But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
– James Madison, Federalist No. 51
The last couple of years have certainly been interesting ones for freedom-loving Americans – especially for those who believe, as our country’s founders did, that rights come from God, not government.
In June 2013, we learned through Edward Snowden that his former employer, the National Security Agency, had been collecting information on Americans – including tracking telephone communications and online activities via the servers of some of the nation’s largest tech firms – through its PRISM program. PRISM is the code name for the government’s top-secret data-collection program, SIGAD US-984XN, begun by President George W. Bush in 2007. Snowden’s leak of its existence sparked an outrage that reverberated not just in the United States – where civil liberty and privacy groups went ballistic – but also around the world, creating diplomatic headaches for the White House.
The bad news: Bill Binney, the high-level NSA veteran who was actually the brains behind the agency’s surveillance brawn – the guy who forged the future for massive data spy technology – said in a December 2013 shocker of an interview that America had already turned into a police state.1
The good news: Edward Snowden and the accompanying fallout from all the document dumps made us forget about the Internal Revenue scandal for a bit.
That the IRS was targeting conservative groups was probably not a huge surprise to those in the conservative camp, especially Tea Par-tiers, who felt the government under President Obama – along with a complicit media – already had bull’s-eyes drawn on their backs. But what was dramatic was hearing Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, admit in May 2013 congressional testimony to singling out Tea Party and patriot organizations during the previous election cycle. Still, the confession was short-lived. She also blamed the targeting on lower-level operatives, absent political motivation – a quasi-apology that left legal minds howling.
And then there was Eric Holder.
Exactly which clause of the Constitution gives the US attorney general the right to send in the snoopers on journalists he deems conspirators, just because they write reports that are related to intelligence?
Holder apparently found one, because he obtained a warrant to track Fox News correspondent James Rosen’s movements in and out of the State Department, and to access his private e-mails and telephone records. Coming to light in May 2013, too, was the Justice Department scandal involving the Associated Press. That’s when it was revealed that the feds had been collecting telephone records on several reporters and editors who worked for the wire service for the previous two months. Meanwhile, Sharyl Attkisson, an investigative reporter with CBS News who regularly produced reports that the White House perceived as negative, came forward with the claim that same month: “My computer has been compromised by a sophisticated hacking system.”
Even liberal and mainstream media didn’t like that one.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg of constitutional grievances that have hit our nation in recent times. It’s also just the tip of a long line of abuses that Americans, accustomed in previous generations to enjoying a limited government more rooted in regard for natural law, have been forced to endure. Think back to the 1776 Virginia Convention that stated in clear and unfettered language: “All men... have certain inherent natural rights.”2 It would seem that message has been corrupted.
In June 2013, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Robert Mueller, admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the agency sometimes flies unmanned drones on US soil for surveillance reasons, to aid with criminal cases. That’s about the same time a Freedom of Information Act request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation – a nonprofit that seeks to balance privacy and civil rights with emerging technology – revealed that the Department of Homeland Security in 2010 suggested using armed drones at the nation’s borders.
Another federal agency that wants to use drones for surveillance? The Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2012, the mainstream media and liberal talking heads hit back at emerging reports of the EPA’s use of drones to monitor compliance with environmental regulations, denouncing the reports as untrue and even mocking the claims in late-night comedy news shows. But the EPA itself admitted on its official website to a 2000–2009 project in collaboration with NASA to develop unmanned aerial vehicles – drones – to provide “next generation environmental monitoring capability.”3
In March 2013, meanwhile, media reports surfaced of a possible White House plan to give the Central Intelligence Agency the ability to track and access financial data on Americans.4 The proposal – a substantial inroad to Americans’ privacy rights for a spy group that’s supposed to operate primarily on foreign soil – was promptly shot down by legal analysts, who called it an expansion of police state powers that would forever degrade the Bill of Rights. The FBI already has access to this information. Why give yet another federal group – and a secretive one, no less – such substantial power over our banks?
