John Whitehead - author of "A Government of Wolves, The Emerging American Police State

[arthunter]

This is a FaceBook posting so I'll paste it in ... from The Rutherford Institute

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the name of the national good by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions. We, the middling classes, are not so fortunate. We find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes. The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government are all around us, from warrantless surveillance and shootings of unarmed citizens by police to privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans. Making matters worse are the endless, petty tyrannies inflicted on an overtaxed, over regulated, and underrepresented populace.

Yet all is not lost. For those who really want to stand up to the government's ongoing acts of aggression, whether by combatting red light cameras, banning the use of weaponized surveillance drones domestically, putting an end to warrantless spying, or reining in government overspending, the place to foment change, institute true reforms, and resist government overreach is at the local level, and trickle upwards. That’s what federalism in early America was all about—government from the bottom up—a loose collective of local governments with power invested in the populace, reflecting their will to those operating at the national level.--John W. Whitehead, author of "A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State"