Whitehead Battlefield America

The War On The American People
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59079-315-2
Verlag: SelectBooks, Inc.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

In Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the follow-up to his award-winning book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead paints a terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself and which is on the verge of undermining the basic freedoms guaranteed to the citizenry in the Constitution. Indeed, police have been transformed into extensions of the military, towns and cities have become battlefields, and the American people have been turned into enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Whitehead, John W.

Leseproben

CHAPTER 4 The Dismal State of Our Freedoms “What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.”1—Author TOM CLANCY 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 while in this country, it may get you arrested or, worse, shot and killed by agents of the government. If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong. However, the scenario described above took place more than two hundred years ago, when American colonists suffered under Britain’s prenatal version of a police state. It was only when the colonists got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant’s fetters. Any attempt to understand the dismal state of our freedoms in the present day must start with an understanding of where it all began. The Founding “Terrorists”? No document better states the colonists’ grievances than the Declaration of Independence. A document seething with outrage over a government that had abused those in its care, the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, by fifty-six men who laid everything on the line and 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. Had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers 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. (Illustration by Caroline Jonik) Branded 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. 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 for would remain secure for future generations. The result: the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Imagine the shock and outrage our forefathers would feel were they to discover that some two hundred years later, the government they had created has been transformed into a militaristic police state in which exercising one’s freedoms is often viewed as a flagrant act of defiance. Indeed, had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers 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 True State of Our Freedoms A cursory review of the true state of our freedoms as outlined in the Bill of Rights shows exactly how dismal things have become: The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind and protest in peace 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 cannot be silenced by the government. Yet despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Whether it’s a Marine detained for criticizing the government on Facebook,2 a reporter persecuted for refusing to reveal his sources,3 or a protester arrested for standing silently in front of the U.S. Supreme Court,4 these are dangerous times for those who choose to exercise their right to free speech. The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Yet while gun ownership has been recognized as an individual citizen right, Americans continue to face an uphill battle in the courts when it comes to defending themselves against militarized, weaponized government agents armed to the hilt. In fact, court rulings in recent years have affirmed that citizens don’t have the right to resist police officers who enter their homes illegally, mistakenly, or otherwise.5 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.” Unfortunately, the wall of separation between civilian and military policing has been torn down in recent years, as militarized SWAT teams are now allowed to burst into homes unannounced in order to investigate minor crimes such as marijuana possession6 and credit card fraud.7 With domestic police increasingly posing as military forces—complete with weapons, uniforms, assault vehicles, etc.—a good case could be made for the fact that SWAT team raids constitute the forced quartering of soldiers within the private home, which the Third Amendment was written to prevent. The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from touching you or placing you under surveillance or entering your property without probable cause and, even then, only with a court-sanctioned warrant. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has been all but eviscerated in recent years by court rulings and government programs that sanction all manner of intrusions. As a result, police now have carte blanche authority to break into homes or apartments without a warrant, conduct roadside strip searches, and generally manhandle the citizenry as they see fit. Moreover, in the so-called name of “national security,” intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) now have the ability to conduct mass unwarranted electronic intrusions into the personal and private transactions of all Americans, including phone, mail, computer, and medical records.8 All of this data is available to other government agencies, including local police. The Fifth Amendment is supposed to ensure that you are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty, or your property without following strict legal guidelines. Unfortunately, those protections have been largely extinguished in recent years, especially in the wake of Congress’s passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and imprison Americans indefinitely without due process.9 Protesters take issue with the NDAA’s indefinite detention provision. (Source: RT) The Sixth Amendment was intended to not only ensure a “speedy and public trial,” but it was supposed to prevent the government from keeping someone in jail for unspecified offenses. That too has been a casualty of the so-called war on terror. Between the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause and the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) legislation, which has been used to justify killing American citizens with drones in the absence of a court trial,10 the Sixth Amendment’s guarantees become meaningless. The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. However, when the populace has no idea what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums11—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it 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”12 leaves us with scant protection in the face of a government elite lacking in morals altogether. America’s continued reliance on the death penalty, which has been shown to be flawed in its application and execution, is a perfect example of this.13 The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the...