Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”—James Madison
How far would you really go to secure the nation’s borders in the so-called name of national security?
Would you give the government limitless amounts of money? Surround the entire country with concrete walls and barbed wire? Erect a high-tech, virtual wall of AI-powered surveillance cameras and drones that does a better job of imprisoning those within its boundaries than keeping intruders out? Empower border police to trample on the rights of anyone who crosses their path, including legal citizens?
Relinquish some of your freedoms in exchange for the elusive promise of non-porous borders? Submit to a national ID card that allows the government to target individuals and groups as it chooses in order to identify those who do not “belong”? Turn a blind eye to private prisons and detainment camps that profit off the forced labor of its detainees?
Would you turn your backs on every constitutional principle for which our founders fought and died in exchange for empty campaign promises of elusive safety by fast-talking politicians?
This is the devil’s bargain that the U.S. government demands of its people.
These devilish deals have been foisted upon “we the people” before.
Every decade or so, the government makes the case for expanding its wartime powers and curtailing the citizenry’s freedom—in the war on terrorism, war on drugs, war on communism, war on foreigners, war on extremism, war on dissidents, war on peace activists, war on anti-government speech, etc.—all for the sake of national security, of course, and as expected, the American people fall in line.
Increasingly, the government wants us to buy into the fiction that its war on illegal immigrants is so necessary for national security that we should be grateful when roving bands of border patrol agents, flexing their muscles far beyond the nation’s borders, exercise their right to disregard the Constitution at every turn.
Except these border patrol cops aren’t just disregarding the Constitution.
They’re trampling all over the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the government from carrying out egregious warrantless searches and seizures without probable cause.
As part of the government’s so-called crackdown on illegal immigration, drugs and trafficking, border patrol cops are expanding their reach, roaming further afield and subjecting greater numbers of Americans to warrantless searches, ID checkpoints, transportation checks, and even surveillance on private property far beyond the boundaries of the borderlands.
That so-called border, once a thin borderline, is now an ever-thickening band spreading deeper and deeper inside the country.
Consequently, nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, or 197.4 million people) now live within a 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.
As journalist Todd Miller explains, that expanding border region now extends “100 miles inland around the United States—along the 2,000-mile southern border, the 4,000-mile northern border and both coasts… This ‘border’ region now covers places where two-thirds of the US population (197.4 million people) live… The ‘border’ has by now devoured the full states of Maine and Florida and much of Michigan.”
So much for walking that golden ribbon of highway.
In this authoritarian reshaping of America, you’d better watch where you roam and ramble, because you could find yourself wandering into the government’s ever-expanding, Constitution-free zone where freedom is off-limits and government agents have all the power and “we the people” have none.
Miller continues:
“In these vast domains, Homeland Security authorities can institute roving patrols with broad, extra-constitutional powers backed by national security, immigration enforcement and drug interdiction mandates. There, the Border Patrol can set up traffic checkpoints and fly surveillance drones overhead with high-powered cameras and radar that can track your movements. Within twenty-five miles of the international boundary, CBP [Customs and Border Protection] agents can enter a person’s private property without a warrant.”
These are definitely not Mayberry cops.
The CBP, with its more than 60,000 Customs and Border Protection employees, supplemented by the National Guard and the U.S. military, is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a national police force imbued with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies.
Just about every nefarious deed, tactic or thuggish policy advanced by the government today can be traced back to the DHS, its police state mindset, and the billions of dollars it distributes to local police agencies in the form of grants to transform them into extensions of the military.
As Miller points out, the government has turned the nation’s expanding border regions into “a ripe place to experiment with tearing apart the Constitution, a place where not just undocumented border-crossers, but millions of borderland residents have become the targets of continual surveillance.”
In much the same way that police across the country have been schooled in the art of sidestepping the Constitution, border cops have also been drilled in the art of “anything goes” in the name of national security.
In fact, according to FOIA documents shared with The Intercept, border cops even have a checklist of “possible behaviors” that warrant overriding the Constitution and subjecting individuals—including American citizens—to stops, searches, seizures, interrogations and even arrests.
