preceding two quotes help to summarize and clarify the top-down legal and societal mechanisms embedded within that early American social stratum which linger to this day.

The social status and hence the nomenclature of “slave” have been with mankind for millennia. Historically, a slave was one who was classified as quasi-sub-human, derived from a lower lineage; and forced to toil for the benefit of another of higher standing. We can find the phraseology of slave throughout the ancient world and within early writings from Egypt, the Hebrew Bible, Greece, and Rome, as well as later periods. In fact, Aristotle (384 to 322 BC, famed polymath, and philosopher) succinctly clarified, from his privileged vantage-point, the social standing and value of personages classified as slaves – which would endure for epochs to come. From the legendary logician’s point of view, a slave was defined as, “one who is a human being belonging by nature not to himself [or herself] but to another is by nature a slave.” Aristotle further described a slave as, “a human being belongs to another if, in spite of being human, he [or she] is a possession; and as a possession, is [simply a tool for labor] having a separate existence.”^[95] Clarifying the fact that in the known world prior to Columbus’ famed voyage, in the late 15^th century, opening the floodgates of European colonial theft, pillage, and domination, historical notions of Western hierarchy and supremacy were commonplace. As European Enlightenment ideals such as, “the natural rights of man,” aforementioned, became ubiquitous amongst early American colonial elites throughout the 18^th century, “equality” became the new modus operandi which galvanized whites over and above all others. Hence, by classifying human beings by “race,” a new method of hierarchy was established based on what many at the time considered “science” to be further explored. As the principles of the Enlightenment penetrated the colonies of North America forming the basis for their early “democracy,” those same values paradoxically undergirded the most vicious kind of subjugation – chattel slavery.^[96]

A significant codified shift took place in colonial America within one of its most prosperous slave domains known as Virginia. Under the tutelage and guidance of the then Governor Sir William Berkeley (1605-1677), wealthy planter and slave owner, the House of Burgesses (the first self-proclaimed “representative government” in that early British colony) included a coterie of councilors hand-chosen by the governor to enact a law of hereditary slavery – which would economically serve their elite planter class interests. The English common law, known as, Partus Sequitur Patrem, traditionally held that, “the offspring would follow the condition … of the father.”^[97] But after a historic legal challenge brought by Elizabeth Key, an enslaved, bi-racial woman who sued for her freedom and won, in 1656, on the basis that her father was white – elite white Virginians understood that a shift in the law was not only necessary, but essential, if they were to maintain and/or increase their wealth through human bondage in the form of “property ownership.” Consequently, the new 1662 law, Partus Sequitur Ventrem, diverged from English common law,  in that it proclaimed that the status of the mother, free or slave, determined the status of her offspring in perpetuity.^[98] Thus, African women were subjugated to the ranking of “breeders,” that would serve to produce more offspring categorized as slaves, whether bi-racial or not, and hence more profit for the ruling class. Enlightenment values ensconced in a rudimentary “race science,” by famed early Americans, would also help to solidify a systematized racialized hierarchy for decades to come.^[99]

Figure 7: Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Diplomat, Son of the Enlightenment, Planter, Lawyer, Philosopher, Primary Author of the Declaration of Independence and Third President of the United States.

Thomas Jefferson is famed to be one of the most quintessential characters in the formulation of America’s early Republic, along with James Madison and others, severing foreign rule and developing a new independent nation, substantiated on the Enlightenment principles of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,”^[100] based largely on John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, which argued that true “freedom” is defined by one’s singular control over their holdings and/or estates, i.e., property.^[101] But the most basest question which still lingers, within America’s long and twisted historical tragedy of early conquest and domination, which must be probed, is, “freedom for whom and for what?” Jefferson, that complex and enigmatic son of Enlightenment thought, both in science and sociological principles, clearly demarcated and endorsed a racialized societal structure that undergirded a system of hierarchy in which white colonists and their European legacy were considered far superior to all others – simplified notions woven within an early race science which would endure through time and memorial. Throughout his lifetime, race was defined by phenotype (or the look of human beings), physical characteristics which “appended physical traits [or idiosyncrasies] defined as ‘slave-like’ [were attributed] to those enslaved.”^[102] As Karen and Barbara Fields, two noted African American scholars, point out, Jefferson became convinced that a forced separation of people delineated by skin color was the only solution; that “the very people white Americans had lived with for over 160 years as slaves would be, after emancipation, too different for white people to live with any longer.”^[103] In fact, he suggested that if slaves were to be freed they should be promptly deported, their lost labor to be best supplied “through the importation of white laborers.”^[104]

Jefferson unabashedly qualified his racialized views when writing, “I advance it therefore as a suspicion only that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”^[105] John Locke and Thomas Jefferson stood in agreement, philosophically, when it came to the superiority versus inferiority of selected “races,” underpinning a racialized stratification within early colonial thought that helped to culturalize a race-based hierarchy in that newly formed “land of freedom,” known as the United States. These arguments of hierarchy which spread throughout the European mindset within that early colonial era, aided and abetted, “the dispossession of Native Americans” and “the enslavements of Africans” during that golden era of revolution.^[106] In his historic manuscript known as, Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson outlined in detail his Enlightenment-inspired racialized interpretations of European superiority, demarcating what he believed to be a “scientific view” of the varying gradations of human beings based on race:

Comparing them [both blacks and whites] by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior … and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. But never yet could I find that a black has uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait, of painting or sculpture.^[107]

Ironically, given the complexity of the man, in response to a critic who opposed his views as presented above, Jefferson confessed that even if blacks were inferior to whites, “it would not justify their enslavement.”^[108] Hence, to his credit, he admitted and/or recognized the strangeness and/or irony of his own position when it came to Enlightenment constructs of race and their structural consequences.^[109] Again, from early on, racialized notions of superiority versus inferiority served the American planter class best, by cleverly embedding perceptions of hierarchy or white preeminence, they were able to suppress that which they feared most – which was the unification or coming together of a mass of lower classes comprising both enslaved Africans and poor whites. The historic incident which, served as an exemplar, sending shockwaves through that propertied class of early colonial America was notably Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676.

Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676) elite Virginian, born and educated in England, member of the governor’s Council and close friend of Sir William Berkeley then colonial Governor – led a bottom-up rebellion which sent tremors through the upper classes of that newly birthed slave society, known as, Virginia – still considered one of the most foundational events of early American history. The colonial elite were threatened on all sides, as made evident by Governor Berkeley’s revelation, “The Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed” would, he feared, use this opportunity to “plunder the Country” and seize the property of the elite planters.^[110] Bacon, “who was no leveler,” was cleverly able to formulate a coalition (or unification), on behalf of his class interests, which included poor white indentured servants, free and enslaved Africans, to push back against any and all encroachments by native inhabitants which included the Appomattox and Susquehannock indigenous tribes of the region, in order to cease their lands and enrich himself and his class even further, insisting that, “the country must defend itself ‘against all Indians in general for that they were all Enemies.’”^[111] Some one hundred years later, in his acclaimed paradox of liberty known as the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, obviously influenced by Bacon’s racialized frame of thought, referred to the indigenous Native American peoples as nothing more than, “merciless Indian savages.”^[112] Hence, the native populations of that early America were collectively used as “scapegoats,” to enlarge the land holdings and wealth of the propertied class. From early on, the United States’ nascent form of Capitalism became dependent upon exploitative low-cost labor, “especially that of those considered nonwhite,” but also that of “the poor in general, including women and children – black and white alike.”^[113] Ironically, by the 1850s, antislavery sentiment grew even more intense amongst the masses, largely spurred on by white Southerner’s aggressive attempts to maintain the societal structure as such through political dominance and the spread of that “peculiar institution,” known as slavery to newly pilfered lands.^[114] In turn, the very idea of the possibility of any and all “lower class unity,” or a coming together of poor white indentured servants and African slaves as a militant force rising up against an entrenched planter class, brought forth a racialized culturalization grounded upon racial difference, racial hierarchy, and racial enmity, “a pattern that those statesmen and politicians of a later age would have found [politically useful and] familiar.”^[115] In fact, right through to the end of the 19^th century, post-Civil War and Reconstruction era (1865-1877), any form of lower-class unity in America stood as a direct threat to the established order of things throughout the nation as a whole; and especially throughout the South – most notably in the form of the Colored Farmers’ Alliance and the South’s reactionary implementation of a brutal social-order of domination and control known as Jim Crow.

Figure 8: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), American Lawyer, Statesman and Politician. Sixteenth President of the United States and Author of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Although historically contentious, Abraham Lincoln’s primary goal within his Reconstruction scheme was to reunite a fractured nation after a bloody and costly Civil War. Through which, Lincoln’s objective was to reestablish the union and transfigure that implacable Southern society. His plan was also stridently committed to enforcing progressive legislation driven by the abolition of slavery. In fact, Lincoln directed Senator Edwin Morgan, chair of the National Union Executive Committee, to put in place a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. And Morgan did just that, in his famed speech before the National Convention on May 30, 1864, demanding the “utter and complete extirpation of slavery” via such an amendment.^[116] Beyond the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln was the first President in American history to call forth an amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing the long-held institution of chattel slavery. For the first time, President Lincoln demanded the eventual passage of the Thirteenth Amendment Section 1 (ratified on December 6, 1865), which mandated that, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”^[117] Defining it as “a fitting, and necessary conclusion” to the war effort that would make permanent the joining of the causes of “Liberty and Union.”^[118] Lincoln’s sweeping Reconstruction agenda  was a fight for freedom, requiring the South to adhere to a new constitution that would implicitly include black suffrage through the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment Section 1, ratified after his death on July 9, 1868, which for the first time in American history, declared:

All persons [meaning black and white alike] born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.^[119]

Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, saw his Reconstruction struggles above all as, “an adjunct of the war effort – a way of undermining the Confederacy, rallying southern white Unionists, and securing emancipation,”^[120] for which he paid the ultimate price. From early on, internecine rivalry, or infighting, within the Republican Party from those labeled as “the Radicals,” led to a push-back against certain elements of Lincoln’s strategy mentioned above – arguing that Reconstruction should be postponed until after the war, “as outlined in the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, which clearly envisioned, as a requirement, that a majority of southern whites take an oath of loyalty,” to the United States; and that the federal government should by necessity, “attempt to ensure basic justice to emancipated slaves.” A point at which, “equality before the law,” not “black suffrage,” as Lincoln had suggested, was an essential factor for many of the Republicans in Congress at the time.^[121] As a result of Lincoln’s efforts in taking away the productive forces of labor within the South, and in turn, the diminishment of property, wealth, and political power of the elite southern planter class, a nefarious conspiracy to murder the President was hatched and executed by southern loyalist and assassin John Wilks Booth, on April 14, 1865, while the President sat accompanied by his wife, Mary, watching a play titled, Our American Cousin, at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. – oddly, the assassin was able to gain access to the theater, enter the Presidential Booth, and shoot and kill the President of the United States. Lincoln’s body was carried to the nearby Petersen House, where he passed away at 7:22 a.m., the following morning. At his bedside, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton famously remarked, “Now he belongs to the ages.”^[122] Reflecting upon not only the uniqueness of the man, but his tremendous contributions to those American ideals of “Liberty and Freedom.” Emphasizing the fact that the Emancipation of Africans from forced labor; and the abolishment of chattel slavery, through a stroke of his pen, uniquely placed Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of historical renown.

That said, throughout the end of the 19^th Century, the road ahead per class relations for African Americans and poor whites alike, especially in the South, would be a hard and arduous one of top-down control and division. Reactionary as they were, as argued, Southern elites would forcefully implement doctrines of superiority, separation, and control that would crush and/or punish any form of lower-class unity which threatened their power and influence over the majority. This reaction would become most evident in the racialized militant form of the Ku Klux Klan; and later the structural control and dominance of an imposed social order known as Jim Crow, which would orchestrate the groundwork for a deepening racial divide.

The Colored Farmers’ Alliance, formulated in the 1870s, still stands as a historical model of class unity amongst the poor, both Black and white alike, which galvanized southern elites in a top-down belligerent class war to protect their interests. The Alliance was created, “when an agricultural depression hit the South around 1870 and poor farmers began to organize themselves into radical multiracial political groups”^[123] – which stood as a direct threat to upper-class Southern dominance and their wealth accumulation. Years earlier by 1865, that elite militancy revealed itself in the form of the Ku Klux Klan (a violent and racist, hate-filled supremacist terror organization) that, “extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans.”^[124] Klan members devised a subversive crusade of coercion and brutal violence directed at Black and white Republican leadership. Even though the U.S. Congress had successfully pushed through regulations intended to mitigate Klan extremism, the KKK  viewed its main goal as the “reinstatement of white governance and supremacy throughout the Southlands in the 1870s and beyond,” made most evident through Democratic victories within state legislatures across the South.^[125] Jim Crow was the name given to a racialized social order or caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively, in the southern and border states between 1877 to the mid-1960s. “Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life.”^[126] Under the system of Jim Crow, African Americans were consigned to the rank of second-class citizens, as emphasized by African American Professor Emeritus, Adolph L. Reed Jr., “We were all unequal, but [when it came to race and class], some were more unequal than others.”^[127] Divisions amongst the lower classes, throughout the South, served as a powerful and effective hegemonic tool of supremacy. Hence, it was not long, thereafter, within that stratified class society, before that black-white alliance had ended – as Democrats slowly united in a series of successful white supremacy campaigns to banish the Fusionists and discontinue what most white southern racists denoted to as, “Negro rule.”^[128] Hence, as noted throughout this study, class, race, and racism have long been fundamental elements of control woven within this class-conscious slave culture, paradoxically, self-described, “birthplace of freedom.”

Conclusion

From the outset, as early as the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it has been inherently difficult to reconcile a faith in the U.S. Constitution as a “living, flexible and changeable,” document – with the fundamental unfeasibility of making systemwide class transformation in the United States of America. There is copious and convincing evidence that the U.S. Constitution was intended and/or mechanized, by design, to stifle and/or inhibit any “meaningful systemic change,” in order to counteract anything that does not assist the benefits of the moneyed elite. Brilliantly designed and implemented by those acclaimed early American “Framers,” such as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and others – the means and complex configurations woven within the U.S. Constitution were deliberately intended to be unchangeable when it came to any and all challenges from below. The Constitutional aphorism over “the rights of private property possession” and its accompanied protections for example – made possible by the “expropriation of Native Americans lands, slavery; and the exploitation of lower-class labor” as discussed – has served, from the very beginning of that early American experiment, as a primary preset to protect wealth.^[129] Political Science Professor Robert Ovetz argues, in fact, that the U.S. Constitution has never really lived up to its well-known first three words, of “We the People,”  insisting that that renowned Charter is, by its very nature and design, “self-breaching,” because “we the people have never directly given consent to be governed by it – nor do the laws put in place give [the people] the liberty to do so.”^[130] That said, given the complexity of mind of those men recognized as “the Framers,” and in their defense, they did interweave a certain language of liberty, in the form of protections, as exemplified in Amendment IX, which states, “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”^[131]

Amendment IX to the Constitution was authorized on December 15^th, 1791. And, it clearly proclaims that the text is not a wide-ranging list of every right of the citizen, but that the unnamed rights to come will be allowed protections under the law.^[132] The IX Amendment explicitly acknowledged that the people have a reserve of rights that go beyond the Constitution. Hence, the enumeration of specific rights “shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”^[133] As a counterweight to popular belief, American political scientist, author, and activist, Michael Parenti contends that, “those privileged delegates gave nothing to popular interests, rather – as with the Bill of Rights – they reluctantly made democratic concessions under the menacing threat of popular rebellion.”^[134] Race and class, in early America, not only substantiated that, “the wealthy are a better class of men,” as James Madison proclaimed during the Convention^[135] – but that wealth and privilege were correlated to intelligence and deserved protections. In fact, not dissimilar to present-day America, “According to the dogma [of that early elite colonial class] efforts to lessen inequality, through progressive taxation, or redistributive public spending, infringe the liberty of the rich,” meaning the rich deserve their benefits and reward as such. Consequently, intelligence determines merit, and merit apportions rewards are those early American values which permeate the culture to this day. The working class, both Black and white alike, “that have been consigned to the lower reaches of society were there,” as noted African American scholars Barbara and Karen Fields have demonstrated, “due to attributions of low intelligence” – demarcating clear class distinctions and divisions based on a model of superiority from early on which privileged an elite few.^[136] The seeds of race supremacy and the hypocrisy of liberty, throughout America’s long and difficult history, were planted by the Framers themselves, “most of whom accepted that human beings could be held as property and that Africans and Native Americans were inferior to Caucasians” in a multitude of ways^[137] – as demonstrated throughout this study.

Endnotes:

[1] James Madison, “Federalist Papers: Primary Documents in American History: Federalist No. 10,” research guide, accessed August 27, 2023, https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10.

[2] Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia: An Annotated Edition, Notes on the State of Virginia (Yale University Press, 2022).

[3] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: G. Routledge, 1893), 556–60.

[4] Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few, 8th ed (Boston: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2008), 40.

[5] Louis Otto quoted in Herbert Aptheker, Early Years of the Republic: From the End of the Revolution to the First Administration of Washington (1783-1793) (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 41.

[6] Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few, 40. Sourcing the works of Sidney H. Aronson, Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service: Standards of Selection in the Administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964); Daniel M. Friedenberg, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Land: The Plunder of Early America (Buffalo, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 1992).

[7] Francis Bacon, The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon, with Prefaces and Notes by the Late Robert Leslie Ellis, Together with English Translations of the Principal Latin Pieces, ed. James Spedding, vol. 4 (London: Longman & co., 1861), 64.

^[8] “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” America’s Founding Documents, National Archives, accessed March 22, 2024, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.

^[9] Nancy G. Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2017), 1.

^[10] Isenberg, 1.

^[11] David McNally, Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance, and Empire (Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2020), 178.

[12] Benjamin Irvin, Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1–18.

[13] Isenberg, White Trash, 1.

[14] John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity, 1630,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd Series (Boston, 1838), 7:31-48, https://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html.

[15] Isenberg, White Trash, 3.

[16] Smith, Wealth of Nations, 556–60.

[17] Robert Ovetz, We the Elites: Why the US Constitution Serves the Few (London: Pluto Press, 2022), 2–3.

[18] Ovetz, 41.

[19] “The Constitution of the United States,” National Archives, accessed September 3, 2023, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution.

[20] Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 40.

[21] “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.”

[22] “From George Washington to Henry Knox,” December 26, 1786, Founders Online, National Archives, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-04-02-0409.

[23] Jennifer Nedelsky, Private Property, and the Limits of American Constitutionalism: The Madisonian Framework and Its Legacy, Paperback ed., (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994), 159.

[24] “From George Washington to Henry Knox,” February 3, 1787, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-05-02-0006.

[25] Gregory H Nobles, “Historians Extend the Reach of the American Revolution,” in Whose American Revolution Was It? Historians Interpret the Founding, ed. Alfred Fabian Young and Gregory H. Nobles (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 213.

[26] “The Constitution of the United States.”

[27] Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783-1802 (New York: Free Press, 1975), 80, 95, 120.

[28] William Manning, The Key of Liberty: The Life and Democratic Writings of William Manning, “a Laborer,” 1747-1814, ed. Michael Merrill and Sean Wilentz, The John Harvard Library (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993), 113.

[29] Manning, 164–66.

[30] Manning, 162.

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^[32] Alexander Hamilton, “Final Version of the Second Report on the Further Provision Necessary for Establishing Public Credit (Report on a National Bank),” December 13, 1790, Founders Online, National Archives, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-07-02-0229-0003.

^[33] Charles Austin Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (Anodos Books, 2018), 88.

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^[38] Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, First Edition (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), 87–88.

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^[55] Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1995), 380.

^[56] Morgan, 380.

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^[59] Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government, 169–75.

^[60] John Locke, “An Essay on the Poor Law,” in Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie, Transferred to digital print, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 190–91.

^[61] Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government, 239–40.

^[62] David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009), 14.

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^[65] Staughton Lynd, Class Conflict, Slavery and the United States Constitution: Ten Essays (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Pr, 1980), 14.

^[66] Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2017), 65.

^[67] Michael J. Klarman, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 294.

^[68] “The Constitution of the United States.”

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^[71] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, 2009, https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html.

^[72] Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 386–87.

^[73] Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Paperback edition (New York: Basic Books, 2016), xviii–xix.

^[74] Baptist, 244–45.

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^[76] Steven Deyle, “The Domestic Slave Trade in America: The Lifeblood of the Southern Slave System,” in The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, ed. Walter Johnson and Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 95.

^[77] Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told, 248.

^[78] Baptist, 248.

^[79] Abraham Lincoln, “The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863,” January 1, 1863, https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/nonjavatext_emancipation.html.

^[80] James M. McPherson, “Who Freed the Slaves?,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 139, no. 1 (1995): 1–10.

^[81] Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told, 400–401.

^[82] Baptist, 400.

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^[84] “SPEECH OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS: Delivered at a Mass Meeting Held at National Hall, Philadelphia, July 6, 1863, for the Promotion of Colored Enlistments,” Liberator (1831-1865), American Periodicals, 33, no. 30 (July 24, 1863): 118.

^[85] David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 409–10.

^[86] John T. Hubbell, “Abraham Lincoln and the Recruitment of Black Soldiers,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association 2, no. 1 (1980).

^[87] “Lincoln’s Death,” Ford’s Theatre, accessed July 16, 2024, https://fords.org/lincolns-assassination/lincolns-death/.

^[88] David R. Roediger, How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Eclipse of Post-Racialism, Paperback edition (London New York: Verso, 2019), XII.

^[89] Brian Duignan, “Enlightenment,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, July 29, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/event/Enlightenment-European-history.

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^[91] Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice (Gabriola Islands, BC: New Society Publ, 1996), 127.

^[92] “Historical Foundations of Race.”

^[93] Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “The Worrying State of the Anti-Prison Movement,” in Abolition Geography: Essays towards Liberation, ed. Brenna Bhandar and Albero Toscano (Brooklyn: Verso, 2022), 451.

^[94] Quoted in Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It, Vol Vintage Books, 1989, 15–16.

^[95] Aristotle, Politics, trans. Harris Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1944), 1.5 1254a13-18, https://catalog.perseus.org/catalog/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0086.tlg035.perseus-eng1.

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^[105] Jefferson, 143.

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^[124] History.com Editors, “Ku Klux Klan: Origin, Members & Facts,” History, April 20, 2023, https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/ku-klux-klan.

^[125] History.com Editors.

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^[130] Ovetz, 161.

^[131] “The Constitution of the United States.”

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^[134] Parenti, Democracy for the Few, 50–51.

^[135] Madison, “Notes on Debates.”

^[136] Fields and Fields, Racecraft, 278.

^[137] Klarman, The Framers’ Coup, 2016, 630–31.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stephen Joseph Scott.

Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country is a ‘Bill of Temporary Privileges.’ And if you read the news, even badly, you know that the list gets shorter and shorter.

—George Carlin

Disguising its power grabs in the self-righteous fervor of national security, the Deep State has mastered the art of the bait-and-switch.

It works like this: first, the government foments fear about some crisis or threat to national security, then they capitalize on it by seizing greater power and using those powers against the American people.

We’ve seen this play out over and over again.

The government used its so-called War on Terror to transform itself into a police state.

Then the police state used its War on COVID-19 to claim lockdown powers.

All indications are that the government’s promised War on Illegal Immigration will be yet another sleight of hand that allows the powers-that-be to engage in greater power grabs while weakening the Constitution.

Therein lies the danger of the government’s growing addiction to power.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America healthy again—inevitably, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

The slippery slope that starts with illegal immigration has all the makings of a thinly veiled plot to empower the government to become the arbiter of who is deserving of rights and who isn’t.

That quickly, we could find ourselves navigating a world in which the rights enshrined in the Constitution for all persons living in the United States are transformed into privileges enjoyed only by those whom the government chooses to recognize as legitimate.

By persuading the public that non-citizens, particularly illegal immigrants, do not enjoy the same inalienable rights as law-abiding citizens (a fact refuted by the Constitution and every credible legal scholar in the country), the Deep State is leading us down a road in which all rights are transitory.

This is how you establish a hierarchy of rights, contingent on whether you belong to a favored political class.

Be warned.

At such a time as the government is emboldened to flip that switch and appoint itself the ultimate authority on which protected class of individuals gets to enjoy the rights enshrined within the Constitution, the dividing line will not be between legal citizens and illegal immigrants.

It will not even be between Republicans and Democrats.

Rather, the purpose of that line of demarcation will be to distinguish the compliant, obedient, subservient vassal of the American police state (the so-called Loyalists) from everyone else.

We’re almost at that point now.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

Here are some of the inherent dangers in allowing the government to become the arbiter of who is deserving of rights:

It leads to the erosion of universal rights. The Bill of Rights was designed to protect the fundamental rights of all persons within the United States, regardless of their citizenship status, race, religion, or any other factor. When the government starts making distinctions about who is entitled to these rights, it undermines the universality that makes them so powerful. This creates a slippery slope where rights become privileges, subject to the whims of those in power.

