Resisting The Creeping Police State, With Special Guest John Whitehead
NSA spying, TSA groping, police shooting first and asking questions later. As the grip of the police state gets ever tighter, how can we resist? Is there any hope of rolling it back? Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead joins today's Liberty Report.
NSA spying, TSA groping, police shooting first and asking questions later. As the grip of the police state gets ever tighter, how can we resist? Is there any hope of rolling it back? Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead joins today's Liberty Report.
NSA spying, TSA groping, police shooting first and asking questions later. As the grip of the police state gets ever tighter, how can we resist? Is there any hope of rolling it back? Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead joins today's Liberty Report.
I'm doing very well, especially because we have a very special guest today.
And he's been on our show once before, and he's been a friend of Liberty.
And I'm delighted to have John Whitehead back with us again today.
John, welcome to our program.
Hey, thanks for having me on, sir.
Well, very good.
We talked once before about on your bill, on your book, The Battlefield America.
And of course, you had another one before that, a government of wolves.
So, and you write and endorse ideas down our alley, so we're very glad, and I know our viewers will be very glad to hear from you.
But I think that it's not going to be difficult to get a good discussion going.
We probably could spend a good hour with you, but time is limited, and you, I'm sure, will get the points across.
But I would like to start off with sort of asking a generalized question.
And, of course, I wanted also to recognize that you are the president of the Rutherford Institute.
You started it in 1982, so that was a couple years ago.
And it's a well-known group, and it's really a very good defender of civil liberties, and that's what is important.
And I want to, though, ask you a generalized question, where we stand today.
You've spent a lot of time on this issue, trying to protect our civil liberties.
And I often think about the oath that many of us take when we go into government service that we will defend the Constitution against all enemies, domestic and foreign.
And, you know, so many people I know as hardcore conservatives, they know all about the foreign enemies, but they don't really emphasize, you know, the domestic.
And I think you have a good hand on this.
You've been in the military, and I think this is important.
If you could just address that for a few minutes on why it's so important to see the connection of what happens when what we do overseas, because I think it is very much connected.
You know, when wars are declared, the protection of civil liberties at home are always threatened.
Yeah, and the thing that I've found, too, is that what we usually do overseas in terms of weapons, bombs, tactics all come home.
When we see the SWAT team raids today, a lot of that was developed, the armor that the police are using to invade people's homes.
And I don't know if you saw that recent case.
It was just settled a couple days ago in Chicago.
A SWAT team rushed into an apartment, put a gun on a three-year-old kid, handcuffed the mother, and beat her.
Supposedly looking for a drug dealer who wasn't there.
Well, they just won a $2.5 million settlement that the taxpayers pay for.
But the point is, is that a lot of the stuff we're seeing, 80,000 SWAT team raids occurring across the country, those are all military tactics.
They're trained militarily.
I saw, it was amazing.
I saw a protest down in Georgia about a month and a half ago with a small group of people.
It was over some issue.
I forget what it was.
Just free speech.
And I looked at the policemen standing around them.
They were in camouflage outfits, camouflage helmets, shields, automatic rifles.
And I'm going, ladies and gentlemen, are we already under martial law?
And to be honest with you, I think we are.
And I've argued that.
We're surrounded by military police to, you know, work with the military.
They work with the FBI.
The police chiefs are trained by them.
So we've entered a whole new realm of the Department of Homeland Security handing out hollow point bullets to the Department of Agriculture and the Smithsonian Institution, you know, bullets that expand on contact.
We're seeing things that, listen, George Ordwell.
Out here wrote in 1984 he couldn't have dreamed of.
He would he?
He would say what is going on.
And when you watch that 2030 video I don't know if you've seen it, Dr Paul, but the Pentagon put out about a year ago a video predicting by 2030, we'd go into the major cities in the world, the United States would be collapsing.
Total martial law have to be applied.
Uh, this is a training video uh, and it applies to what we see happening.
So there's, the government, for some reason, is getting prepared for some kind of extreme measures and I mean, I can see the economy may be collapsing.
I don't know, i'm not an economist, but if what they're predicting is going to happen uh, we're in a lot of trouble.
I think that since 9-11, it's just the train has picked up speed.
It's going very, very fast, Daniel.
You know John, I wonder about that this, this visual that we have of the police looking like robocops, looking like militarized and, as you say, in a relatively benign setting, a relatively benign demonstration, and I wonder why people accept it.