For instance, if you’re driving a vehicle that to a border cop looks unusual in some way, you can be stopped.
If your passengers look dirty or unusual, you can be stopped.
If you or your passengers avoid looking at a cop, you can be stopped.
If you or your passengers look too long at a cop, you can be stopped.
If you’re anywhere near a border (near being within 100 miles of a border, or in a city, or on a bus, or at an airport), you can be stopped and asked to prove you’re legally allowed to be in the country.
If you’re traveling on a public road that smugglers and other criminals may have traveled, you can be stopped.
If you’re not driving in the same direction as other cars, you can be stopped.
If you appear to be avoiding a police checkpoint, you can be stopped.
If your car appears to be weighed down, you can be stopped.
If your vehicle is from out of town, wherever that might be, you can be stopped.
If you’re driving a make of car that criminal-types have also driven, you can be stopped.
If your car appears to have been altered or modified, you can be stopped.
If the cargo area in your vehicle is covered, you can be stopped.
If you’re driving during a time of day or night that border cops find suspicious, you can be stopped.
If you’re driving when border cops are changing shifts, you can be stopped.
If you’re driving in a motorcade or with another vehicle, you can be stopped.
If your car appears dusty, you can be stopped.
If people with you are trying to avoid being seen, or exhibiting “unusual” behavior, you can be stopped.
If you slow down after seeing a cop, you can be stopped.
Are you starting to get the picture yet?
This isn’t about illegal immigrants and border crossings at all.
It’s a test to see how hard “we the people” will fight to hold onto what remains of our freedoms.
If this is a test, we’re failing abysmally.
Then again, we’ve been failing this particular test for a long time now.
Indeed, as journalist Hayes Brown concludes, the United States has a long, dubious history of putting national security before people’s freedoms.
Certainly, it took no time at all for us to forget Benjamin Franklin’s warning that “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
It was 1798 when Americans, their fears stoked by rumblings of a Quasi-War with France, chose safety over liberty when they failed to protest the Alien and Sedition Acts, which criminalized anti-government speech, empowered the government to deport “dangerous” non-citizens and made it harder for immigrants to vote.
During the Civil War, Americans went along when Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus (the right to a speedy trial) and authorized government officials to spy on Americans’ mail.
During World War I, Americans took it in stride when President Woodrow Wilson and Congress adopted the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to interfere with the war effort and criminalized any speech critical of war.
By World War II, Americans were marching in lockstep with the government’s expanding war powers to imprison Japanese-American citizens in detainment camps, censor mail, and lay the groundwork for the future surveillance state.
Fast-forward to the Cold War’s Red Scares, the McCarthy era’s hearings on un-American activities, and the government’s surveillance of Civil Rights activists such as Martin Luther King Jr.—all done in the name of national security.
By the time 9/11 rolled around, all George W. Bush had to do was claim the country was being invaded by terrorists, and the government was given greater powers to spy, search, detain and arrest American citizens in order to keep America safe.
The terrorist invasion never really happened, but the government kept its newly acquired police powers made possible by the nefarious USA Patriot Act.
Barack Obama continued Bush’s trend of undermining the Constitution, going so far as to give the military the power to strip Americans of their constitutional rights, label them extremists, and detain them indefinitely without trial, all in the name of keeping America safe.
Despite the fact that the breadth of the military’s power to detain American citizens violates not only U.S. law and the Constitution but also international laws, the government has refused to relinquish its detention powers made possible by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Then Donald Trump claimed the only way to keep America safe from dangerous immigrants was to build an expensive border wall, expand the reach of border patrol, and empower the military to “assist” with border control.
Now you have Joe Biden sending thousands of active-duty troops to the southern border in order to deal with what they anticipate could be more than 10,000 illegal crossings per day.
It’s a state of affairs perfectly timed to stir up, divide and distract the populace, while expanding the reach of the police state under our noses.