It gives rise to authoritarianism. History is replete with examples of governments that consolidated power by first stripping away the rights of marginalized groups. Once the principle of universal rights is breached, it becomes easier to target other groups deemed “undesirable” or “unworthy.” This paves the way for authoritarianism, where the government dictates who enjoys freedom and who does not.

It creates a two-tiered society. A hierarchy of rights inevitably leads to a two-tiered society, where some individuals enjoy full protection under the law while others are relegated to second-class status. This fosters resentment, division, and social unrest. It also creates a vulnerable population that can be easily exploited and abused.

It undermines the rule of law. The rule of law is a fundamental principle of a just society. It means that everyone is subject to the same laws and that no one is above the law. When the government selectively applies the law based on arbitrary criteria, it undermines the rule of law and erodes trust in the legal system.

It chills free speech and dissent, i.e., the right to criticize the government. When people fear that their rights are contingent on their political views or social status, they are less likely to speak out against injustice or challenge the government. This chilling effect on dissent stifles free speech and creates a climate of fear and conformity.

It contributes to the loss of moral authority. A nation that claims to champion liberty and justice for all loses its moral authority when it denies those principles to certain groups within its borders. This undermines its standing in the world and diminishes its ability to promote human rights abroad.

 Remember, the erosion of inalienable rights often starts subtly, with the government chipping away at the edges of those rights for specific groups.

The pattern is subtle at first, with government officials exploiting fear and prejudice in order to target groups that are already marginalized or perceived as “outsiders.” Incrementally, the net is cast wider and wider, so that by the time the injustice is widespread enough to inspire outrage in the greater populace, it’s too late to resist.

Historic examples abound of how the government has manufactured a blatantly unjust hierarchy of rights in order to diminish certain segments of society. These run the gamut from slavery and the persecution of Native Americans to the Japanese internment camps and segregation.

More recently, we’ve seen this tactic deployed in order to justify policies that run afoul of the Constitution, ranging from immigration policies and mass surveillance programs to SWAT team raids, voting rights, and the erosion of due process.

Clearly, Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all, a warning issued in response to the threat posed by Nazi Germany’s fascist regime, still applies.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts.

It doesn’t help that growing numbers of American citizens barely know their rights. Consider that only 5% of the U.S. adults surveyed could correctly name all five rights in the First Amendment, 20% could not correctly name any, and less than one in 10 Americans know they have a right to petition the government.

Such civic illiteracy lays the groundwork for all manner of tyrannies to follow. After all, how can you defend your rights if you don’t know what those rights are?

Then again, civic illiteracy among government officials, who are entrusted with upholding and protecting the Constitution, doesn’t appear to be much better.

It was ten years ago on December 15, National Bill of Rights Day, that the U.S. Supreme Court in its 8-1 ruling in Heien v. State of North Carolina gave police in America one more ready excuse to routinely violate the laws of the land, this time under the guise of ignorance.

The Heien case, which started with an improper traffic stop based on a police officer’s ignorance of the law and ended with an unlawful search, seizure and arrest, was supposed to ensure that ignorance of the law did not become a ready excuse for government officials to routinely violate the law.

It failed to do so.

In failing to enforce the Constitution, the Court gave police the go-ahead to justify a laundry list of misconduct, from police shootings of unarmed citizens to SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, and the tasering of vulnerable individuals with paltry excuses such as “they looked suspicious” and “she wouldn’t obey our orders.”

Ignorance of the law has become an all-too-convenient cover for all manner of abuses by government officials who should know better.

I’m not sure which is worse: government officials who know nothing about the laws they have sworn to uphold, support and defend, or a constitutionally illiterate citizenry so clueless about their rights that they don’t even know when those rights are being violated.

This much I do know, however: for anyone to advocate terminating or suspending the Constitution is tantamount to a declaration of war against the founding principles of our representative government and the rule of law.

If there is one point on which there should be no political parsing, no legal jockeying, and no disagreement, it is this.

Then again, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, one could well make the case that the Constitution has already been terminated after years on life support, given the extent to which the safeguards enshrined in the Bill of Rights—adopted 233 years ago as a means of protecting the people against government overreach and abuse—have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

History provides chilling examples of how quickly rights can vanish, even in a nation such as ours founded on the principles of freedom. As George Carlin astutely observed:

If you think you do have rights, next time you’re at the computer, get on the internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, I want you to type in ‘Japanese Americans 1942’ and you’ll find out all about your precious … rights. In 1942, there were 110,000 Japanese American citizens in good standing, law-abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That’s all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had: ‘right this way’ into the internment camps. Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took them away. And rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away.

Remember you were warned, folks.

At the point that rights become privileges, then the Constitution and the government’s adherence to the rule of law will become optional.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

If voting could ever really change anything, it’d be illegal.

— Thorne, Land of the Blind (2006)

After months of handwringing and mud-slinging and fear-mongering, the votes have finally been cast and the outcome has been decided: the Deep State has won.

Despite the billions spent to create the illusion of choice culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, when it comes to most of the big issues that keep us in bondage to authoritarian overlords, not much will change.

Despite all of the work that has been done to persuade us to buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the “right” political savior, the day after a new president is sworn in, it will be business as usual for the unelected bureaucracy that actually runs the government.

War will continue. Drone killings will continue. Surveillance will continue. Censorship of anyone who criticizes the government will continue. The government’s efforts to label dissidents as extremists and terrorists will continue. Police shootings will continue. SWAT team raids will continue. Highway robbery meted out by government officials will continue. Corrupt government will continue. Profit-driven prisons will continue. And the militarization of the police will continue.

These problems have persisted—and in many cases flourished—under both Republican and Democratic administrations in recent years.

The outcome of this year’s election changes none of that.

Indeed, take a look at the programs and policies that will not be affected by the 2024 presidential election, and you’ll get a clearer sense of the government’s priorities, which have little to do with representing the taxpayers and everything to do with amassing money, power and control.

The undermining of the Constitution will continue unabated. America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, has chipped away at our freedoms, unraveled our Constitution and transformed our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws—which completely circumvent the rule of law and the constitutional rights of American citizens, re-orienting our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the rule of law, our U.S. Constitution, becomes the map by which we navigate life in the United States—will continue to be enforced.

The government’s war on the American people will continue unabated.  “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled. Consequently, you no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent. The oppression and injustice—be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms, roadside searches, and so on—will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now.

The shadow government— a.k.a. the Deep State, a.k.a. the police state, a.k.a. the military industrial complex, a.k.a. the surveillance state complex—will continue unabated. The corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials will continue to call the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House or controls Congress. By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

The government’s manipulation of national crises in order to expand its powers will continue unabated. “We the people” have been subjected to an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security. Whatever the so-called threat to the nation, the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state. Indeed, the government’s answer to every problem continues to be more government—at taxpayer expense—and less individual liberty.

Endless wars that enrich the military industrial complex will continue unabated. America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $93 million an hour (that adds up to $920 billion annually). Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 40% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 9 biggest spending nations combined.

Government corruption will continue unabated.  The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.” Americans instinctively understand this. When asked to name the greatest problem facing the nation, Americans of all political stripes ranked the government as the number one concern. In fact, almost three-quarters of Americans surveyed believe the government is corrupt. Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control.

Government tyranny under the reign of an Imperial President will continue unabated. The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers. In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government. The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.

The grim reality we must come to terms with is the fact that the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this state of affairs has become the status quo, no matter which party is in power.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

All sides are still waging war on our constitutional freedoms, and “we the people” remain the biggest losers.

This year’s presidential election is no exception.

As Bruce Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, warns in a recent article in the Baltimore Sun, “In November, the American people will have a choice between Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance. But they will not have a choice between an Empire and a Republic.”

In other words, the candidates on this year’s ballot do not represent a substantive choice between freedom and tyranny so much as they constitute a cosmetic choice: the packaging may vary widely, but the contents remain the same.

No matter who wins, the bureaucratic minions of the Security/Military Industrial Complex and its Police State/Deep State partners will retain their stranglehold on power.

Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris have the greatest of track records when it comes to actually respecting the rights enshrined in the Constitution, despite the rhetoric being trotted out by both sides lately regarding their so-called devotion to the rule of law.

Indeed, Trump has repeatedly called for parts of the Constitution to be terminated, while both Harris and Trump seem to view the First Amendment’s assurance of the right to free speech, political expression and protest as dangerous when used to challenge the government’s power.

This flies in the face of everything America’s founders fought to safeguard.

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

In the 23 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.

In this way, “we the people” continue to be terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.

If there is any sense to be made from a recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

So what’s the solution?

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.”

In other words, it’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.

Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.

Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to do more than grouse and complain.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.

In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.

In a unanimous decision in the combined cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the states could pass laws to prohibit censorship by Big Tech companies on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

And in a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri , the Supreme Court sidestepped a challenge to the federal government’s efforts to coerce social media companies into censoring users’ First Amendment expression.

Welcome to the age of technocensorship.

On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.

In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

Case in point: internal documents released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government confirmed what we have long suspected: that the government has been working in tandem with social media companies to censor speech.

By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.

This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.

The revelations that Facebook worked in concert with the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation, followed on the heels of a ruling by a federal court in Louisiana that prohibits executive branch officials from communicating with social media companies about controversial content in their online forums.

Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

This is the very definition of technofascism.

Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.

The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

As Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes write for The Wall Street Journal: “The First Amendment prohibits the government from ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies.”

Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.

The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.

Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will all be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.

This is how it starts.

First, the censors went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “hate speech.”

Then they went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “disinformation” about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden.

By the time so-called extremists found themselves in the crosshairs for spouting so-called “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists.

Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

Watch and learn.

We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

Here’s the point: you don’t have to like or agree with anyone who has been muzzled or made to disappear online because of their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now will eventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.

Eventually, as Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s happening already.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Our dying republic.

We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.

The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

So, what’s the answer?

For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Our dying republic.

We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.

The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.

That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

So, what’s the answer?

For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.

Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.

Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.

You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.

You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.

So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

You shall have no other gods before me.

— The Ten Commandments

Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.

— Donald Trump

Politics has become our national religion.

While those on the Left have feared a religious coup by evangelical Christians on the Right, the danger has come from an altogether different direction: our constitutional republic has given way to a theocracy structured around the worship of a political savior.

For all intents and purposes, politics has become America’s God.

Pay close attention to the political conventions for presidential candidates, and it becomes immediately evident that Americans have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into worshipping a political idol manufactured by the Deep State.

In a carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” have become victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.

Every confidence game has six essential stages: 1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion; 2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted; 3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they’ve got a vested interest in the outcome; 4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up; 5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early “wins”; and 6) the “hurrah”— a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.

In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Kamala Harris—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.

In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it’s the Deep State rigging the outcome.

Terrorist attacks, pandemics, economic uncertainty, national security threats, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn’t change much in the long term.

No matter who wins this election, we’ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.

Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.

When it comes to the power players that call the shots, there is no end to their voracious appetite for more: more money, more power, more control. Thus, since 9/11, the government’s answer to every problem has been more government and less freedom.

Yet despite what some may think, the Constitution is no magical incantation against government wrongdoing. Indeed, it’s only as effective as those who abide by it.

However, without courts willing to uphold the Constitution’s provisions when government officials disregard it and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to be outraged when those provisions are undermined, the Constitution provides little to no protection against SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed citizens, indefinite detentions, and the like.

Unfortunately, the courts and the police have meshed in their thinking to such an extent that anything goes when it’s done in the name of national security, crime fighting and terrorism.

Consequently, America no longer operates under a system of justice characterized by due process, an assumption of innocence, probable cause and clear prohibitions on government overreach and police abuse. Instead, our courts of justice have been transformed into courts of order, advocating for the government’s interests, rather than championing the rights of the citizenry, as enshrined in the Constitution.

The rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, once the map by which we navigated sometimes hostile government terrain, has been unceremoniously booted out of the runaway car that is the U.S. government by the Deep State.

What we are dealing with is a rogue government whose policies are dictated more by greed than need. Making matters worse, “we the people” have become so gullible, so easily distracted, and so out-of-touch that we have ignored the warning signs all around us in favor of political expediency in the form of electoral saviors.

Yet it’s not just Americans who have given themselves over to political gods, however.

Evangelical Christians, seduced by electoral promises of power and religious domination, have become yet another tool in the politician’s toolbox.

For instance, repeatedly conned into believing that Republican candidates from George W. Bush to Donald Trump will save the church, evangelical Christians have turned the ballot box into a referendum on morality. Yet in doing so, they have shown themselves to be as willing to support totalitarian tactics as those on the Left.

This was exactly what theologian Francis Schaeffer warned against: “We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way, ‘We should not wrap Christianity in our national flag.’”

Equating religion and politics, and allowing the ends to justify the means, only empowers tyrants and lays the groundwork for totalitarianism.

This way lies madness and the certain loss of our freedoms.

If you must vote, vote, but don’t make the mistake of consecrating the ballot box.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it doesn’t matter what religion a particular candidate claims to subscribe to: all politicians answer to their own higher power, which is the Deep State.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Similarly, Matthew Marino, the Executive Editor of the University of Cincinnati Law Review, summed up the problem in the U.S. in March 2021:

Emergency powers have desirable features. As mentioned, Congress cannot act quickly in response to a crisis. Presidential authority has increased in most liberal democracies so presidents can effectively confront “a world besieged by complexity and crisis” that legislatures are ill-equipped to address. However, with more power vested exclusively in the President comes more potential for abuse of the emergency powers.

According to Marino, the National Emergencies Act (NEA) of 1976 was originally intended to hold back the executive branch, but “accountability and reporting provisions have not been vigorously enforced and therefore do not adequately restrain the President’s broad discretion under emergency statutes.” Congress members had “recognized that by refusing to terminate states of emergency, the President was retaining extraordinary power intended only for use during a genuine crisis.”

Marino adds that at that time, in 2021, the U.S. was under 40 ongoing states of emergency.

The NEA allowed President George W. Bush to declare a national emergency for the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and it allowed former President Trump to issue a “Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak” on 13 March 2020. These are two of the “national emergencies” that stand out, but we are now accustomed, in fact, to constantly living under national emergencies, which can also be categorized in Agamben’s terms as “states of exception.” And most U.S. citizens are not aware of this, how different life is for us, compared to generations long ago, such as those who lived during the 19th century.

Agamben explains that the Patriot Act that was issued by the U.S. Senate on 26 October 2001 had already allowed the Attorney General to take into custody any alien suspected of endangering our national security, but under that law, within one week, the alien had to be charged with a crime or let go. (State of Exception 1.3). On 13 November of that year, then President Bush issued a “military order” entitled “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism.”

But “in a 5-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled on June 29, 2006, that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees. The court ruled that the tribunals violate U.S. laws and the international Geneva Conventions.”

In Agamben’s estimation, what was new about Bush’s order was that it radically erased “any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being.” (State of Exception 1.3). For Agamben the legal situation of Taliban members captured in Afghanistan was similar to that of Jews in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. With insights from the philosopher Judith Butler in mind, he writes that “bare life reaches its maximum indeterminacy” in the situation of the detainee at Guantánamo. (State of Exception 1.3)

I have argued in previous essays (starting in March 2021) that the U.S. government has engaged in fearmongering in order to establish “states of exception,” increasingly since the 9/11 attack, including establishing such a state in 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. In February of this year, I gave examples of how COVID-19 was being manipulated through a filter of censorship by the U.S. “national security state,” allowing them to exaggerate the danger posed by the virus, create a state of exception through our fear of it, and generate suspicion against anyone who would dare downplay the threat of the contagion or criticize the biosecurity industry.

The several years after 9/11 saw a huge expansion of the U.S. budget for biodefense. And to raise awareness about the trajectory that we are currently on, with respect to the ideologies surrounding biodefense, here I outline some of the legal changes that have facilitated biomedical “states of exception” and the growth and empowerment of the biodefense industry.

Emergency Use Authorization (EUAs)

Under these EUAs, it became OK during an emergency to resort to relatively risky medical interventions. In 2004, Congress passed the Project BioShield Act. This called for $5 billion for purchasing vaccines that would be used in the event of a bio terrorist attack. This opened the door to “EUAs,” and on 4 February 2020 the “HHS Secretary determined that there is a public health emergency that has a significant potential to affect national security or the health and security of United States citizens living abroad, and that involves the virus that causes COVID-19.” This legal emergency made it possible for many people to receive the new vaccines, even at the stage when there were doubts about safety and effectiveness. While these vaccines may have saved the lives of millions, some previously healthy people have actually suffered various injuries and harms, such as myocarditis. Surely very few knew, if any, about such risks when they consented to receive the vaccine. Such is the disadvantage of authorizing the use of vaccines that have not been thoroughly tested in clinical trials.

The 2005 PREP Act

The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2005. This law was essential to establishing a new system of irresponsibility for vaccine manufacturers. “During a public health emergency, the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (“PREP Act”) gives immunity from lawsuits, for manufacturers, administrators and distributors of vaccines, as well as other qualified persons (i.e., healthcare and other providers) who prescribe, administer, or dispense countermeasures, unless they were acting with willful misconduct.” (Author’s italics. Of course, it would be difficult to prove willful misconduct in a court of law).

This PREP Act was a liability shield that protected manufacturers of “countermeasures.” It limited liability so that potentially life-saving countermeasures would be “efficiently developed, deployed, and administered.” (Author’s italics).

Kadlec and BARDA:

Following the introduction of those major laws in 2004 and 2005, the biodefense industry got a new law that facilitated the stockpiling of countermeasures in 2006. The Pandemics and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA, pronounced “Papa”) created the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and established the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR) position. Former President Donald Trump nominated Robert Kadlec for this position and he held it from August 2017 to January 2021.

In the words of Paula Jardine, who has written about various aspects of the military approach to COVID-19, the “ASPR controls the national stockpile of smallpox and anthrax vaccines and other public health emergency medical equipment such as ventilators. During emergencies this Assistant Secretary [the ASPR] has expansive powers enabling him or her to act as the single point of control co-ordinating national response.”

Other Transaction Authority (OTAs)

In 2016, the definition of OTAs was changed such that prototypes of countermeasures could be deployed. Originally, OTAs were up in the 1990s to help DARPA promote basic research and acquire weapons. “DARPA” stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Department of Defense. Tom Burghardt wrote in 2010 that they have “geek squads” working on “bizarre projects hatched in darkness.”

Apparently, the Pentagon “loosened regulations guiding the use” of OTAs for the COVID-19 health policies. And through an OTA the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer gained financial support from the U.S. government. The mass media has not really questioned, problematized, or debated whether we want the mechanism of OTAs to authorize risky products, even when anyone can see that Pfizer used that mechanism. Pfizer is clearly referenced in a judge’s written decision for a case in which an employee named Brook Jackson sued Pfizer. Jackson’s case was dismissed, but the judge wrote:

Defendants claim that “due to pandemic-related exigencies, the Project Agreement was not a standard federal procurement contract, but rather a “prototype” agreement… Such prototype agreements are executed under the DoD’s “Other Transaction Authority.”

Trial Site News explains the case in a clear and succinct way. Jackson claimed that “in the race to secure billions in federal funding and become the first to market, Defendants deliberately withheld crucial information from the United States that calls the safety and efficacy of their vaccine into question.” The Defendants included three companies, Pfizer, ICON, and Ventavia. Jackson had worked for Ventavia until she started to raise questions and blow the “whistle.” That’s when she was fired.

Turning the Switch

By 2020, all the legal machinery for the mRNA vaccine profit-taking was in place. On 31 January 2020, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared the novel coronavirus a public health emergency. Six weeks later, on 13 March 2020, Trump issued a “Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak.” He authorized assistance administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Five days later, he notified the FEMA Administrator that his agency would be in charge of the federal pandemic response effort.

That was a first. FEMA had never been in charge of a public health crisis before.

In fact, according to Debbie Lerman, the National Security Council (NSC), a “group of military and intelligence people who advise about war and terrorism,” rather than civilian medical doctors who advise about disease, were the ones in charge of COVID-19 policy. (See Figure 2, “US Government COVID-19 Coordination and Response,” on page 9 of “PanCAP Adapted U.S. Government COVID-19 Response Plan,” 13 March 2020). The NSC decided the policy, and FEMA implemented it. Although Dr. Fauci has recently been publicly grilled about COVID policy failures, in fact, it appears that the NSC should be investigated since they made the big decisions.

Conclusion

In early 2019, Elizabeth Goitein, author of a report entitled “The New Era of Secret Law,” warned about what then President Trump could do to our country, given the unfortunate state of our laws.

Like all emergency powers, the laws governing the conduct of war allow the president to engage in conduct that would be illegal during ordinary times. This conduct includes familiar incidents of war, such as the killing or indefinite detention of enemy soldiers. But the president can also take a host of other actions, both abroad and inside the United States. These laws vary dramatically in content and scope. Several of them authorize the president to make decisions about the size and composition of the armed forces that are usually left to Congress. Although such measures can offer needed flexibility at crucial moments, they are subject to misuse. For instance, George W. Bush leveraged the state of emergency after 9/11 to call hundreds of thousands of reservists and members of the National Guard into active duty in Iraq, for a war that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Other powers are chilling under any circumstances: Take a moment to consider that during a declared war or national emergency, the president can unilaterally suspend the law that bars government testing of biological and chemical agents on unwitting human subjects. (“In a Crisis, the President Can Invoke Extraordinary Authority. What Might Donald Trump Do With This Power?” The Atlantic Monthly 323:1, p. 42).

Well, thanks to the DNC’s short-sightedness, Trump will probably get four more years to test out those emergency powers, once again, as he did with his “business-government-military partnership” Operation Warp Speed. Many decades ago a liberal president, too, violated our constitution by invoking emergency powers, in his role as the Commander-in-Chief, when he issued Executive Order 9066 directing that all Japanese-Americans residing on the West Coast be placed into internment camps.

In Where Are We Now?, Agamben cites the philosopher before him Michel Foucault, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, to question and analyze contemporary biosecurity ideologies, with his idea that “biopolitics tends to morph into thanatopolitics” (a politics of death). (Section 17, “Law and life,” Where Are We Now?). Arguably, that is especially true under a state of exception that is manipulated by a military institution, such as the Pentagon. He underlines the fact that the “first case of legislation by means of which a state programmatically assumed for itself the care of its citizens was Nazi eugenics” (Section 17).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Joseph Essertier.

“What’s up, boss?”

“It’s that damn gun thing again: an infringement on the Constitutional right to sell patriotic weapons. A lot of the guys are still grousing about the stupid bump stock law that Trump got conned into signing. They’re saying if we sit back and let the wing nuts have their way with that one, then what will they try to screw us with next? Somebody has to make a stand, or the Libs will pass another one and then another one, and pretty soon there’ll be so may damn rules and regulations in place that the only kind of weapons we can sell will be the ones made for killing animals! And Clare, how much money or patriotism is in that?”

“Yeah, I hear you. Tell you what, just give me some time to poke around a little and I’ll get right back to you; don’t worry; shouldn’t take long.”

*****

“Tony, you’re going to like it; I have the usual work-around, and the boys will love it. Back in 1934, when they described, or defined a machine gun, it did address what they knew to be true at the time: a machine gun was a gun that could rapidly shoot a hell of a lot of bullets with just a single pull of the trigger. As you probably know, it wasn’t designed for killing a herd of deer or a flock of geese; it was intended for efficient military use. Its main function was to enable the killing of a whole bunch of enemy soldiers in just a few quick seconds. Later on, when it began to find its way into criminal hands, Congress decided to codify and outlaw it because they thought that doing so would protect law-abiding citizens and be in the best public interest.”

“But Clare, how does that help us today?”

“It’s in the wordage, Tony; it’s always in the wordage. In 1934 they thought the ‘single pull’ phrase was sufficient to define any conceivable automatic weapon. Little did they know that 90 years later, some patriotic-minded genius would invent a ‘bump stock’ gizmo that turns a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon. It works just like a machine gun, but circumvents the machine gun definition and is thereby still lawful.”

“Yeah, exactly, and how could they have known way back then what the public interest would be today?”

“Right boss, but anyway it’s the finger-pull thing that gives us the out”

“Pull my finger?”

“Hah! Not that one … but close. Back in 1934, what they outlawed was an automatic weapon that could repeatedly fire bullets with just a single pull of the trigger. The beauty of the bump stock invention is that it actually utilizes your finger as part of the mechanism. You consciously pull the trigger just once, and then the machine takes over and bypasses your brain. The recoil from the first, or previous shot, pulls or pushes your finger on the trigger again, and again, and again, and it does it so fast that you don’t even have time to think about it. The gun does it for you! It’s moving your finger faster than your brain could ever tell it to move! In essence, the shooter becomes part of the gun, or maybe it’s vice versa; either way, it doesn’t really matter.”

