Lockdown in Shanghai<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.\u201d\u2014H.L. Mencken<\/strong><\/p>\n First came 9\/11, which the government used to transform itself into a police state.<\/p>\n Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which the police state used to test out its lockdown powers.<\/p>\n In light of the government\u2019s tendency to exploit crises (legitimate or manufactured) and capitalize on the nation\u2019s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state, one has to wonder what so-called crisis it will declare next.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power.<\/p>\n Frankly, it doesn\u2019t even matter what the nature of the next national emergency might be (terrorism, civil unrest, economic collapse, a health scare, or the environment) as long as it allows the government to lockdown the nation and justify all manner of tyranny in the so-called name of national security.<\/p>\n Cue the Emergency State.<\/p>\n Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, \u201cunforeseen economic collapse,\u00a0loss of functioning political and legal order<\/a>, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters\u201d: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now<\/a>.<\/p>\n As David C. Unger writes for the New York Times<\/em>: \u201cLife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management<\/a>: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what we know: given the rate at which the government keeps devising new ways to establish itself as the \u201csolution\u201d to all of our worldly problems at taxpayer expense, each subsequent crisis ushers in ever larger expansions of government power and less individual liberty.<\/p>\n This is the slippery slope to outright tyranny.<\/p>\n You see, once the government acquires (and uses) authoritarian powers\u2014to spy on its citizens, to carry out surveillance, to transform its police forces into extensions of the military, to seize taxpayer funds, to wage endless wars, to censor and silence dissidents, to identify potential troublemakers, to detain citizens without due process\u2014it does not voluntarily relinquish them.<\/p>\n The lesson for the ages is this: once\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0government is allowed to overreach and expand its powers, it\u2019s almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. As Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe recognizes, \u201cThe dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts<\/a>.<\/p>\n In this way, every crisis since the nation\u2019s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government.<\/p>\n Each crisis has also been a test to see how far \u201cwe the people\u201d would allow the government to sidestep the Constitution in the so-called name of national security; a test to see how well we have assimilated the government\u2019s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly we\u2019ll march in lockstep with the government\u2019s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance we offer up to the government\u2019s power grabs when made in the name of national security.<\/p>\n Most critically of all, it has been a test to see whether the Constitution\u2014and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights\u2014could survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, we\u2019ve been failing this particular test for a long time<\/a> now.<\/p>\n Indeed, the powers-that-be have been pushing our buttons and herding us along like so much cattle since World War II, at least, starting with the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, which not only propelled the U.S. into World War II but also unified the American people in their opposition to a common enemy<\/a>.<\/p>\n That fear of attack by foreign threats, conveniently torqued by the growing military industrial complex, in turn gave rise to the Cold War era\u2019s \u201cRed Scare.\u201d Promulgated through government propaganda, paranoia and manipulation, anti-Communist sentiments boiled over into a mass hysteria that viewed anyone and everyone as suspect: your friends, the next-door neighbor, even your family members could be a Communist subversive.<\/p>\n This hysteria, which culminated in hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where hundreds of Americans were called before Congress to testify about their so-called Communist affiliations and intimidated into making false confessions, also paved the way for the rise of an all-knowing, all-seeing governmental surveillance state<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the time 9\/11 rolled around, all George W. Bush had to do was claim the country was being invaded by terrorists, and the government used the USA Patriot Act to claim\u00a0greater powers to spy, search, detain and arrest<\/a> American citizens in order to keep America safe<\/em>.<\/p>\n By way of the National Defense Authorization Act, Barack Obama continued Bush\u2019s trend of undermining the Constitution, going so far as to give the military the power to strip Americans of their constitutional rights, label them extremists, and detain them indefinitely without trial<\/a>, all in the name of<\/em> keeping America safe<\/em>.<\/p>\n Despite the fact that the breadth of the military\u2019s power to detain American citizens violates not only U.S. law and the Constitution but also international laws, the government has refused to relinquish its detention powers made possible by the NDAA.<\/p>\n Then Donald Trump took office, claiming the country was being invaded by dangerous immigrants and insisting that the only way to keep America safe was to expand the reach of the border police, empower the military to \u201cassist\u201d with border control<\/a>, and essentially turn the country into a Constitution-free zone.<\/p>\n That so-called immigration crisis then morphed into multiple crises (domestic extremism, the COVID-19 pandemic, race wars, civil unrest, etc.) that the government has been eager to use in order to expand its powers.<\/p>\n Joe Biden, in turn, has made every effort to expand the reach of the militarized police state, pledging to hire 87,000 more IRS agents and 100,000 police officers, and allowing the FBI to operate as standing army.<\/p>\n What the next crisis will be is anyone\u2019s guess, but you can be sure that there will<\/em> be a next crisis.<\/p>\n So, what should you expect if the government decides to declare another state of emergency and institutes a nationwide lockdown?<\/p>\n You should expect more of the same, only worse.<\/p>\n More compliance, less resistance.<\/p>\n More fear-mongering, mind-control tactics and less tolerance for those who question the government\u2019s propaganda-driven narratives.<\/p>\n Most of all, you should expect more tyranny and less freedom.<\/p>\n Given the government\u2019s past track record and its long-anticipated plans for using armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems in response to a future crisis, there\u2019s every reason to worry about what comes next.<\/p>\n Mark my words: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People<\/em><\/a> and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries<\/em><\/a>, if and when another crisis arises\u2014if and when a nationwide lockdown finally hits\u2014if and when martial law is enacted with little real outcry or resistance from the public\u2014 then we will truly understand the extent to which the powers-that-be have fully succeeded in acclimating us to a state of affairs in which the government has all the power and \u201cwe the people\u201d have none.<\/p>\n In the meantime, if all we do to reclaim our freedoms and regain control over our runaway government is vote for yet another puppet of the Deep State, by the time the next crisis arises, it may well be too late.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute<\/a>. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People<\/a>, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State<\/a>, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries<\/a>. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org<\/a>. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n