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By John W. Whitehead

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

—Thomas Paine, December 1776

It’s time to declare your independence from tyranny, America.

For too long now, we have suffered the injustices of a government that has no regard for our rights or our humanity.

Too easily pacified and placated by the pomp and pageantry of manufactured spectacles (fireworks on the Fourth of July, military parades, ritualized elections, etc.) that are a poor substitute for a representative government that respects the rights of its people, the American people have opted, time and again, to overlook the government’s excesses, abuses and power grabs that fly in the face of every principle for which America’s founders risked their lives.

We have done this to ourselves.

Indeed, it is painfully fitting that mere days before the nation prepared to celebrate its freedoms on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the City Council for Charlottesville, Virginia—the home of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration—voted to do away with a holiday to honor Jefferson’s birthday, because Jefferson, like many of his contemporaries, owned slaves. City councilors have opted instead to celebrate “Liberation and Freedom Day” in honor of slaves who were emancipated after the Civil War.

This is what we have been reduced to: bureaucrats dithering over meaningless trivialities while the government goosesteps all over our freedoms.

Too often, we pay lip service to those freedoms, yet they did not come about by happenstance. They were hard won through sheer determination, suffering and sacrifice by thousands of patriotic Americans who not only believed in the cause of freedom but also had the intestinal fortitude to act on that belief. The success of the American revolution owes much to these men and women.

In standing up to the British Empire and speaking out against an oppressive regime, they exemplified courage in the face of what seemed like an overwhelming foe.

Indeed, imagine living in a country where armed soldiers crash through doors to arrest and imprison citizens merely for criticizing government officials.

Imagine that in this very same country, you’re watched all the time, and if you look even a little bit suspicious, the police stop and frisk you or pull you over to search you on the off chance you’re doing something illegal.

Keep in mind that if you have a firearm of any kind (or anything that resembled a firearm) while in this country, it may get you arrested and, in some circumstances, shot by police.

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

However, the scenario described above took place more than 200 years ago, when American colonists suffered under Great Britain’s version of an early police state. 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.

No document better states their grievances than the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

A document seething with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens, the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, by 56 men who laid everything on the line, pledged it all—“our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”—because they believed in a radical idea: that all people are created to be free.

Labeled traitors, these men were charged with treason, a crime punishable by death. 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 when silence could not be tolerated. 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.

Imagine the shock and outrage these 56 men would feel were they to discover that 243 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 the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.

The danger is real.

We could certainly use some of that revolutionary outrage today.

Certainly, we would do well to reclaim the revolutionary spirit of our ancestors and remember what drove them to such drastic measures in the first place.

Then again, perhaps what we need to do is declare our independence from the tyranny of the American police state.

It’s not a radical idea.

It has been done before.

The Declaration of Independence speaks volumes about the abuses suffered by early Americans at the hands of the British police state.

Read the Declaration of Independence again, and ask yourself if the list of complaints tallied by Jefferson don’t bear a startling resemblance to the abuses “we the people” are suffering at the hands of the American police state.

If you find the purple prose used by the Founders hard to decipher, here’s my translation of what the Declaration of Independence would look and sound like if it were written in the modern vernacular:

There comes a time when a populace must stand united and say “enough is enough” to the government’s abuses, even if it means getting rid of the political parties in power.

Believing that “we the people” have a natural and divine right to direct our own lives, here are truths about the power of the people and how we arrived at the decision to sever our ties to the government:

All people are created equal.

All people possess certain innate rights that no government or agency or individual can take away from them. Among these are the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The government’s job is to protect the people’s innate rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The government’s power comes from the will of the people.

Whenever any government abuses its power, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government and replace it with a new government that will respect and protect the rights of the people.

It is not wise to get rid of a government for minor transgressions. In fact, as history has shown, people resist change and are inclined to suffer all manner of abuses to which they have become accustomed.

However, when the people have been subjected to repeated abuses and power grabs, carried out with the purpose of establishing a tyrannical government, people have a right and duty to do away with that tyrannical Government and to replace it with a new government that will protect and preserve their innate rights for their future wellbeing.

This is exactly the state of affairs we are under suffering under right now, which is why it is necessary that we change this imperial system of government.

The history of the present Imperial Government is a history of repeated abuses and power grabs, carried out with the intention of establishing absolute Tyranny over the country.

To prove this, consider the following:

The government has, through its own negligence and arrogance, refused to adopt urgent and necessary laws for the good of the people.

The government has threatened to hold up critical laws unless the people agree to relinquish their right to be fully represented in the Legislature.

In order to expand its power and bring about compliance with its dictates, the government has made it nearly impossible for the people to make their views and needs heard by their representatives.

The government has repeatedly suppressed protests arising in response to its actions.

The government has obstructed justice by refusing to appoint judges who respect the Constitution and has instead made the Courts march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

The government has allowed its agents to harass the people, steal from them, jail them and even execute them.

The government has directed militarized government agents—a.k.a., a standing army—to police domestic affairs in peacetime.

The government has turned the country into a militarized police state.

The government has conspired to undermine the rule of law and the constitution in order to expand its own powers.

The government has allowed its militarized police to invade our homes and inflict violence on homeowners.

The government has failed to hold its agents accountable for wrongdoing and murder under the guise of “qualified immunity.”

The government has jeopardized our international trade agreements.

The government has overtaxed us without our permission.

The government has denied us due process and the right to a fair trial.