You know, and I think there must be maybe maybe, maybe you share this view there must be a feeling that gosh, we must be important, we must.
We're under siege.
We were told since 9-11 that we're at war.
We're at war.
I mean, do you think the average joe really who's who's going to a, to a nine-to-five job somehow feels life is more exciting with this kind of thing around him?
I don't know, I think most people are distracted, and that's the key.
I think most people you know, with screen devices today.
I mean, when I go into restaurants and I see uh, children and parents all watching a screen device and they go home and they watch television, I mean, what the studies show is that if you're addicted to screen devices, you're staring at them continually, the prefrontal cortex, the thinking, analytical part of your mind, actually stops.
Criticism of Facebook's Surveillance Practices00:04:43
You don't think anymore.
I don't think people are thinking.
I mean people are more uh worried, concerned about what basketball players dunking the basketball or who's going football, than they are about what's happening around them.
We no longer focus on civil liberties.
It's not, it's in our schools, and that's the one that blows my mind.
I have law students that come into my program here and study for the summer who can't tell me what's in the first amendment.
Wow listen, I talk to older Americans who have a trouble distinguishing between the declaration of independence and the constitution.
I just did a commentary on the declaration of independence where I said i'm going to translate it into modern terms.
Wow, the criticism I got.
I was getting my criticism.
People were saying hey, you don't want to change the constitution.
I went, hello folks.
JOHN Intercept had a recent article out about these spy hubs and they were talking about that in combination with at.
And, of course, there's been a lot of stories about how there's a uh cooperation, Cooperation between social media outlets and the government.
I don't know if you saw that.
I wanted to make a comment, but my big concern is this combination of these so-called private groups who do favors for the big government and indirectly, if not directly, get financing.
Then we, as libertarians, sometimes have a hard time.
Well, we can't write laws, you know, telling Facebook what to do.
That's a private company.
That becomes difficult, but also I see it as a great danger.
Oh, yeah, it's when, again, you have ATT in eight major cities building bunkers.
They look like skyscrapers.
They're collecting phone calls, emails, Facebook chats for the NSA.
Wait a minute, folks.
What does that say?
The NSA is involved.
What does the Fourth Amendment say?
Most people can't tell me.
You can't do surveillance on Americans unless you have some evidence of wrongdoing or crime.
They're doing surveillance.
I mean, when you have Amazon building a proposed $10 billion contract, the Department of Defense now to build another intelligence cloud for all 17 intelligence agencies that Amazon has access to.
But wait a second, Ron Paul doesn't have access to it.
John Whitehead doesn't have access to it.
Hmm.
So if you have a corporate state, and that's exactly where we're headed, where your private enterprise is not indistinguishable from government, what do you have?
Will they be cracking heads too, or they stand back?
I mean, there are a number of people who told me that modern police are there just to protect the corporate elite.
Again, I'm not against corporations working with government.
But the point is, should they be doing illegal activities with the government?
That's the question.
And, you know, we find out that the NSA collected 534 million calls and texts from Americans in 2017.
It's a three times, 300% increase over 2016.
They're gobbling up everything.
And then I saw a piece on Truth Dig that, okay, all of a sudden we actually, sorry, we got too much information from ATT.
We're going to have to destroy these records.
You know, gosh.
Something there smells very fishy, John.
I don't know if you saw that.
Oh, yeah, you can't trust.
I talked to former NSA agents who quit the agency, and they're really concerned where it's going.
But you have to say, we live in a total surveillance state.
We have stingray devices in police cars handed out to the Department of Homeland Security with fake cell phone tires.
They drive in front of your house, download everything you're doing in your laptop, your phones, or whatever.
You have the FBI finally getting caught flying dirt box, sessions with dirt boxes, the same kind of fake cell phone tires around countries around whole surveillance areas and collecting all our phone calls.
You have fusion centers watching us across the country wherever we go.
The thing is, you have to understand, and again, all I do is research and write about this.
We live in a total surveillance state now.
I mean, it's what Orwell said.
Everything you're doing is being watched.
The FBI mission can turn your phone on from a distance or your laptop.
So you're being watched.
I mean, Amazon works closely with them.
Facebook works closely with them.
I mean, it's just, and here's another thing most people don't understand.
The Department of Homeland Security is doing threat assessments on American homes.
They run from green to red.
If you commit a crime, you have a rifle, hunting rifle, you probably have red.