“So, where’s the out?”

“I just told you, Tony. The machine gun was described or defined as a weapon that requires a single pull of the trigger to fire repeatedly. With a bump stock, your finger repeatedly pulls the trigger, even though your brain isn’t telling it to. So, by proper definition, it’s not really a machine gun; it just works like one!” Get it? Your finger is still pushing the trigger over and over; you just don’t have to think about it. It’s, ‘quick-pull trigger time,’ while your brain takes a holiday!”

“That’s awesome, Clare! You did it again, my friend; the boys will love it. How about the optics, though? Any concern about how the media will play it? The Libs will probably jump all over you – and the Court, too. Won’t they pompously accuse you all of just parsing old words and putting innocent lives at risk.”

“Hah! Order in the courtroom, Tony! Here comes the judge!”

“Clare?”

“Just parsing words? Are you kidding me? Tony, it’s what we do! It’s what we always do! Isn’t that why you and the boys put us here? We are the word; the last word! We’re lifers, Tony! It doesn’t matter what the Libs think; it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, because the buck stops here. Who cares about optics? If they don’t like it, they can go ask Congress to change it, and if they ever manage to do that, then maybe we’ll take another look somewhere down the road.”

“Yeah, you’re right Clare; good work all around. I think maybe you’ve earned yourself a little break. Got anything planned for you and the missus this summer? How about a nice little RV trip to get away from the hubbub?”

“Nah, it’s already looking like a super hot summer. We’re thinking more like ‘waterfront’ and a cool ocean breeze. Got any suggestions?”

“I hear you, Clare. Tell you what, just give me some time to poke around a little and I’ll get right back to you; don’t worry; shouldn’t take long.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vern Loomis.

“What’s up, boss?”

“It’s that damn gun thing again: an infringement on the Constitutional right to sell patriotic weapons. A lot of the guys are still grousing about the stupid bump stock law that Trump got conned into signing. They’re saying if we sit back and let the wing nuts have their way with that one, then what will they try to screw us with next? Somebody has to make a stand, or the Libs will pass another one and then another one, and pretty soon there’ll be so may damn rules and regulations in place that the only kind of weapons we can sell will be the ones made for killing animals! And Clare, how much money or patriotism is in that?”

“Yeah, I hear you. Tell you what, just give me some time to poke around a little and I’ll get right back to you; don’t worry; shouldn’t take long.”

*****

“Tony, you’re going to like it; I have the usual work-around, and the boys will love it. Back in 1934, when they described, or defined a machine gun, it did address what they knew to be true at the time: a machine gun was a gun that could rapidly shoot a hell of a lot of bullets with just a single pull of the trigger. As you probably know, it wasn’t designed for killing a herd of deer or a flock of geese; it was intended for efficient military use. Its main function was to enable the killing of a whole bunch of enemy soldiers in just a few quick seconds. Later on, when it began to find its way into criminal hands, Congress decided to codify and outlaw it because they thought that doing so would protect law-abiding citizens and be in the best public interest.”

“But Clare, how does that help us today?”

“It’s in the wordage, Tony; it’s always in the wordage. In 1934 they thought the ‘single pull’ phrase was sufficient to define any conceivable automatic weapon. Little did they know that 90 years later, some patriotic-minded genius would invent a ‘bump stock’ gizmo that turns a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon. It works just like a machine gun, but circumvents the machine gun definition and is thereby still lawful.”

“Yeah, exactly, and how could they have known way back then what the public interest would be today?”

“Right boss, but anyway it’s the finger-pull thing that gives us the out”

“Pull my finger?”

“Hah! Not that one … but close. Back in 1934, what they outlawed was an automatic weapon that could repeatedly fire bullets with just a single pull of the trigger. The beauty of the bump stock invention is that it actually utilizes your finger as part of the mechanism. You consciously pull the trigger just once, and then the machine takes over and bypasses your brain. The recoil from the first, or previous shot, pulls or pushes your finger on the trigger again, and again, and again, and it does it so fast that you don’t even have time to think about it. The gun does it for you! It’s moving your finger faster than your brain could ever tell it to move! In essence, the shooter becomes part of the gun, or maybe it’s vice versa; either way, it doesn’t really matter.”

“So, where’s the out?”

“I just told you, Tony. The machine gun was described or defined as a weapon that requires a single pull of the trigger to fire repeatedly. With a bump stock, your finger repeatedly pulls the trigger, even though your brain isn’t telling it to. So, by proper definition, it’s not really a machine gun; it just works like one!” Get it? Your finger is still pushing the trigger over and over; you just don’t have to think about it. It’s, ‘quick-pull trigger time,’ while your brain takes a holiday!”

“That’s awesome, Clare! You did it again, my friend; the boys will love it. How about the optics, though? Any concern about how the media will play it? The Libs will probably jump all over you – and the Court, too. Won’t they pompously accuse you all of just parsing old words and putting innocent lives at risk.”

“Hah! Order in the courtroom, Tony! Here comes the judge!”

“Clare?”

“Just parsing words? Are you kidding me? Tony, it’s what we do! It’s what we always do! Isn’t that why you and the boys put us here? We are the word; the last word! We’re lifers, Tony! It doesn’t matter what the Libs think; it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, because the buck stops here. Who cares about optics? If they don’t like it, they can go ask Congress to change it, and if they ever manage to do that, then maybe we’ll take another look somewhere down the road.”

“Yeah, you’re right Clare; good work all around. I think maybe you’ve earned yourself a little break. Got anything planned for you and the missus this summer? How about a nice little RV trip to get away from the hubbub?”

“Nah, it’s already looking like a super hot summer. We’re thinking more like ‘waterfront’ and a cool ocean breeze. Got any suggestions?”

“I hear you, Clare. Tell you what, just give me some time to poke around a little and I’ll get right back to you; don’t worry; shouldn’t take long.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vern Loomis.

Indeed, the 2024 elections will not do much to alter our present course towards a police state.

Nor will the popularity contest for the new occupant of the White House significantly alter the day-to-day life of the average American greatly at all. Those life-changing decisions are made elsewhere, by nameless, unelected government officials who have turned bureaucracy into a full-time and profitable business.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few uncomfortable truths about life in the American police state that we will not be hearing from either of the two leading presidential candidates.

1. The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.”

2. By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect our constitutional rights while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.

3. Republicans and Democrats like to act as if there’s a huge difference between them and their policies. However, they are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.

4. Presidential elections merely serve to maintain the status quo. Once elected president, that person becomes part of the dictatorial continuum that is the American imperial presidency today.

5. The U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on foreign aid programs it can’t afford, all the while the national debt continues to grow, our domestic infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and our borders continue to be breached. What is going on? It’s obvious that a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy is running the country.

6. 1984 has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.

7. When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals. In the current governmental climate, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the police state can easily render you an “enemy of the state.”

8. If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it. Americans only think they’re choosing the next president. In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another manufactured illusion conjured up in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.

9. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

10. The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public’s cooperation and compliance. This draconian exercise in how to divide, conquer and subdue a nation is succeeding. This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-endowed people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship.

11. The government long ago sold us out to the highest bidder. The highest bidder, by the way, has always been the Deep State.

12. Every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent.

13. “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled.

14. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead. Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by the U.S. government’s vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.

15. Private property means nothing if the government can take your home, car or money under the flimsiest of pretexts, whether it be asset forfeiture schemes, eminent domain or overdue property taxes.

16. If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.

17. From the moment they are born to the time they legally come of age, young people are now wards of the state.

18. All you need to do in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

19. The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis.

20. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

These are not problems that can be glibly dismissed with a few well-chosen words, as most politicians are inclined to do.

No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need to own up to the fact that there can be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.

Likewise, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it. After all, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, “We the people.”

There is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land.

We are the government.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.

— James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,  1785

James Madison, often referred to as the “Father of the Constitution,” once predicted that the Bill of Rights would become mere “parchment barrier,” words on paper ignored by successive generations of Americans.

How right he was.

Although Madison initially felt that the inclusion of a bill of rights in the originally ratified Constitution was unnecessary to its success, Thomas Jefferson persuaded him that “a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, & what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences.”

The Bill of Rights drafted by Madison—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—was a document so revolutionary at the time that it would come to be viewed as the epitome of American liberty. The rights of the people reflected in those ten amendments encapsulated much of Madison’s views about government, the corrupting influence of power, and the need for safeguards against tyranny.

Madison’s writings speak volumes to the present constitutional crisis in the country.

Read them and weep.

“The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 47 (30 January 1788) Federalist (Dawson)/46 Full text at Wikisource

“The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 49 (2 February 1788)

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 51 (6 February 1788)

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” — James Madison, Speech, Constitutional Convention (29 June 1787), from Max Farrand’s Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. I [1] (1911), p. 465

“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.” — James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson (17 October 1788), as quoted in James Madison: The Writings, 1787-1790 Vol. 5 (1904)]

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” — James Madison to W.T. Barry, 4 August 1822, Writings 9:103-p-9

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”— James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention on Control of the Military, June 16, 1788 in: History of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788, vol. 1, p. 130 (H.B. Grigsby ed. 1890).

In the years since the founders laid their lives on the line to pursue the dream of individual freedom and self-government, big government has grown bigger and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.

However, there are certain principles—principles that every American should know—which undergird the American system of government and form the basis of our freedoms.

The following seven principles are a good starting point for understanding what free government is really all about.

First, the maxim that power corrupts is an absolute truth. Realizing this, those who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights held one principle sacrosanct: a distrust of all who hold governmental power. As such, those who drafted our founding documents would see today’s government as an out-of-control, unmanageable beast.

The second principle is that governments primarily exist to secure rights, an idea that is central to constitutionalism. The purpose of constitutionalism is to limit governmental power and ensure that the government performs its basic function: to preserve and protect our rights, especially our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the government today has discarded this principle and now sees itself as our master, not our servant.

The third principle revolves around the belief that no one is above the law, not even those who make the law. This is termed rule of law. Richard Nixon’s statement, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal,” would have been an anathema to the Framers of the Constitution.

Fourth, separation of powers ensures that no single authority is entrusted with all the powers of government. The fact that the president today has dictatorial powers would have been considered an offense to every principle for which the Framers took their revolutionary stand.

Fifth, a system of checks and balances, essential if a constitutional government is to succeed, strengthens the separation of powers and prevents legislative despotism. The Framers did not anticipate the emergence of presidential powers or the inordinate influence of corporate powers on governmental decision-making. Indeed, as recent academic studies now indicate, we are ruled by a monied oligarchy that serves itself and not “we the people.”

Sixth, representation allows the people to have a voice in government by sending elected representatives to do their bidding while avoiding the need of each and every citizen to vote on every issue considered by government.

Finally, federalism is yet another constitutional device to limit the power of government by dividing power and, thus, preventing tyranny. In America, the levels of government generally break down into federal, state and local branches (which further divide into counties and towns or cities). Because local and particular interests differ from place to place, such interests are better handled at a more intimate level by local governments, not a bureaucratic national government.

These seven vital principles have been largely forgotten in recent years, obscured by the haze of a centralized government, a citizenry that no longer thinks analytically, and schools that don’t adequately teach our young people about their history and their rights.

Yet here’s the rub: while Americans wander about in their brainwashed states, their “government of the people, by the people and for the people” has largely been taken away from them.

The answer, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries: get un-brainwashed.

Learn your rights.

Stand up for the founding principles.

Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.

Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.

Most of all, do these things today.

If we wait until the votes have all been counted or hang our hopes on our particular candidate to win and fix what’s wrong with the country, “we the people” will continue to lose.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

— Thomas Jefferson

If America’s schools are to impart principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, they must start by respecting the constitutional rights of their students

Take the case of Lucas Hudson.

With all the negative press being written about today’s young people, it’s refreshing to meet a young person who not only knows his rights but is prepared to stand up for them.

Lucas is a smart kid, a valedictorian of his graduating class at the Collegiate Academy at Armwood High School in Hillsborough County, Fla.

So, when school officials gave Lucas an ultimatum: either remove most of his speech’s religious references from his graduation speech—in which he thanked the people who helped shape his character, reflected on how quickly time goes by, and urged people to use whatever time they have to love others and serve the God who loves us—or he would not be speaking at all, Lucas refused to forfeit his rights.

That’s when Lucas’s father turned to The Rutherford Institute for help.

In coming to Lucas’ defense, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute warned school officials that their attempts to browbeat Lucas into watering down his graduation speech could expose the school to a First Amendment lawsuit.

Thankfully for Lucas, the school backed down, and he was able to deliver his speech as written.

It doesn’t always work out so well, unfortunately.

Over the course of The Rutherford Institute’s 42-year history, we have defended countless young people who found themselves censored, silenced and denied their basic First Amendment rights, especially when they chose to exercise their rights to free speech and religious freedom.

In case after case, we encounter an appalling level of ignorance on the part of public school officials who mistakenly believe that the law requires anything religious be banned from public schools.

Here’s where government officials get it wrong: while the government may not establish or compel a particular religion, it also may not silence and suppress religious speech merely because others might take offense.

People are free to ignore, disagree with, or counter the religious speech of others, but the government cannot censor private religious speech.

Unfortunately, you can only defend your rights when you know them, and the American people—and those who represent them—are utterly ignorant about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.

As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don’t know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging (e.g., logo) are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.”

More than government corruption and ineptitude, police brutality, terrorism, gun violence, drugs, illegal immigration or any other so-called “danger” that threatens our nation, civic illiteracy may be what finally pushes us over the edge.

As Thomas Jefferson warned, no nation can be both ignorant and free.

Unfortunately, the American people have existed in a technology-laden, entertainment-fueled, perpetual state of cluelessness for so long that civic illiteracy has become the new normal for the citizenry.

In fact, most immigrants who aspire to become citizens know more about national civics than native-born Americans. Surveys indicate that half of native-born Americans couldn’t correctly answer 70% of the civics questions on the U.S. Citizenship test.

Not even the government bureaucrats who are supposed to represent us know much about civics, American history and geography, or the Constitution although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic.”

For instance, a couple attempting to get a marriage license was recently forced to prove to a government official that New Mexico is, in fact, one of the 50 states and not a foreign country.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. The government’s purpose is to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.”

Those who founded this country knew quite well that every citizen must remain vigilant or freedom would be lost. As Thomas Paine recognized, “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”

You have no rights unless you exercise them.

Still, you can’t exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.

“If Americans do not understand the Constitution and the institutions and processes through which we are governed, we cannot rationally evaluate important legislation and the efforts of our elected officials, nor can we preserve the national unity necessary to meaningfully confront the multiple problems we face today,” warns the Brennan Center in its Civic Literacy Report Card. “Rather, every act of government will be measured only by its individual value or cost, without concern for its larger impact. More and more we will ‘want what we want, and [will be] convinced that the system that is stopping us is wrong, flawed, broken or outmoded.’”

Education precedes action.

As the Brennan Center concludes “America, unlike most of the world’s nations, is not a country defined by blood or belief. America is an idea, or a set of ideas, about freedom and opportunity. It is these ideas that bind us together as Americans and have kept us free, strong, and prosperous. But these ideas do not perpetuate themselves. They must be taught and learned anew with each generation.”

There is a movement underway to require that all public-school students pass the civics portion of the U.S. naturalization test—100 basic facts about U.S. history and civics—before receiving their high-school diploma, and that’s a start.

Lucas Hudson would have passed such a test with flying colors.

On graduation day, Lucas stepped up to the podium and delivered his uncensored valedictorian speech as written, without any interference by school censors.

As Lucas’s father relayed to The Rutherford Institute:

In the end, Lucas got to give his entire speech the way he wanted to give it, and everybody was paying attention.  Nobody got hurt.  Nothing bad happened.  It was just a young man using the First Amendment rights to speak his mind regarding his personal beliefs. [Lucas] never thought a few sentences in a speech would create such a controversy in his world, but this speech turned into a defining moment for him.  He will never be the same after this experience, but this permanent change is a good thing.  When it mattered, Lucas stood up for himself, and when those he stood up against tried to push him down, [The Rutherford Institute] came to his aide and backed him up to make it a fair fight. I am comforted to know you are defending the rights of the people.  These fights matter.  Every time you defend the rights of one person, you defend the rights of every person.  You helped my son fight for his rights against the school, and, in doing so, Hillsborough County Public Schools will think twice before infringing on the rights of future students. Your defense of Lucas became an inspiration for the students in his school and sparked a healthy and meaningful debate among the teachers, students, and parents about the value of the First Amendment and the need for limits on government control over our personal beliefs.  You are fighting for good and doing important work.  Don’t ever stop. Thank you, Rutherford Institute, for being there for my son when he needed you most.

America needs more freedom fighters like Lucas Hudson and The Rutherford Institute.

It’s up to us.

We have the power to make and break the government.

We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

We must act—and act responsibly.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s our job to keep freedom alive using every nonviolent means available to us.

As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized in a speech delivered on December 5, 1955, just four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery city bus: “Democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth.”

Know your rights. Exercise your rights. Defend your rights. If not, you will lose them.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Nor does the police state want citizens prepared to exercise those rights.

This year’s graduates are a prime example of this master class in compliance. Their time in college has been set against a backdrop of crackdowns, lockdowns and permacrises ranging from the government’s authoritarian COVID-19 tactics to its more recent militant response to campus protests.

Born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, these young people have been 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.

And now, when they should be empowered to take their rightful place in society as citizens who fully understand and exercise their right to speak truth to power, they are being censored, silenced and shut down.

Consider what happened recently in Charlottesville, Va., when riot police were called in to shut down campus protests at the University of Virginia staged by students and members of the community to express their opposition to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.

As the local newspaper reported, “State police sporting tactical gear and riot shields moved in on the demonstrators, using pepper spray and sheer force to disperse the group and arrest the roughly 15 or so at the camp, where for days students, faculty and community members had sang songs, read poetry and painted signs in protest of Israel’s ongoing war in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.”

What a sad turn-about for an institution which was founded as an experiment in cultivating an informed citizenry by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Bill of Rights, and the nation’s third president.

Unfortunately, the University of Virginia is not unique in its heavy-handed response to what have been largely peaceful anti-war protests. According to the Washington Post, more than 2300 people have been arrested for taking part in similar campus protests across the country.

These lessons in compliance, while expected, are what comes of challenging the police state.

Free speech can certainly not be considered “free” when expressive activities across the nation are being increasingly limited, restricted to so-called free speech zones, or altogether blocked.

Remember, the First Amendment gives every American the right to “petition his government for a redress of grievances.”

Along with the constitutional right to peacefully (and that means non-violently) assemble, the right to free speech allows us to challenge the government through protests and demonstrations and to attempt to change the world around us—for the better or the worse—through protests and counterprotests.

If citizens cannot stand out in the open and voice their disapproval of their government, its representatives and its policies without fearing prosecution, then the First Amendment with all its robust protections for free speech, assembly and the right to petition one’s government for a redress of grievances is little more than window-dressing on a store window—pretty to look at but serving little real purpose.

After all, living in a representative republic means that each person has the right to take a stand for what they think is right, whether that means marching outside the halls of government, wearing clothing with provocative statements, or simply holding up a sign.

That’s what the First Amendment is supposed to be about: it assures the citizenry of the right to express their concerns about their government to their government, in a time, place and manner best suited to ensuring that those concerns are heard.

Unfortunately, through a series of carefully crafted legislative steps and politically expedient court rulings, government officials have managed to disembowel this fundamental freedom, rendering it with little more meaning than the right to file a lawsuit against government officials.

In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

Indeed, there is a long and growing list of the kinds of speech that the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation and prosecution: hate speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, extremist speech, etc.

Clearly, the government has no interest in hearing what “we the people” have to say.

Yet if Americans are not able to peacefully assemble for expressive activity outside of the halls of government or on public roads on which government officials must pass, or on college campuses, the First Amendment has lost all meaning.

If we cannot stand peacefully outside of the Supreme Court or the Capitol or the White House, our ability to hold the government accountable for its actions is threatened, and so are the rights and liberties that we cherish as Americans.

And if we cannot proclaim our feelings about the government, no matter how controversial, on our clothing, or to passersby, or to the users of the world wide web, then the First Amendment really has become an exercise in futility.

The source of the protest shouldn’t matter. The politics of the protesters are immaterial.

To play politics with the First Amendment encourages a double standard that will see us all muzzled in the end.

The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the final link in the police state chain.

If ever there were a time for us to stand up for the right to speak freely, even if it’s freedom for speech we hate, the time is now.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

It wants the power to decide who lives or dies and whose rights are worthy of protection.

Abortion may still be front and center in the power struggle between the Left and the Right over who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, sexual freedom, the rights of the unborn, and property interests in one’s body, but there’s so much more at play.

In the 50-plus years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, the government has come to believe that it not only has the power to determine who is deserving of constitutional rights in the eyes of the law but it also has the authority to deny those rights to an American citizen.

This is how the abortion debate has played into the police state’s hands: by laying the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights.

Despite the Supreme Court having overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry all along the spectrum of life.

Take a good, hard look at the many ways in which Americans are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

American families killed by errant SWAT team raids in the middle of the night are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Disabled individuals who are being strip searched, handcuffed, arrested and “diagnosed” by police as dangerous or mentally unstable merely because they stutter and walk unevenly are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Unarmed citizens who are tasered or shot by police for daring to hesitate, stutter, move a muscle, flee or disagree in any way with a police order are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

American citizens subjected to government surveillance whereby their phone calls are being listened in on, their mail and text messages read, their movements tracked and their transactions monitored are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Individuals whose DNA has been forcibly collected and entered into federal and state law enforcement databases whether or not they have been convicted of any crime are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Drivers whose license plates are being scanned, uploaded to a police database and used to map their movements, whether or not they are suspected of any crime, are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Protesters and activists who are being labeled domestic terrorists and extremists and accused of hate crimes for speaking freely are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Hard-working Americans whose bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash are seized by police (operating according to asset forfeiture schemes that provide profit incentives for highway robbery) are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

So, what is the common denominator here?

These are all American citizens—endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, rights that no person or government can take away from them, among these the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and they are all being oppressed in one way or another by a government that has grown drunk on power, money and its own authority.

If the government—be it the President, Congress, the courts or any federal, state or local agent or agency—can decide that any person has no rights, then that person becomes less than a citizen, less than human, less than deserving of respect, dignity, civility and bodily integrity. He or she becomes an “it,” a faceless number that can be tallied and tracked, a quantifiable mass of cells that can be discarded without conscience, an expendable cost that can be written off without a second thought, or an animal that can be bought, sold, branded, chained, caged, bred, neutered and euthanized at will.

It’s a slippery slope that justifies all manner of violations in the name of national security, the interest of the state and the so-called greater good.

Yet those who founded this country believed that what we conceive of as our rights were given to us by God—we are created equal, according to the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence—and that government cannot create, nor can it extinguish our God-given rights. To do so would be to anoint the government with god-like powers and elevate it above the citizenry.

Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this particular devil for quite some time now.

If we continue to wait for the government to restore our freedoms, respect our rights, rein in its abuses and restrain its agents from riding roughshod over our lives, our liberty and our happiness, then we will be waiting forever.

The highly politicized tug-of-war over abortion will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale.  Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity.

Humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being. As such, we haven’t even begun to wrap our heads around how present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty, and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies.

Yet here is what I know.

Life is an inalienable right.

By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” (that of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights.

If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection.

Likewise, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together.

Freedom cannot be a piece-meal venture.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Cue the rise of protest laws, which take the government’s intolerance for free speech to a whole new level and send the resounding message that resistance is futile.

In fact, ever since the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021, state legislatures have introduced a broad array of these laws aimed at criminalizing protest activities.

There have been at least 205 proposed laws in 45 states aimed at curtailing the right to peacefully assemble and protest by expanding the definition of rioting, heightening penalties for existing offenses, or creating new crimes associated with assembly.

Weaponized by police, prosecutors, courts and legislatures, these protest laws, along with free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, and a host of other legalistic maladies have become a convenient means by which to punish individuals who refuse to be muzzled.

In Florida, for instance, legislators passed a “no-go” zone law making it punishable by up to 60 days in jail to remain within 25 feet of working police and other first responders after a warning.

Yet while the growing numbers of protest laws cropping up across the country are sold to the public as necessary to protect private property, public roads or national security, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thinly disguised plot to discourage anyone from challenging government authority at the expense of our First Amendment rights.

It doesn’t matter what the source of that discontent might be (police brutality, election outcomes, COVID-19 mandates, the environment, etc.): protest laws, free speech zones, no-go zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, etc., aim to muzzle every last one of us.

To be very clear, these legislative attempts to redefine and criminalize speech are a backdoor attempt to rewrite the Constitution and render the First Amendment’s robust safeguards null and void.

No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

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.

