John Whitehead | The Libertarian Institute

Come Home, America: Stop Policing the Globe and Put an End to Wars-Without-End

by John Whitehead | Jan 10, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves…. together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning. From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our...

Nullify Government Tyranny: In 2020, Harness the Power of Your Discontent

by John Whitehead | Jan 3, 2020 | Featured Articles, Justice

Twenty years into the 21st century, and what do we have to show for it? Government corruption, tyranny and abuse have propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, and pay-to-play politicians have become the new normal. Here’s just a small sampling of the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal,...

Betraying the Constitution

by John Whitehead | Dec 11, 2019 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism

“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”—Thomas Paine While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts. Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had been set to expire on December 15, 2019. Once again, to...

Betraying the Constitution: Who Will Protect Us from an Unpatriotic Patriot Act?

by John Whitehead | Dec 4, 2019 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism

While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts. Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had been set to expire on December 15, 2019. Once again, to no one’s surprise, the bureaucrats on both sides of the aisle—Democrats and Republicans...

The Police State’s Deadly Toll on America’s Children

by John Whitehead | Oct 20, 2019 | Featured Articles, Justice

“Mommy, am I gonna die?”— 4-year-old Ava Ellis after being inadvertently shot in the leg by a police officer who was aiming for the girl’s boxer-terrier dog, Patches “‘Am I going to get shot again.’”—2-year-old survivor of a police shooting that left his three siblings, ages 1, 4 and 5, with a bullet in the brain, a fractured skull and gun wounds to the face Children learn what they live. As family counselor Dorothy Law Nolte wisely observed, “If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear, they learn...

Welfare Checks Turn Deadly

by John Whitehead | Sep 30, 2019 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism

“Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement.”—Steve Silberman, The New York Times Think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one. Especially if that person is autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffering from dementia, disabled or might have a condition that hinders their ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order. Particularly if...

The Tyranny of the Police State Disguised as Law-and-Order

by John Whitehead | Jul 31, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

Enough already. Enough with the distractions. Enough with the partisan jousting. Enough with the sniping and name-calling and mud-slinging that do nothing to make this country safer or freer or more just. We have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny go on for too long. We are approaching a reckoning. This is the point, as the poet W. B. Yeats warned, when things fall apart and anarchy is loosed upon the world. We have seen this convergence before in Hitler’s Germany, in Stalin’s...

A Badge of Shame: The Government’s War on America’s Military Veterans

by John Whitehead | Nov 10, 2018 | Featured Articles, Politics

“For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” ― Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston Not all heroes wear the uniform of war. In the United States, however, we take particular pride in recognizing as heroes those who have served in the military. Yet while we honor our veterans with holidays, parades, discounts at retail stores and restaurants, and endless political rhetoric about their sacrifice and bravery, we do a pitiful job of respecting their freedoms and caring for their needs once out of uniform. Despite the...