How The Police State Uses Crises To Expand Lockdown Powers, With John Whitehead
The assault on our civil liberties is in overdrive. Habeas corpus is thrown out the window and the government is asking to be able to indefinitely detain Americans without charge or trial. Constitutional law attorney John Whitehead, President of the Rutherford Institute, joins today's Liberty Report to discuss these threats...and to let us know what we can do about them!
Read John's latest article here: https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/suspending_the_constitution_police_state_uses_crises_to_expand_its_lockdown_powers
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Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is co-host, Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to see you today.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
Doing well, and we're going to have a good program today.
Yes.
That's our attempt every single day.
But we know, because we have a very special guest and a friend, friend of Liberty, John Whitehead, who's president of the Rutherford Institute.
He's been to one of our conferences, and he writes on civil liberties.
He's a civil libertarian expert.
He started the Rutherford Institute back in 1982, and we're going to have him talking about the threats that we face right now, because under dire conditions, there are authoritarians out there that like to expose and grab more power.
Daniel, say hello.
Good morning, John.
You know, in addition to the fantastic work you do with your weekly column, which is, it really is kind of a horror show to read every week, but we need that kind of horror.
But I also wanted to thank John and the Rutherford Institute for, if you remember Dr. Paul, taking up our case when the TSA was attacking our daughters.
So they do terrific work.
They've got a bunch of great lawyers who are really out there fighting for our civil liberties.
So we're delighted to have you here with us today, John, to discuss your most recent article.
Thank you.
Very good.
And I'm going to start off with a more generalized question about civil liberties and what motivates people, because conditions are always such that motivate people to be willing to give up their liberties.
And what is it that prevents that?
Why do we go for a period of time and have respect for civil liberties?
Why People Cede Liberty00:15:08
And why do people tend to give up so easily?
And I heard, and Daniel heard the same comments after 9-11.
They came and said, Ron, you're right, but you're wrong, because to protect civil liberties, you have to sacrifice some of your liberty in the meantime.
So address that a little bit.
When did the people cave in it?
And I know you do your great work, and I think that is the answer, understanding, you know.
But in a political sense, how do we get people motivated to love their liberty and not be so easily enticed to accept more government as a solution?
Well, the thing is, I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but the government does a good job of controlling people.
One obvious way is fear, and fear for some, you know, fear builds its own prison walls.
That's just something I like to say.
And it's easier to kind of quiver in a place and think you're being protected by this person or that or whatever by government officials.
But when you see what's happening across the country on a daily basis before this coronavirus thing, 80,000 SWAT team raids happening annually across America, all the people getting shot in the streets, all the people put in prisons, the largest prison population in the world.
1.5 million more people are going into prison this year.
And it's a scary situation.
If you look at the history of the human race, people have had a tendency to, you want to use the term, suck up the power, and think that other people are going to deliver them from catastrophe.
But if you look in the history, every time people have bought into that, they've ended up in some kind of totalitarian tyranny.
And the really cool thing about our country was we had a group of people called our founding fathers who had an idea about freedom that freedom didn't come from government.
And most people, when you ask them today, where do your rights come from?
I mean, I talk to young people getting out of law school.
Their answer automatically is, my rights come from government.
And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Something existed before government.
What was it?
I mean, you know, it's what Jefferson argued, natural rights, God-given rights.
I mean, and government's there to do one thing, not to take away rights or threaten us and do all the things we see happening.
It's going to get worse, by the way.
They're supposed to be protecting our rights against egregious attacks, but the problem, we're not seeing a lot of that today.
We're not seeing this.
We're seeing that, you know, like I say, the largest prison population in the world, all the things we're seeing, 80,000 SWAT team raids.
And the fact that if you go to my commentary that I wrote last week, go to Rutherford.org and read it.
The government's been preparing for, gee, since the late 1950s for some kind of major catastrophe where they're going to have to lock down the country all the way up through Ronald Reagan, the Rex 84 operations, continuity of government, which I talk about in my commentary.
That's all set up.
The government is ready to lock down any moment.
And here's the key.
They're protecting themselves.
They have their own bunkers.
They have a place called Mount Weather right out of Washington, D.C.
I wrote about that when I saw it.
When I realized, I didn't realize until after 9-11, there was a place called Mount Weather where all the government officials go hide underground.
It has shopping malls, stores.
It's got an office of the presidency, which receives daily updates on security matters.
So they already have a government ready set in place.
It's what we've called the deep state before, but it's operating.
It operates all the time.
And listen, I keep telling people, this is the key.
We the people, that's how the Constitution starts.
We're the government.
Don't give away your rights to other people or your authority to other people to rule over you, but we're doing that.
Like you say, most people are sitting at home these days.
The average American watches 150 hours of television a month.
