USA – Now a Statist Nation

By Tom Rhodes, 8/26/2013

Question: What does a modern technological tyrannical police state look like?
Answer: USA circa 2013

Does that answer seem extreme? Hardly, when you consider the facts. The overflow of news about government abuse of individual rights and privacy is so great it cannot be contained. Among the news that the government wished remained secret is the fact that secret courts found the NSA in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. Judge John Bates wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion, “For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe.” The fact is that NSA collects email not just of foreign correspondence but of domestic nature as well.

There were zero arrests, and zero accountability of the NSA. It took a FISA (freedom of information act) request and over a year of litigation to release the heavily redacted 2011 secret court ruling. The WSJ reports that NSA captures and has access to 75% or more of all internet traffic in the USA. Like it or not the 4th amendment is dead.

Some say that the government is only looking for terrorists, and won’t/doesn’t abuse the information they collect. If you say that then you missed the August 1, 2013 story where in the kitchen a woman was looking up pressure cookers and recipes while in the other room her husband was looking up backpacks for the kids, the police show up wanting to search the place to make sure they weren’t making bombs. Finding no evidence they left after a 45 min search they left. The agents reportedly told the husband "that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing."

Your internet searches, and browsing history, are known by the government - Period. Ignoring the constitution they monitor everybody. You can use things like DuckDuckGo.com or StartPage.com which don’t store the ISP or other information on people doing searches, you can use TOR, and you can use encrypted mail, pay for your purchases with cash, avoid giving your name to retailers, etc. But ..... if you do these things the government assumes probable cause that you are doing something illegal.

Do you understand that??? If you take steps to protect your Fourth Amendment Right to be secure in you person, property, and effects (especially electronic effects), then you have given the government probable cause to search your person, property, and effects. Talk about circular reasoning.

Today, in the USA, the government can and will show up at your door with guns based on your use of the internet. Without probable cause or even reasonable suspension of any particular crime or item or communication they are searching your effects. The secret court to protect your rights is toothless, and even when it finds the government violating constitutional rights holds nobody responsible.

Tyranny in the USA is here, it’s happened incrementally like boiling the proverbial frog. Little by little statism has overtaken our formerly free nation. It is becoming evident that the two factions of the Statist Federal Government, Republican and Democrat Parties, are not and will not defend the constitution, and ever seek more power for an ever increasing statist government. After the Snowden leaks, the politicians who said they would do something, investigate, etc. from both sides of the aisle have grown silent, and are actually doing nothing to protect your Constitutional Rights.

Obama as a senator, often made bold statements condemning the violation of individual rights, yet after attaining the White House has continued, extended and increased such violations. His actions have been no different than Bush’s. Of course as a senator there was much he didn’t know that after becoming President he learned that affected his positions. That or his change proves the axiom that “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It matters not; Protecting the safety of the people has long been the excuse tyrants use to curb individual liberty and increase the power of the state.

There cannot be both absolute safety and absolute liberty. Our statist government is choosing safety over liberty. It is not giving the people a choice. The government not works under the assumption that it’s compelling interest supersedes individual liberty, and the constitutional limits placed on the government must be discarded.

Statism is defined as the theory or practice of concentrating economic and political power in the state, resulting in a weak position for the individual or community with respect to the government. So the answer to the question, “What does a modern technological tyrannical police state look like?” is Statist. The results of both the Democrats and Republicans actions is clear, they are bringing the USA to become a totalitarian statist nation; where the individual is servant to the state not the other way around.

If you want liberty, what are you doing to take it back, as you no longer have it? The question is do you want security of liberty?

Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem