John Whitehead | The Libertarian Institute

What I Don’t Like About Life in Post-9/11 America

by John Whitehead | Sep 18, 2018 | Featured Articles, Politics

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”―Edward Abbey, American author Life in a post-9/11 America increasingly feels like an endless free fall down a rabbit hole into a terrifying, dystopian alternative reality in which the citizenry has no rights, the government is no friend to freedom, and everything we ever knew and loved about the values and principles that once made this country great has been turned on its head. We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone...

There Is No ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card for the President

by John Whitehead | Jun 8, 2018 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics

“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.“—Richard Nixon Someone needs to alert Donald Trump: there is no “Get Out of Jail Free” card just for being president. According to Trump’s Twitter feed, he believes that he has an absolute right to pardon himself of any crimes for which he might be charged while serving in office. He’s not alone in this imperial belief. Two of Trump’s lawyers have attempted to float the idea that “the president’s powers are so broad as to make it impossible for him to have obstructed justice.” Rudy Giuliani, another of Trump’s enablers, insists...

Round Ups, Checkpoints and National ID Cards

by John Whitehead | Jan 24, 2018 | Featured Articles, Justice

“The roundups are getting worse. The checkpoints are getting worse. The harassment is getting worse. The things we were worried would happen are happening.”—Angus Johnston, professor at the City University of New York No one is safe. No one is immune. No one gets spared the anguish, fear and heartache of living under the shadow of an authoritarian police state. That’s the message being broadcast 24/7 to the citizens and residents of the American police state with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the...

The Iron Jaws of the Police State

by John Whitehead | Apr 26, 2017 | Featured Articles, Justice

Trump’s America Is a Constitution-Free Zone Please. Somebody give Attorney General Jeff Sessions a copy of the Constitution. And while you’re at it, get a copy to President Trump, too. In fact, you might want to share a copy with the nation’s police officers, as well. I have my doubts that any of these individuals—all of whom swore to uphold and defend the Constitution—have ever read any of the nation’s founding documents. Had they actually read and understood the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, there would be no militarized police, no mass surveillance, no...

Death at Your Door

by John Whitehead | Mar 30, 2017 | Featured Articles, Justice

“It’s 4 in the morning, there’s headlights that are shining into your house; there’s a number of different officers that are now on the premises; they’re wearing tactical gear; they have weapons; and they approach your front door. Do you think that the ordinary citizen in that situation feels that they have an obligation to comply?”— Michigan Supreme Court Justice Richard Bernstein It’s 1:30 a.m., a time when most people are asleep. Your neighborhood is in darkness, except for a few street lamps. Someone—he doesn’t identify himself and the voice isn’t familiar—is pounding on your front door,...

Rule by Thieves

by John Whitehead | Mar 20, 2017 | Featured Articles, Justice

The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) continues to suck the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere. Case in point: in the same week that Wikileaks dropped its bombshell about the CIA’s use of spy tools to subject law-abiding Americans to all manner of government surveillance and...

The Police State is Alive and Well

by John Whitehead | Mar 1, 2017 | Featured Articles, Justice

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security… This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary...

The Tyranny at Standing Rock

by John Whitehead | Dec 2, 2016 | Featured Articles, Justice

Divide and conquer. It’s one of the oldest military strategies in the books, and it’s proven to be the police state’s most effective weapon for maintaining the status quo. How do you conquer a nation? Distract them with football games, political circuses and Black Friday sales. Keep them focused on their differences—economic, religious, environmental, political, racial—so they can never agree on anything. And then, when they’re so divided that they are incapable of joining forces against a common threat, start picking them off one by one. What we’re witnessing at Standing Rock, where...