Journalists have come under particular fire for exercising their right to freedom of the press.

According to U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the criminalization of routine journalism has become a means by which the government chills lawful First Amendment activity.

Journalists have been arrested or faced dubious charges for “publishing,” asking too many questions of public officials, being “rude” for reporting during a press conference, and being in the vicinity of public protests and demonstrations.

It’s gotten so bad that merely daring to question, challenge or hesitate when a cop issues an order can get you charged with resisting arrest or disorderly conduct.

For example, college professor Ersula Ore was slammed to the ground and arrested after she objected to the “disrespectful manner” shown by a campus cop who stopped her in the middle of the street and demanded that she show her ID.

Making matters worse, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in Nieves v. Bartlett that protects police from lawsuits by persons arrested on bogus “contempt of cop” charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that result from lawful First Amendment activities (filming police, asking a question of police, refusing to speak with police).

These incidents reflect a growing awareness about the state of free speech in America: you may have distinct, protected rights on paper, but dare to exercise those rights, and you risk fines, arrests, injuries and even death.

Case in point: Tony Rupp, a lawyer in Buffalo, NY, found himself arrested and charged with violating the city’s noise ordinance after cursing at an SUV bearing down on pedestrians on a busy street at night with its lights off. Because that unmarked car was driven by a police officer, that’s all it took for Rupp to find himself subjected to malicious prosecution, First Amendment retaliation and wrongful arrest.

The case, as Jesse McKinley writes in The New York Times, is part of a growing debate over “how citizens can criticize public officials at a time of widespread reevaluation of the lengths and limits of free speech. That debate has raged everywhere from online forums and college campuses to protests over racial bias in law enforcement and the Israel-Hamas war. Book bans and other acts of government censorship have troubled some First Amendment experts. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about a pair of laws — in Florida and Texas — limiting the ability of social media companies such as Facebook to ban certain content from their platforms.”

Bottom line: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t resist.

What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

Yet there can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.

Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to speak freely.

Remember, the unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to challenge government agents, think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, by muzzling the citizenry, by removing the constitutional steam valves that allow people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world, the government is creating a climate in which violence becomes inevitable.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The remedy is worse than the disease.

— Francis Bacon, “Of Seditions and Trouble” in Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall

The government never cedes power willingly.

Neither should we.

If the COVID-19 debacle taught us one thing it is that, as Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged, “Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”

Unfortunately, we still haven’t learned.

We’re still allowing ourselves to be fully distracted by circus politics and a constant barrage of bad news screaming for attention.

Three years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave world governments (including our own) a convenient excuse for expanding their powers, abusing their authority, and further oppressing their constituents, there’s something being concocted in the dens of power.

The danger of martial law persists.

Any government so willing to weaponize one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security will not hesitate to override the Constitution and lockdown the nation again.

You’d better get ready, because that so-called crisis could be anything: civil unrest, national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

COVID-19 was a test to see how quickly the populace would march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked, and how little resistance the citizenry would offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

“We the people” failed that test spectacularly.

Characterized by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country,” the government’s COVID-19 response to the COVID-19 pandemic constituted a massively intrusive, coercive and authoritarian assault on the right of individual sovereignty over one’s life, self and private property.

In a statement attached to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Arizona v. Mayorkas, a case that challenged whether the government could continue to use it pandemic powers even after declaring the public health emergency over, Gorsuch provided a catalog of the many ways in which the government used COVID-19 to massively overreach its authority and suppress civil liberties:

“Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.”

Truly, the government’s (federal and state) handling of the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a knockout blow to our civil liberties, empowering the police state to flex its powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc.

What started off as an experiment in social distancing in order to flatten the curve of an unknown virus (and not overwhelm the nation’s hospitals or expose the most vulnerable to unavoidable loss of life scenarios) quickly became strongly worded suggestions for citizens to voluntarily stay at home and strong-armed house arrest orders with penalties in place for non-compliance.

Every day brought a drastic new set of restrictions by government bodies (most have been delivered by way of executive orders) at the local, state and federal level that were eager to flex their muscles for the so-called “good” of the populace.

There was talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, mass surveillance in order to carry out contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities, and heavy fines and jail time for those who dared to venture out without a mask, congregate in worship without the government’s blessing, or re-open their businesses without the government’s say-so.

It was even suggested that government officials should mandate mass vaccinations and “ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.”

Those tactics were already being used abroad.

In Italy, the unvaccinated were banned from restaurants, bars and public transportation, and faced suspensions from work and monthly fines. Similarly, France banned the unvaccinated from most public venues.

In Austria, anyone who had not complied with the vaccine mandate faced fines up to $4100. Police were to be authorized to carry out routine checks and demand proof of vaccination, with penalties of as much as $685 for failure to do so.

In China, which adopted a zero tolerance, “zero COVID” strategy, whole cities—some with populations in the tens of millions—were forced into home lockdowns for weeks on end, resulting in mass shortages of food and household supplies. Reports surfaced of residents “trading cigarettes for cabbage, dishwashing liquid for apples and sanitary pads for a small pile of vegetables. One resident traded a Nintendo Switch console for a packet of instant noodles and two steamed buns.”

For those unfortunate enough to contract COVID-19, China constructed “quarantine camps” throughout the country: massive complexes boasting thousands of small, metal boxes containing little more than a bed and a toilet. Detainees—including children, pregnant women and the elderly— were reportedly ordered to leave their homes in the middle of the night, transported to the quarantine camps in buses and held in isolation.

If this last scenario sounds chillingly familiar, it should.

Eighty years ago, another authoritarian regime established more than 44,000 quarantine camps for those perceived as “enemies of the state”: racially inferior, politically unacceptable or simply noncompliant.

While the majority of those imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps, forced labor camps, incarceration sites and ghettos were Jews, there were also Polish nationals, gypsies, Russians, political dissidents, resistance fighters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

Culturally, we have become so fixated on the mass murders of Jewish prisoners by the Nazis that we overlook the fact that the purpose of these concentration camps were initially intended to “incarcerate and intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a threat to the survival of the regime.”

How do you get from there to here, from Auschwitz concentration camps to COVID quarantine centers?

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to connect the dots.

You just have to recognize the truth in the warning: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This is about what happens when good, generally decent people—distracted by manufactured crises, polarizing politics, and fighting that divides the populace into warring “us vs. them” camps—fail to take note of the looming danger that threatens to wipe freedom from the map and place us all in chains.

It’s about what happens when any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and a disregard for the rights of the individual.

This is the slippery slope: a government empowered to restrict movements, limit individual liberty, and isolate “undesirables” to prevent the spread of a disease is a government that has the power to lockdown a country, label whole segments of the population a danger to national security, and force those undesirables—a.k.a. extremists, dissidents, troublemakers, etc.—into isolation so they don’t contaminate the rest of the populace.

The slippery slope begins with propaganda campaigns about the public good being more important than individual liberty, and it ends with lockdowns and concentration camps.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the danger signs are everywhere.

COVID-19 was merely one crisis in a long series of crises that the government has shamelessly exploited in order to justify its power grabs and acclimate the citizenry to a state of martial law disguised as emergency powers.

Everything I have 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 become part of the government’s arsenal of terrifying lockdown powers should the need arise.

What we should be bracing for is: what comes next?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

This matter has cropped up in the US courts in what has become an international affair, namely, the case of WikiLeaks founder and publisher, Julian Assange.  While the US Department of Justice battles to sink its fangs into the Australian national for absurd espionage charges, various offshoots of his case have begun to grow.  The issue of CIA sponsored surveillance during his stint in the Ecuadorian embassy in London has been of particular interest, since it violated both general principles of privacy and more specific ones regarding attorney-client privilege.  Of particular interest to US Constitution watchers was whether such actions violated the reasonable expectation of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment.

Four US citizens took issue with such surveillance, which was executed by the Spanish security firm Undercover (UC) Global and its starry-eyed, impressionable director David Morales under instruction from the CIA.  Civil rights attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler and media lawyer Deborah Hrbek, and journalists John Goetz and Charles Glass, took the matter to the US District Court of the Southern District of New York in August last year.  They had four targets of litigation: the CIA itself, its former director, Michael R. Pompeo, Morales and his company, UC Global SL.

All four alleged that the US Government had conducted surveillance on them and copied their information during visits to Assange in the embassy, thereby violating the Fourth Amendment.  In doing so, the plaintiffs argued they were entitled to money damages and injunctive relief.  The government moved to dismiss the complaint as amended.

On December 19, District Judge John G. Koeltl delivered a judgment of much interest, granting, in part, the US government’s motion to dismiss but denying other parts of it.  Before turning to the relevant features of Koeltl’s reasons, various observations made in the case bear repeating.  The judge notes, for instance, Pompeo’s April 2017 speech, in which he “‘pledged that his office would embark upon a ‘long term’ campaign against WikiLeaks.’”  He is cognisant of the plaintiffs’ claims “Morales was recruited to conduct surveillance on Assange and his visitors on behalf of the CIA and that this recruitment occurred at a January 2017 private security industry convention at the Las Vegas Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

From that meeting, it is claimed that “Morales created an operations unit, improved UC Global’s systems, and set up live streaming from the United States so that surveillance could be accessed instantly by the CIA.”  The data gathered from UC Global “was either personally delivered to Las Vegas; Washington, D.C.; and New York City by Morales (who travelled to these locations more than sixty times in the three years following the Las Vegas convention) or placed on a server that provided external access to the CIA”.

Koeltl preferred to avoid deciding on the claims that Morales and UC Global were, in fact, “acting as agents of Pompeo and the CIA”.  Such matters were questions of fact “that cannot be decided on a motion to dismiss.”

A vital issue in the case was whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue the CIA in the first place.  Citing the case of ACLU v Clapper, which involved a challenge to the National Security Agency’s bulk telephone metadata collection program, Koeltl accepted that they did.  In doing so, he rejected a similar argument made by the government in Clapper – that the injuries alleged were simply “too speculative and generalized” and that the information gathered via surveillance would necessarily even be used against them.  “In this case, the plaintiffs need not allege, as the Government argues, that the Government will imminently use their information collected at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.”   If the search of the conversations and electronic devices along with the seizure of the contents of the electronic devices “were unlawful, the plaintiffs have suffered a concrete and particularized injury fairly traceable to the challenged program and redressable by favorable ruling.”

Less satisfactory for the plaintiffs was the finding they had no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their conversations with the publisher given that “they knew Assange was surveilled even before the CIA’s alleged involvement.”  The judge thought it significant that they did “not allege that they would not have met Assange had they known their conversations would be surveilled.”  Additionally, it “would not be recognized as reasonable by society” to have expected conversations held with Assange at the embassy in London to be protected, given such societal acceptance of, for instance, video surveillance in government buildings.

This reasoning is faulty, given that the visits by the four plaintiffs to the embassy did not take place with their knowledge of the operation being conducted by UC Global with CIA blessing.  In a general sense, anyone visiting the embassy could not help but suspect that Assange might be the object of surveillance, but to suggest something akin to a waiver of privacy rights on the part of attorneys and journalists aiding a persecuted publisher is an odd turn.

The US Government also succeeded on the point that the plaintiffs had no reasonable expectation to privacy regarding their passports or their devices they voluntarily left at the Embassy reception desk.  In doing so, they “assumed the risk that the information may be conveyed to the Government.”  Those visiting embassies must, it would seem, be perennially on guard.

That said, the plaintiffs convinced the judge that they had “sufficient allegations that the CIA and Pompeo, through Morales and UC Global, violated their reasonable expectation to privacy in the contents of their electronic devices.”  The government even went so far as to concede that point.

Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, the biggest fish was let off the hook.  The plaintiffs had attempted to use the 1971 US Supreme Court case of Bivens to argue that the former CIA director be held accountable and liable for violating constitutional rights.  Koeltl thought the effort to extend the application of Bivens inappropriate in terms of the high standing nature of the defendant and the context.  “As a presidential appointee confirmed by Congress […] Defendant Pompeo is in a different category of defendant from a law enforcement agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.”  More’s the pity.

Leaving aside some of the more questionable turns of reasoning in Koeltl’s judgment, public interest litigants and activists can take heart from the prospect that civil trials against the CIA for violations of the US Constitution are no longer unrealistic.  “We are thrilled,” declared Richard Roth, the plaintiffs’ attorney, “that the court rejected the CIA’s efforts to silence the plaintiffs, who merely seek to expose the CIA’s attempt to carry out Pompeo’s vendetta against WikiLeaks.”  The appeals process, however, is bound to be tested.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Power-hungry, lawless and steadfast in its pursuit of authoritarian powers, the government does not voluntarily relinquish those powers once it acquires, uses and inevitably abuses them.

Likewise, any presidential candidate who promises to be a dictator on day one, if elected, will be a dictator-in-chief for life.

Then again, the president is already a dictator with permanent powers: imperial, unaccountable and unconstitutional thanks to a relatively obscure directive (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), part of the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, which gives unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president in the event of a “national emergency.”

That national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has long been suspended, and we’ve been operating in a state of martial law for some time now.

The emergency powers that we know about which presidents might claim during such states of emergency are vast, ranging from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, including implementing an internet kill switch, and restricting travel.

Yet according to documents obtained by the Brennan Center, there may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public.

Deploying the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep State—has been planning and preparing for such crises for years now, quietly assembling a wish list of presidential lockdown powers that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s notice.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die.

Mind you, the police state with the president at its helm has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.

All of the imperial powers amassed by past presidents—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were passed from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden and will be passed along to the next president.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

These are the powers that continue to be passed along to each successive heir to the Oval Office, the Constitution be damned.

The war on disinformation, the war on electoral corruption, the war on CO

VID-19, the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration: all of these countermeasures have become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

After all, it is a tale that has been told time and again throughout history about how easy it is for freedom to fall and tyranny to rise.

What we desperately need is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”

We must recalibrate the balance of power.

Congress must also put an end to the use of presidential executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely—no matter which party holds office.

The process of unseating a dictator and limiting the powers of the presidency is far from simple but at a minimum, it must start with “we the people.”

Make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Don’t believe it.

It doesn’t matter whether you obey every law. The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.

For instance, it was recently revealed that the White House, relying on a set of privacy loopholes, has been sidestepping the Fourth Amendment by paying AT&T to allow federal, state, and local law enforcement to access—without a warrant—the phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime.

This goes way beyond the NSA’s metadata collection program.

Operated during the Obama, Trump and now the Biden presidencies, this secret dragnet surveillance program (formerly known as Hemisphere and now dubbed Data Analytical Services) uses its association with the White House to sidestep a vast array of privacy and transparency laws.

According to Senator Ron Wyden, Hemisphere has been operating without any oversight for more than a decade under the guise of cracking down on drug traffickers.

This is how the government routinely breaks the law and gets away with it: in the so-called name of national security.

More than a trillion domestic phone records are mined through this mass surveillance program every year, warrantlessly targeting not only those suspected of criminal activity but anyone with whom they might have contact, including spouses, children, parents, and friends.

It’s not just law enforcement agencies investigating drug crimes who are using Hemisphere to sidestep the Fourth Amendment, either. Those who have received training on the program reportedly include postal workers, prison officials, highway patrol officers, border cops, and the National Guard.

It’s a program ripe for abuse, and you can bet it’s getting abused.

Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people—weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands—haven’t made America any safer, and they certainly aren’t helping to preserve our freedoms.

Indeed, America will never be safe as long as the U.S. government is allowed to shred the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment was intended to serve as a protective forcefield around our persons, our property, our activities, our communications and our movements. It keeps the government out of our private business except in certain, extenuating circumstances.

Those extenuating circumstances are spelled out clearly: government officials must have probable cause that criminal activity is afoot (a higher legal standard than “reasonable suspicion”), which is required by the Constitution before any government official can search an individual or his property.

Unfortunately, all three branches of government—the legislatures, courts and executive offices—have given the police state all kinds of leeway when it comes to sidestepping the Fourth Amendment.

As a result, on a daily basis, Americans are already being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.

Warrantless, dragnet surveillance is the manifestation of a lawless government that has gone rogue in its determination to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, the Constitution be damned.

This creepy new era of government/corporate spying—in which we’re being listened to, watched, tracked, followed, mapped, bought, sold and targeted every second of every day—has been made possible by a global army of techno-tyrants, electronic eavesdroppers, robotic snoops and digital Peeping Toms.

The government has a veritable arsenal of surveillance tools to track our movements, monitor our spending, and sniff out all the ways in which our thoughts, actions and social circles might land us on the government’s naughty list, whether or not you’ve done anything wrong.

Rounding out the list of ways in which the Techno-Corporate State and the U.S. government are colluding to nullify the privacy rights of the individual is the Biden Administration’s latest drive to harness the power of artificial intelligence technologies while claiming to protect the citizenry from harm.

In his executive order on artificial intelligence, President Biden is calling for guidelines on how the government will use AI while simultaneously insisting that corporations protect consumer privacy.

Talk about ironic that the very government that has been covertly invading our privacy rights wants to appoint itself the guardian of those rights.

Tell me this: how do you trust a government that continuously sidesteps the Constitution and undermines our rights? You can’t.

A government that repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn can’t be trusted.

At a minimum, you shouldn’t trust the government with your privacy, property or freedoms.

Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests.

Remember the purpose of a good government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people.

Unfortunately, what we have been saddled with is, in almost every regard, the exact opposite of an institution dedicated to protecting the lives and liberties of its people.

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.

This is the grim reality of life in the American police state: our so-called rights have been reduced to technicalities in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which the Constitution means nothing.

What we need is a digital “No Trespassing” sign that protects our privacy rights and affirms our right to be left alone.

Then again, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, what we really need is a government that respects the rights of the citizenry and obeys the law.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

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.

As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don’t know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging (e.g., logo) are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.”

More than government corruption and ineptitude, police brutality, terrorism, gun violence, drugs, illegal immigration or any other so-called “danger” that threatens our nation, civic illiteracy may be what finally pushes us over the edge.

As Thomas Jefferson warned, no nation can be both ignorant and free.

Unfortunately, the American people have existed in a technology-laden, entertainment-fueled, perpetual state of cluelessness for so long that civic illiteracy has become the new normal for the citizenry.

It’s telling that Americans were more able to identify Michael Jackson as the composer of a number of songs than to know that the Bill of Rights was the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

In fact, most immigrants who aspire to become citizens know more about national civics than native-born Americans. Surveys indicate that a majority in every state but Vermont would fail a test of U.S. citizenship questions.

Not even the government bureaucrats who are supposed to represent us know much about civics, American history and geography, or the Constitution although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic.”

For instance, a few years ago, a couple attempting to get a marriage license was forced to prove to a government official that New Mexico is, in fact, one of the 50 states and not a foreign country.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Here’s a classic example of how surreal the landscape has become.

Every year, the White House issues a proclamation affirming the importance of the Bill of Rights.

These proclamations pay lip service to the government’s commitment to upholding the Constitution and guarding against government abuses of power.

Don’t believe it for a second.

The government doesn’t want its abuses checked or its powers restricted.

For that matter, this is not a government that holds the Constitution in high esteem.

Indeed, we wouldn’t be in this sorry state if it weren’t for the damage inflicted in recent years on the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which historically served as the bulwark from government abuse.

In the so-called named of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago.

The Bill of Rights—462 words that represent the most potent and powerful rights ever guaranteed to a group of people officially—became part of the U.S. Constitution on December 15, 1791, because early Americans such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson understood the need to guard against the government’s inclination to abuse its power.

Yet the reality we must come to terms with is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants.

Make no mistake: if our individual freedoms have been restricted, it is only so that the government’s powers could be expanded at our expense.

Government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, over-criminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, the courts and the like), etc.: these are merely the weapons of the police state.

The power of the police state is dependent on a populace that meekly obeys without question.

Remember: when it comes to the staggering loss of civil liberties, the Constitution hasn’t changed. Rather, it is the American people who have changed.

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. The government’s purpose is to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” Those who founded this country knew quite well that every citizen must remain vigilant or freedom would be lost. As Thomas Paine recognized, “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”

You have no rights unless you exercise them.

Still, you can’t exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.

Education precedes action.

If there is to be any hope for restoring our freedoms and reclaiming our runaway government, we will have to start by breathing life into those three powerful words that set the tone for everything that follows in the Constitution: “we the people.”

People get the government they deserve.

It’s up to us.

We have the power to make and break the government.

We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

It’s time to stop waiting patiently for change to happen.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved, whether that means forgoing Monday night football in order to attend a city council meeting or risking arrest by picketing in front of a politician’s office.

Whatever you do, please don’t hinge your freedoms on politics.

The Constitution is neutral when it comes to politics. What the Constitution is not neutral about, however, is the government’s duty to safeguard the rights of the citizenry.

“We the people” also have a duty that goes far beyond the act of voting: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s our job to keep freedom alive using every nonviolent means available to us.

Know your rights. Exercise your rights. Defend your rights. If not, you will lose them.

Freedom’s greatest hour of danger is now.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

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.

As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don’t know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging (e.g., logo) are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.”

More than government corruption and ineptitude, police brutality, terrorism, gun violence, drugs, illegal immigration or any other so-called “danger” that threatens our nation, civic illiteracy may be what finally pushes us over the edge.

As Thomas Jefferson warned, no nation can be both ignorant and free.

Unfortunately, the American people have existed in a technology-laden, entertainment-fueled, perpetual state of cluelessness for so long that civic illiteracy has become the new normal for the citizenry.

It’s telling that Americans were more able to identify Michael Jackson as the composer of a number of songs than to know that the Bill of Rights was the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

In fact, most immigrants who aspire to become citizens know more about national civics than native-born Americans. Surveys indicate that a majority in every state but Vermont would fail a test of U.S. citizenship questions.

Not even the government bureaucrats who are supposed to represent us know much about civics, American history and geography, or the Constitution although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic.”

For instance, a few years ago, a couple attempting to get a marriage license was forced to prove to a government official that New Mexico is, in fact, one of the 50 states and not a foreign country.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Here’s a classic example of how surreal the landscape has become.

Every year, the White House issues a proclamation affirming the importance of the Bill of Rights.

These proclamations pay lip service to the government’s commitment to upholding the Constitution and guarding against government abuses of power.

Don’t believe it for a second.

The government doesn’t want its abuses checked or its powers restricted.

For that matter, this is not a government that holds the Constitution in high esteem.

Indeed, we wouldn’t be in this sorry state if it weren’t for the damage inflicted in recent years on the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which historically served as the bulwark from government abuse.

In the so-called named of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago.

The Bill of Rights—462 words that represent the most potent and powerful rights ever guaranteed to a group of people officially—became part of the U.S. Constitution on December 15, 1791, because early Americans such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson understood the need to guard against the government’s inclination to abuse its power.

Yet the reality we must come to terms with is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants.

Make no mistake: if our individual freedoms have been restricted, it is only so that the government’s powers could be expanded at our expense.

Government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, over-criminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, the courts and the like), etc.: these are merely the weapons of the police state.

The power of the police state is dependent on a populace that meekly obeys without question.

Remember: when it comes to the staggering loss of civil liberties, the Constitution hasn’t changed. Rather, it is the American people who have changed.

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. The government’s purpose is to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” Those who founded this country knew quite well that every citizen must remain vigilant or freedom would be lost. As Thomas Paine recognized, “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”

You have no rights unless you exercise them.

Still, you can’t exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.

Education precedes action.

If there is to be any hope for restoring our freedoms and reclaiming our runaway government, we will have to start by breathing life into those three powerful words that set the tone for everything that follows in the Constitution: “we the people.”

People get the government they deserve.

It’s up to us.

We have the power to make and break the government.

We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

It’s time to stop waiting patiently for change to happen.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved, whether that means forgoing Monday night football in order to attend a city council meeting or risking arrest by picketing in front of a politician’s office.

Whatever you do, please don’t hinge your freedoms on politics.

The Constitution is neutral when it comes to politics. What the Constitution is not neutral about, however, is the government’s duty to safeguard the rights of the citizenry.

“We the people” also have a duty that goes far beyond the act of voting: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s our job to keep freedom alive using every nonviolent means available to us.

Know your rights. Exercise your rights. Defend your rights. If not, you will lose them.

Freedom’s greatest hour of danger is now.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

There is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame?

— V for Vendetta

We have arrived at the dystopian future depicted in the 2005 film V for Vendetta, which is no future at all.

Set in the year 2020, V for Vendetta (written and produced by the Wachowskis) provides an eerie glimpse into a parallel universe in which a government-engineered virus wreaks havoc on the world. Capitalizing on the people’s fear, a totalitarian government comes to power that knows all, sees all, controls everything and promises safety and security above all.

Concentration camps (jails, private prisons and detention facilities) have been established to house political prisoners and others deemed to be enemies of the state. Executions of undesirables (extremists, troublemakers and the like) are common, while other enemies of the state are made to “disappear.” Populist uprisings and protests are met with extreme force. The television networks are controlled by the government with the purpose of perpetuating the regime. And most of the population is hooked into an entertainment mode and are clueless.