Once the government acquires—and uses—additional powers (to spy on its citizens, to carry out surveillance, to transform its police forces into extensions of the police, to seize taxpayer funds, to wage endless wars, to censor and silence dissidents, to identify potential troublemakers, to detain citizens without due process), it does not voluntarily relinquish them.
It’s time “we the people” put our house in order.
Just look at the mess we’re in right now: political theatrics that keep the populace distracted while the police state clamps down, an economy that is disintegrating before our eyes, a surveillance state that is gearing up for total control, an aging national infrastructure that is falling apart, an appalling lack of leaders with moral backbones and civic knowledge, and a government that grows more authoritarian with every passing day.
The looming problem is not so much that the U.S. is being invaded by hostile forces at the border, but rather that the U.S. Constitution is under assault from within by a power-hungry cabal at the highest levels of power.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the government is now the greatest threat to our safety, and there’s no border wall big enough to protect us from these ruffians in our midst.
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Ahem.
FBI Admits Hacking Americans’ Computers to ‘Fix Russian Malware’
The FBI has admitted to secretly hacking into the computers of American citizens but insists that the effort was meant to “fix Russian malware.”
The U.S. federal government revealed details of the operation on Tuesday.
Slay News
Bi and Dumber “Well duh Lloyd, the child porn isn’t going to plant itself on the opposition’s computers. “
The USSA Constipation is a ship in Boston Harbor
Didn’t Little Georgie Bush say The Constipation is just a piece of paper. The Patriot Act took care of whatever was left of it’s validity.
And Obama said the constitution is there to be manipulated to his will
The congress did a fine job spending a hundred years delegating away its validity.
Says link not found. But yes this has been called conspiracy theory for years, thus proving it is so.
Consequently, nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, or 197.4 million people) now live within a 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.
Actually, in most nations that front on oceans, more than half of the population lives within 100 miles of those oceans … Australia, the UK, New Zealand, most of central and south america … it’s just that now our government has seen to deprive those of US that live in those areas of our rights …
The Constitution ceased to exist in 1865.
It’s like the owners manual for an appliance that you read once and threw away.
The Articles of Confederation were usurped by the CONstitutional CONvention coup-d’etat in 1787.
And anyway, even if it were legit:
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
“And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see.”
― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2095916-no-treason-the-constitution-of-no-authority
Isn’t being bound by a contract not of one’s drafting or choosing or signing, also known as slavery?
But, but, slavery ended in 1865.
It was expanded at that time to cover us all (and we masses continue to acquiesce in our own enslavement to a very few).
“[Rothbard’s] brilliant disciple, Hans-Hermann Hoppe . . . argued that no constitution could restrain the state. Once its monopoly of force was granted legitimacy, constitutional limits became mere fictions it could disregard; nobody could have the legal standing to enforce those limits. The state itself would decide, by force, what the constitution “meant,” steadily ruling in its own favor and increasing its own power. This was true a priori, and American history bore it out.” READ REST:
http://www.sobran.com/reluctant.shtml
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship . . . No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” ~ Orwell, 1984
“There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution”
~ The Police, “Spirits In The Material World”
Constitution ceases to exist for everyone who contracts away “rights” via public or private contracting.
The constitution has no provision preventing the credulous from giving away their power at evey turn. [At least I don’t think it does.]
Further to the society and the country degenerating due to the Woke Diversity agenda.
The insanity is everywhere, not just in medical schools, but in the Biden administration staffing, our military, etc. This goes with the Rubio video.
The societal suicide of the country is laid out point by point. Unarguable. Very short video.
The Navy is extremely rigorous in the selection of the captain of its ships, as they KNOW that the performance of the ship is a reflection of the Captain’s abilities and character.
Heather MacDonald’s new book takes on some of these issues, such as ‘merit’ … and ‘How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.’
https://vdare.com/articles/ann-coulter-heather-mac-donald-s-when-race-trumps-merit-no-biggie-just-the-end-of-civilization
I met 2 recently retired health care employees(?). She was a professor at George Mason for nursing and he was on the administration side of health care.