Like I say, if you're sitting on your butt, you ain't doing it.
And I'm trying to get people up off their butts, getting acting.
If this is not a signal, after this thing dies down, if it does, I mean, whatever freedoms you think have been locked down in your country, get back to your local city councils, get acting and get your local governments.
And if you don't like what the government's putting in place, nullify it.
Fight back, folks.
Do what the founding fathers did.
And teach this to your kids in the home.
The one thing the government doesn't want, they don't want rebels.
They don't want freedom fighters because that means trouble for them and trouble for us if we're not together and acting together as a good citizenry.
Damn.
You know, John, on this program, we've offered some alternative analysis of what's happening with the coronavirus scare.
We've looked at some different perspectives.
You know, of course, there's a strawman that's set up.
If you question everything, if you question the absolute lockdown of the country, well, they have a word for it.
You're a denier.
You're a coronavirus denier.
It's a terrible word.
It sounds like Holocaust denier or something, you know.
And this is the word they're attaching to it.
And it can't be by accident.
You know, it seems that this scare, this coronavirus scare, is achieving what even 9-11 could not.
And you wrote about this so well in your most recent column, by the way, viewers, we will put a link to it in the description.
But you talked about dependency.
And if you don't mind, I'm just going to read this short paragraph.
Not only are the federal and state governments unraveling the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that are sending the economy into a stales tailspin and wreaking havoc with our liberties, this is it right here.
They are also rendering the citizenry fully dependent on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection, and sustenance.
That's pretty chilling, John.
That's the future.
But, you know, again, I keep saying we're in the future.
I mean, we can say we're not.
And there was that great theoretist in the 1960s, a guy named Marshall McLuhan.
He said, people, from the beginning of time, they don't know what's surrounding them until it's there.
He called them environments.
What I see as a totalitarian regime is already here.
It's all the elements are in place.
And when you see the packages that they're rolling out, Congress is going to help the country.
I mean, you have $86 billion going to the Department of Homeland Security for what?
A billion dollars for more equipment for our local police who are stuck to the gills with MRAPs, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, kill bar helmets.
They've got them all.
Where's all this?
I thought the money was going to come to the American people.
But I don't see that.
I mean, a $5 handout here or there, but you've got someone who works for the government getting maybe thousands and millions of dollars.
So look at it carefully.
We're a rule.
We've talked about the deep state on this program before.
The deep state rules from its own power.
It wants the money.
And that's the basic point of government.
The government wants your money.
They want your taxes.
The IRS has SWAT teams.
You don't pay your taxes to come get them.
If you don't, you think you own your home, okay?
Do you really own your home?
Go try to get the deed.
They won't give it to you.
If you don't pay your taxes, they'll take your home.
And here's the other thing that people have to understand.
With these lockdowns, you say, well, I'm suspending my rights for this or that.
And I'm saying, listen, you're suspending your rights.
Will you ever get them back if you suspend your rights?
Is that what we really want to do in this country?
Do we want to think like that?
We're willing to cower like little rabbits and hide in a little cage because we're afraid of this or that.
And like I said, fear is a very good tactic.
It's been used well by governments through the beginning of time, folks.
Wake up.
But again, kids don't get this in the schools today.
They don't get this kind of thing.
Most kids have never read Orwell's 1984, some of the great people who were talking about this early on.
So I'm greatly concerned by saying the government's got the power.
Any second they lock this country down with a fear like this, and I would say this, most people will go along with it, and they have in the past, unfortunately.
Right.
And, you know, this was created by the politicians who sought power and it evolved and we have this mess.
And yet they're still going back.
The people are going back.
Well, $1 trillion extra money last week wasn't enough, so they made it $2 trillion.
And they're still believing that this can be helpful.
And the conservatives are celebrating a success, you know, this sort of thing.
And yet, what we have in government, the politicians, I think, are so inept, and they aren't the answer because they're a reflection of an intellectual climate.
And, you know, what's going on.
And unfortunately, we don't have enough John Whiteheads teaching young people in our university.
Our universities are ruined.
But it's an intellectual fight.
And that's why you're doing such a vital work as far as changing people's minds.
Because I don't think I've had the experience in Washington.
They're not going to change.
It's power that they want.
And they will continue to spend more money and use more power.
So intellectually, I think is the fight.
And I'm just wondering, you're involved in that.
And I hope people understand that that's what we're involved.
But how do you, how optimistic are you about that?
Do you feel good about that movement?
Because sometimes when I hear and read your stuff, I say, you know, we're alive and well, and it's going to change because we have to replace, you know, the intellectual climate that we put up with for 50 years.
That has to be removed.
And maybe this crisis that we have now might close down our universities.
Who knows?
Maybe they'll go to education over the internet.
Is there any hope to go in that direction?