The government has engaged in extraordinary rendition.

The government has continued to expand its military empire in collusion with its corporate partners-in-crime and occupy foreign nations.

The government has eroded fundamental legal protections and destabilized the structure of government.

The government has not only declared its federal powers superior to those of the states but has also asserted its sovereign power over the rights of “we the people.”

The government has ceased to protect the people and instead waged domestic war against the people.

The government has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, and destroyed the lives of the people.

The government has employed private contractors and mercenaries to carry out acts of death, desolation and tyranny, totally unworthy of a civilized nation.

The government through its political propaganda has pitted its citizens against each other.

The government has stirred up civil unrest and laid the groundwork for martial law.

Repeatedly, we have asked the government to cease its abuses. Each time, the government has responded with more abuse.

An Imperial Ruler who acts like a tyrant is not fit to govern a free people.

We have repeatedly sounded the alarm to our fellow citizens about the government’s abuses. We have warned them about the government’s power grabs. We have appealed to their sense of justice. We have reminded them of our common bonds.

They have rejected our plea for justice and brotherhood. They are equally at fault for the injustices being carried out by the government.

Thus, for the reasons mentioned above, we the people of the united States of America declare ourselves free from the chains of an abusive government. Relying on God’s protection, we pledge to stand by this Declaration of Independence with our lives, our fortunes and our honor.

That was 243 years ago.

In the years since early Americans first declared and eventually won their independence from Great Britain, we—the descendants of those revolutionary patriots—have through our inaction and complacency somehow managed to work ourselves right back under the tyrant’s thumb.

Only this time, the tyrant is one of our own making: the American Police State.

The abuses meted out by an imperial government and endured by the American people have not ended. They have merely evolved.

“We the people” are still being robbed blind by a government of thieves.

We are still being taken advantage of by a government of scoundrels, idiots and monsters.

We are still being locked up by a government of greedy jailers.

We are still being spied on by a government of Peeping Toms.

We are still being ravaged by a government of ruffians, rapists and killers.

We are still being forced to surrender our freedoms—and those of our children—to a government of extortionists, money launderers and corporate pirates.

And we are still being held at gunpoint by a government of soldiers: a standing army in the form of a militarized police.

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.

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 and by American citizens who failed to heed James Madison’s warning to “take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.”

In so doing, we compromised our principles, negotiated away our rights, and allowed the rule of law to be rendered irrelevant.

There is no knowing how long it will take to undo the damage wrought by government corruption, corporate greed, militarization, and a nation of apathetic, gullible sheep.

The problems we are facing will not be fixed overnight: that is the grim reality with which we must contend.

Frankly, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we may see no relief from the police state in my lifetime or for several generations to come.

That does not mean we should give up or give in or tune out.

Remember, there is always a price to be paid for remaining silent in the face of injustice.

That price is tyranny.

As Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century British statesman and author who supported the American colonists warned, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

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ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

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By John W. Whitehead

“Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.”— Justice William O. Douglas

Unjust. Brutal. Criminal. Corrupt. Inept. Greedy. Power-hungry. Racist. Immoral. Murderous. Evil. Dishonest. Crooked. Excessive. Deceitful. Untrustworthy. Unreliable. Tyrannical.

These are all words that have at some time or other been used to describe the U.S. government.

These are all words that I have used at some time or other to describe the U.S. government. That I may feel morally compelled to call out the government for its wrongdoing does not make me any less of an American.

If I didn’t love this country, it would be easy to remain silent. However, it is because I love my country, because I believe fervently that if we lose freedom here, there will be no place to escape to, I will not remain silent.

Nor should you.

Nor should any other man, woman or child—no matter who they are, where they come from, what they look like, or what they believe.

This is the beauty of the dream-made-reality that is America. As Chelsea Manning recognized, “We’re citizens, not subjects. We have the right to criticize government without fear.”

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.

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

Unfortunately, those who run the government don’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power. In fact, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

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

President Trump, who delights in exercising his right to speak (and tweet) freely about anything and everything that raises his ire, has shown himself to be far less tolerant of those with whom he disagrees, especially when they exercise their right to criticize the government.

In his first few years in office, Trump has declared the media to be “the enemy of the people,” suggested that protesting should be illegal, and that NFL players who kneel in protest during the national anthem “shouldn’t be in the country.” More recently, Trump lashed out at four Democratic members of Congress—all women of color— who have been particularly critical of his policies, suggesting that they “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Fanning the flames of controversy, White House advisor Kellyanne Conway suggested that anyone who criticizes the country, disrespects the flag, and doesn’t support the Trump Administration’s policies should also leave the country.

The uproar over Trump’s “America—love it or leave it” remarks have largely focused on its racist overtones, but that misses the point: it’s un-American to be anti-free speech.

It’s unfortunate that Trump and his minions are so clueless about the Constitution. Then again, Trump is not alone in his presidential disregard for the rights of the citizenry, especially as it pertains to the right of the people to criticize those in power.

President Obama signed into law anti-protest legislation that makes it easier for the government to criminalize protest activities (10 years in prison for protesting anywhere in the vicinity of a Secret Service agent). The Obama Administration also waged a war on whistleblowers, which The Washington Postdescribed as “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration,” and “spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records.”

