arthunter
04-12-2015, 07:02 PM
Everything this nation once stood for is being turned on its head. Free speech, religious expression, privacy, due process, bodily integrity, the sanctity of human life, the sovereignty of the family, individuality, the right to self-defense, protection against police abuses, representative government, private property, human rights—the very ideals that once made this nation great—have become casualties of a politically correct, misguided, materialistic, amoral, militaristic culture. Indeed, I’m having a hard time reconciling the America I know and love with the America being depicted in the daily news headlines, where corruption, cronyism and abuse have taken precedence over the rights of the citizenry and the rule of law.
It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry. In such an environment, it’s not just our Fourth Amendment rights—which protect us against police abuses—that are being trampled. It’s also our First Amendment rights to even voice concern over these practices that are being muzzled. Long before the menace of the police state, with its roadside strip searches, surveillance drones, and SWAT team raids, it was our First Amendment rights that were being battered by political correctness, hate crime legislation, the war on terror and every other thinly veiled rationale used to justify censoring our free speech rights.
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” and is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in and must be watched all the time. 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. -- John W. Whitehead, author of "Battlefield America: The War on the American People"
Continues here. (https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/kick_open_the_doorway_to_liberty_what_are_we_waiting_for)
It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry. In such an environment, it’s not just our Fourth Amendment rights—which protect us against police abuses—that are being trampled. It’s also our First Amendment rights to even voice concern over these practices that are being muzzled. Long before the menace of the police state, with its roadside strip searches, surveillance drones, and SWAT team raids, it was our First Amendment rights that were being battered by political correctness, hate crime legislation, the war on terror and every other thinly veiled rationale used to justify censoring our free speech rights.
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” and is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in and must be watched all the time. 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. -- John W. Whitehead, author of "Battlefield America: The War on the American People"
Continues here. (https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/kick_open_the_doorway_to_liberty_what_are_we_waiting_for)