The State of the Nation: I am afraid

The State of the Nation: I am afraid

Posted on 27 January 2010

By John W. White­head
Pres­i­dent, The Ruther­ford Institute

“As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.” – Bertram Gross, Friendly Fas­cism: The New Face of Power in America

Omi­nous devel­op­ments in America have been a long time coming, in part pre­cip­i­tated by “we the people” – a cit­i­zenry that has been asleep at the wheel for too long. And while there have been wake-up calls, we have failed to heed the warnings.

Just con­sider the state of our nation:

We’re encased in what some are calling an elec­tronic con­cen­tra­tion camp. The gov­ern­ment con­tinues to amass data files on more and more Amer­i­cans. Every­where we go, we are watched: at the banks, at the gro­cery store, at the mall, crossing the street. This loss of pri­vacy is symp­to­matic of the growing sur­veil­lance being car­ried out on average Amer­i­cans. Such sur­veil­lance grad­u­ally poi­sons the soul of a nation, trans­forming us from one in which we’re pre­sumed inno­cent until proven guilty to one in which everyone is a sus­pect and pre­sumed guilty. Thus, the ques­tion that must be asked is: can freedom in the United States flourish in an age when the phys­ical move­ments, indi­vidual pur­chases, con­ver­sa­tions and meet­ings of every cit­izen are under con­stant sur­veil­lance by pri­vate com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment agencies?

We are meta­mor­phosing into a police state. Gov­ern­mental ten­ta­cles now invade vir­tu­ally every facet of our lives, with agents of the gov­ern­ment lis­tening in on our tele­phone calls and reading our emails. Tech­nology, which has devel­oped at a rapid pace, offers those in power more inva­sive, awe­some tools than ever before. Fusion cen­ters – data col­lecting agen­cies spread throughout the country, aided by the National Secu­rity Agency – con­stantly mon­itor our com­mu­ni­ca­tions, every­thing from our internet activity and web searches to text mes­sages, phone calls and emails. This data is then fed to gov­ern­ment agen­cies, which are now inter­con­nected – the CIA to the FBI, the FBI to local police – a rela­tion­ship which will make a tran­si­tion to mar­tial law that much easier. We may very well be one ter­rorist attack away from seeing armed forces on our streets – and the Amer­ican people may not put up much resis­tance. According to a recent study, a greater per­centage of Amer­i­cans are now willing to sac­ri­fice their civil lib­er­ties in order to feel safer in the wake of the failed crotch bomber’s attack on Christmas Day.

We are plagued by a fal­tering economy and a mon­strous finan­cial deficit that threatens to bank­rupt us. Our national debt is more than $12 tril­lion (which trans­lates to more than $110,000 per tax­payer), and is expected to nearly double to $20 tril­lion by 2015. The unem­ploy­ment rate is over 10% and growing, with more than 15 mil­lion Amer­i­cans out of work and many more forced to sub­sist on low-paying or part-time jobs. The number of U.S. house­holds on the verge of losing their homes soared by nearly 15% in the first half of last year alone. The number of chil­dren living in poverty is on the rise (18% in 2007). As his­tory illus­trates, author­i­tarian regimes assume more and more power in trou­bled finan­cial times.

Our rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the White House and Con­gress bear little resem­blance to those they have been elected to rep­re­sent. Many of our politi­cians live like kings. Chauf­feured around in lim­ou­sines, flying in pri­vate jets and eating gourmet meals, all paid for by the Amer­ican tax­payer, they are far removed from those they rep­re­sent. What’s more, they con­tinue to spend money we don’t have on pork-laden stim­ulus pack­ages while run­ning up a huge deficit and leaving the Amer­ican tax­payers to foot the bill. And while our rep­re­sen­ta­tives may engage in a show of par­tisan bick­ering, the Wash­ington elite – that is, the Pres­i­dent and Con­gress – moves for­ward with what­ever it wants, paying little heed to the will of the people.

We are embroiled in global wars against ene­mies that seem to attack from nowhere. Our armed forces are pushed to their limit, spread around the globe and under con­stant fire. The amount of money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is nearing $1 tril­lion and is esti­mated to total some­where in the vicinity of $3 tril­lion before it’s all over. That does not take into account the rav­aged coun­tries that we occupy, the thou­sands of inno­cent civil­ians killed (including women and chil­dren), or the thou­sands of Amer­ican sol­diers who have been killed or irreparably injured or who are com­mit­ting sui­cide at an alarming rate. Nor does it take into account the fam­i­lies of the 1.8 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who have served or are cur­rently serving tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

America’s place in the world is also under­going a drastic shift, with China slated to emerge as the top economy over the next decade. Given the extent to which we are finan­cially beholden to China, their influ­ence over how our gov­ern­ment car­ries out its affairs, as well as how it deals with its cit­i­zens, cannot be dis­counted. As of July 2009, China owned $800.5 bil­lion of our debt – that’s 45% of our total (for­eign) debt – making them the largest for­eign holder of U.S. for­eign debt. Little wonder, then, that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion has kow­towed to China, hes­i­tant to overtly chal­lenge them on crit­ical issues such as human rights. The most recent example of this can be seen in the Obama administration’s ini­tial reluc­tance to con­front the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment over its reported cyber­at­tacks on Google and other Amer­ican tech­nology companies.

As national bor­ders dis­solve in the face of spreading glob­al­iza­tion, the like­li­hood increases that our Con­sti­tu­tion, which is the supreme law of America, will be sub­verted in favor of inter­na­tional laws. What that means is that our Con­sti­tu­tion will come increas­ingly under attack.

The cor­po­rate media, increas­ingly acting as a mouth­piece for gov­ern­mental pro­pa­ganda, no longer serves a pri­mary func­tion as watch­dogs, guarding against encroach­ments of our rights. Instead, much of the main­stream media has given itself over to mind­less, celebrity-driven news, which bodes ill for our country. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about tabloid news, enter­tain­ment news or legit­i­mate news shows, there’s very little dif­fer­ence between them any­more. Unfor­tu­nately, most Amer­i­cans have bought into the notion that what­ever the media hap­pens to report is impor­tant and rel­e­vant. In the process, Amer­i­cans have largely lost the ability to ask ques­tions and think ana­lyt­i­cally. Indeed, most cit­i­zens have little, if any, knowl­edge about their rights or how their gov­ern­ment even works. For example, a national poll found that less than one per­cent of adults could name the five free­doms pro­tected in the First Amendment.

Finally, I have never seen a country more spir­i­tu­ally beaten down than the United States. We have lost our moral com­pass. A growing number of our young people now see no meaning or pur­pose in life. And we no longer have a sense of right and wrong or a way to hold the gov­ern­ment account­able. We have for­gotten that the essen­tial premise of the Amer­ican gov­ern­mental scheme, as set forth in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, is that if the gov­ern­ment will not be account­able to the people, then it must cer­tainly be account­able to the “Creator.”

But what if the gov­ern­ment is not account­able to the people or the Creator?

As Thomas Jef­ferson writes in the Dec­la­ra­tion, it is then the right of “the People to alter or abolish it” and form a new government.

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Con­sti­tu­tional attorney and author John W. White­head is founder
and pres­i­dent of The Ruther­ford Insti­tute. He can be con­tacted at
johnw@rutherford.org. Infor­ma­tion about the Insti­tute is avail­able
at www.rutherford.org.