Part of the Patriot Act signed into law by President George W. Bush made it a crime for an American citizen to engage in peaceful, lawful activity on behalf of any group designated by the government as a terrorist organization. Under this provision, even filing an amicus brief on behalf of an organization the government has labeled as terrorist would constitute breaking the law.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the FBI to censor all news and control communications in and out of the country in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt also signed into law the Smith Act, which made it a crime to advocate by way of speech for the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence.

President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal to criticize the government’s war efforts.

President Abraham Lincoln seized telegraph lines, censored mail and newspaper dispatches, and shut down members of the press who criticized his administration.

In 1798, during the presidency of John Adams, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to “write, print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous, and malicious” statements against the government, Congress or president of the United States.

Clearly, the government has been undermining our free speech rights for quite a while now, but Trump’s antagonism towards free speech is much more overt.

For example, at a recent White House Social Media Summit, Trump defined free speech as follows: “To me free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad. To me that’s very dangerous speech, and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech.”

Except Trump is about as wrong as one can be on this issue.

Good, bad or ugly, it’s all free speech unless as defined by the government it falls into one of the following categories: obscenity, fighting words, defamation (including libel and slander), child pornography, perjury, blackmail, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats, and solicitations to commit crimes.

This idea of “dangerous” speech, on the other hand, is peculiarly authoritarian in nature. What it amounts to is speech that the government fears could challenge its chokehold on power.

The kinds of speech the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation, prosecution and outright elimination include: hate speech, bullying speech, intolerant speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, incendiary speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, right-wing speech, left-wing speech, extremist speech, politically incorrect speech, etc.

Conduct your own experiment into the government’s tolerance of speech that challenges its authority, and see for yourself.

Stand on a street corner—or in a courtroom, at a city council meeting or on a university campus—and recite some of the rhetoric used by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams and Thomas Paine without referencing them as the authors.

For that matter, just try reciting the Declaration of Independence, which rejects tyranny, establishes Americans as sovereign beings, recognizes God (not the government) as the Supreme power, portrays the government as evil, and provides a detailed laundry list of abuses that are as relevant today as they were 240-plus years ago.

My guess is that you won’t last long before you get thrown out, shut up, threatened with arrest or at the very least accused of being a radical, a troublemaker, a sovereign citizen, a conspiratorialist or an extremist.

Try suggesting, as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin did, that Americans should not only take up arms but be prepared to shed blood in order to protect their liberties, and you might find yourself placed on a terrorist watch list and vulnerable to being rounded up by government agents.

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms,” declared Jefferson. He also concluded that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Observed Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”

Better yet, try suggesting as Thomas Paine, Marquis De Lafayette, John Adams and Patrick Henry did that Americans should, if necessary, defend themselves against the government if it violates their rights, and you will be labeled a domestic extremist.

“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government,” insisted Paine. “When the government violates the people’s rights,” Lafayette warned, “insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.” Adams cautioned, “A settled plan to deprive the people of all the benefits, blessings and ends of the contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the constitution, to deprive them of all share in making and executing laws, will justify a revolution.” And who could forget Patrick Henry with his ultimatum: “Give me liberty or give me death!”

Then again, perhaps you don’t need to test the limits of free speech for yourself.

One such test is playing out before our very eyes on the national stage led by none other than the American Police State’s self-appointed Censor-in-Chief, who seems to believe that only individuals who agree with the government are entitled to the protections of the First Amendment.

To the contrary, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was very clear about the fact that the First Amendment was established to protect the minority against the majority.

I’ll take that one step further: the First Amendment was intended to protect the citizenry from the government’s tendency to censor, silence and control what people say and think.

Having lost our tolerance for free speech in its most provocative, irritating and offensive forms, the American people have become easy prey for a police state where only government speech is allowed. You see, the powers-that-be understand that if the government can control speech, it controls thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

This is how freedom rises or falls.

As Hermann Goering, one of Hitler’s top military leaders, remarked during the Nuremberg trials:

It is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to 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.

It is working the same in this country, as well.

Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.

We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of allindividuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.

Never forget: 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 step out of line.

What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, tolerance for dissent is vital if we are to survive as a free nation.

While there are all kinds of labels being put on so-called “unacceptable” speech today, the real message being conveyed by those in power is that Americans don’t have a right to express themselves if what they are saying is unpopular, controversial or at odds with what the government determines to be acceptable.

By suppressing free speech, the government is contributing to a growing underclass of Americans who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”

Mind you, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law is labeled an “extremist,” is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, must be watched all the time, and is rounded up when the government deems it necessary.

It doesn’t matter how much money you make, what politics you subscribe to, or what God you worship: we are all potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government.

In other words, if and when this nation falls to tyranny, we will all suffer the same fate: we will fall together.

The stamping boot of tyranny is but one crashing foot away.

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By: Mike Maharrey

It was around this time 10 years ago that I became politically active.

Yes, I was a product of the Tea Party.

Sadly, that party is over.

I remember those early days well. The movement was a reaction to the Obama administration and its out-of-control spending, along with the taxes everybody assumed were sure to follow.

I spoke to a lot of Tea Party groups in 2011 and 2012. Crowds cheered at the mere mention of cutting the size and scope of the federal government. They railed against Obama’s big-spending ways. They embraced the principles of nullification and decentralization of power.

Then the soiree started getting a little ho-hum and mundane. Partiers started to drift away when the Republican Party apparatus coopted the Tea Party and turned it into a GOP fundraising platform. The radicals were squeezed out. A more moderate message was necessary to fill Republican coffers and ensure electoral success.