She told me that because of DIE, you cannot fail these people. They all pass. The last of the gates is the licensing test. I mentioned to her that the test will be changed soon. She said she is keeping a close eye on that.
As a side note, she said the best nurses are Philipinos.
My experience is the best nurses come from nowhere near the philippines … too rigid in following the ‘rules’ with little to no knowledge about the consequences that the one-rule-fits-all mentality produces.
I had one filipina nurse who came onto the oncology ward where I was being treated with experimental chemotherapy … and she volunteered herself to administer it even though she wasn’t ‘certified’ for it.
When she came to administer it to me, I told her that the bottle she held in her hand was’t the proper chemo chemical … and, after she shoved at me the 4th time — threatening to put me to sleep in order to give it to me — I asked for my oncologist ASAP.
When the head of oncology came to my call, he informed the head nurse that the filipina was to be taken off the oncology ward … was not to touch another patient pending an evaluation … because, as he told her, if she’d given me what she intended to give me I’d have died within less than a minute.
You see — the chemical in question was cisplatinum — which was supposed to come straight out of refrigeration to the patient, and, since it was light sensitive, had to be in a foil-wrapped bottle. When she came in to work, she immediately took the bottle out of refrigeration and stripped off the foil … and, as the head of oncology said, those 2 things would render the cisplatinum poisonous in the extreme.
It’s not just this side of Epstein’s life … but his whole connection via Ghislaine Maxwell and her family of merry jew thieves and saboteurs of freedom that matter … and Whitney Webb has published quite a bit on her site(s) concerning those topics.
The Maxwell family is knee-deep into Silicon Valley and implanting spy software in sensitive computer systems across the US … even prior to 9/11 and the infamous ‘Patriot Act’ that Bidet takes credit for drafting in the ’90s.
Pick up this thread by Ms. Webb … work out from it …
What Are The White Vans Of Tyler Texas For?
Are We Truly Being Invaded Tomorrow And Is It a CCP Led Attack? Well, Nobody Has Ever Said WHY IT IS NOT. Normally Nations Do Not Invade Themselves
https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/what-are-the-white-vans-of-tyler
He was a good boi, ain’t never dun nuffin’ ……reeeee…. jus’ axe any lolibertz.
Try refuting, point by point, libertarianism, instead of eyerolling “lolbert” & “reeee” like a shrill, hysterical teenage girl on antisocial media every time – unless you too are a glowturd. Y’know, if you can, that is. If you’re so smart and capable and have a workable alternative.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/
.
When libertarianism endorses unlimited immigration and the elimination of borders, it jumps the shark into globalism.
A trojan horse for collectivism and the elimination of individual rights.
Not to mention free trade, which is certainly part and parcel open bo0rders. It certainly is an assault on property rights, except what they wish to have for themselves in control of everything at the top.
Free trade is a central tenet of communism.
It does not come without an end of welfare and a restoration of private property rights.
You lost me at the 7 billion to Israel. Three point five billion within a 10 year package of approx. 38 billion for the 100% purchase of Boeing-Raytheon and the rest manufactured items. Good jobs for the Amerikows, and all of AmeriKa, Inc is happy. Maybe you should consider that the USG is paying not only for all the weapons flowing to USKraine, but paying the salaries of its gov’ts, pensions, and O&M costs that exceed the ‘aid’ to the Israelis for the past 30 years, and that is just after 15 months. I could go on, but really not worth the effort.
That is exactly the trap the Jews designed it for. There is no libertarian movement without Jews.
Remember the Terri Schiavo case? Every single one I knew at the time (movers and shakers) all came down on the side of the gov / courts deciding to let her die. They wrap it in a thin veneer of liberty, but always come down on the side of the NWO.
Just be nice and love one another. LMAO
Flash took over after 22 Win Mag got launched.
Somebody showed him how to copy/paste and now he can’t stop.
Reeeee, globohomo, shekels, etc….
ha ha ha… I was a card carrying lolbertz when you were still shitting your diapers. I grew out of my delusion…hope your grew out of shitting your pants…but if you’re still defending lolbertz , I sincerely doubt it.