With Vendetta, whose imagery borrows heavily from Nazi Germany’s Third Reich and George Orwell’s 1984, we come full circle. The corporate state in V conducts mass surveillance on its citizens, helped along by closed-circuit televisions. Also, London is under yellow-coded curfew alerts, similar to the American government’s color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System.

Sounds painfully familiar, doesn’t it?

As director James McTeighe observed about the tyrannical regime in V for Vendetta, “It really showed what can happen when society is ruled by government, rather than the government being run as a voice of the people. I don’t think it’s such a big leap to say things like that can happen when leaders stop listening to the people.”

Clearly, those we appointed to represent our interests have stopped following the Constitution and listening to the American people.

What will it take for the government to start listening to the people again?

In V for Vendetta, as in my novel The Erik Blair Diaries, the subtext is that authoritarian regimes—through a vicious cycle of manipulation, oppression and fear-mongering—foment violence, manufacture crises, and breed terrorists, thereby giving rise to a recurring cycle of blowback and violence.

Only when the government itself becomes synonymous with the terrorism wreaking havoc in their lives do the people to finally mobilize and stand up to the government’s tyranny.

V, a bold, charismatic freedom fighter, urges the British people to rise up and resist the government. In Vendetta, V the film’s masked crusader blows up the seat of government on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, while in Erik Blair, freedom fighters plot to unmask the Deep State.

Acts of desperation and outright anarchy are what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent: people get desperate, citizens lose hope, and lawful, nonviolent resistance gives way to unlawful, violent resistance.

This way lies madness.

Then again, madness may be unavoidable unless we can wrest back control over our runaway government starting at the local level.

It is time to recalibrate the government.

For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the farce that is the highly partisan, two-party, bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided the government with the perfect excuse to lay claim to a long laundry list of terrifying lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level) that override the Constitution: the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die, and impose health mandates on large segments of the population.

Crises tend to bring out the authoritarian tendencies in government.

That’s no surprise: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separate and shares power between three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.

“The system of checks and balances that the Framers envisioned now lacks effective checks and is no longer in balance,” concludes law professor William P. Marshall. “The implications of this are serious. The Framers designed a system of separation of powers to combat government excess and abuse and to curb incompetence. They also believed that, in the absence of an effective separation-of-powers structure, such ills would inevitably follow. Unfortunately, however, power once taken is not easily surrendered.”

Unadulterated power in any branch of government is a menace to freedom.

There’s no point debating which political party would be more dangerous with these powers.

The fact that any individual—or branch of government—of any political persuasion is empowered to act like a dictator is danger enough.

So, what we can do to wrest back control over a runaway government and an imperial presidency?

It won’t be easy.

We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority.

This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

We are ruled by an elite class of individuals who are completely out of touch with the travails of the average American.

We are viewed as relatively expendable in the eyes of government: faceless numbers of individuals who serve one purpose, which is to keep the government machine running through our labor and our tax dollars. Those in power aren’t losing any sleep over the indignities we are being made to suffer or the possible risks to our health. All they seem to care about are power and control.

We are being made to suffer countless abuses at the government’s hands.

We have little protection against standing armies (domestic and military), invasive surveillance, marauding SWAT teams, an overwhelming government arsenal of assault vehicles and firepower, and a barrage of laws that criminalize everything from vegetable gardens to lemonade stands.

In the name of national security, we’re being subjected to government agencies such as the NSA, FBI and others listening in on our phone calls, reading our mail, monitoring our emails, and carrying out warrantless “black bag” searches of our homes. Adding to the abuse, we have to deal with surveillance cameras mounted on street corners and in traffic lights, weather satellites co-opted for use as spy cameras from space, and thermal sensory imaging devices that can detect heat and movement through the walls of our homes.

That doesn’t even begin to touch on the many ways in which our Fourth Amendment rights are trampled upon by militarized police and SWAT teams empowered to act as laws unto themselves.

In other words, freedom—or what’s left of it—is threatened from every direction.

The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers are shooting unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—are being armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies are fleecing taxpayers. Government technicians are spying on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors are making a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

In other words, the American police state is alive and well and flourishing.

Nothing has changed, and nothing will change unless we insist on it.

How to do this? It’s not rocket science.

There is no 10-step plan. If there were a 10-step plan, however, the first step would be as follows: turn off the televisions, tune out the politicians, and do your part to stand up for freedom principles in your own communities.

Stand up for your own rights, of course, but more importantly, stand up for the rights of those with whom you might disagree. Defend freedom at all costs. Defend justice at all costs. Make no exceptions based on race, religion, creed, politics, immigration status, sexual orientation, etc. Vote like Americans, for a change, not Republicans or Democrats.

Most of all, use your power—and there is power in our numbers—to nullify anything and everything the government does that undermines the freedom principles on which this nation was founded.

Don’t play semantics. Don’t justify. Don’t politicize it. If it carries even a whiff of tyranny, oppose it. Demand that your representatives in government cut you a better deal, one that abides by the Constitution and doesn’t just attempt to sidestep it.

That’s their job: make them do it.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together. They fall together, as well.

The police state does not discriminate. Eventually, we will all suffer the same fate.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

1. The US Constitution

The purportedly overriding law in the US is its Constitution. Bear in mind that it was written by and for the British oligarchs who, African slaves in tow, invaded the Native Americans’ land and proceeded quickly to slaughter the inhabitants and steal their land.

Let’s examine some segments of that lawless piece of document revered by deliberately snookered Americans who are in the vast majority of the population.

Consider the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, the Holy Grail of the National Rifle Association, and all other gun zealots. The Framers weren’t idiots. They knew what they were crafting, and they were scared of possible repercussions from the masses. They wanted to be sure that if the masses revolted against the Oligarch’s subjugation, the Oligarch’s could count on being protected by a well-armed militia that could be quickly summoned.

Now consider the disingenuously crafted Eight Amendment: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”  You don’t need to be a genius or a cryptographer to see that this Amendment is a “go pass jail card” for the original Oligarchs and their power elite progeny. “Hey, clan, the takings are yours for the wanting.”

2. Fake Anti-War Laws

Various laws exist that outlaw war. Parts of the U.S. Constitution outlaw war, but remember, that document was meant to be broken. International laws such as the 1928 Kellog-Briand Peace Pact outlaw war but what lusty war monger/profiteer cares if aware of such far-away laws?

What about the belated creation in 2002 of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Over 100 countries belong. The U.S. does not. The ICC is basically toothless and timid, going after war criminals only when they live in powerless states, and even in those cases, I don’t think any genocidal leader, for example, has yet to be brought to stand before the ICC court. Even so, the U.S. power elite are not about to take their chances, given the long and continuing history of US warring and plundering.

Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter stipulates that: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The UN? It is a worthless organization. Well, let’s modify that; Know many if any members of the U.S. power elite who pay attention to the UN?

Incredulously, if possible, are laws prohibiting wars conducted inhumanly! What are the inhumane methods of war? They include prohibition on exploding or expanding bullets (1868), expanding bullets (1899), poison and asphyxiating gases (1925), biological weapons (1972), chemical weapons (1993), munitions using undetectable fragments (1980), blinding laser weapons (1995), anti-personnel mines (1997), cluster munitions (2008). Sure, tell inhumanly or humanly war advocates that the late Albert Einstein once said “war is an act of murder.”

3. Meet People Corporations

Not corporate people, but corporate organizational charts that act like real people, talking, walking, and having emotions like gloating. These human qualities were bestowed on corporations by an infamous US Supreme Court ruling. The metamorphous gives corporations a huge advantage in getting by with lawless acts. For example, legal inspectors can no longer make a surprise visit to investigate illegal corporate acts. The inspectors must be given permission by the corporation for any on-site snooping, and you can guess how often that happens.

The chance of a personhood amendment even getting to the ratification stage is slim to none. So, expect to continue seeing corporate organizational charts walking the streets, chatting with other charts, driving, going to the movies, whatever!

4. License to Kill

Did you know that a corporation could get a license to kill? It all began with the corpocrats copying King George’s chartering of corporations to do his lascivious bidding. Greedy Delaware corpocrats were out of the gate first and the State quickly became every corporation’s darling. Eventually the other States awakened and followed suit. One, Virginia became the butt of a joke. The State may be the laxest, having allowed, for instance, a group of anti-tobacco activists to get a charter for their new tobacco company, “Licensed to Kill, Inc.,” even though it was clearly stated in the articles of incorporation that the company’s purpose would be to make and sell products that kill millions of people worldwide!³

5. Lap Dogs

Did you know that you are at the mercy of lap dogs? Junkyard dogs would protect your interests. The corpocrats clearly know that and use lap dogs instead. I briefly considered creating a catalogue “Beware of the Government’s Lap Dogs.” Sections in it could start like this: “Do you know what’s in the meat you eat? Meat inspectors don’t.” “Could this pacemaker stop your heart permanently? Don’t expect medical device inspectors to know.” “Could you get killed on this job? Don’t expect occupational health and safety inspectors to know.” “Could this drug prescription be toxic? Don’t expect the drug inspectors to know.” Would this be too risky an investment? Don’t expect the SEC to force rating agencies to rate honestly. Etc., etc.

6. The “Houdini” Lawyers

You are also at the mercy of the corpocrats’ “Houdini” Lawyers. Corpocrats’ escape hatches are often easy to find or create. They are out in the open just waiting to be used. Whenever they aren’t, corporations can turn to their hired Houdini’s, or lawyers, for help.Once they go to work finding or creating escape hatches the game is up-for justice that is. It’s Corporation 1, Justice 0, in almost every instance.

7. The Touts “Swimming Upstream”

We commoners don’t stand a chance for justice and real law when the touts (i.e., lobbyists) go “swimming upstream” on Connecticut Avenue to the Capitol Hill. When a tout walks through the door to the office of any member of Congress, the public’s interest goes out the window!

Here’s my doggerel about a real-life example of the touts’ clout when swimming up Connecticut Ave. on the way to Capitol Hill:

          Along the political sewer
          With far more touts than fewer
          With a putrid present and past
          With just one cast
          Look at what I caught!
          The biggest tout ever thought!

Can you guess that tout’s real name? It’s the pharmaceutical industry. Its touting expenses pay off handsomely in its return on investment! The Center for Public Integrity examined the Congress-Drug lobby track record of “Big Pharma” from 1980 until 2006. The Goliath giver and beggar got 20 some favors from the “drugged” Congress. Here’s but one e.g.: “government listing of preferred drugs prohibited.”⁴ When you open your medicine cabinet, what do you see? Big Pharma sneering at you?

8. The Burrowers

You undoubtedly know that a burrower is an animal digging a hole to live underground. But have you ever seen a human burrower or even know what it means? I’ll tell you. They come and go to Capitol Hill. They are appointees of the US president. Once the Prez leaves his (never a “her”) appointees burrow into civil servants, a guaranteed job probably even if the burrower accosts a female subordinate.

9. The Revolving Doors

Now you see them here. Now you see them there. Who are they and where are they coming and going? They don’t stay put like the political careerists do. They are the pick pockets coming and going, the shufflers back and forth through the so-called, perfectly named “revolving door.” There are actually three kinds of revolving doors.

One is for corporate officials and lobbyists who go through to appointments in key government posts to ensure corporate interests aren’t denied by the American people.

There’s the government-to-industry door through which public officials, having gotten experience and valuable contacts from the inside in keeping public interests at bay, go to industry and parlay their experience and contacts into furthering corporate interests in exchanges, usually private, with the government.

And finally, there’s the government-to-lobbyist door through which former legislators, their staffs, and executive-branch officials pass on the way to lucrative positions in lobbying firms to lobby their former colleagues.

Besides the revolving doors there are the “archways,” the metaphor author Naomi Klein uses for the passage of people who used to occupy top posts in the government, left for lucrative positions in the corporate world, then left it but stopped short of going through the revolving door.⁵ Instead they remained outside as influential advisors to top government officials and in so doing avoided conflict of interest rules (which have never stopped conflicts of interest among the revolving door people). She cites members of the Defense Policy Board as an example. Those folks helped pedal the Iraqi War.

Let’s put to rest right now the argument that appointing people from corporations and their allies to influential government positions helps make government do a better job of legislating, regulating, and enforcing measures to protect the American people from powerful corporate interests. I’m not stupid. I know what happens when foxes guard chicken houses!

10. Voting Hurdles

I don’t want everybody to vote.
Elections are not won by a majority
of the people. They never have been
from the beginning of our country.
They are not now. As a matter of
fact, our leverage in the elections
quite candidly goes up as the
voting populace goes down.

          — Paul Weyrich

Thank you “radical right strategist,” Paul Weyrich for your candid remark at a 1980 training session for 15,000 conservative preachers in Dallas (just imagine being cooped up with them; I should know, my father-in-law was a fundamentalist preacher).⁶

11. The Electoral College

This college doesn’t award diplomas. It disallows the results of the vote when a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College vote, a perfectly legitimate but terribly unfair outcome. I’m not going to get bogged down here in a discussion of half a dozen or so alternatives to the ridiculous Electoral College such as instant runoff voting, direct vote with plurality rule, etc. Truly fair voting may l never see the light of day.

12. Voting Hurdles

I doubt if even an Olympic hurdles jumper gold medalist could leap over voting hurdles.

Voting hurdles are mostly constructed in the form of regulatory, legislative and administrative skullduggery, although occasionally illegal tactics are used such as Republican operatives jamming a Democratic phone bank.⁷

Other noteworthy hurdles are unjust voter eligibility criteria that bar otherwise eligible voters from voting, vote tampering that corrupts honest votes, and understaffed and incompetent personnel at polling places that complicate or distort the voting.

The Supremely Corporatized Court, not long ago in a 6 to 3 vote upheld Indiana’s voter identification law, allegedly the strictest in the country. The majority said the law was not unconstitutional, would improve the election process, would deter fraud and shrugged off counter arguments that prosecuted fraud is rare to nil; and that an unjustified, nontrivial burden was being imposed “on people who are old, poor or members of minority groups and less likely to have driver’s licenses or other acceptable forms of identification.”⁸ I have no doubt that in conservative Indiana the real motivation for the law in the first place was to bar otherwise eligible voters from voting for the opposite party (alas, Indiana is my home state).

13. Powell’s “Howl”         

Before he was appointed by Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court, Lewis F. Powell, gave a “wake-up” call in 1971 to a moribund big business and to wealthy conservatives. Powell was at the time a successful tobacco industry lawyer who specialized in securities laws and who had also been president of the American Bar Association. A staunch advocate of keeping government out of the affairs of business he had become alarmed over what he perceived to be a pervasive assault on the free enterprise system from the gamut of public institutions and the liberal elements of the public itself.  Big business, he fretted, was taking the assault lying down.

So, he wrote a memorandum, eventually dubbed Powell’s “manifesto,” to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce proposing that it lead a counterattack.⁹ Business, he wrote, was “ill-equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking insidiously and constantly to sabotage it” and “have shown little stomach for hard-nose contest with their critics.” He went on to lay out what amounted to a “battle plan,” apparently to help business conduct “guerilla warfare.”

He suggested numerous strategies targeting four major American institutions: education, the media, the political arena, and the courts. The strategies were all very aggressive. A few on paper at least seem militant and even paranoid and Orwellian in nature, to wit: It is “a long road and not for the fainthearted.” “There should be no hesitation to attack [those] who openly seek destruction of the system.” “There must be “constant surveillance of textbooks” and “monitoring of national television networks.” Does that read like it’s coming right out of some Orwellian pages?

His manifesto triggered a tacit conspiracy of new conservative think tanks, conservatively activist legal centers and an awakened, alarmed, and determined corporate America that all worked together to revitalize America’s corpocracy. Powell demonstrated without a doubt the power of one. But the power grab could never have happened without a submissive government partner, the Carter administration and continuing with all successively submissive administrations to this day.

“Mr. Powell, wherever you are, free enterprise is nothing more than a crucible for enslaved and exploited customers!”

14. The Mind Readers

The corporatized court is a great friend of criminal corporations. The judicial doctrine of criminal intent is yet another good example of legal sophistry that says being motivated to commit a crime is immaterial, while intent to commit a crime is material. Now, I’m a psychologist who thinks the difference between motive and intent is gossamer thin if different at all and that both require the judiciary and the jury to be what neither they nor anyone else can possibly be, psychics who pretend to read minds.

15. A “Shore” Way to Escape Accountability

When corporate executives are wanted by foreign countries for corporate crimes committed on their soil, and our captive government refuses to allow their extradition, the criminals become fugitives but apparently only in the eyes of the plaintiff countries. Scofflaw corporations are also fugitives when they incorporate offshore.

16. “Phantom Substitutes”

Government will sometimes go to extreme lengths not to prosecute corporate criminals, as in cases of what I call “phantom substitutes.” Instead of having to give a “death sentence” mandated by its own harsh (on paper only) rule, the prosecution has a phantom or defunct unit of the criminal corporation plead guilty (I guess the phantom can write and talk) and gives it the death sentence. The “parent” criminal, meanwhile, continues to milk the cash cow.

17. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”

I use this scripture to refer to criminal corporations being given amnesty. Telecom companies, for instance, were granted retroactive amnesty from massive prosecution for invasion of privacy in the administration’s surveillance operations seeking to ferret out possible terrorists. Amnesty is a central part of the US Department of InJustice’s “corporate leniency” policy.

18. The “Pamperers”

Yes, diapered politicians. Reminds me of this riddle: Why are politicians like diapers? Astute readers, you undoubtedly know the answer, but just in case: Because they have a load full and need to be changed often! They pamper, not prosecute and jail corporate criminals through such means as non-prosecution and deferred prosecution.

19. “Baseball” Thieves

Not named because baseballs are stolen, but because it’s “three strikes and you’re out” for petty thieves in the State of California who thieve pettily three times. Corporate criminals never strike out in any state.

20. “Culpability Score Card”

It is a provision in the corporate sentencing guidelines (eventually made advisory rather than mandatory of course by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling) that allows for fines and other penalties to be reduced up to 95% if the corporation’s gets a low “culpability score” by having adopted and begun implementing a compliance program prior to the offense. Now obviously the program failed or there wouldn’t have been an offense in the first place! And that isn’t surprising because compliance programs tend to be window dressing anyway. Moreover, having a compliance program tends to give corporations a sense of immunity and brazenness.

Pit Bull

If a pit bull approached you, you might rightly be petrified, but you would be well advised to proceed cautiously. So, it would also be wise to confront the few thousand power elite pit bulls very cautiously, wisely and strategically. A good way to do that would be to follow these steps:

1. Target the vulnerabilities of the power elite. There is a slew of them that I have detailed elsewhere.¹⁰

2. Identify all the dissident groups in America.  There are around 17 of them such as, for example, consumer groups, political dissidents, angry veterans, etc.

3. Ask a public opinion polling organization to poll the American people, asking them questions such as a) would you be willing to join at no cost a virtual organization, the “US Democracy Corps,” to carry out strategic objectives to topple peacefully the power elite’s vulnerabilities? b) could you name one or more public figures you think should lead the USDC? c) would you be willing to join at no cost the USDC’s “America’s Freedom Legionnaires” and affiliate with one or more alliances of people with concerns and experiences such as yours like public education, financial management, research, alliance coordination etc., etc.?

4. Recruit a public figure to be the USDC’s “field marshal” with responsibilities such as seeking funding from public figures whose wealth is not ill-begotten.

I am confident that if the above proposal were to materialize, the US corpocracy would eventually “dematerialize.”

Law vs Morals

A “Law Abiding America” may or may not be possible to achieve. A “Moral America” would be improbable if not impossible for law is the lower standard for civilized behavior whereas morality is the higher standard.

Michael Josephson, a brilliant lawyer turned brilliant ethicist (an unusual career change) searched far and wide throughout time and places looking for moral values that consistently showed up no matter where he looked. He found¹¹ what I call the “universal moral values.” Here is a list of them in alphabetical order:

·            Accountability
·            Caring for Others
·            Excellence
·            Fairness
·            Honesty
·            Integrity
·            Justice
·            Loyalty
·            Promise Keeping
·            Respecting Others
·            Responsibility

Being curious to see how the corpocracy at work stacked up against those high moral standards, for several years I compiled news accounts of work incidents in these sectors: corporate America in general, the agriculture/chemical/food industries, the ammunition/gun/war industries, the communication/ entertainment industries, the financial industry, the health care industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the transportation industry, and government.¹² In all, the compilation comprised over 160 depictions of work incidents. Guess what I found. Every incident violated every one of the moral values (e.g., “Markets a drug that is more expensive than alternative drugs and deadly among children.”) They represent not just immoral behavior but evildoing, for the Merriam Webster dictionary defines evil as “profound immorality.” Now, I will leave it to you to decide whether and how evil is the few thousand members of the US corpocracy’s power elite.

In Closing

Readers, please think about being “careful ancestors of the future,” especially if you have a progeny.

And please do not make these two “death wishes” for humanity:

1. Things must get worse before they get better.

2. There is nothing I can do about it.

ENDNOTES

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gary Brumback.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

— Hermann Goering, German military commander and Hitler’s designated successor

For those who remember the days and months that followed 9/11, there is an unnerving feeling of déjà vu about the Hamas attacks on Israel.

The same shocking images of carnage and grief dominating the news. The same disbelief that anyone could be so hateful, so monstrous, so evil as to do this to another human being. The same outpourings of support and unity from around the world. The same shared fear that this could easily have happened to us or our loved ones.

Now once again the drums of war are sounding on the world stage, not that they ever really stopped. Israel is preparing to invade Gaza, the Palestinians are nearing a humanitarian crisis, and the rest of the world is bracing for whatever blowback comes next.

Here in the United States, as we approach the 22nd anniversary of the USA Patriot Act on October 26, we’re still grappling with the blowback that arises from allowing one’s freedoms to be eviscerated in exchange for the phantom promise of security.

Here are a few lessons that we never learned or learned too late.

Mammoth legislation that expands the government’s powers at the citizenry’s expense will not make anyone safer. Rushed through Congress a mere 45 days after the 9/11 attacks, the USA Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, undermined civil liberties, expanded the government’s powers and opened the door to far-reaching surveillance by the government on American citizens.

Pre-emptive strikes will only lead to further blowback. Not content to wage war against Afghanistan, which served as the base for Osama bin Laden, the U.S. embarked on a pre-emptive war against Iraq in order to “stop any adversary challenging America’s military superiority and adopt a strike-first policy against terrorist threats ‘before they’re fully formed.’” We are still suffering the consequences of this failed policy, which resulted in lives lost, taxpayer dollars wasted, the fomenting of hatred against the U.S. and the further radicalization of terrorist cells.

War is costly. There are many reasons to go to war, but those who have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that have profited most from these endless military occupations and exercises. Thus far, the U.S. taxpayer has been made to shell out more than $8 trillion to wage wars abroad, including the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt. That also does not include the more than hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, or the millions displaced from their homes as a result of endless drone strikes and violence.

The tactics and weapons of war, once deployed abroad, will eventually be used against the citizenry at home. The horrors that took place at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison in Iraq, involved “US military personnel humiliating, hurting and abusing Iraqi prisoners in a myriad of perverse ways. While American servicemen and women smiled and gave thumbs up, naked men were threatened by dogs, or were hooded, forced into sexual positions, placed standing with wires attached to their bodies, or left bleeding on prison floors.” Adding to the descent into moral depravity, the United States government legalized the use of torture, including waterboarding, in violation of international law and in the so-called pursuit of national security. The ramifications have been far-reaching, with domestic police mirroring a battlefield mindset in their encounters with American citizens, including the use of torture tactics at secret locations such as Homan Square in Chicago.

Allowing the government to spy on the citizenry will not reduce acts of terrorism, but it will result in a watched, submissive, surveillance society. Not only did the USA Patriot Act normalize the government’s mass surveillance powers, but it also dramatically expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens without much of any oversight. Thus, a byproduct of this post 9/11-age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere. We have all become data collected in government files.

News cycle distractions are calibrated to ensure that you lose sight of what the government is doing. The average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the reality of the American police state. Whether these events are critical or unimportant, when we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this. In this way, regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions that keep the citizenry tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles also keep them tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on their freedoms.

If you stop holding the government accountable to the rule of law, the only laws it abides by will be the ones used to clamp down on the citizenry. Having failed to hold government officials accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the American people have found themselves saddled with a government that skirts, flouts and violates the Constitution with little consequence. Overcriminalization, asset forfeiture schemes, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, warrantless surveillance, SWAT team raids, indefinite detentions, covert agencies, and secret courts are just a few of the egregious practices carried out by a government that operates beyond the reach of the law.