Then the party came to a screeching halt with the election of Donald Trump. It was kind of like the cops just showed up.

Suddenly limiting the size and scope of government wasn’t important anymore. Cutting spending and deficits didn’t matter so much to those former partiers. Their guy was in charge. There were walls to build and bump stocks to ban.

But at least that rascal Obama was gone.

In February, the federal government ran the largest monthly budget deficit in history. There was a time people stood out in the rain to protest that kind of spending. But I guess it’s only bad when the Democrats do it.

Oh – we got our tax cut. But even with complete control of the entire federal government, the Republicans did exactly zero to address the fundamental problem. There wasn’t even an attempt to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.

I talked about the debt, deficits and spending out the wazoo in my latest podcast. You can listen HERE.

Here’s the bottom line – when it comes to spending, deficits and debt, Trump = Obama.

But the party was fun while it lasted.

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Mike Maharrey

Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE

Be sure and visit BamaCarry Inc. Alabama’s largest gun-rights group.

By: Mike Maharrey

President Trump has repeatedly bragged about “his” economy, talking about economic growth in glowing, hyperbolic terms. To hear the president tell it (or tweet it as the case may be) Americans currently enjoy the best economy in the history of forever. But Trump’s boasting doesn’t hold up, even to a cursory examination of the data.

Economic growth over the last two years, as measured by GDP, comes in at basically the same rate as it did during the best two years of the Obama administration.

And if you dig deeper into the numbers, you will find that it’s all smoke and mirrors. The entire economy is nothing but a house of cards built on a shaky foundation of spending and debt.

The Commerce Department recently released second-quarter GDP data. Although it slightly beat expectations, growth came in at a relatively tepid 2.1 percent.

Along with releasing Q2 data, the Commerce Department also revised numbers from previous quarters. As it turns out, the economy actually grew slightly faster during Obama’s two best years (2014 and 2015) than it has during the first two years of the Trump administration.

The best year for GDP growth during the Obama era was 2015 when the economy grew by 2.9 percent. That’s identical to the 2.9 percent growth in 2018. In 2014, GDP was 2.5 percent. That compares with 2.4 percent in Trump’s first year.

In a nutshell, the data reveals very little difference between the Trump and Obama economies.

Nevertheless, Trump wasn’t discouraged about the lackluster Q2 number. He tweeted that growth was “not bad considering we have the very heavy weight of the Federal Reserve anchor wrapped around our neck.”

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

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Trump’s tweet actually misses the truth by about 180 degrees.

The Federal Reserve has certainly had a major impact on the economy, but not in the way Trump would have you believe. In fact, the Fed’s easy money policy with its low interest rates have driven what little economic growth we’ve seen. Federal Reserve policy isn’t a millstone wrapped around the economy’s neck. It’s a hydraulic jack propping it up.

The Fed cut interest rates to zero in the wake of the 2008 crash and held them there for seven years. In December 2015, the central bank began to “normalize” rates. But it only managed to push rates to 2.5 percent (nowhere near “normal”) before the stock market began to tank in December 2018. To stop the air from coming out of the bubble, the Fed put normalization on hold. Powell and company are now set to begin cutting rates again.

These abnormally low interest rates were intended to “stimulate” the economy by incentivizing borrowing and spending. It certainly worked, as the most recent GDP report reveals.

The most important part of GDP – gross private domestic investment – was down 5.5 percent in Q2. That represents the weakest quarter since Q4 2015. Non-residential business investment was also down 0.6 percent. Residential investment fell 1.5 percent. That category has been down six straight quarters, the longest span since 2009 — during the Great Recession. Net exports saw the biggest drop in a decade last quarter.

In a nutshell, the economy supposedly grew by 2.1 percent, despite a decline in business investment, decreasing imports and falling corporate profits.

So, what drove the growth?

Borrowed money.

Consumer spending increased by 4.3 percent and accounted for nearly all of the GDP growth. That may lead you to believe that the U.S. workers have plenty of money in their pockets.

You would believe wrong.

Consumers are digging deeper and deeper into debt to pay for this spending spree. Consumer debt has risen to a record-setting $4.9 trillion. That does not include mortgages. Americans owe over $1.07 trillion in credit card debt. Credit card balances rose by $7.2 billion in May alone.

The other big boost to GDP in Q2 came in the form of government stimulus. Federal spending was up 5 percent. That added 0.85 percent to the overall GDP. Non-defense spending was up a whopping 15.9 percent in Q2. The last time government spending grew that much in a single quarter was 21 years ago. The U.S. endured two recessions in that timespan – including the Great Recession.

In other words, government spending rose last quarter by more than it did in any quarter during either of those recessions. Think about that. Trump keeps complaining that he’s not getting as much monetary stimulus via low interest rates as Obama did. But he’s getting more fiscal stimulus.

When you shatter the mirrors and blow away the smoke, you discover the truth about the supposed success of the Trump economy (and the Obama economy too for that matter) — it has nothing to do with industry or business. The consumer and the federal government spent more borrowed money.

That’s it.

This raises the $22 trillion question. How long can an economy built on debt continue to grow?

Mike Maharrey

Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE

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By: Rob Natelson

Everyone who studies the Constitution knows it grants to agencies of the federal government and a few other entities only enumerated (listed) powers. Sometimes, though, it is not obvious whether a particular function is included in an enumerated power. For example, is authority to inspect goods within Congress’s authority to “regulate Commerce?”