I did too, so there is still hope for them.
1) There is no individual liberty outside of collective defense.
2)If you can’t defend it, you don’t own it.
3) Might makes right
4) Tribe up or die.
I don’t believe that the geriatric tribe (any other ‘tribe’ that you are surely referencing is a dead letter) is gonna suffice. I’m sorry that I’m so negative about the trend. Those under 50 are absolute wastes of carbon to the ideal of personal liberty, et. al., consequently the trend imho is the most reliable indicator prognosticating outcomes. I’m further sorry that I really have nothing to add of value to any of these comment threads.
You do add value. Just being here.
You’re very kind.
5) …Reeeeee
6) bruh
7)globohomos suck
8) deep Shekels
9) copy/paste or die trying
10) tribe up with other inbred hillbillies
“Inbred hillbillies” is a favorite Jewish projection.
if you’re heaven-bound anyway, & you know it, clap your hands, over&over.
the old linchpin: everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die.
cake-eating-having-perp/etual motion of usual suspects lookin for a keyser soze strongleader to tribe mightily the defense against dyin’.
helen gurley brown: you can have it all. just subscribe.
but you liked lightfoot. so there’s that. & if there’s a rock&roll heaven ….
every body wants to hear the truth, but every body lies
Refute libertarianism???
America. Child Trannies. Gay marriage.
You lose.
Ouch
If you try to argue with a lolbertardian, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
For sure don’t try to boycott anything from the State of Israel. It might mean jail time.
Even to think it or say it — no action required — could land you in jail in the US and most of the EU … and, for God’s sake, do NOT ever have a thought or word or deed about questioning the holiest-of-holies … the holoco$t … that’s a one-way ticket to the slammer …
Good point. “They” even know WTH one is thinking!
Do it, just don’t announce it. A huge produce market near us identifies the origin nation of all produce (or state). Very helpful in avoiding Israeli goods.
https://gab.com/OberstHansUlrichRudel/posts/110331005371436594
I’m sorry, but I have not seen any signs of a “war on illegal immigration”. What I see is a “war of illegal immigration” being waged against US citizens.
Game wardens in Texas have done this forever as far as I know. It’s their “job”. The “legalities” I’m uncertain. A question for the audience, if you had some acreage and every deer season some idiot takes shots at deer on your supposed “private property” from a public road oblivious to the fact there’s a house “back there” , would you be a traitor for asking a game warden to set up a sting operation? I had no idea wardens could still do that, but they can as I asked one recently that investigated an errant bullet that nailed the radiator on my PU. Not a “road hunter” as the shot was fired from a neighbors property. The game warden crossed another piece of “private property” between mine and the “private property” from where the shot was fired investigating line of sight and did not ask anyone’s “permission” to do so. The warden had “permission” to come on my property because I notified the sheriff.
John nails it on the 4th Amendment. What’s that? And the descriptions about being stopped because one’s vehicle does not look right or whatever, exactly what took place some years ago in Tenaha , Texas. Don’t have any cash in your vehicle for sure. Things like that have never happened to me. Still what a bunch of “legalized criminals” in the Tenaha incidents.
Shut off the welfare state and round up and deport everyone. No freebies and the numbers will plummet. No need to lose freedoms.
Too late. I’m polishing my 2A door stop furiously…..Quinn?! You’re taxing my 2A polish supply with all these articles today.
Poor homeless black man is the face of freedom, and he’s paying for it.
===
https://notthebee.com/article/new-york-has-finally-found-a-reason-to-crack-down-on-homeless-people-crapping-on-the-street/
white man caring about others…enemy of the state, and he’s paying for it.
===
Further to:
More and more:
Common knowledge now that the DOJ / FBI is totally corrupt.
“To protect Democrats from real crimes federal officials commit perjury, and to falsely accuse President Trump they commit perjury again. One wonders if Republicans understand the fight they are in.”
I prefer to call them the AmeriKan Stasi. You can ask an agent if they’re from the Cheka or NKVD Division.