Listen, the educational system in this country is in such a bad shape in terms of what they're teaching the kids.
I mean, I talk to law students today, and I talk to lawyers.
You can't tell me what's in the First Amendment.
And most Americans can't tell me what's even in the Bill of Rights.
They have no idea.
They don't read the Declaration of Independence anymore, the Constitution.
Why aren't the schools teaching this?
Because they don't want people.
Listen, there's a reason you don't teach something.
And you teach other things like, I will obey you, teacher.
They're teaching people not to be rebellious.
They don't want a Thomas Jefferson.
They don't want the people that we're seeing today.
And again, sometimes I feel like I'm a wolf out there on the hill screaming.
And people go, oh, you're overreacting and being weird.
And I was warning people about the SWAT team raids about 15 years ago, and they weren't listening.
Now, 80,000 annually, and they're crashing through people's doors, shooting dogs, killing kids.
And the so-called mainstream media, our protectors, don't report that stuff.
They don't tell us this is going on.
Most Americans have no clue.
So the mainstream media, by the way, I think, again, I'll say it, works pretty cozy with the government.
I mean, when I see some of these major TV programs I'm watching, the advisors are former government employees, CIA.
And I'm going, is the government now giving me the news?
Is that the way we wanted it?
Jojo, you talked about the educational system.
Absolutely correct.
People don't understand these things.
Going back to the piece, you had a really great exposition on the importance of habeas corpus.
You start by informing us that the Department of Justice has asked for the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial, oh, just temporarily for this crisis.
Right.
And pause the courts.
And pause the course.
You won't be able to get it.
And pause the courts.
Yeah.
So talk a little about that and explain to people who may not be as familiar as they should be the importance of the concept of habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus is a famous written.
It's the only thing written really basically in the central constitution, you know, outside the Bill of Rights that proposes a really strong right.
And that is the fact that if you're detained unlawfully, you have a right to come out and defend yourself in a court of law.
What the Department of Justice now, and the Trump administration is asking for, is to suspend that indefinitely.
You won't have that right to detain you indefinitely.
It's like they're invoking the National Defense Authorization Act automatically, and they can round up people in droves and go back in history, folks.
Most people don't know history.
I mean, former regimes had a really good plan about hurting people in the camps and stuff like that.
You know something?
They didn't get out a lot of them.
And the FEMA camps are built.
I mean, the Bush administration gave $385 million for the Halliburton Corporation to build the FEMA camps.
And I've talked to former NSA agents that say they've been built their own military bases.
They're ready for any event to round up the so-called people.
And here's the thing that really bothers me most.
When I talk to government officials, a lot of them sometimes when I'm opposing them in cases, it's the way they view the American people.
They basically view us now as data bits because we live in a corporate state that's basically targeting us for information, money, and control.
And that's where we're at today.
So it's not, we're in a total different environment.
We're in a technological environment now being run by computers and artificial intelligence, and that's going to get worse when you have people like Elon Musk now arguing for the Neuralink to put a chip in your head and you'll be connected to the computer.
I mean, that's where it's headed.
Look at young people today.
What is the thing they stare at the most?
The phones.
They're addicted to the cell phone.
Now, the cell phone is basically the next thing is the pre-chip.
It's going into your head, folks.
Get ready.
That's coming.
You know, you started off about talking, explaining where liberty comes from.
It doesn't come from our government.
No.
And, of course, the major problem we have is there's no real love or understanding about what liberty is all about, and there's this dependency.
But who ultimately is responsible for instituting or implying or getting people to love liberty like we do and eliminate this dependency?
Who ultimately is responsible?
Is it we ourselves?
Our parents, it will always be in the educational system.
We know it's not the government.
So where does the shortcoming come up?
We the people have let ourselves down.
That's the key.
We the people are the government.
Listen, there are local governments today, and just a few around the country that are actually fighting back.
Local governments can fight back.
They can nullify acts of the federal government, the state government.
You get the right people together.
But the worst thing today is getting people away from the screen devices and getting them looking a government official in the head at the local city council meeting saying, we're going to re-alter this.
We the People Are the Government00:06:20
No more SWAT teams in our area unless it's a highly volatile situation.
Stop crashing through people's doors without warrants and go down the list.
And it's all on our website.
I mean, we have a constitutional section on our website.
People should go study it and how to implement these things.
But it's all there.
The people who wrote our Constitution gave it to us.
But if you don't know it, if you don't know it, how in the world are you going to enforce it?
And the kids today don't have any idea.
I mean, listen, I had a bunch of kids I saw in the fourth and fifth graders, and I asked them, you know, did they know anything about the Bill of Rights?
They looked at me crazy, and they started talking about the words they couldn't say in school.
And they went down the list, and one was the G word.
And I thought, oh, no, not God again.