When the American people were considering whether to ratify the Constitution, the principal argument of its opponents (Antifederalists) was that the Constitution would grant too much power to the central government. The Constitution’s advocates (Federalists) countered that the central government’s authority would be strictly limited.

To reinforce their position, the Federalists promised a bill of rights that would remove some subjects—such as religion—entirely from federal jurisdiction. They also publicized lists of functions that, if the Constitution were adopted, would remain solely within the spheres of the private sector and of state governments. It is doubtful whether the Constitution would have been ratified if the Federalists had not provided the country with those representations.

History well remembers the Bill of Rights. But despite their importance, the lists of enumerated non-federal functions were long forgotten. In 2003, however, I researched and wrote a scholarly article, The Enumerated Powers of States.

It re-published the Federalists’ list of powers exclusively within the private and state sphere. It also showed how their representations were at the core of the constitutional deal. Under the terms of that deal, the federal government was to have little or no authority over many subjects onto which it has since intruded: manufactures, real estate, the criminal law, civil jurisprudence, health care, most infrastructure projects, and many others.

Of course, the “prestige” law journals refused to seriously consider my article. But a newer publication, Nevada Law Journal, agreed to publish it. The Enumerated Powers of States has become one of my all-time most-cited writings.

Last summer, I published a supplemental survey in the Federalist Society Review. It included information not in the original article. Now the same publication has released a third essay in which I discuss still more founding-era evidence—this evidence only newly brought to light. This material reinforces the conclusion that the Founders understood the Constitution to place outside federal control many functions the central government has appropriated.

Liberal law professors have long floated innovative—and rather far-fetched—claims about the Constitution designed to show that the document somehow authorizes the welfare and regulatory state. The latest essay discusses two of the most recent assertions of this kind. My essay shows that both the Constitution’s text and the latest evidence flatly contradict these assertions. You can find my latest article here.

Rob Natelson
In private life, Rob Natelson is a long-time conservative/free market activist, but professionally he is a constitutional scholar whose meticulous studies of the Constitution’s original meaning have been repeatedly cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions and published or cited by many top law journals (See: https://i2i.org/author/rob/) He co-authored The Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause (Cambridge University Press) and The Original Constitution (Tenth Amendment Center). He was a law professor for 25 years and taught constitutional law and related courses. He is the Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at Colorado’s Independence Institute.

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Michael Boldin | 10th Amendment Center

For us it’s principle over party – all the time.

There are many examples of the founders warning about the power of factions, which would certainly include the massive political parties of today.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison discussed it in Federalist 9 and 10.

In his 1796 farewell address, George Washington famously warned of “The alternate domination of one faction over another.”

And in the New York ratifying convention, Melancton Smith said he’d only support his party “as far as is consistent with propriety,” letting other members know that his primary goal was to stand for his principles.

In short, if you’re dedicated to a politician or a political party rather than a foundational principle, you’ll always be led on the wrong path and help set foundation for what Washington called a “more formal and permanent despotism.”

In 1763, a young John Adams noted that “in every age” many of the best writers and speakers had wasted their skills in “foolish, deluded, and pernicious flattery” of one party, while engaging in “furious, prostitute invectives against another.”

Today, our view at the Tenth Amendment Center matches his rejection of this partisanship when he wrote:

“I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.”

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By: TJ Martinell

A recent decision by U.S. Supreme Court not to take up a gun rights case demonstrates that all too often, the high court does not act in a way that protects individual liberty. It also demonstrates further why our right to keep and bear arms will only be secured through local action and nullification by states willing to defy federal overreach.

It is clear based on a plain and logical reading of the Second Amendment that it prohibits the federal government from passing any restriction on the right to keep and bear arms. Yet since the 1930s, the three branches of the federal government have repeatedly violated it in the form of executive orders, legislation, and court rulings. A prime example is the National Firearms Act, which requires a person to get permission from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) before purchasing a suppressor. The process is much more intrusive and thorough than federal background checks – also unconstitutional – and usually takes several months.

In 2013, the Kansas legislature passed the Second Amendment Protection Act and Governor Sam Brownback signed it with Attorney General Derek Schmidt as one of the witnesses. The bill originally required the Kansas Attorney General to prosecute any federal agent who committed the felony of acting against the law but it was watered down to say that he “may” prosecute federal agents. In effect, the bill legalized the manufacture and sale of firearms and firearm accessories in Kansas without any federal licensing or restrictions so long as that firearm is not sold outside of Kansas.

In 2017, a federal judge sentenced Shane Cox and Jeremy Kettler under federal law – Cox for manufacturing and selling a silencer and other firearms without paying the federal license/tax and Kettler for possessing and using that silencer. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt refused to take action against the federal agents and refused to intervene in the federal court case despite the urging of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and many others.

Cox and Kettler argued that the policy violated their right to keep and bear arms and that they should have been shielded by the state law. Their appeal went all the way to SCOTUS, which declined to hear the case.

In the ideal world with judges truly faithful to the true meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the case would have been taken up by the high court and used as an opportunity to declare all federal gun control laws or regulations null and void. Instead, we have judges sitting on the high court that refuse to even consider the matter.

This is yet again why Americans should never put their trust in the feds of any branch to defend their rights. It is not the approach advocated by key Founding Fathers such as James Madison, who had the foresight to promote a “refusal to cooperate with officers of the Union” as the key to ensuring liberties were preserved.