Do not turn your country into a battlefield, your citizens into enemy combatants, and your law enforcement officers into extensions of the military. A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the citizenry of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead? It was for this reason that those who established America vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, we in America now find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military and have just as little regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.

As long as you remain fearful and distrustful of each other, you will be incapable of standing united against any threats posed by a power-hungry government. Early on, U.S. officials solved the problem of how to implement their authoritarian policies without incurring a citizen uprising: fear. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. Most of all, they want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Once you trade your freedom for security, the terrorists win. We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state. And in so doing, we have proven Osama Bin Laden right. He warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

It took a long time to clear away the rubble from the 9/11 attacks.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, 22 years after the USA Patriot Act was unleashed on a vulnerable nation, we are still reeling from the destruction it has wrought on our freedoms.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

— Hermann Goering, German military commander and Hitler’s designated successor

For those who remember the days and months that followed 9/11, there is an unnerving feeling of déjà vu about the Hamas attacks on Israel.

The same shocking images of carnage and grief dominating the news. The same disbelief that anyone could be so hateful, so monstrous, so evil as to do this to another human being. The same outpourings of support and unity from around the world. The same shared fear that this could easily have happened to us or our loved ones.

Now once again the drums of war are sounding on the world stage, not that they ever really stopped. Israel is preparing to invade Gaza, the Palestinians are nearing a humanitarian crisis, and the rest of the world is bracing for whatever blowback comes next.

Here in the United States, as we approach the 22nd anniversary of the USA Patriot Act on October 26, we’re still grappling with the blowback that arises from allowing one’s freedoms to be eviscerated in exchange for the phantom promise of security.

Here are a few lessons that we never learned or learned too late.

Mammoth legislation that expands the government’s powers at the citizenry’s expense will not make anyone safer. Rushed through Congress a mere 45 days after the 9/11 attacks, the USA Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, undermined civil liberties, expanded the government’s powers and opened the door to far-reaching surveillance by the government on American citizens.

Pre-emptive strikes will only lead to further blowback. Not content to wage war against Afghanistan, which served as the base for Osama bin Laden, the U.S. embarked on a pre-emptive war against Iraq in order to “stop any adversary challenging America’s military superiority and adopt a strike-first policy against terrorist threats ‘before they’re fully formed.’” We are still suffering the consequences of this failed policy, which resulted in lives lost, taxpayer dollars wasted, the fomenting of hatred against the U.S. and the further radicalization of terrorist cells.

War is costly. There are many reasons to go to war, but those who have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that have profited most from these endless military occupations and exercises. Thus far, the U.S. taxpayer has been made to shell out more than $8 trillion to wage wars abroad, including the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt. That also does not include the more than hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, or the millions displaced from their homes as a result of endless drone strikes and violence.

The tactics and weapons of war, once deployed abroad, will eventually be used against the citizenry at home. The horrors that took place at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison in Iraq, involved “US military personnel humiliating, hurting and abusing Iraqi prisoners in a myriad of perverse ways. While American servicemen and women smiled and gave thumbs up, naked men were threatened by dogs, or were hooded, forced into sexual positions, placed standing with wires attached to their bodies, or left bleeding on prison floors.” Adding to the descent into moral depravity, the United States government legalized the use of torture, including waterboarding, in violation of international law and in the so-called pursuit of national security. The ramifications have been far-reaching, with domestic police mirroring a battlefield mindset in their encounters with American citizens, including the use of torture tactics at secret locations such as Homan Square in Chicago.

Allowing the government to spy on the citizenry will not reduce acts of terrorism, but it will result in a watched, submissive, surveillance society. Not only did the USA Patriot Act normalize the government’s mass surveillance powers, but it also dramatically expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens without much of any oversight. Thus, a byproduct of this post 9/11-age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere. We have all become data collected in government files.

News cycle distractions are calibrated to ensure that you lose sight of what the government is doing. The average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the reality of the American police state. Whether these events are critical or unimportant, when we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this. In this way, regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions that keep the citizenry tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles also keep them tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on their freedoms.

If you stop holding the government accountable to the rule of law, the only laws it abides by will be the ones used to clamp down on the citizenry. Having failed to hold government officials accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the American people have found themselves saddled with a government that skirts, flouts and violates the Constitution with little consequence. Overcriminalization, asset forfeiture schemes, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, warrantless surveillance, SWAT team raids, indefinite detentions, covert agencies, and secret courts are just a few of the egregious practices carried out by a government that operates beyond the reach of the law.

Do not turn your country into a battlefield, your citizens into enemy combatants, and your law enforcement officers into extensions of the military. A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the citizenry of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead? It was for this reason that those who established America vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, we in America now find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military and have just as little regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.

As long as you remain fearful and distrustful of each other, you will be incapable of standing united against any threats posed by a power-hungry government. Early on, U.S. officials solved the problem of how to implement their authoritarian policies without incurring a citizen uprising: fear. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. Most of all, they want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Once you trade your freedom for security, the terrorists win. We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state. And in so doing, we have proven Osama Bin Laden right. He warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

It took a long time to clear away the rubble from the 9/11 attacks.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, 22 years after the USA Patriot Act was unleashed on a vulnerable nation, we are still reeling from the destruction it has wrought on our freedoms.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

These criminal cases rest on the assumption that Trump knew his claims of election fraud were false, making his actions to overturn the election an illegal conspiracy. However, what anti-Trumpers declare disinformation is what Trumpers and others consider their First Amendment free speech right to speak the truth. So far, the US has no official 1984-style Ministry of Truth or “science” that declares what is misinformation – though Biden sought to create one with the Nina Jankowicz Disinformation Governance Board.

Trump challenged the election results in some states and asked officials there to find evidence of fraud. Later he asked Vice President Pence to reject the Electors from those states. A candidate in any election has the right to challenge the vote count. The Constitution presents some procedures for doing this, which Trump followed.

Yet, in 2000, 2004, and particularly in 2016, when Democrats lost the election, they also challenged the final vote. The US clearly has undemocratic presidential elections, where winning the popular vote does not mean you win the election, a consequence of the Constitution giving us no right to vote for president.

In 2000, the Supreme Court did intervene to stop the recount of votes for president in Florida that would have made Al Gore the president. In 2004, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer and others objected to certifying the Ohio elector votes for Bush, which would make him the victor. In 2016, after the Hillary Clinton-CIA-FBI Russia collusion hoax – the biggest national security state hoax since their WMDs in Iraq – had failed to stop Trump, Democratic activists tried to convince electors to switch their votes from Trump. Two did. Some even received death threats if they voted for Trump. No one was charged with obstructing an official proceeding in either case.

Trump stands accused of violating the Espionage Act, treason, by possessing classified documents in his private mansion – something we know Biden did as Vice President and Clinton did as Secretary of State. Trump – unlike Biden or Clinton at the time – was President of the United States, the highest official of the Executive Branch of the government. Even the American Bar Association states the President has “broad authority to formally declassify most documents.”

Glenn Greenwald asked:

What is it that Donald Trump did exactly that was illegal? He definitely sued in court multiple times and lost, which is absolutely his right to do. He told Mike Pence what he heard from his lawyers was Mike Pence’s ability to do, even if it wasn’t, which was act as that vice presidential role and reject as certified results, ones that he regarded had evidence of fraud and send them back to the states. He arranged for an alternative state of electors to be ready to be anointed in the event he could prove that there was a fraud. But what about this is criminal? Which of these steps is illegal?

In Georgia state court Trump was charged with 13 felony conspiracy counts under their RICO anti-racketeering law used against mobsters. The law makes everyone who did anything as part of the conspiracy a full member of the criminal ring and equally responsible for crimes committed by others, as long as they were committed as part of the conspiracy. The prosecutor outlandishly claimed this conspiracy began one day after the 2020 election, when Trump gave a speech saying he won. This is criminalizing our First Amendment free speech rights.

National Security State Lawfare to Fix 2024 Election for Biden

The Biden administration is using the Department of Justice to eliminate his only serious challenger in the presidential race. This lawfare election fixing is unprecedented in US history, though presidents have been “elected” in underhanded ways, as in 1824, 1876, 1960, 2000. Even more ominously, this lawfare is being engineered by the national security state. They have opposed Trump since he first condemned US wars in the Middle East during the 2016 Republican primary debates, and called out the national security state hoax of weapons of mass destruction to instigate the war on Iraq.

It now looks like the 2024 presidential election will not be decided by our vote, but by the national security state intervening beforehand to remove Biden’s most formidable challenger.

Trump could have brought the same charges against Biden in 2020, when Biden, years after no longer holding a government position, had secret documents in his house. However, there would have been national outrage and popular mobilizations against “fascism” if Trump’s Department of Justice had indicted Biden for treason in the run-up to the election. But today, progressive people either approve of lawfare against Trump, or are silent.

In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter mass protests, people called for defunding the police and prison network, and regarded prosecutors as covering for police brutality. Now, the left and liberals champion the prosecutors of Trump, not questioning their credibility. Greenwald noted, “They really have come to be a political movement that reveres institutions of power because they regard them as being their political allies.”

Voters for Democrats now Trust the FBI and CIA

A Gallup poll a year ago, before the indictments of Trump corroborates this: 79% of Democrat voters say the FBI is doing an excellent or good job; only 29% of Republican voters do. And 69% of Democratic voters say the CIA is doing a good job; only 38% of Republican voters do. We live in a different era from what we grew up in, even 20 years ago at the start of Bush’s war on Iraq. Now most Democrats like the CIA and FBI and most Republicans don’t. Now all the Democrats in Congress vote to continually fund the war in Ukraine, while only Republicans vote against.

It’s a bygone era when Republicans were the war hawks and a wing of the Democrats were pro-peace. Unfortunately most leftists and progressives still live in that era.

Today many who want to defend free speech, stop endless war, stop censorship, oppose the “deep state,” find a hearing with Trump Republicans, while the Democrats have become advocates of war and state censorship.

Lawfare Indictments against Trump will be directed against us

These lawfare charges to remove Trump from the presidential race, presented by the national security police agencies along with the Democratic Party and neo-con Republicans, will be used against viable future third parties. They will be a threat to our constitutional rights and our ability to organize against the 1%. Already, in part thanks to the absence of progressive outcry, the RICO law prosecution of Trump in Georgia is used against Stop Cop City protestors in Atlanta.

We should protest the indictments against Trump and the harsh criminal sentences against his January 6 supporters because if the left would ever move off the sidelines and become a force, they will be subject to similar prosecutions, only in an even more draconian way. Working class forces who effectively take on the bosses will suffer the same treatment.

McCarthyism of the Left

Unfortunately, anti-Trump sentiment infects and blinds much of the left milieu. Very few oppose these national security police state attacks on Trump or the lawfare manipulation of the 2024 election. We protest the New York Times’ McCarthyite attack on anti-war activists, but McCarthyism also exists in the left, where people are baited, and fear being baited – not as Reds, but as Trump supporters often simply for not condemning him enough. Consequently, they either participate in Trumper-baiting themselves or are intimidated into not standing up to it. This left McCarthyism is widespread and functions to push people towards voting for the supposed “lesser evil” Democratic Party and towards defending the actions of the national security police state.

We see this left McCarthyism with cheering the harsh sentences of January 6 defendants, most of who were non-violent. We see it in progressives’ not demanding answers for what the 100-200 undercover FBI and other police agency undercover agents in the crowd were actually doing that day. We see it in their not demanding answers about what the federal agents who had infiltrated the Proud Boys and other groups months before January 6 actually knew of January 6 plans. Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers, was in regular contact with the Secret Service for months prior to January 6. We see it in progressives’ failure to question the reasons behind the deliberate lack of defense of the Capitol. We see it in progressives not standing up for Rhodes and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who were non-violent on January 6, and did not even enter the Capitol, but were given 18 and 22 years for a charge often used against radicals: “seditious conspiracy.” These sentences are precedents that will be used against us. But left McCarthyism, fear of being baited as soft on Trump, makes progressives keep their mouths shut.

Unfortunately, as the Democratic Party shifted far to the right, and now is in open collusion with the FBI and CIA, becoming increasingly owned by the national security state, more and more of the left has capitulated to the identity politics ideology of that Party and the belief that it represents the “lesser evil” to Trump “fascism.” How far this left will degenerate, and how long until there is a national reaction to national security state fixing the 2024 election is unclear. The left is digging themselves into a hole, and giving the police state the opportunity to cover them up when they try to get out of it.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stansfield Smith.

There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.

— Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler, March 2002

Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?

Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?

Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?

Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.

Let that sink in a moment.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

I assure you I’m not making this stuff up.

So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”?

The government is grooming the American people to spy on each other as part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program.

According to journalist Leo Hohmann, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”

As Hohmann explains:

Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.

Cue the dawning of the Snitch State.

This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, hyper-vigilant, technologically-wired age.

For more than two decades, the Department of Homeland Security has plastered its “See Something, Say Something” campaign on the walls of metro stations, on billboards, on coffee cup sleeves, at the Super Bowl, even on television monitors in the Statue of Liberty. Colleges, universities and even football teams and sporting arenas have lined up for grants to participate in the program.

The government has even designated September 25 as National “If You See Something, Say Something” Awareness Day.

If you see something suspicious, says the DHS, say something about it to the police, call it in to a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smart phone.

This DHS slogan is nothing more than the government’s way of indoctrinating “we the people” into the mindset that we’re an extension of the government and, as such, have a patriotic duty to be suspicious of, spy on, and turn in our fellow citizens.

This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.

Yet while community policing and federal programs such as “See Something, Say Something” are sold to the public as patriotic attempts to be on guard against those who would harm us, they are little more than totalitarian tactics dressed up and repackaged for a more modern audience as well-intentioned appeals to law and order and security.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own policing.

After all, the police can’t be everywhere. So how do you police a nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren’t enough cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only track but analyze the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within the United States?

The answer is simpler than it seems: You persuade the citizenry to be your eyes and ears. You hype them up on color-coded “Terror alerts,” keep them in the dark about the distinctions between actual threats and staged “training” drills so that all crises seem real, desensitize them to the sight of militarized police walking their streets, acclimatize them to being surveilled “for their own good,” and then indoctrinate them into thinking that they are the only ones who can save the nation from another 9/11.

Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

This is how you turn a people into extensions of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent police state, and in the process turn a citizenry against each other.

It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other and shadowy forces from outside the country, they’re incapable of focusing on more definable threats that fall closer to home—namely, the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

Community policing did not come about as a feel-good, empowering response to individuals trying to “take back” their communities from crime syndicates and drug lords.

Rather, “Community-Oriented Policing” or COPS (short for Community Partnerships, Organizational Transformation, and Problem Solving) is a Department of Justice program designed to foster partnerships between police agencies and members of the community.

To this end, the Justice Department identifies five distinct “partners” in the community policing scheme: law enforcement and other government agencies, community members and groups, nonprofits, churches and service providers, private businesses and the media.

Together, these groups are supposed to “identify” community concerns, “engage” the community in achieving specific goals, serve as “powerful” partners with the government, and add their “considerable resources” to the government’s already massive arsenal of technology and intelligence. The mainstream media’s role, long recognized as being a mouthpiece for the government, is formally recognized as “publicizing” services from government or community agencies or new laws or codes that will be enforced, as well as shaping public perceptions of the police, crime problems, and fear of crime.

Inevitably, this begs the question: if there’s nothing wrong with community engagement, if the police can’t be everywhere at once, if surveillance cameras do little to actually prevent crime, and if we need to “take back our communities” from the crime syndicates and drug lords, then what’s wrong with community policing and “See Something, Say Something”?

What’s wrong is that these programs are not, in fact, making America any safer while turning us into a legalistic, intolerant, squealing, bystander nation.

We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall, widening mass surveillance dragnet comprised of fusion centers, red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, terror watch lists, facial recognition, snitch tip lines, biometric scanners, pre-crime programs, DNA databases, data mining, precognitive technology and contact tracing apps, to name just a few.

This is how the government keeps us under control and in its crosshairs.

By the time you combine the DHS’ “See Something, Say Something” with CP3 and community policing, which has gone global in the guise of the Strong Cities Network program, you’ve got a formula for enabling the government to not only flag distinct “anti-government” segments of the population but locking down the entire nation.

Under the guise of fighting violent extremism “in all of its forms and manifestations” in cities and communities across the world, the Strong Cities Network program works with the UN and the federal government to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal.

What this program is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale with the objective being to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police will identify, monitor and deter individuals who could be construed as potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats.

The government’s war on extremists has been sold to Americans in much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was sold to Americans: as a means of combatting terrorists who seek to destroy America.

However, as we now know, the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that has turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect.

Similarly, the concern with the government’s ongoing anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists.

These reports, which use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably, indicate that for the government, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—can be labeled an extremist.

Fast forward a few years, and you have the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which each successive presidential administration has continually re-upped, that allows the military to take you out of your home, lock you up with no access to friends, family or the courts if you’re seen as an extremist.

Now connect the dots, from the 2009 Extremism reports to the NDAA and the far-reaching data crime fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

Add in tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that identifies and tracks you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the circle, toss in the real-time crime centers which are attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, unless we can put the brakes on this dramatic expansion and globalization of the government’s powers, we’re not going to recognize this country five, ten—even twenty—years from now.

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.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

In the 22 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks.  It has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, with the nation still suffering blowback from the permanent state of emergency brought about by 9/11 and COVID-19.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone. Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault.

The Second Amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.

The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.

The Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.

The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution, that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury. However, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated.

The Eighth Amendment is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.

The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme.

As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.

Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution, which was adopted 236 years ago on September. 17, 1787, opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.”

It’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.

Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.

Tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

— H.L. Mencken, In Defence of Women, 1918

First came 9/11, which the government used to transform itself into a police state.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which the police state used to test out its lockdown powers.

In light of the government’s tendency to exploit crises (legitimate or manufactured) and capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state, one has to wonder what so-called crisis it will declare next.

It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power.

Frankly, it doesn’t even matter what the nature of the next national emergency might be (terrorism, civil unrest, economic collapse, a health scare, or the environment) as long as it allows the government to lockdown the nation and justify all manner of tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

Cue the Emergency State.

Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now.

As David C. Unger writes for the New York Times:

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

Here’s what we know: given the rate at which the government keeps devising new ways to establish itself as the “solution” to all of our worldly problems at taxpayer expense, each subsequent crisis ushers in ever larger expansions of government power and less individual liberty.

This is the slippery slope to outright tyranny.

You see, once the government acquires (and uses) authoritarian powers—to spy on its citizens, to carry out surveillance, to transform its police forces into extensions of the military, to seize taxpayer funds, to wage endless wars, to censor and silence dissidents, to identify potential troublemakers, to detain citizens without due process—it does not voluntarily relinquish them.

The lesson for the ages is this: once any government is allowed to overreach and expand its powers, it’s almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. As Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe recognizes, “The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable.”

Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.

In this way, every crisis since the nation’s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government.

Each crisis has also been a test to see how far “we the people” would allow the government to sidestep the Constitution in the so-called name of national security; 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, it has been a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—could survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

Unfortunately, we’ve been failing this particular test for a long time now.

Indeed, the powers-that-be have been pushing our buttons and herding us along like so much cattle since World War II, at least, starting with the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, which not only propelled the U.S. into World War II but also unified the American people in their opposition to a common enemy.

That fear of attack by foreign threats, conveniently torqued by the growing military industrial complex, in turn gave rise to the Cold War era’s “Red Scare.” Promulgated through government propaganda, paranoia and manipulation, anti-Communist sentiments boiled over into a mass hysteria that viewed anyone and everyone as suspect: your friends, the next-door neighbor, even your family members could be a Communist subversive.

This hysteria, which culminated in hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where hundreds of Americans were called before Congress to testify about their so-called Communist affiliations and intimidated into making false confessions, also paved the way for the rise of an all-knowing, all-seeing governmental surveillance state.

By the time 9/11 rolled around, all George W. Bush had to do was claim the country was being invaded by terrorists, and the government used the USA Patriot Act to claim greater powers to spy, search, detain and arrest American citizens in order to keep America safe.

By way of the National Defense Authorization Act, Barack Obama continued Bush’s trend of undermining the Constitution, going so far as to give the military the power to strip Americans of their constitutional rights, label them extremists, and detain them indefinitely without trial, all in the name of keeping America safe.

Despite the fact that the breadth of the military’s power to detain American citizens violates not only U.S. law and the Constitution but also international laws, the government has refused to relinquish its detention powers made possible by the NDAA.

Then Donald Trump took office, claiming the country was being invaded by dangerous immigrants and insisting that the only way to keep America safe was to expand the reach of the border police, empower the military to “assist” with border control, and essentially turn the country into a Constitution-free zone.

That so-called immigration crisis then morphed into multiple crises (domestic extremism, the COVID-19 pandemic, race wars, civil unrest, etc.) that the government has been eager to use in order to expand its powers.

Joe Biden, in turn, has made every effort to expand the reach of the militarized police state, pledging to hire 87,000 more IRS agents and 100,000 police officers, and allowing the FBI to operate as standing army.

What the next crisis will be is anyone’s guess, but you can be sure that there will be a next crisis.

So, what should you expect if the government decides to declare another state of emergency and institutes a nationwide lockdown?

You should expect more of the same, only worse.

More compliance, less resistance.

More fear-mongering, mind-control tactics and less tolerance for those who question the government’s propaganda-driven narratives.

Most of all, you should expect more tyranny and less freedom.

Given the government’s past track record and its long-anticipated plans for using armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems in response to a future crisis, there’s every reason to worry about what comes next.

Mark my words: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if and when another crisis arises—if and when a nationwide lockdown finally hits—if and when martial law is enacted with little real outcry or resistance from the public— then we will truly understand the extent to which the powers-that-be have fully succeeded in acclimating us to a state of affairs in which the government has all the power and “we the people” have none.

In the meantime, if all we do to reclaim our freedoms and regain control over our runaway government is vote for yet another puppet of the Deep State, by the time the next crisis arises, it may well be too late.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The lower court decision had shaken the fossil fuel industry with its finding in favour of the eight children and their litigation guardian, an octogenarian nun.  Justice Bromberg found that considering the potential harm arising from carbon dioxide emissions was a mandatory consideration of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.  The Minister for the Environment also had a duty of care given that it was reasonably foreseeable that the Australian children would face a risk of harm in extending the mine project.  Furthermore, the Minister had control over that risk, given that she could approve the extension, and that the children were vulnerable to a real risk of harm arising from climatic threats.

While the three Federal Court justices disagreed with Justice Bromberg’s reasoning, rejecting his finding that the minister needed to consider the potential harm arising from greenhouse gas emissions to the children under the EPBC, one of the justices did leave room for a future consideration about finding a duty of care.

In Montana, a court has found in favour of 16 individuals aged from 5 to 22 who argued that their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment was violated by permitting fossil fuel projects.  Only a smattering of states in the US, including Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, have enshrined environmental protections in their constitutions.  The Montana constitution specifically enumerates that “the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment … for present and future generations.”

In her August 14 decision, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley specifically held that the policy of evaluating fossil fuel permits, a process that did not permit agencies to consider greenhouse gas emissions, was unconstitutional.  “Every additional ton of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions exacerbates the plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.”  As it stood, the policy had already contributed, unlawfully, to “depletion and degradation” of the state’s environment.

The judge refused to accept the state’s contention that Montana’s environmental role was miniscule and insignificant in the scheme of such emissions, and that stopping carbon dioxide emissions would have no effect in any tangible way given the global contributions of other countries.

Talking heads have expressed a range of views about the significance of the decision.  Michael Gerrard of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change called the Held decision “the strongest decision on climate change ever issued by any court.”

Richard Lazarus, Harvard Law School professor, suggests that the impact of the decision should not be exaggerated, though nonetheless accepted its singular nature.  (The decision is the first of its kind in the US.)  “To be sure, it is a state court not a federal court and the ruling is based on a state constitution and not the US Constitution,” he stated to the Associated Press, “but it is still clearly a major, pathbreaking win for climate plaintiffs.”

James Huffman of the Portland-based Lewis & Clark Law School was even less impressed.  “The ruling really provides nothing beyond emotional support for the many cases seeking to establish a public trust right, human right or federal constitutional right.”

Indeed, the judge’s finding is also hampered by a failure to enforce the remedial right.  The plaintiffs can only expect the Montana legislature to implement policies that do not violate entitlements to a clean environment, suggesting that the right is negative in nature.  It involves no imposition of any duty to adopt a GHG mitigation strategy.

That said, the state regulator now faces the prospect of having to consider climate effects and greenhouse gas emissions regarding current projects, including the $283 million, 175 MW gas-fired powerplant under construction on the Yellowstone River south of Billings.  As Seeley noted, construction on the project was initially paused as a consequence of an April court ruling that the Department of Environment Quality had erred in not considering the effects of an estimated 23 million tons of GHG emissions.  Work had resumed, however, after the legislature’s amendment to the state energy law explicitly preventing state agencies from considering “an evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions and corresponding impacts to the climate in the state or beyond the state’s borders.”  Such a resumption of construction had taken place in the absence of any review about the “cumulative impacts of the permits [the regulator] issues on GHG emissions or climate change.”

