Freedom Under Fire | The Rutherford Institute

How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none? You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, e...

Those who seek to exercise their First Amendment rights during encounters with the police are increasingly finding that there is no such thing as freedom of speech. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, this is the painful lesson being imparted with every incident in which someone gets arrested and charged with any of the growing number of contempt charges...

Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will turn deadly. Indeed, the most common reason for a citizen to come into contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic st...

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-chang...

Police sexual misconduct is a systemic problem, and the dangers arise every time police are dispatched: traffic stops, domestic abuse calls, minor offenses, drug arrests, police interactions with teenagers, investigations into sex trafficking. Rather than being part of the solution, America’s police forces—riddled with corruption, brutality, sexual misconduct and drug abuse—have increasingly becom...

Children, young girls—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old. Sex trafficking—especially when it comes to the buying and selling of young girls—has become big business in America, the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after...

When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals. In the current governmental climate, where laws that run counter to the dictates of the Constitution are made in secret, passed without debate, and upheld by secret courts that operate behind closed doors, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the police state can render you an “enemy of...

We’re not living the American Dream. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we’re in the grip of a financial nightmare. “We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America. We get taxed on how much we earn, taxed on what we eat, taxed on what we buy, taxed on where we go, taxed on what we drive, and taxed on how much is left of our assets...

The U.S. government has unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances. These horrors are being meted out against humans and animals alike. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, you don’t have to dig very deep or g...

The absurd cruelties of the American police state keep reaching newer heights. Consider that if you kill a police dog, you could face a longer prison sentence than if you’d murdered someone or abused a child. If a cop kills your dog, however, there will be little to no consequences for that officer. Not even a slap on the wrist. In this, as in so many instances of official misconduct by government...

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs. As John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, it’s all a ruse. In one month alone, government agencies—including the Department of Defense—went on a $97 million shopping spree that included $670,000 for golf carts, $1.7 million for musical equipment including p...

You think you’ve got rights? Think again. All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to dis...

With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer’s, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store—and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we’re helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know...

Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence. Even so, I’m not breaking up with America this Valentine’s Day, and neither should you. Instead, get outraged at what has been done to our country. What has been done to our freedoms. Get off your duff, get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city coun...

Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid. These raids are one more vivid example of how the government’s short-sighted use of immoral, illegal and unconstitutional tactics become dangerous weapons turned against the...

Get ready, folks, because the government—helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomp...

Every decade or so, the government makes the case for expanding its wartime powers and curtailing the citizenry’s freedom—in the war on terrorism, war on drugs, war on communism, war on foreigners, war on extremism, war on dissidents, war on peace activists, war on anti-government speech, etc.—all for the sake of national security, of course, and as expected, the American people fall in line. This...

President Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency in order to build a border wall is more manufactured political theater, a Trojan Horse intended to camouflage the real threat to our freedoms: yet another expansion of presidential power exposing us to constitutional peril. This is not about illegal immigration or porous borders or who will pay to build that wall. This is about unadulterated...

We are approaching critical mass, the point at which all hell breaks loose. The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis. What makes the outlook so much bleaker is the utter ignorance of the American people—and those who represent them—about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.

To a nation of snowflakes, Christmas has become yet another trigger word. The latest Christmas casualties in the campaign to create one large national safe space are none other than the beloved animated classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (denounced for promoting bullying and homophobia) and the Oscar-winning tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (accused of being a date rape anthem). Also on the en...

Yes, You Have the Right to Talk Back to the Government, But It Could Get You Killed by John W. Whitehead

Fixing what’s wrong with this country is not going to happen overnight, but there are things we can all do right now to make this world (or at least our small corners of it) a little bit kinder, a lot less hostile and more just.

"The Freedom Crisis in America": A lecture by John W. Whitehead

Mark my words: red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, will only add to the government’s power. These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspe...

The government’s efforts to wage war on military veterans, especially those who speak out against government wrongdoing, is downright appalling. The government even has a name for its war on America’s veterans: Operation Vigilant Eagle.