The rights of a free people will never be preserved in the most unlikely of hands – a small group of unelected people who have enough difficulty reaching their position by straying the slightest from what Tom Woods refers to as the “3×5 index card of allowable opinion.”

TJ Martinell

Visit his personal site at www.tjmartinell.com. Join his Facebook page here. Listen to his weekly podcast on Sound Cloud.http://www.tjmartinell.com

TJ Martinell is an author, writer, and award-winning reporter from Washington state. His dystopian novel The Stringers depicting a neo-Prohibition Era in the city of Seattle is available on Amazon.

By: Mike Maharrey

I recently took a trip that required me to fly. I was filled with a sense of dread as I got ready to head to the airport, which is sad because I used to really enjoy flying.

You see, I love airplanes. I have since I was a little kid. I actually worked in the airline industry for about 7 years. I’ve flown a lot. But the TSA has ruined flying for me.

The last time I flew, a TSA agent at LAX grabbed my crotch.

We’re all safer now.

You’re welcome for my service.

I loathe the TSA. I honestly hate it more than any other federal agency.

Oh, I know there are greater threats to my liberty. I should hate the IRS more. Or maybe the NSA. Perhaps the Pentagon. But the TSA  — I guess that it’s just such a tangible violation of my rights and the Constitution. I can literally feel it running up and down my leg.

We’ve all heard the stories of TSA agents groping cancer patients, grandmothers and little kids. Of course, they do it for “security.” But it doesn’t even serve its advertised purpose. Like I said, I worked in the airline industry. I can assure you that the TSA mostly engages in “security theater.” Does anybody really believe it necessary to grope grandma in order to protect airplanes?

But even if it actually did make us safer, the federal government lacks the constitutional authority to serve as airport security, and many of its actions clearly violate the Fourth Amendment.

Still, many Americans defend the TSA, and they primarily advance one argument: if you don’t like it, you don’t have to fly!

But you know what? I do have to fly. The trip I am about to make wouldn’t be possible without air travel. And regardless, I find this argument absurd.

Why do I have to make a choice between convenient transportation and having my rights violated?

How about this: the TSA quits violating our rights and then if you don’t like it, or if you feel frightened by the lack of peek and grope security theater, YOU don’t have to fly.
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Mike Maharrey

Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE

By: Michael Rappaport

One of the most difficult issues for the originalists on the Supreme Court has been state sovereign immunity.

While these originalists usually argue against interpretations that do not derive from the constitutional text, in the area of sovereign immunity they have written and joined opinions that strangely rely on techniques that bring to mind Griswold v. Connecticut’s “penumbras and emanations.” In other words, these originalists appear to be acting in a hypocritical manner.

The challenge for originalists is whether they can justify state sovereign immunity using originalist interpretive techniques.

I tried my hand at this 20 years ago. In 1999, I wrote an article entitled “Reconciling Textualism and Federalism: The Proper Textual Basis of the Supreme Court’s Tenth and Eleventh Amendment Decisions.” The article argued that the reasoning of the sovereign immunity decisions (as well as other state immunity decisions, such as those prohibiting commandeering) was inconsistent with textualism and originalism. But I argued there was an originalist way to justify those decisions—by rooting them in the term “State” in the Constitution.

The article argued that at the time of the Constitution, the term state referred to an independent country with full sovereignty. The term had been used that way in the Constitution itself as well as in other founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence. Thus, we should understand that the Constitution used the term to indicate entities with sovereignty. Of course, the Constitution had taken away certain sovereign privileges from the states in a variety of ways, such as denying them the power to make war and allowing the federal government to pass laws that governed their citizens. But the Constitution should not be understood as depriving the states of core notions of their sovereignty, especially if the language of the Constitution did not expressly or at least clearly indicate such sovereignty was eliminated.

One way of understanding the argument is that the Constitution contained potentially conflicting terms—the powers of the federal government and the meaning of the term “state.” When provisions conflict, traditional interpretive canons require that one reconcile the provisions so as to do the least damage to their respective meanings. One way of doing that is to respect the explicit or clear powers of the federal government, while continuing to respect the core notions of state sovereignty when they otherwise conform to the structure of the Constitution. My article argued that respecting certain traditional state immunities, including sovereign immunity, was the correct way of reconciling these conflicting provisions.

In the recent case of Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, the Supreme Court once again wrestled with sovereign immunity. While there is much to criticize in Hyatt, one happy result is that the Supreme Court is improving the textual basis for its decisions in the area. In Hyatt, the Supreme Court appeared to adopt my use of the term “State” as a basis for sovereign immunity. After discussing the immunities that states enjoyed at the time of the Constitution, Justice Thomas wrote:

“In short, at the time of the founding, it was well settled that States were immune under both the common law and the law of nations. The Constitution’s use of the term “States” reflects both of these kinds of traditional immunity. [emphasis added] And the States retained these aspects of sovereignty, “except as altered by the plan of the Convention or certain constitutional Amendments.”

Thus, the Court employed the Constitution’s use of the term “States” as a textual indication that the states continued to enjoy certain traditional immunities.

Unfortunately, the Court did not cite my article, which they certainly knew about since it was quoted and cited in one of the amicus briefs arguing for constitutional sovereign immunity. When I wrote the article back in the late 1990s, I was not sure whether I thought it was the correct original meaning of the Constitution or simply the best argument for the Court’s decisions. Over time, I have moved closer towards the latter interpretation.