So why are police showing up at doors agitated?
And some of the cases begin punching people in the face or doing knock and talks at 3 a.m. in the morning.
And people come to the door with a pistol in their hand, think they're getting robbed, and the police shoot them through the window.
What kind of country are we living in now?
Again, watching everything we're doing.
If you know in China, they're doing the social credit scores where they're watching you.
Dealing with Surveillance00:09:56
If you have the wrong social credit store, you can't fly on airplanes.
You're a watch citizens.
Well, threat assessments are the same thing.
That's where we're at.
We're mimicking China.
And now you have this DJI Corporation, which is a corporation which makes drones.
It's working with Axon, the Taser Company, to now sell drones to American policemen.
We're going to be flying Chinese drones over our heads doing surveillance and with weapons.
John, wake up, folks.
That's why I tell people.
Don't take the blue pill, take the red pill.
Where the hell we're going?
You know, one item in the news right now is the president getting ready to choose a member of the Supreme Court and to be approved by the Senate.
Now, if you were a senator, which would be a good idea if you were, how would you phrase your questions, especially because you talked already today about privacy in the Fourth Amendment and First Amendment?
How would you sort that out?
Could you narrow that down to really pin a person down?
And I don't know whether the skepticism of their answers would play a part in it too, but I'd like to hear you phrase a couple of these questions.
I would go to that document that's only 462 words long.
It's called the Bill of Rights.
And I'd say, excuse me, sir.
Can you give me the five freedoms of the First Amendment before we start this conversation?
And what's the Third Amendment about, sir?
What about the Fourth?
Hey, about the Fifth Amendment.
Can you tell me what's in that?
If they're stumbling, I guarantee you they will stumble.
I would say, sir, I have a lot of trouble agreeing to have someone like you on a court when you don't even know our basic document, which is the Bill of Rights, not part of the Constitution.
So I would go through the Bill of Rights.
If they can't, they stumble.
They look like idiots.
I mean, I don't want them interpreting my Constitution if they don't know what's in it.
And that's how I would do it.
I'd go through the Bill of Rights and make sure that they understood it.
But I guarantee you, I talk to judges.
I talk to lawyers.
They can't tell me.
I talk to policemen who can't tell me what's in the Fourth Amendment.
Again, the educational system has failed us.
And I guarantee a lot of people coming before that cannot tell you the basic questions that I'm doing.
That's what I would want to know.
Do you know what's in the Constitution?
Good suggestion.
I hope somebody's listening.
Very good, very good.
And John, I'm going to make an announcement now because people by now have been able to hear you for a few minutes and get as excited as we are with your great ideas, your great defense of liberty.
I'm going to inform our audience and announce to our audience that John Whitehead will be joining us at the Ron Paul Institute Conference on August 18th in Washington, D.C. John is going to be one of the speakers talking about our civil liberties and also talking about the media and how the media is falling down on its job.
And that would lead me to my question, John.
And by the way, thank you.
We are so excited about the fact that you're going to come join us.
But, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about this NSA collection.
Oops, we got too much of your stuff.
You know, the Intercept, which is doing what publications should do, digging these things up.
This is where these things are.
And here's, just as an example, I was just browsing around.
Here's a publication called The Observer, mainstream media.
They're not angry at the NSA for setting up these towers.
They're not angry at AT ⁇ T for collaborating with them.
They're angry with the Intercept for finding it out.
Here's a quote from The Observer, going to a level of detail that seems designed to encourage terrorists to attack them.
The piece gives the exact address of the facilities.
So they're angry at us for knowing this information.
Yeah.
Well, I want to know what did Jefferson say?
And a number of the founding fathers that started this country that had some radical ideas, which was called freedom.
A well-informed citizen is the only way that you can keep freedom.
I want to know where these places are.
Now I know generally where they are.
No one sits in the middle of Manhattan, Chicago, Los Angeles.
We should know where they are.
In fact, by the way, our government should have already told us this.
They're sneaking around, folks.
You don't want sneaks ruling over you.
And that's what we have.
We have a bunch of sneaks royal.
They're listening.
They're trying to figure out how they can control us.
And I look at the word govern.
What's that mean?
Govern.
All right.
Rule over.
And again, I tell people this.
Who is the government, folks?
Read the Constitution.
How's the Constitution start?
We, the people of the United States, do ordain this.
Whoa, we are the government.
It ain't that dude called Trump.
