This is not an election. This is a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle. In this carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we are victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.

Freedom Under Fire | The Rutherford Institute

The 2020 Election Bamboozle

Republicans and Democrats alike fear that the other party will attempt to hijack this election. President Trump is convinced that mail-in ballots are a scam except in Florida, where it’s safe to vote by mail because of its “great Republican governor.” The FBI is worried about foreign hackers continuing to target and exploit vulnerabilities in the nation’s electoral system, sowing distrust about the parties, the process and the outcome. John W. Whitehead, on the other hand, is not overly worried. As he makes clear in this week's podcast, the voting booths have already been hijacked by a political elite comprised of Republicans and Democrats who are determined to retain power at all costs.

The Election Has Already Been Hijacked

The U.S. Supreme Court will not save us. It doesn’t matter which party gets to pick the replacement to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The battle that is gearing up right now is yet more distraction and spin to keep us oblivious to the steady encroachment on our rights by the architects of the American Police State. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice.

Justice Sleeps: No, the U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Save Us

You can map the nearly 20-year journey from the 9/11 attacks to the COVID-19 pandemic by the freedoms we’ve lost along the way. The road we have been traveling has been littered with the wreckage of our once-vaunted liberties, especially those enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. The assaults on our freedoms that began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act laid the groundwork for the eradication of every vital constitutional safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse. The COVID-19 pandemic with its lockdowns, mask mandates, surveillance, snitch lines for Americans to report their fellow citizens for engaging in risky behavior, and veiled threats of forced vaccinations has merely provided the architects of the American police state with an opportunity to flex their muscles. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, these have become mile markers on the road to tyranny.

Mile Markers of Tyranny: Losing Our Freedoms on the Road from 9/11 to COVID-19

The history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts. To the police state, this COVID-19 pandemic has been a huge boon, like winning the biggest jackpot in the lottery. Certainly, it will prove to be a windfall for those who profit from government expenditures and expansions. Given the rate at which the government has been devising new ways to spend our money and establish itself as the “solution” to all of our worldly problems, this current crisis will most likely end up ushering in the largest expansion of government power since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, this is how the emergency state operates, after all.

Since 9/11, the Government’s Answer to Every Problem Has Been More Government

Merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a greenhouse on your property, or shopping at a gardening store for gardening supplies—incredibly enough—could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by the courts. In this case, the make-work principle (translation: making work to keep the police state busy at taxpayer expense) is being used to justify sending police and expensive military helicopters likely equipped with sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devices on exploratory sorties every summer—again at taxpayer expense—in order to uncover illegal marijuana growing operations. Often, however, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, what these air and ground searches end up targeting are backyard gardeners growing tomato plants.

Attack of the Tomato Killers: The Police State’s War on Weed and Backyard Gardens

It’s possible that the next president might be better, but then again, he or she could be far worse. Remember, presidential elections merely serve to maintain the status quo. Once elected president, that person becomes part of the dictatorial continuum that is the American imperial presidency today. If we are to return to a constitutional presidency, “we the people” must recalibrate the balance of power. The only thing that will save us now is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”

The Great Election Fraud: Will Our Freedoms Survive Another Election?

There’s a pattern emerging if you pay close enough attention. Civil discontent leads to civil unrest, which leads to protests and counterprotests. Without fail, what should be an exercise in how to peacefully disagree turns ugly the moment looting, vandalism, violence, intimidation tactics and rioting are introduced into the equation. Instead of restoring order, local police stand down. Tensions rise, violence escalates, and federal armies move in. Coincidence? I think not.

This Is Amerika: Where Fascism, Totalitarianism and Militarism Go Hand In Hand

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a convenient, traumatic, devastating distraction. While America continues to fixate on the drama-filled reality show scripted by the powers-that-be, directed from the nation’s capital, and played out in high definition across the country, the American Police State has moved steadily forward. Nothing has changed. The American people, the permanent underclass in America, have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses by the architects of the Deep State. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, it’s time to get educated on what’s really going on. Thus, in the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer that spells out the grim realities of life in the American Police State.

