Break the cycle or surrender to totalitarianism; there are no other choices. From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”—Edmund Burke
Folks, it’s time to break the cycle of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government for way too long.
Here’s just a small sampling of what we suffered through in 2023.
The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.
The president became more imperial. 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. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.
The cost of endless wars drove the nation deeper into debt. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense.
The courts failed to uphold justice. Time and time again, the Supreme Court failed to right the wrongs being meted out by the American police state. A review of critical court rulings over the past decade or so, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Very good article as always. Your list has proven that a constitutional republic does not exist here. It has been replaced with statism, authoritarianism, however you might describe it. People are on the edge of losing everything they have at any moment in the name of health safety, terrorism safety, (enter any excuse here) and no one will come to the aid of their neighbor until their time comes an they will wonder why no one comes to help them. A country that has secret courts and allows unlimited spying on its citizens is not free by any test.
This cannot be changed by voting, complaining or demanding that those responsible change their methods. Technically, it has already ended.
Chad