\u201cU.S.: Mile Markers of Tyranny: Losing Our Freedoms on the Road from 9\/11 to COVID-19\u201d<\/a> Article<\/p>\n\u201c\u2018No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.\u2019 \u2014George Orwell<\/p>\n
Indeed, the U.S. government has grown so corrupt, greedy, power-hungry and tyrannical over the course of the past 240-plus years that our constitutional republic has since given way to an idiocracy, and representative government has given way to a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens)…<\/p>\n
\u2018We the people\u2019 have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties…<\/p>\n
Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, post-9\/11 and in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.<\/p>\n
Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being arrested and charged with bogus \u2018contempt of cop\u2019 charges such as \u2018disrupting the peace\u2019 or \u2018resisting arrest\u2019 for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into \u2018free speech zones.\u2019 And under the guise of \u2018government speech,\u2019 the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a government forum.<\/p>\n
The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee \u2018the right of the people to keep and bear arms.\u2019 Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against SWAT team raids and government agents armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield. As such, this amendment has been rendered null and void.<\/p>\n
The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen\u2019s home without \u2018the consent of the owner.\u2019 With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces\u2014complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.\u2014it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most\u2014a standing army on American soil.<\/p>\n
The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or invading you, unless they have some evidence that you\u2019re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise) and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.<\/p>\n
The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.<\/p>\n
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what\u2019s in the Constitution\u2014civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums\u2014that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government\u2019s actions\u2014and thereby help balance the scales of justice\u2014is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that \u2018we the people\u2019 retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.<\/p>\n
The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court\u2019s determination that what constitutes \u2018cruel and unusual\u2019 should be dependent on the \u2018evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society\u2019 leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.<\/p>\n
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty\u2014the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers\u2014is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an \u2018important government interest\u2019 in doing so.<\/p>\n
As for the Tenth Amendment\u2019s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite\u2014the president, Congress and the courts.<\/p>\n
If there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government\u2019s powers could be expanded…<\/p>\n
Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them. Our power as a citizenry comes from our ability to agree and stand united on certain freedom principles that should be non-negotiable.<\/p>\n
It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: \u2018We the people.\u2019 In other words, we have the power to make and break the government. We are the masters and they are the servants. We the American people\u2014the citizenry\u2014are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America\u2019s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cQuebec City Says it Will Isolate \u2018Uncooperative\u2019 Citizens in Secret Corona Facility\u201d Article \u201cAuthorities in Quebec City, Canada have announced they will isolate \u2018uncooperative\u2019 citizens in a coronavirus facility, the location of which remains a secret. During a press conference, Dr. Jacques Girard, who heads the Quebec City public health authority, drew attention to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[200,206,209],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[663],"class_list":["post-156717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-pestilences","category-global-governance-beast-system","category-u-s","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t
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