Seeley also noted that four private coal power plants have been authorised to produce 30% of Montana’s energy needs “without considering how the added GHG emissions will contribute to climate change or be consistent with the standards the Constitution imposes” on the state’s entities “to protect people’s rights.”

The Montana legislature, which remains the least impressed of all, promises to appeal the decision, and they, as with the Australian Commonwealth in the Sharma case, might well succeed.  Emily Flower, spokesperson for the state’s attorney general, Austin Knudsen, restated the government position that those in Montana “can’t be blamed for changing the climate.”  The legal theory being tested “has been thrown out of federal court and courts in more than a dozen states.  It should have been here as well.”

Despite such consternation and opposition from legislatures, a judicial clearing is being made for plaintiffs keen to drag lawmakers and decisionmakers away from blithe complacency and comfortable accommodation with the fossil fuel lobby.  Ecological sustainability, in time, promises to become a matter, not merely of express rights as solemnly implied ones.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The lower court decision had shaken the fossil fuel industry with its finding in favour of the eight children and their litigation guardian, an octogenarian nun.  Justice Bromberg found that considering the potential harm arising from carbon dioxide emissions was a mandatory consideration of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.  The Minister for the Environment also had a duty of care given that it was reasonably foreseeable that the Australian children would face a risk of harm in extending the mine project.  Furthermore, the Minister had control over that risk, given that she could approve the extension, and that the children were vulnerable to a real risk of harm arising from climatic threats.

While the three Federal Court justices disagreed with Justice Bromberg’s reasoning, rejecting his finding that the minister needed to consider the potential harm arising from greenhouse gas emissions to the children under the EPBC, one of the justices did leave room for a future consideration about finding a duty of care.

In Montana, a court has found in favour of 16 individuals aged from 5 to 22 who argued that their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment was violated by permitting fossil fuel projects.  Only a smattering of states in the US, including Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, have enshrined environmental protections in their constitutions.  The Montana constitution specifically enumerates that “the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment … for present and future generations.”

In her August 14 decision, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley specifically held that the policy of evaluating fossil fuel permits, a process that did not permit agencies to consider greenhouse gas emissions, was unconstitutional.  “Every additional ton of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions exacerbates the plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.”  As it stood, the policy had already contributed, unlawfully, to “depletion and degradation” of the state’s environment.

The judge refused to accept the state’s contention that Montana’s environmental role was miniscule and insignificant in the scheme of such emissions, and that stopping carbon dioxide emissions would have no effect in any tangible way given the global contributions of other countries.

Talking heads have expressed a range of views about the significance of the decision.  Michael Gerrard of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change called the Held decision “the strongest decision on climate change ever issued by any court.”

Richard Lazarus, Harvard Law School professor, suggests that the impact of the decision should not be exaggerated, though nonetheless accepted its singular nature.  (The decision is the first of its kind in the US.)  “To be sure, it is a state court not a federal court and the ruling is based on a state constitution and not the US Constitution,” he stated to the Associated Press, “but it is still clearly a major, pathbreaking win for climate plaintiffs.”

James Huffman of the Portland-based Lewis & Clark Law School was even less impressed.  “The ruling really provides nothing beyond emotional support for the many cases seeking to establish a public trust right, human right or federal constitutional right.”

Indeed, the judge’s finding is also hampered by a failure to enforce the remedial right.  The plaintiffs can only expect the Montana legislature to implement policies that do not violate entitlements to a clean environment, suggesting that the right is negative in nature.  It involves no imposition of any duty to adopt a GHG mitigation strategy.

That said, the state regulator now faces the prospect of having to consider climate effects and greenhouse gas emissions regarding current projects, including the $283 million, 175 MW gas-fired powerplant under construction on the Yellowstone River south of Billings.  As Seeley noted, construction on the project was initially paused as a consequence of an April court ruling that the Department of Environment Quality had erred in not considering the effects of an estimated 23 million tons of GHG emissions.  Work had resumed, however, after the legislature’s amendment to the state energy law explicitly preventing state agencies from considering “an evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions and corresponding impacts to the climate in the state or beyond the state’s borders.”  Such a resumption of construction had taken place in the absence of any review about the “cumulative impacts of the permits [the regulator] issues on GHG emissions or climate change.”

Seeley also noted that four private coal power plants have been authorised to produce 30% of Montana’s energy needs “without considering how the added GHG emissions will contribute to climate change or be consistent with the standards the Constitution imposes” on the state’s entities “to protect people’s rights.”

The Montana legislature, which remains the least impressed of all, promises to appeal the decision, and they, as with the Australian Commonwealth in the Sharma case, might well succeed.  Emily Flower, spokesperson for the state’s attorney general, Austin Knudsen, restated the government position that those in Montana “can’t be blamed for changing the climate.”  The legal theory being tested “has been thrown out of federal court and courts in more than a dozen states.  It should have been here as well.”

Despite such consternation and opposition from legislatures, a judicial clearing is being made for plaintiffs keen to drag lawmakers and decisionmakers away from blithe complacency and comfortable accommodation with the fossil fuel lobby.  Ecological sustainability, in time, promises to become a matter, not merely of express rights as solemnly implied ones.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

When players are piled on top of each other after a mad scramble for a loose ball, it’s a free-for-all. There are no rules.  Anything goes. That’s because there’s nobody in the pile to monitor what’s going on.

— Mike Thomas, sports editor, Sportscasting, November 9, 2020

What is playing out before our eyes right now should be familiar to any fan of football: it’s called the pile on, a brutal, frenzied, desperate play to seize control and gain power while crushing the opposition.

In this particular analogy, “we the people” are trapped at the bottom of that pile, buried under a mountain of bread-and-circus distractions, economic worries, environmental disasters, power plays, power grabs, police raids, indictments and circus politics.

The Maui wildfires. The Trump indictments. Hunter Biden’s legal troubles. The looming 2024 presidential election. The Ukraine-Russia conflict.

In the midst of this pile on of woes, worries and semi-manufactured crises falling with sledgehammer-like frequency, monopolizing the media narrative and eclipsing all other news, it’s difficult to stay focused on what’s really going on, and yet something is brewing.

Pay attention.

Caught up in the partisan boxing match that is politics today, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s real.

The indictments against Trump, the investigation of Hunter Biden, and the chatter of the political classes aren’t real; they are more sound and fury, signifying nothing in the end.

As Aldous Huxley observed in Brave New World Revisited:

Non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature are deliberately used as instruments of policy, for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation… Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures.

So what is real?

What’s real is the $5,000 fine and five-year jail sentence that could be levied against anyone found driving an illegal immigrant in their car in the state of Florida.

What’s real are the hi-tech policing tools such as robotic dogs equipped with all manner of weaponry and surveillance technology that are rewriting the ground rules when it comes to privacy and security.

What’s real is the North Carolina pastor who was fined $60,000 for ministering to the homeless on church property without a permit.

What’s real is the revelation that Boston officials created and sent police a watch list of the mayor’s most vocal critics, not unlike the government’s own growing databases for anti-government dissidents.

What’s real is what happened in Marion, Kansas, on Friday August 11, 2023, when police raided the office of the Marion County Record, blowing past the constitutional safeguards intended to safeguard the freedom of the press.

Are you starting to get the picture yet?

The manufactured media spectacles, piled on one after another, have a very real purpose, which is to distract us from the government’s constant encroachments on our freedoms.

In the larger scheme of things, these individual incidents—the police raid of a small-town newspaper, a state ban on who gets to be inside your car, an outrageous fine for feeding the destitute, a politician’s use of an enemies list to silence critics—might easily go unremarked, yet they are all part of the police state’s tendency to pile on: pile on the distractions, pile on the retribution, pile on the show of force in order to completely eviscerate anything that even remotely resembles opposition.

The police state has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, all-out assault on anyone who even questions its authority, let alone challenges its chokehold on power.

“We the people”—the proverbial nails to the police state’s heavy-handed tactics—will be hammered into compliance, intimidated into subservience, and terrorized into silence.

It doesn’t matter which party dominates in Congress or the White House: all of us are in danger from these fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in tactics.

In this way, anarchy is being loosed upon the nation.

Day after day, the government’s crimes against the citizenry grow more egregious, more treacherous and more tragic. And day after day, the prison walls holding the American people captive become ever more inescapable.

The upcoming election and its aftermath will undoubtedly keep the citizenry divided and at each other’s throats, so busy fighting each other that they never manage to present a unified front against tyranny in any form.

Yet the winner has already been decided.

As American satirist H.L. Mencken predicted almost a century ago:

All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

In other words, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, nothing will change.

You cannot have a republican form of government—nor a democratic one, for that matter—when the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.

Seventy years after Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 depicted a fictional world in which books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled, we find ourselves navigating an eerily similar reality.

Welcome to the age of technocensorship.

On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.

In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

Case in point: internal documents released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government confirmed what we have long suspected: that the government has been working in tandem with social media companies to censor speech.

By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.

This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.

The revelations that Facebook worked in concert with the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation, followed on the heels of a ruling by a federal court in Louisiana that prohibits executive branch officials from communicating with social media companies about controversial content in their online forums.

Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

This is the very definition of technofascism.

Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.

The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

As Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes write for The Wall Street Journal: “The First Amendment prohibits the government from ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies.”

Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.

The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of free speech as we once knew it.

In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.

Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will all be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.

This is how it starts.

Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combating fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

Watch and learn.

We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

Here’s the point: you don’t have to like or agree with anyone who has been muzzled or made to disappear online because of their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now will eventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.

As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:

The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.

Be warned: it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.

Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s happening already.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The newsreel is rolling, words are at an all-time cheap. The more they are talking, the less it means to me.

— Brand New Kind of Blue – Gold Motel

Culture is a plot to hide this fact from you…that there are doorways out of ordinary reality into worlds impossible to describe and too strange to suppose.

— Terence McKenna

Commonplace dialog in politics, academia, and news-media feels like it’s missing something; leaving out rudimentary areas of investigation that have become taboo for polite society to question. Those aforementioned groups occasionally cite problems as “systemic,” but when it comes to defining what that means exactly or asking what alternatives there might be to the present system there is a collective hush that speaks loudly to tacit boundaries in place.

Instead the solution-set primarily discussed is limited to what amounts to band-aids for gaping wounds, or symptomatic responses that serve primarily to pander to a particular issue or crowd that often are a bridge too far themselves for the powers that be. The so called pundits of all flavors tend to stay in the safe intellectual territory usually defined by those who use leverage to become an authority; e.g., nation states, corporations and such. The authority will define what is in the acceptable limits of conversation while typically journalists and academics reactively talk along predefined lines.

Like take, for instance, Biden’s attempt at student debt relief. There was no participative democratic inquiry as to what to do about the ungodly sums of student loan debt accrued. Rather power offered what amounts to a conciliatory gesture to address the issue mostly all by itself. The proposed band-aid only applies to some, and it only removes a portion of the debt, and ends up being even less comprehensive than initially proposed.

The plan also entirely ignored larger issues that no one with a significant voice in the public sphere brings up. Like, why is academia allowed to price gouge people for rather flimsy educations in the first place?  Especially when many large universities are extraordinarily wealthy having multiple streams of income and receive large donations along with federal and state funding? Or why aren’t corporations footing the bill for training people, which they once commonly did, but as it is, universities are effectively charging the masses an eye watering premium to be better tools for corporate use. Expanding out, there are even larger issues to delve into around the legitimacy of capitalism, or how debt sure seems like it’s just rebranded indentured servitude, or how arguably these educational systems serve as instruments of domestication for the human mind that may be doing more harm than good.

However, the typical reaction to dissenting ideas in public dialogue, even if they are ideas that are obvious solutions and quite workable, is that if it’s not aligned with status quo thoughts stemming from central power it’s shunned, mocked, and thrown out with laughable disdain. Sadly, it’s often journalists, so called experts, and academics who are at the vanguard of contempt against all that color outside the lines of the discussion offered by those in power.

I feel compelled to note that bringing up Biden has nothing to do with partisanship, merely an example of how power defines what is pragmatic conversation in public dialogue and how punditry fails to be anything other than a babbling reactionary.

What’s at the Forefront of Public Ignorance?

I believe the crux of the ignored conversation is a simple straight forward questioning of good faith. Are these nation states, corporations, and other contemporary social hierarchies of power benevolent entities as they claim to be, or are they primarily self-serving with wildly different agendas than what they sell to the masses? If they prove to be the latter, then the tone of public debate will have to shift from trying to tweak a system, to suggesting forms of radical change to the status quo, because if the status quo is at fundamental odds with peace or unable to bring forth meaningful conversation that actually reflects the will of the people, then another way of being must be found or the real felt quality of life will never improve.

What is evident is that those that have power always tout their supposed accomplishments and how they are going to offer plenty of hope and change, how they are going to make everything great or build something better, and yet nearly the exact same type of system remains that has always been there despite the empty promises of politicians, which is a top down society where money buys a voice and hence power. A society with conspicuous inequality that manages to always find some method of segregation that amounts to awarding a few with incredible luxuries while others struggle to find food and housing, and even when such things are bountiful the basics of life will are withheld, arguably so that those at the top of the hierarchy can control the behavior of those beneath them in the hierarchy. Without manufacturing desperation or the fear of being desperate, centralized power would find it difficult to hold their system together, so it seems desperation is a built-in feature in our socioeconomic system that allows for people to be more easily manipulated.

Our collective problems are not recent developments either, they are long standing. If you read the writings of radicals from a hundred years ago, for instance, take anarchists Alexander Berkman or his close friend Emma Goldman, it’s evident that society was grappling with eerily similar problems in their time and if you push back further in the writings of dissidents of western society, you’ll find the same kind of critiques. Showing that those who have ruled in the past use the same basic methods of oppression they use now, like a magician the powers that be merely use sleight of hand in semantics to rebrand old world barbarism to hide the fact that systemic forces which govern our lives today are just as intransigent and ravenously opportunistic as the rulers of old.

People are led to believe that something else magical happened when European Enlightenment took hold in the 17^th century; however, upon further review it was actually only a great enlightenment for power, who learned a critical lesson that it’s easier to sell people the idea they are free to keep them docile and confused than it is to rule via direct fear and threat, which is prone to causing more direct uprisings. Power now works through various forms of leverage.  They’ll use whatever is convenient at any moment to get the results that are beneficial to those at the top of the hierarchy. It’s applied game theory, which intelligence agencies openly employ as noted by game theory expert Dr. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita who himself has assisted the CIA and is the exact kind of academic I’m referring to here in this writing that simply ignores other ways of cooperating together as possibilities, which leaves him with a rather naive childlike outlook believing the US is innately a force for good that just occasionally gets some things wrong here and there.

The fact that the US is applying game theory means they have agendas and are playing a contrived game of one-upmanship with the rest of the planet, that is unless one is to believe it’s all just for defensive purposes. This doesn’t seem to be the case, though, considering the CIA has overthrown leadership of other sovereign countries, meddled in people’s lives all over the world, tortured and every other horror imaginable to the degree that it’s nearly impossible to rest on the idea that they are simply playing a defensive game. They are able to get away with all that because of power imbalances economically and militarily that create the leverage they need to continue with their wretched ways.

The Problems With Asking Others to Think for Us

Sage Ramana Maharshi often spoke of the value of self inquiry and quieting the mind so we can become more open in a state of flow; freeing ourselves of prejudices and limiting narratives. I’d argue that without the ability to see what the mind is doing that we are little more than grim bio-computers running programs we’ve been behaviorally conditioned to learn. While running our programs there is no real choice, only a limited selection of rote reactions.

Journalists and academics have been designated as our collective self inquiry for the entire global civilization, and the overlay of a socioeconomic system is our bewildering nattering ego based mind running a program from the past. The problem that arises here is that the ego has hired a portion of the ego to inquire about the legitimacy of the agendas of our socioeconomic system.

Turns out that the majority of academics and journalists aren’t immune from aspects of careerism, which is little more than creating an egoic identity through their work. So if asking particular questions are socially frowned upon or will negatively impact the ego they’ve been working so hard to construct, they’ll usually refrain from doing so and hold in an avoidance pattern sticking to doing what’s comfortable or culturally acceptable. They might point out problems that might need to be fixed, but rarely will they argue towards ideas that could impinge on their own agendas or might threaten the larger system that has given them a special status.

So it should come as no surprise that you’ll probably never see the New York Times run an article questioning if a monetary system can ever produce a balanced peaceful society living in symbiosis with nature. A valid question since over a couple thousand years in western “civilization” every monetary system looks a lot more of a tool to control the actions of the majority of the population than a system that is freeing us to live better lives, not to mention how nearly every western society that has used the dark art of monetary exchange has also caused ecological havoc to the environment often leading to their collapse, could be a coincidence, but it does seem that when the world is reduced through an abstract lens seen through profit craven eyes that there are major implications that go along with it.

Money, after all, directly translates into people doing things for you in a slavish manner often doing things they wouldn’t ordinarily do but are simply doing so to earn money, which makes the bulk of us liars who must go to these jobs. We all know lawyers are paid to lie, and look at the social distrust they spawn. How many sales people believe everything they are telling their prospective customers? How many politicians lie for fundraising? How many people are in jobs that will offer a polite smile while internally feeling undulating waves of quiet desperation wishing they could say how they really feel to their employers or clients?

Money and capitalism as a whole make us all liars of sorts. And this is the society we want? One based on rewarding people for telling lies? A bunch of insincere liars trying to get ahead of one another while chasing cheap thrills and useless luxuries that result in heinous externalities. In many jobs people amount to servants for those who hold currency. They clean their toilets, cook their meals, and chauffeur them around. The end goal of what is termed success in this materialistic capitalist society is to sit around like a demanding turd only moving for the sake of recreation or to diddle the lower class on private jets, and their primary job is simply managing their money, writing checks, and telling someone what to do for it. This is the useless life so many lie, manipulate, and even murder to obtain.

What we have long given up is real community where there are strong social bonds. We’ve given up the bulk of our free time to be in a labor camp called employment by polite society, but it’s stuff you better do or else you’ll be cut off from food and housing resources. We’ve given up having a say and letting real human intelligence and creativity emerge that’s not coerced. We’ve given up seeing nature during the day to be in some dreary building, given up being close to our loved ones so we can mingle among acquaintances in high pressure situations where we embarrassingly ingratiate ourselves to people we’d rather tell to screw off.

Is it so hard to question for a moment that the money system may be completely contrived and controlled by a small in-group that is vying for power and control, just like happens in any social hierarchy? Is it not possible that our entire western based civilization is simply based on a cheap form of opportunism?

All things considered I believe this to be a highly pertinent line of questioning, yet academics and journalists won’t touch it.

How is it that something that seems so rife with problems, like the monetary system, can go almost unquestioned in public discourse in terms of asking if there are alternatives. Are these minds just closed or disinterested? In either case that’s a real problem in itself since authentic curiosity, meaning non-self serving motives with an open disposition, are major factors when it comes to intelligent decision making.

I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.

— Albert Einstein

The monetary system and what is called capitalism today was initiated and maintained by a group of people whose collective mindset appears to be sketchy based on how they treated people over thousands of years even though capitalism, itself, is said to be a recent invention, threads of it reach much further back in time.

When you control all the land and offer it at a premium to live there, that means those people must do some level of work which they owe to the system just to live on the land. And we call this “freedom,” and “free markets.” Working to live on the land where one can’t escape systems originating from centralized power and unable to live on your own terms smacks of feudalism. Coercion. A centralized authority planning your life for you.

People, in fact, are capable of forming complex voluntary communities living outside a centralized economic system with tighter communal bonds and drastically more fulfilling lives with more free time of their own. This has all happened before, and can happen again and be even better than before if we’d let it happen.

They got the remedy
But they won’t let it happen

Eternal Summer — The Strokes

A monetarily wealthy class is able subvert any idea of democracy when the money allows them to hire armies of people to represent their voice over a myriad of different mediums. Under this economic way of being representative democracy is a total sham, likely a sham wherever a central hierarchy is formed that is noncooperative as ours is, but especially in a two party system that is beholden to the donor-ship class, where payoffs and backroom deals are made daily; it’s a pay to play democracy in name only, that functions as a system of quid pro quo favors.

The mindset of the money changers can’t be ignored any longer. They formed their systems while also engaged in colonialism, genocide, imperialism, warfare, slavery, and basically any awful thing that gives them more of what they crave. So based on the emotional thrust of a competitive domination ownership society where prominent players in this game of deceit vie for global hegemonic rule there is little reason to think that such people with imperialist agendas who start wars under false pretenses are going to create an economic system that is fair and beneficial to the masses and every reason to think based on patterns long established that the economic system itself is nothing more than an evolution of chattel slavery, except in modernity they claim you’re free even though most people still end up working close to the same amount of hours they would have worked as serfs, slaves, and servants. The material accouterments have improved overall, yet all that makes us is a better treated servant class.

Thus, perhaps it’s a good idea to question if the monetary system isn’t just a ruse to control human behavior.

The same analysis can be applied to every part of the systems created by power; e.g., the military industrial complex, prisons, hierarchical government, the “educational” institutions, or the chosen paths of scientific research…there’s reason to question if it’s all just part of an overall system created as a method to corral people into spending their lives doing the activities organized power desires instead of people living truly free allowing them to organize their own communities without a parental oligarch meddling with their lives from hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

Big money from oligarchs fund both major corporate news media and academia, fuels political powers and allows for their message to be pumped through public dialogue while others who have significantly less financial resources have an extremely limited or no ability to voice their opinions. I know, that sounds very conspiratorial of me to say such things, but that’s just the way things work and given that the powers that be will militarily occupy a country like Iraq without any good reason for doing so, killing at least a million Iraqis in the process, then I think it’s fair to question authority’s intentions at every moment. Once someone is willing to kill massive amounts of people for selfish reasons there’s not much they wouldn’t be capable of doing.

Returning to my point on academia and journalism, corporate news media at times work hand in hand with the government, some getting first dibs at information and interviews with politicians if they agree not to ask questions that are inconvenient to power. Further, when news media have corporate sponsors they are very unlikely to bite the hand that is feeding them, hence remaining unbiased becomes an impossibility. Of course, let’s not forget that Noam Chomsky wrote a book with lead author, Edward S. Herman, entitled Manufacturing Consent detailing how news media is sold-out. Chomsky is an academic himself who is also sold-out in many ways, but he makes some astute observations regarding how media overall operates in complicity with the establishment.

Further, journalists and haughty academics are often considered to be essential parts of maintaining what is often referred to as “institutions of democracy.” A vague important sounding phrase that glazes completely over questioning if the system is democratic at all in the first place. The phrase is commonly used and rarely, if ever, does anyone define what those institutions are or what it is they are really doing.

In fact, these quasi protectors of something we don’t actually have, democracy, aren’t even bold enough to investigate if this system is actually holding up to what was stated in the founding documents. The beginning of the Declaration of Independence is so radical there’s not a major media outlet even willing to measure our current condition against its words:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

The “consent of the governed” doesn’t sound like something our government cares about at all when it comes to every war fought, every act of taxation legislated, every handout to the military industrial complex, every country and segregated group meddled with for oligarchs’ own selfish gain. Further, how much of the population must agree for change to happen and how is that measured? Just because an election was held didn’t mean that any of those questions were put up for debate, or even functionally could be in this brand of pseudo-democracy. A sizable faction of people may want to be free of their system, but it doesn’t matter, they will be forced into the system that top down power demands regardless of how unjust that system is.

The Declaration of Independence then goes super radical and says that it’s the right of the people to alter or abolish government if it’s known they are not holding up the aforementioned values. However, just try creating a movement to abolish this beast and you’ll be labeled a terrorist, likely to be incarcerated for a long time as a result. There are no thresholds set for when or how the people could validly force their government to change. It simply states rebellion is valid in extremely vague terms that has no real teeth to it or allows for the people to have sufficient traction to implement such changes thus rendering it to be nothing more than a hollow gesture.

The constitution has the same vague wording throughout and the Bill of Rights is equally as useless as a rebuke to the demands of power, since power does what it wants via leverage and interprets words that best fits their agenda de jour. Each amendment has laws underneath that drastically changes the meaning of its logical antecedent making the entire thing a statement of rights that you have with a barrage of convenient exceptions allowing those in power to sidestep any constitutional right at their convenience.