But even at the time I wrote the article, I believed that the strongest argument for the results in those cases would come from a combination of the term “State” and the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Will Baude has recently developed an argument for sovereign immunity based on the limits of the Necessary and Proper Clause. Baude argues that sovereign immunity was part of the general common law at the time of the Constitution and the federal government does not have the authority to displace such sovereign immunity under the Necessary and Proper Clause. Baude contends that the Necessary and Proper Clause cannot be used to exercise a great power (as opposed to an incidental or lesser power) and abrogating state sovereign immunity might be a great power.

The argument for state sovereign immunity based on the Necessary and Proper Clause, however, would be made even stronger by the proper understanding of the term “state.” If the Constitution recognizes the sovereignty of the states, then that makes it more likely that only a great power could eliminate a key aspect of that sovereignty. Moreover, one might conclude that Congress does not have the authority to eliminate state sovereign immunity even if doing so is not a great power. If one needs to reconcile the Necessary and Proper Clause and the term “State,” one might conclude that reading the former not to authorize abrogations of state sovereign immunity was the best way of reconciling them.

While I find these arguments about the Necessary and Proper Clause to be quite plausible, unfortunately the Court’s decision in Hyatt does not involve that Clause. Instead, the case involved the question whether one state had to recognize the sovereign immunity of another state in the first state’s courts. The Necessary and Proper Clause was thus not implicated. And Will Baude and Steven Sachs argue that the Constitution leaves this question to the states decide on their own. One way, if not the only way, to protect state sovereign immunity in this context is through the term State and thus it may not be surprising that the court invoked it here.

Michael Rappaport

Professor Rappaport is the Darling Foundation Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism. His principal areas of interest are originalism, separation of powers, federalism, and supermajority rules. He teaches Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Constitutional History, and Legislation.

By John W. Whitehead

“Adolf Hitler is alive and well in the United States, and he is fast rising to power.”—Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, on the danger posed by the FBI to our civil liberties

Despite the finger-pointing and outcries of dismay from those who are watching the government discard the rule of law at every turn, the question is not whether Donald Trump is the new Adolf Hitler but whether the American Police State is the new Third Reich.

For those who can view the present and past political landscape without partisan blinders, the warning signs are unmistakable: the Deep State’s love affair with totalitarianism began long ago.

Indeed, the U.S. government so admired the Nazi regime that following the second World War, it secretly recruited Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order, implemented his tactics in incremental steps, and began to lay the foundations for the rise of the Fourth Reich.

Sounds far-fetched? Read on. It’s all documented.

As historian Robert Gellately recounts, “After five years of Hitler’s dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI’s seal of approval.” The Nazi police state was initially so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police—the Gestapo.

The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that, according to the New York Times, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.

All told, thousands of Nazi collaborators—including the head of a Nazi concentration camp, among others—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip. Subsequently, they were hired on as spies and informants, and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. All the while, thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national security.

Adding further insult to injury, American taxpayers have been paying to keep these ex-Nazis on the U.S. government’s payroll ever since. And in true Gestapo fashion, anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.

As if the government’s covert, taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II wasn’t bad enough, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and have used them repeatedly against American citizens.

Indeed, with every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.

These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where the only law that counts comes in the form of heavy-handed, unilateral dictates from a supreme ruler who uses a secret police to control the populace.

That danger is now posed by the FBI, whose laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government; recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.

Whatever minimal restrictions initially kept the FBI’s surveillance activities within the bounds of the law have all but disappeared post-9/11. Since then, the FBI has been transformed into a mammoth federal policing and surveillance agency that largely operates as a power unto itself, beyond the reach of established laws, court rulings and legislative mandates.

Consider the FBI’s far-reaching powers to surveil, detain, interrogate, investigate, prosecute, punish, police and generally act as a law unto themselves—much like their Nazi cousins, the Gestapo—and then try to convince yourself that the United States is still a constitutional republic.

Just like the Gestapo, the FBI has vast resources, vast investigatory powers, and vast discretion to determine who is an enemy of the state.

Today, the FBI employs more than 35,000 individuals and operates more than 56 field offices in major cities across the U.S., as well as 400 resident agencies in smaller towns, and more than 50 international offices. In addition to their “data campus,” which houses more than 96 million sets of fingerprints from across the United States and elsewhere, the FBI has also built a vast repository of “profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.” The FBI’s burgeoning databases on Americans are not only being added to and used by local police agencies, but are also being made available to employers for real-time background checks.

All of this is made possible by the agency’s nearly unlimited resources (its minimum budget alone in fiscal year 2015 was $8.3 billion), the government’s vast arsenal of technology, the interconnectedness of government intelligence agencies, and information sharing through fusion centers—data collecting intelligence agencies spread throughout the country that constantly monitor communications (including those of American citizens), everything from internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails.

Much like the Gestapo spied on mail and phone calls, FBI agents have carte blanche access to the citizenry’s most personal information.

Working through the U.S. Post Office, the FBI has access to every piece of mail that passes through the postal system: more than 160 billion pieces are scanned and recorded annually. Moreover, the agency’s National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose those demands to the customer. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread constitutional violations.

Much like the Gestapo’s sophisticated surveillance programs, the FBI’s spying capabilities can delve into Americans’ most intimate details (and allow local police to do so, as well).