It ain't that dude called whatever senator or that senator.
We're the government.
So everything that's happening, it's either we make it or we break it.
And I'm telling people, you either get involved or we're going to blow it.
And you can do a lot of neat things at the local level, by the way.
I'm urging people across the country to start civil liberties oversight committees.
Volunteers who study what's happening, SWAT team raids, all surveillance in their communities, and go after their city councils, get on city council and stop this stuff.
And, you know, we can nullify under the 10th Amendment.
How many people know that?
There are a lot of things you can do, but you have to have knowledge to begin with.
You know, Daniel pointed out that when you tell the truth and expose the government, you're in worse trouble than the people who are breaking the law.
And it sort of goes back: you know, you tell the truth and they consider it treasonous to do so.
And then we punish the whistleblowers more than the people who committed the crime.
Why don't you make a quick comparison because we will be winding down here in a minute?
You know, we've had the FBI.
It's been around for a while.
And the individual's name is on the FBI building as Jaeger Hoover.
He was not a champion of civil liberties.
I mean, he did a little bit of spying too, and he was rather ruthless at times.
And now we have, right now, it's being exposed what the FBI is doing, the CIA is doing, and all the things, you know, in this political thing.
It's becoming, I think, in a good way, more apparent to the American people.
But how do you compare the Jaeger Hoover time with the FBI and what we have today?
Is it a lot worse?
And what should we do?
Do we really can we rewrite the law and curtail the FBI and what they're allowed to do?
If our congressmen would get their act together, they could.
But the FBI, you know, has a long history.
They're still doing it.
They're building this huge DNA database where they're going to study us.
You know, they still collect information on all our phone calls.
They work with the NSA.
They're part of the intelligence cloud that Amazon has built and is rebuilding.
They collected 17,000 pages of information on Martin Luther King to stop him.
They listened to John Lennon, a huge foul on John Lennon because he was anti-war.
You go through the list.
And, I mean, I write about it in my books.
It's a dangerous situation we're in.
There's no control or no oversight on any of these people.
And our congressmen are sitting up there on their butts and they're not doing their job.
You can control them.
And again, we should be screaming every time we hear about the things that are being done in this country through the FBI, the NSA, all these collection agencies.
But the voices are very quiet out here right now.
People think that by electing a president, they've done their job.
Wait a minute.
Like I say, we, the people, are the government.
It's us.
It's our job.
Daniel?
You know, John, you write about so much.
You know, in your weekly column, I recommend that everyone read it weekly.
It's a great column.
One of the things you brought up, and I hesitate to get into yet another topic because I know we're trying to wind it down, but really the issue of the border issue and the issue of separating families is an important issue.
And I was wondering what your take was on this because the media is covering it in such a small way.
It's only about parents being separated from their kids.
That's important.
That tears at the heartstrings.
Why are they never covering the reason why there's this mass immigration to the U.S.?
Why aren't they covering the drug war, which is really the kernel, the core, the cause of this?
Yeah.
Well, you know, just to give you an idea, they're on the verge of approving a $675 billion budget for the Pentagon.
We drop a bomb every 12 minutes in the Middle East.
Listen, we help create a lot of the refugees, but you know, that's part of it.
But also, I'm not saying we're the fault.
What I'm saying is, you know, the drug wars, yeah, the media.
The media is happening.
I mean, your average media person, like I said, is they don't even know, they don't understand rights or what it means to be a citizen.
They're just up there moving their lips.
And most of them are not very intelligent.
I'm sorry.
The ones that interview me sometimes are like, oh, can you give me credit a source for your information?
It's everywhere.
It's on the intercept, the Guardian, New York Times.
They don't get ready for the interview.
So you're not dealing with the most astute people.
You're not dealing with a Ron Paul, a Thomas Jefferson, or people like that who are up on the matters.
You're dealing with people who just get on the news and smile a lot.
And, you know, that's what we're dealing with.
And, you know, again, we have to make our own news sources, folks.
We have to be the news source, and we have to start doing it.
And we have to start taking over our local governments.
That sounds great.
This has been a great program, John.
We will be closing, but I want to put up your book that we've talked about before, Battlefield America.
People need to take a close look at this and get a copy if you don't have it.
But there's so many other things that John has written that you can come across and you should pay attention.
John, I want to thank you very much for being with us today.
I am sure it's going to be a very popular program with our viewers.
Thank you for all your good work, sir.
Good.
And I want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.