Journalists and academia, these so called protectors of our democracy do offer some positives by exposing holes in the system; however, no matter how much evidence of corruption is found and how deep it runs, no matter how mendacious the lies told by power are, the validity of the entire system is rarely put into question. There are, of course, exceptions, but this is about the majority, and the majority are too afraid of saying anything that falls outside accepted avenues of thought often for fear of career or financial repercussions.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that you don’t even need to dig that deep in order to make valid arguments exposing the flaws of the socioeconomic system. The proof of a perpetually corrupt system of thought is right on the surface in how things work and the consistent end results, which are endless war, the promotion of greed (a concept many capitalists deny exists), and the forced poverty innate to a system that doesn’t pay out enough collectively through middle class labor to cover rents for the total population. Creating a game of musical chairs for the entire society where some will inevitably be homeless and likely to be forever in debt till their last days. Despite the cumbersome work hours many must adhere to in order to keep their jobs they somehow still owe something after decades of labor to the upper class, who have more than they could ever use.

The only way the majority can have access to land is by performing tasks for money and even then most will have to take on long term debt to pay a mortgage, and when that is done you still owe taxes on that land in perpetuity. It takes about thirty years of wage labor, or indentured servitude as it was once called, before you can live on land without huge payments made, but even then they can take it from you the second you don’t pay property taxes. Free access to land is the cornerstone of liberty and not a whisper of this sort of discussion is had by any major media outlet or academic institution.

You can spend your whole life working for something,

Just to have it taken away.

— Ain’t No Reason, Brett Dennen

How is it that this way of being can be considered freedom when there are so many forced into doing things they’d rather not be doing simply because the economic system insists they prioritize money in their lives over all else. There are so many that would opt for a different way of living altogether but this system allows for no other choice. This relatively obvious line of question gains no traction, though, in mainstream discussions.  In fact, discussions over alien invasions from outer space are taken more seriously than changing something that is completely under human control to do and that could instantly make lives more free, less stressful, and could potentially create a truly better felt quality of life than what is here now.

Final Thoughts…

The most pertinent questions are often deemed to be impractical, yet if the system is never fundamentally questioned then how would we ever know if it’s broken beyond repair, or, in fact, if we’ve been sold on a system that is doing what it always intended and will never be honest with the people. Journalists and academics are unwittingly complicit with power when they are failing to ask any real questions regarding the feasibility of the system itself or dare to present radical alternatives as an option.

Corporate journalists seem to have plenty to say about a full range of asinine subjects. They’ll comment on what socialites are up to, discuss the president’s last sneeze, or endlessly speculate on who is going to run public office in a few years like it meant anything at all when there are so many larger areas of investigation commonly ignored yet deserving of consideration.

The academics will follow in nerd like fashion to critique journalism with their own pointless contributions about the trending banal subject of the day, like how the president’s sneeze was technically a cough and a sneeze at the same time followed by a fart and how it was misleading journalism to say otherwise. This is obviously on the satirical side, but the point here is that what is actually being addressed on the public stage is every bit as useless as debating the nature of bodily emissions from world leaders while failing to question the basic reason-for-being of a system that looks to be domination oriented and consistently lying to manipulate people for self serving egotistical purposes. There’s some serious questioning of the legitimacy of the whole thing that is somehow deemed irrelevant and out of the bounds of pragmatism to ask when they are some of the most important discussions to be had.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jason Holland.

If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar … and why?

Whether red ants will really fight black ants to the death is a question for the biologists, but it’s an apt analogy of what’s playing out before us on the political scene and a chilling lesson in social engineering that keeps us fixated on circus politics and conveniently timed spectacles, distracted from focusing too closely on the government’s power grabs, and incapable of focusing on who’s really shaking the jar.

This controversy over Jason Aldean’s country music video, “Try That In a Small Town,” which is little more than authoritarian propaganda pretending to be respect for law and order, is just more of the same.

The music video, riddled with images of militarized police facing off against rioters, implies that there are only two types of people in this country: those who stand with the government and those who oppose it.

Yet the song gets it wrong.

You see, it makes no difference whether you live in a small town or a big city, or whether you stand with the government or mobilize against it: either way, the government is still out to get you.

Indeed, the government’s prosecution of the January 6 protesters (part of a demographic that might relate to the frontier justice sentiments in Aldean’s song) is a powerful reminder that the police state doesn’t discriminate when it comes to hammering away at those who challenge its authority.

It also serves to underscore the government’s tone-deaf hypocrisy in the face of its own double-crossing, double-dealing, double standards.

Imagine: the very same government that violates the rights of its citizenry at almost every turn is considering charging President Trump with conspiring against the rights of the American people.

It’s so ludicrous as to be Kafkaesque.

If President Trump is indicted over the events that culminated in the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021, the government could hinge part of their case on Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which makes it a crime for two or more people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate” anyone “with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege” the person enjoys under the U.S. Constitution.

That the government, which now constitutes the greatest threat to our freedoms, would appoint itself the so-called defender of our freedoms shows exactly how farcical, topsy-turvy, and downright perverse life in the American police state has become.

Unfortunately, “we the people” are partially to blame for allowing this double standard to persist.

While we may claim to value freedom, privacy, individuality, equality, diversity, accountability, and government transparency, our actions and those of our government rulers contradict these much-vaunted principles at every turn.

Even though the government continues to betray our trust, invade our privacy, and abuse our rights, we just keep going back for more.

For instance, we claim to disdain the jaded mindset of the Washington elite, and yet we continue to re-elect politicians who lie, cheat and steal.

We claim to disapprove of the endless wars that drain our resources and spread thin our military, and yet we repeatedly buy into the idea that patriotism equals supporting the military.

We claim to chafe at taxpayer-funded pork barrel legislation for roads to nowhere, documentaries on food fights, and studies of mountain lions running on treadmills, and yet we pay our taxes meekly and without raising a fuss of any kind.

We claim to object to the militarization of our local police forces and their increasingly battlefield mindset, and yet we do little more than shrug our shoulders over SWAT team raids and police shootings of unarmed citizens.

And then there’s our supposed love-hate affair with technology, which sees us bristling at the government’s efforts to monitor our internet activities, listen in on our phone calls, read our emails, track our every movement, and punish us for what we say on social media, and yet we keep using these very same technologies all the while doing nothing about the government’s encroachments on our rights.

By tacitly allowing these violations to continue and legitimizing a government that has long since ceased to operate within the framework of the Constitution, we not only empower the tyrant but we feed the monster.

This is exactly how incremental encroachments on our rights, justified in the name of greater safety, become routine, wide-ranging abuses so entrenched as to make reform all but impossible.

The tactics follow the same script: first, the government lures us in with a scheme to make our lives better, our families safer, and our communities more secure, and then once we take the bait, they slam the trap closed and turn “we the people” into Enemy Number One.

Despite how evident it is that we are mere tools to be used and abused and manipulated for the power elite’s own diabolical purposes, we somehow fail to see their machinations for what they truly are: thinly veiled attempts to expand their power and wealth at our expense.

So here we are, caught in a vicious cycle of in-fighting and partisan politics, all the while the government—which never stops shaking the jar—is advancing its agenda to lockdown the nation.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, until we can face up to that truth and forge our own path back to a world in which freedom means something again, we’re going to be stuck in this wormhole of populist anger, petty politics and destruction that is pitting us one against the other.

In that scenario, no one wins, whether you live in a small town or big city.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

— Harry S. Truman

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.

Yet it was not always this way.

It used to be “we the people” giving the orders, telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry’s ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as “qualified immunity”).

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen’s right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen’s house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

The government may NOT carry out unreasonable searches and seizures on the citizenry or their possessions, NOR can government officials issue warrants without some evidence of wrongdoing (probable cause). Unfortunately, what is unreasonable to the average American is completely reasonable to a government agent, for whom the ends justify the means. In such a climate, we have no protection against roadside strip searches, blood draws, DNA collection, SWAT team raids, surveillance or any other privacy-stripping indignity to which the government chooses to subject us.

The government is NOT to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Nevertheless, the government continues to incarcerate tens of thousands of Americans whose greatest crime is being poor and not white. The same goes for those who are put to death, some erroneously, by a system weighted in favor of class and wealth.

The government may NOT take private property for public use without just compensation. Nevertheless, under the guise of the “greater public interest,” the government often hides behind eminent domain laws in order to allow megacorporations to tear down homes occupied by less prosperous citizens in order to build high-priced resorts and shopping malls.

Government agents may NOT force a citizen to testify against himself. Yet what is the government’s extensive surveillance network that spies on all of our communications but a thinly veiled attempt at using our own words against us?

The government is NOT permitted to claim any powers that are not expressly granted to them by the Constitution. This prohibition has become downright laughable as the government continues to claim for itself every authority that serves to swell its coffers, cement its dominion, and expand its reach.

Despite what some special interest groups have suggested to the contrary, the problems we’re experiencing today did not arise because the Constitution has outlived its usefulness or become irrelevant, nor will they be solved by a convention of states or a ratification of the Constitution.

No, the problem goes far deeper.

It can be traced back to the point at which “we the people” were overthrown as the center of the government. As a result, our supremacy has been undone, our authority undermined, and our experiment in democratic self-governance left in ruins.

No longer are we the rulers of this land. We have long since been deposed and dethroned, replaced by corporate figureheads with no regard for our sovereignty, no thought for our happiness, and no respect for our rights.

In other words, without our say-so and lacking any mandate, the point of view of the Constitution has been shifted from “we the people” to “we the government.” Our taxpayer-funded employees—our appointed servants—have stopped looking upon us as their superiors and started viewing as their inferiors.

Unfortunately, we’ve gotten so used to being dictated to by government agents, bureaucrats and militarized police alike that we’ve forgotten that WE are supposed to be the ones calling the shots and determining what is just, reasonable and necessary.

Then again, we’re not the only ones guilty of forgetting that the government was established to serve us as well as obey us. Every branch of government, from the Executive to the Judicial and Legislative, seems to be suffering this same form of amnesia. Certainly, when government programs are interpreted from the government’s point of view (i.e., the courts and legislatures), there is little the government CANNOT do in its quest for power and control.

We’ve been so brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing that the government is actually looking out for our best interests, when, in fact, the only compelling interesting driving government programs is maintain power and control by taking away our money and control. This vital truth, that the government exists for our benefit and operates at our behest, seems to have been lost in translation over two centuries dominated by government expansion, endless wars and centralized federal power.

Have you ever wondered why the Constitution begins with those three words “we the people”? It was intended to be a powerful reminder that everything flows from the citizenry. We the people are the center of the government and the source of its power. That “we” is crucial because it reminds us that there is power and safety in numbers, provided we stand united. We can accomplish nothing alone.

This is the underlying lesson of the Constitution, which outlines the duties and responsibilities of government. It was a mutual agreement formed by early Americans in order to ensure that when problems arose, they could address them together.

It’s like the wagon trains of the Old West, comprised of individual groups of pioneers. They rarely ventured out alone but instead traveled as convoys. And when faced with a threat, these early Americans formed their wagons into a tight circle in order to defend against invaders. In doing so, they presented a unified front and provided protection against an outside attack.

In much the same way, the Constitution was intended to work as an institutionalized version of the wagon circle, serving as a communal shield against those who would harm us.

Unfortunately, we have been ousted from that protected circle, left to fend for ourselves in the wilderness that is the American frontier today. Those who did the ousting—the courts, the politicians, and the corporations—have since replaced us with yes-men, shills who dance to the tune of an elite ruling class. In doing so, they have set themselves as the central source of power and the arbiters of what is just and reasonable.

Once again, we’re forced to navigate hostile terrain, unsure of how to protect ourselves and our loved ones from militarized police, weaponized drones, fusion centers, Stingray devices, SWAT team raids, the ongoing military drills on American soil, the government stockpiling of ammunition, the erection of mass detention centers across the country, and all other manner of abuses.

Read the smoke signals, and the warning is clear: the government is on the warpath.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we are to have any hope of surviving whatever is coming at us, it’s time to circle the wagons, folks.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

— Harry S. Truman

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.

Yet it was not always this way.

It used to be “we the people” giving the orders, telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry’s ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as “qualified immunity”).

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen’s right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen’s house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

The government may NOT carry out unreasonable searches and seizures on the citizenry or their possessions, NOR can government officials issue warrants without some evidence of wrongdoing (probable cause). Unfortunately, what is unreasonable to the average American is completely reasonable to a government agent, for whom the ends justify the means. In such a climate, we have no protection against roadside strip searches, blood draws, DNA collection, SWAT team raids, surveillance or any other privacy-stripping indignity to which the government chooses to subject us.

The government is NOT to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Nevertheless, the government continues to incarcerate tens of thousands of Americans whose greatest crime is being poor and not white. The same goes for those who are put to death, some erroneously, by a system weighted in favor of class and wealth.

The government may NOT take private property for public use without just compensation. Nevertheless, under the guise of the “greater public interest,” the government often hides behind eminent domain laws in order to allow megacorporations to tear down homes occupied by less prosperous citizens in order to build high-priced resorts and shopping malls.

Government agents may NOT force a citizen to testify against himself. Yet what is the government’s extensive surveillance network that spies on all of our communications but a thinly veiled attempt at using our own words against us?

The government is NOT permitted to claim any powers that are not expressly granted to them by the Constitution. This prohibition has become downright laughable as the government continues to claim for itself every authority that serves to swell its coffers, cement its dominion, and expand its reach.

Despite what some special interest groups have suggested to the contrary, the problems we’re experiencing today did not arise because the Constitution has outlived its usefulness or become irrelevant, nor will they be solved by a convention of states or a ratification of the Constitution.

No, the problem goes far deeper.

It can be traced back to the point at which “we the people” were overthrown as the center of the government. As a result, our supremacy has been undone, our authority undermined, and our experiment in democratic self-governance left in ruins.

No longer are we the rulers of this land. We have long since been deposed and dethroned, replaced by corporate figureheads with no regard for our sovereignty, no thought for our happiness, and no respect for our rights.

In other words, without our say-so and lacking any mandate, the point of view of the Constitution has been shifted from “we the people” to “we the government.” Our taxpayer-funded employees—our appointed servants—have stopped looking upon us as their superiors and started viewing as their inferiors.

Unfortunately, we’ve gotten so used to being dictated to by government agents, bureaucrats and militarized police alike that we’ve forgotten that WE are supposed to be the ones calling the shots and determining what is just, reasonable and necessary.

Then again, we’re not the only ones guilty of forgetting that the government was established to serve us as well as obey us. Every branch of government, from the Executive to the Judicial and Legislative, seems to be suffering this same form of amnesia. Certainly, when government programs are interpreted from the government’s point of view (i.e., the courts and legislatures), there is little the government CANNOT do in its quest for power and control.

We’ve been so brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing that the government is actually looking out for our best interests, when, in fact, the only compelling interesting driving government programs is maintain power and control by taking away our money and control. This vital truth, that the government exists for our benefit and operates at our behest, seems to have been lost in translation over two centuries dominated by government expansion, endless wars and centralized federal power.

Have you ever wondered why the Constitution begins with those three words “we the people”? It was intended to be a powerful reminder that everything flows from the citizenry. We the people are the center of the government and the source of its power. That “we” is crucial because it reminds us that there is power and safety in numbers, provided we stand united. We can accomplish nothing alone.

This is the underlying lesson of the Constitution, which outlines the duties and responsibilities of government. It was a mutual agreement formed by early Americans in order to ensure that when problems arose, they could address them together.

It’s like the wagon trains of the Old West, comprised of individual groups of pioneers. They rarely ventured out alone but instead traveled as convoys. And when faced with a threat, these early Americans formed their wagons into a tight circle in order to defend against invaders. In doing so, they presented a unified front and provided protection against an outside attack.

In much the same way, the Constitution was intended to work as an institutionalized version of the wagon circle, serving as a communal shield against those who would harm us.

Unfortunately, we have been ousted from that protected circle, left to fend for ourselves in the wilderness that is the American frontier today. Those who did the ousting—the courts, the politicians, and the corporations—have since replaced us with yes-men, shills who dance to the tune of an elite ruling class. In doing so, they have set themselves as the central source of power and the arbiters of what is just and reasonable.

Once again, we’re forced to navigate hostile terrain, unsure of how to protect ourselves and our loved ones from militarized police, weaponized drones, fusion centers, Stingray devices, SWAT team raids, the ongoing military drills on American soil, the government stockpiling of ammunition, the erection of mass detention centers across the country, and all other manner of abuses.

Read the smoke signals, and the warning is clear: the government is on the warpath.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we are to have any hope of surviving whatever is coming at us, it’s time to circle the wagons, folks.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

— Harry S. Truman

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.

Yet it was not always this way.

It used to be “we the people” giving the orders, telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry’s ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as “qualified immunity”).

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen’s right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen’s house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

The government may NOT carry out unreasonable searches and seizures on the citizenry or their possessions, NOR can government officials issue warrants without some evidence of wrongdoing (probable cause). Unfortunately, what is unreasonable to the average American is completely reasonable to a government agent, for whom the ends justify the means. In such a climate, we have no protection against roadside strip searches, blood draws, DNA collection, SWAT team raids, surveillance or any other privacy-stripping indignity to which the government chooses to subject us.

The government is NOT to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Nevertheless, the government continues to incarcerate tens of thousands of Americans whose greatest crime is being poor and not white. The same goes for those who are put to death, some erroneously, by a system weighted in favor of class and wealth.

The government may NOT take private property for public use without just compensation. Nevertheless, under the guise of the “greater public interest,” the government often hides behind eminent domain laws in order to allow megacorporations to tear down homes occupied by less prosperous citizens in order to build high-priced resorts and shopping malls.

Government agents may NOT force a citizen to testify against himself. Yet what is the government’s extensive surveillance network that spies on all of our communications but a thinly veiled attempt at using our own words against us?

The government is NOT permitted to claim any powers that are not expressly granted to them by the Constitution. This prohibition has become downright laughable as the government continues to claim for itself every authority that serves to swell its coffers, cement its dominion, and expand its reach.

Despite what some special interest groups have suggested to the contrary, the problems we’re experiencing today did not arise because the Constitution has outlived its usefulness or become irrelevant, nor will they be solved by a convention of states or a ratification of the Constitution.

No, the problem goes far deeper.

It can be traced back to the point at which “we the people” were overthrown as the center of the government. As a result, our supremacy has been undone, our authority undermined, and our experiment in democratic self-governance left in ruins.

No longer are we the rulers of this land. We have long since been deposed and dethroned, replaced by corporate figureheads with no regard for our sovereignty, no thought for our happiness, and no respect for our rights.

In other words, without our say-so and lacking any mandate, the point of view of the Constitution has been shifted from “we the people” to “we the government.” Our taxpayer-funded employees—our appointed servants—have stopped looking upon us as their superiors and started viewing as their inferiors.

Unfortunately, we’ve gotten so used to being dictated to by government agents, bureaucrats and militarized police alike that we’ve forgotten that WE are supposed to be the ones calling the shots and determining what is just, reasonable and necessary.

Then again, we’re not the only ones guilty of forgetting that the government was established to serve us as well as obey us. Every branch of government, from the Executive to the Judicial and Legislative, seems to be suffering this same form of amnesia. Certainly, when government programs are interpreted from the government’s point of view (i.e., the courts and legislatures), there is little the government CANNOT do in its quest for power and control.

We’ve been so brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing that the government is actually looking out for our best interests, when, in fact, the only compelling interesting driving government programs is maintain power and control by taking away our money and control. This vital truth, that the government exists for our benefit and operates at our behest, seems to have been lost in translation over two centuries dominated by government expansion, endless wars and centralized federal power.

Have you ever wondered why the Constitution begins with those three words “we the people”? It was intended to be a powerful reminder that everything flows from the citizenry. We the people are the center of the government and the source of its power. That “we” is crucial because it reminds us that there is power and safety in numbers, provided we stand united. We can accomplish nothing alone.

This is the underlying lesson of the Constitution, which outlines the duties and responsibilities of government. It was a mutual agreement formed by early Americans in order to ensure that when problems arose, they could address them together.

It’s like the wagon trains of the Old West, comprised of individual groups of pioneers. They rarely ventured out alone but instead traveled as convoys. And when faced with a threat, these early Americans formed their wagons into a tight circle in order to defend against invaders. In doing so, they presented a unified front and provided protection against an outside attack.

In much the same way, the Constitution was intended to work as an institutionalized version of the wagon circle, serving as a communal shield against those who would harm us.

Unfortunately, we have been ousted from that protected circle, left to fend for ourselves in the wilderness that is the American frontier today. Those who did the ousting—the courts, the politicians, and the corporations—have since replaced us with yes-men, shills who dance to the tune of an elite ruling class. In doing so, they have set themselves as the central source of power and the arbiters of what is just and reasonable.

Once again, we’re forced to navigate hostile terrain, unsure of how to protect ourselves and our loved ones from militarized police, weaponized drones, fusion centers, Stingray devices, SWAT team raids, the ongoing military drills on American soil, the government stockpiling of ammunition, the erection of mass detention centers across the country, and all other manner of abuses.

Read the smoke signals, and the warning is clear: the government is on the warpath.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we are to have any hope of surviving whatever is coming at us, it’s time to circle the wagons, folks.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.

— H.L. Mencken, “Le Contrat Social” in: Prejudices: Third Series (1922)

And so it continues.

This entire fiasco—indicting Donald Trump for allegedly violating both the Espionage Act and obstructing justice by improperly handling classified records—is merely the latest in a never-ending series of distractions, distortions, and political theater aimed at diverting the public’s attention from the sinister advances of the American Deep State.

Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, diverted or mesmerized by the cheap theater tricks.

This indictment spectacle is Shakespearean in its scope: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Nothing is the key word here.

Despite the wall-to-wall media coverage, this is all just smoke and mirrors.

Mark my words: the government is as corrupt and self-serving as ever, dominated by two political factions that pretend to be at odds with each other all the while moving in lockstep to maintain the status quo.

If you really want to talk about who’s guilty of treason, set your sights higher: indict the government for overstepping its authority, abusing its power, disregarding the rule of law, and betraying the American people.

When we refer to the “rule of law,” that’s constitutional shorthand for the idea that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

When the government and its agents no longer respect the rule of law—the Constitution—or believe that it applies to them, then the very contract on which this relationship is based becomes invalid.

This abuse of power has been going on for so long that it has become the norm, the Constitution be damned.

There are hundreds—make that thousands—of government bureaucrats who are getting away with murder (in many cases, literally) simply because the legislatures, courts and the citizenry can’t be bothered to make them play by the rules of the Constitution.

Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.

For too long now, the American people have played politics with their principles and turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient, allowing the government to wreak havoc with their freedoms and act in violation of the rule of law.

“We the people” are paying the price for it now.

We are paying the price every day that we allow the government to continue to wage its war on the American People, a war that is being fought on many fronts: with bullets and tasers, with surveillance cameras and license readers, with intimidation and propaganda, with court rulings and legislation, with the collusion of every bureaucrat who dances to the tune of corporate handouts while on the government’s payroll, and most effectively of all, with the complicity of the American people, who continue to allow themselves to be easily manipulated by their politics, distracted by their pastimes, and acclimated to a world in which government corruption is the norm.

It’s the nature of the beast: power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.

The republic has fallen.

The Deep State’s plot to take over America has succeeded.

The American system of representative government has been overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, corporate oligarchy bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad.

Even now, we are being pushed and prodded towards a civil war, not because the American people are so divided but because that’s how corrupt governments control a populace (i.e., divide and conquer).

These are dangerous times.

These are indeed dangerous times but not because of violent crime or terrorism or illegal immigration.

No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing armies to rob, steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill American citizens with immunity.

The danger “we the people” face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.

This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.

This danger comes from greedy, power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.

This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.

Consider, if you will, all of the dastardly, devious, diabolical, dangerous, debilitating, deceitful, dehumanizing, demonic, depraved, dishonorable, disillusioning, discriminatory, dictatorial schemes inflicted on “we the people” by a bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that has long since ceased to be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

• Americans have no protection against police abuse.
• Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state.
• Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty.
• Americans no longer have a right to private property.
• Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school.
• Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police.
• Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity.
• Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy.
• Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice.
• Americans no longer have a representative government.

I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

Indictments, impeachments and elections will not save us.

History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a totalitarian state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.

Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

From Clinton to Bush, then Obama to Trump and now Biden, it’s as if we’re caught in a time loop, forced to re-live the same thing over and over again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience to the Deep State, and the same corrupt, self-serving government that exists only to amass power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its continued domination.

There can be no denying that the world is indeed a dangerous place, but it’s the government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life, and no amount of politicking, parsing or pandering will change that.

It is easy to be diverted, distracted and amused by political circuses and entertainment spectacles.

What is far more difficult to face up to is the reality of life in America, where “we the people” are at a distinct disadvantage in the face of the government elite’s power grabs, greed and firepower.

The Constitution doesn’t stand a chance against a federalized, globalized standing army protected by legislative, judicial and executive branches that are all on the same side.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, no matter what political views they subscribe to: suffice it to say, they are not on our side or the side of freedom.

That is the real betrayal.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.