In addition to technology (which is shared with police agencies) that allows them to listen in on phone calls, read emails and text messages, and monitor web activities, the FBI’s surveillance boasts an invasive collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls.  In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.” Law enforcement agencies are also using social media tracking software to monitor Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts. Moreover, secret FBI rules also allow agents to spy on journalists without significant judicial oversight.

Much like the Gestapo’s ability to profile based on race and religion, and its assumption of guilt by association, the FBI’s approach to pre-crime allows it to profile Americans based on a broad range of characteristics including race and religion.

The agency’s biometric database has grown to massive proportions, the largest in the world, encompassing everything from fingerprints, palm, face and iris scans to DNA, and is being increasingly shared between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in an effort to target potential criminals long before they ever commit a crime. This is what’s known as pre-crime. Yet it’s not just your actions that will get you in trouble. In many cases, it’s also who you know—even minimally—and where your sympathies lie that could land you on a government watch list. Moreover, as the Intercept reports, despite anti-profiling prohibitions, the bureau “claims considerable latitude to use race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion in deciding which people and communities to investigate.”

Much like the Gestapo’s power to render anyone an enemy of the state, the FBI has the power to label anyone a domestic terrorist.

As part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the nation’s de facto secret police force has begun using the terms “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably. Moreover, the government continues to add to its growing list of characteristics that can be used to identify an individual (especially anyone who disagrees with the government) as a potential domestic terrorist. For instance, you might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you:

• express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
• exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership)
• read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books
• show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
• fear an economic collapse
• buy gold and barter items
• subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation
• voice fears about Big Brother or big government
• expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties
• believe in a New World Order conspiracy

Much like the Gestapo infiltrated communities in order to spy on the German citizenry, the FBI routinely infiltrates political and religious groups, as well as businesses.

As Cora Currier writes for the Intercept: “Using loopholes it has kept secret for years, the FBI can in certain circumstances bypass its own rules in order to send undercover agents or informants into political and religious organizations, as well as schools, clubs, and businesses…” The FBI has even been paying Geek Squad technicians at Best Buy to spy on customers’ computers without a warrant.

Just as the Gestapo united and militarized Germany’s police forces into a national police force, America’s police forces have largely been federalized and turned into a national police force.

In addition to government programs that provide the nation’s police forces with military equipment and training, the FBI also operates a National Academy that trains thousands of police chiefs every year and indoctrinates them into an agency mindset that advocates the use of surveillance technology and information sharing between local, state, federal, and international agencies.

Just as the Gestapo’s secret files on political leaders were used to intimidate and coerce, the FBI’s files on anyone suspected of “anti-government” sentiment have been similarly abused.

As countless documents make clear, the FBI has no qualms about using its extensive powers in order to blackmail politicians, spy on celebrities and high-ranking government officials, and intimidate and attempt to discredit dissidents of all stripes. For example, not only did the FBI follow Martin Luther King Jr. and bug his phones and hotel rooms, but agents also sent him anonymous letters urging him to commit suicide and pressured a Massachusetts college into dropping King as its commencement speaker.

Just as the Gestapo carried out entrapment operations, the FBI has become a master in the art of entrapment.

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the FBI has not only targeted vulnerable individuals but has also lured or blackmailed them into fake terror plots while actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing or deporting them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.” In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts. USA Todayestimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day. Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.

When and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America, in much the same way that the empowerment of Germany’s secret police tracked with the rise of the Nazi regime.

How did the Gestapo become the terror of the Third Reich?

It did so by creating a sophisticated surveillance and law enforcement system that relied for its success on the cooperation of the military, the police, the intelligence community, neighborhood watchdogs, government workers for the post office and railroads, ordinary civil servants, and a nation of snitches inclined to report “rumors, deviant behavior, or even just loose talk.”

In other words, ordinary citizens working with government agents helped create the monster that became Nazi Germany. Writing for the New York Times, Barry Ewen paints a particularly chilling portrait of how an entire nation becomes complicit in its own downfall by looking the other way:

“In what may be his most provocative statement, [author Eric A.] Johnson says that ‘‘most Germans may not even have realized until very late in the war, if ever, that they were living in a vile dictatorship.’’ This is not to say that they were unaware of the Holocaust; Johnson demonstrates that millions of Germans must have known at least some of the truth. But, he concludes, ‘‘a tacit Faustian bargain was struck between the regime and the citizenry.’’ The government looked the other way when petty crimes were being committed. Ordinary Germans looked the other way when Jews were being rounded up and murdered; they abetted one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century not through active collaboration but through passivity, denial and indifference.”

Much like the German people, “we the people” have become passive, polarized, gullible, easily manipulated, and lacking in critical thinking skills.  Distracted by entertainment spectacles, politics and screen devices, we too are complicit, silent partners in creating a police state similar to the terror practiced by former regimes.

Had the government tried to ram such a state of affairs down our throats suddenly, it might have had a rebellion on its hands.

Instead, the American people have been given the boiling frog treatment, immersed in water that slowly is heated up—degree by degree—so that they’ve fail to notice that they’re being trapped and cooked and killed.

“We the people” are in hot water now.

The Constitution doesn’t stand a chance against a federalized, globalized standing army of government henchmen protected by legislative, judicial and executive branches that are all on the same side, no matter what political views they subscribe to: suffice it to say, they are not on our side or the side of freedom.

From Clinton to Bush, then Obama and now Trump, it’s as if we’ve been 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.

Can the Fourth Reich happen here?

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People,  it’s already happening right under our noses. already happening right under our noses.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.