You can't say God's school.
And the girl said, I can't, I really can't say the word.
I said, write it down, and the word was gun.
Couldn't say the word gun in her school.
And I went, how do you explain what people are carrying over in Afghanistan called American Truth?
What are the police carrying?
How do you do it?
And they look at you like, we're raising a, the word idiocracy has been used.
We're creating ideocracy, which is easy to rule, by the way.
All you got to do is put up fabrications, and everybody falls into order.
Yeah, that's true.
And it really is a good suggestion, John, about your local governments, because we are closer to them.
We can go to a local city council meeting.
And I've talked about this yesterday.
You know, unfortunately, in this current situation, the local governments are full of want to be dictators.
They feel like they're finally getting their 15 minutes of fame.
I mentioned this a couple of times, but up in Harris County, this is where Houston is, the fourth largest city in the United States.
There's a 29-year-old county judge, Lena Hidalgo.
She grabbed the microphone on March 24th and said, the city's shut down.
Businesses are shut down.
Can't go to work.
Can't do anything.
And it's just incredible that someone like this has so much power.
But you're right, we can.
People can go to that meeting.
They can go and talk to her.
They can do something about it.
But right now, unfortunately, the mood doesn't seem to be going in our direction.
No, we had a great move.
You go back to people, Martin Luther King, people like that were not perfect people, had a lot of problems.
But the point is, at a certain point, they just basically flipped the middle finger at the government and said, we're sitting down, we ain't moving.
You're going to have to move us.
We're fighting you back.
That's the kind of spirit we need.
Violence will not work because they have enough guns and tanks to blow you away.
I mean, I'm telling people, watch out.
I mean, I think it's important to have a firearm in your home to protect you against invaders or whatever.
But the point is, they're so armed right now.
But the one thing, and I think John Lennon was right, the one thing the government can't handle is humor and nonviolence.
And look them in the eye.
But here's a phrase that's been lost in American ideology: federalism.
I hear people talk about that.
What's federalism mean?
It's something they used to teach me in law school.
I learned it in law school.
They don't teach anymore.
It means that there's a disbursement of governments.
The federal government is just one of them.
Local governments.
They're all basically operating on the same level, and the local governments govern best, we were taught.
Now it's the faraway government with the big federal government and the godlike character, you know, is ruling over us, and we must worship them.
And they will save us with that $500 gift while they're giving another billion dollars to some federal agency.
Yeah, well, you know, John, you mentioned about how the local people should resist and the government should challenge the federal government.
I think a lot of that is going on, and there's room for some optimism there.
But there's also room, for my understanding, that a little bit of a concern because Daniel already mentioned how one little bureaucrat at the county level was able to write an edict, and they become just as authoritarian as even the federal government.
And occasionally, you know, Trump is trying to ease off and away from that.
And then the governors come up and the government, you know, it's incestuous.
But yet I do understand your point that if we had stronger efforts, and I guess that's what they need, is encouragement and comfort level, that they're allowed to do this.
They're not un-American because they're challenging some of these horrible edicts from our federal government.
Listen, James Madison who wrote our Bill of Rights, he said we ought to mistrust all those in power.
I say that's the basic principle of being a patriot.
And the thing here is, that individual that shut down that city council meeting, that's not the government.
I keep telling them, again, I go back, we the people, we're the government.
We can say, you sit down.
We're running this thing from now on.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Microphone and start talking like they do.
There are a lot of individuals who do that, and they get in trouble sometimes.
We've helped some of them in those issues.
But the point is, is that we need Americans today here at Willow to stand up, to have the guts to it.
And it's the great quote: What is real courage, being scared to death, but saddling up anyway?
The John Wayne quote.
Let's saddle up.
Let's do this thing.
Because if we're not, I mean, this is just, this is psychological conditioning.
This thing may pass, but it conditions people to bow before the secular powers that run the so-called government.
John, we're going to have to close this out, but I want to thank you very much for being on because your message is so vital to everybody.
And I actually, you know, come across optimistically when I talk and meet with people like you.
Because people say, well, why is he so pessimistic?
The world's falling apart.
Because he's pointing out and giving us the truth and that there is a different option and you don't have to sell out America for it.
So, John, thank you very much for being with us and keep at it because I think the solution comes from individuals like you who speak the truth and write it and spread a message.
And you are the educator that we look to.
So is there a website or anything that you might encourage our viewers to tune to to stay in tune with you?
By the way, I'm not a pessimist.
I'm a realist.
And our website is at rutherford.org, rutherford.org, all the articles there.
And go to our Constitutional Section Learning Constitution.
Teach your kids at home the Constitution.
They will not get it at school.
We need a few more rebels out there.
I like them.
Very good.
All right.
Well, thanks again.
And I want to thank our viewers today for tuning in.