P Is for Predator State: The Building Blocks of Tyranny from A to Z

We have become one nation under house arrest. You think we’re any different from the Kentucky couple fitted out with ankle monitoring bracelets and forced to quarantine at home? We’re not. Consider what happened to Elizabeth and Isaiah Linscott. Elizabeth took a precautionary diagnostic COVID-19 test before traveling to visit her parents and grandparents in Michigan. It came back positive: Elizabeth was asymptomatic for the novel coronavirus but had no symptoms. Her husband and infant daughter tested negative for the virus. Now in a country where freedom actually means something, the Linscotts would have the right to determine for themselves how to proceed responsibly, but in the American Police State, we’ve only got as much freedom as the government allows. That’s not saying much. Indeed, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, it’s a dangerous time for anyone who still clings to the idea that freedom means the right to think for yourself and act responsibly according to your best judgment.

One Nation Under House Arrest: How Do COVID-19 Mandates Impact Our Freedoms?

This is a wake-up call. What is unfolding before our very eyes—with police agencies defying local governments in order to tap into the power of federal militarized troops in order to put down domestic unrest—could very quickly snowball into an act of aggression against the states, a coup by armed, militarized agents of the federal government. At a minimum, warns constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead in this week's podcast, this is an attack on the Tenth Amendment, which affirms the sovereignty of the states and the citizenry, and the right of the states to stand as a bulwark against overreach and power grabs by the federal government.

The Federal Coup to Overthrow the States and Nix the 10th Amendment Is Underway

Seventy years after McCarthyism infected the nation with its vitriol, fear-mongering and knee-jerk intolerance, his totalitarian tactics are once again being deployed in a free-for-all attack by those on both the political Left and Right against anyone who, in daring to think for themselves, subscribes to ideas or beliefs that run counter to the government’s or mainstream thought. It doesn’t even seem to matter what the issue is anymore (racism, Confederate monuments, Donald Trump, COVID-19, etc.): modern-day activists are busily tearing down monuments, demonizing historic figures, boycotting corporations for perceived political transgressions, and using their bully pulpit to terrorize the rest of the country into kowtowing to their demands. All the while, the American police state continues to march inexorably forward. This is how fascism, which silences all dissenting views, prevails. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, the silence is becoming deafening.

America, You’ve Been Blacklisted: McCarthyism Refashioned for a New Age

How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none? You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-endowed people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship. It works the same way every time.

Tyranny Without a Tyrant: The Deep State’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy Is Working

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. This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning. Just recently, in fact, Attorney General William Barr announced plans to target, track and surveil “anti-government extremists” and preemptively nip in the bud any “threats” to public safety and the rule of law. No doubt about it, concludes constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead in this week's podcast: America’s revolutionary founders would have been at the top of Barr’s list.

America’s Revolutionary Founders Would Be Anti-Government Extremists Today

What started as a movement to denounce police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of killer cops has become a free-for-all campaign to rid the country of any monument, literal or figurative, to anyone who may have at any time in history expressed a racist thought, exhibited racist behavior, or existed within a racist society. Censoring speech—toppling monuments—kowtowing to political correctness—is not the answer to what ails this nation. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out, what we need is more speech, more discourse, and a greater understanding of history and the evils perpetrated in the name of conquest, profit and racial supremacy. Because if we bury the mistakes of the past under a sanitized present, if we fail to at least provide context to the past, we risk allowing the government to repeat those past mistakes—rewritten for a new age—and no one will be the wiser.

Madness: The Summer of Hate Meets the Age of Intolerance

Freedom Under Fire with John Whitehead™, available free of charge, provides listeners and radio stations alike with insightful, relevant and provocative commentary on popular culture and constitutional issues.

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Freedom Under Fire | The Rutherford Institute

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