But that’s the alarming trend in America – ceding power to the government. And such stories are becoming commonplace across the entire nation. The danger, of course, is that we’re losing our constitutionally guaranteed rights.
But the deeper danger is that these rights, based on the idea that God is the true leader and provider, will soon be subject to government doling – like entitlements. Our future generations won’t be equipped with the awareness that, since America’s freedoms are based on natural law, they aren’t rightly in the control of elected officials. How then to slow the tide of government encroachment?
In August 2012, a former Marine living in Virginia was taken into custody, thrown in jail, and forcibly transferred to a hospital located nearly three hours from his home and family to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, all at the order of law enforcement officials – and absent the normal court process.5 His crime? He posted on his private Facebook page messages that painted the government in a poor light. Within days, a judge dismissed the case, finding no factual basis to jail him. He’s turned the tables on the government and launched a lawsuit – but he’s hardly the only American to be thrown behind bars for online messages deemed criminal by government entities. A Texas teen was locked in jail in February 2013 for making what he claimed were sarcastic comments on his Facebook page in an argument with a friend about an online video game, but which authorities said were genuine threats to kill kindergartners.6
Move over, First Amendment freedom of speech. Hello, George Orwell and the thought-crime scenarios described in his 1984.
In July 2013, a University of Virginia student was swarmed by state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents who thought the carton of bottled water she was carrying across the parking lot of a grocery store was really a twelve-pack of beer and she was an underage buyer.7 She said one drew her gun, another jumped on the hood of her SUV, and still others shouted conflicting orders and flashed badges she couldn’t read. Terrified, she tried to flee in her SUV, but agents halted and arrested her, charging her with two counts of assault – for reportedly brushing two officials with her vehicle when she pulled from the parking lot – and one count of eluding police. Even the commonwealth’s attorney who investigated the incident found the case ridiculous and refused to prosecute. But the twenty-year-old still spent a night in jail – for the crime of purchasing water.
Look to Arizona for a textbook example of ridiculous government action that’s even worse.
In July 2012, Scottsdale City Council members approved the $1.87 million purchase of an office-warehouse building that spans 17,827 square feet for its police investigative unit – but refused to disclose the facility’s location. Adding insult to taxpayer injury was the fact that council members approved the purchase as a consent agenda item, a fast-track means of giving simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down to proposals that are generally considered noncontroversial in nature, unworthy of public discussion.
The reason for the council’s secretive action? They wanted to protect the lives of the police officers, many of whom were working undercover.8 Given the well-publicized locations of the Central Intelligence Agency; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and other federal agencies with officers who work sensitive cases that require undercover missions, that’s hardly an excuse. Even America’s top-secret federal data centers that serve as collection centers and clearinghouses for classified information have known locations. Wikipedia, for instance, publishes a photograph of the Utah data center along with a map of the facility’s layout, and that’s a project of the National Security Agency. So, really, Scottsdale City Council members – really?
As counter as Scottsdale’s City Council runs to the notion of America’s of, by, and for the people form of governance, it’s still not as egregious in terms of inflicting tyrannical rule on the populace as New York City, where the administration under Mayor Michael Bloomberg – who served for twelve years in that role, through 2013 – became a laughingstock of nanny government.
His list of bans and mandates were great:
• Ban supersize sodas.
• Ban trans fats.
• Ban cigarettes from being displayed for sale in stores.
• Ban baby formula from automatic distribution to mothers who give birth in city hospitals.
• Ban Styrofoam.
• Mandate trash composting.
• Mandate that buildings push visitors off the elevators and escalators and onto the stairs.
• Mandate calorie counts on fast-food menus.
And that’s all in addition to his biggest pet project, the one he’s funded from his own pocket to the tune of millions of dollars – ban guns. He’s the co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nonprofit he helped found in 2006 to clamp down on Second Amendment rights around the nation, all in the name of safety and security.9
It’s head-spinning.
Add to that the private-sector abuses – retail stores that track customers’ movements using their cell phones, and mannequins that watch you while you shop – and the future of America’s freedoms looks dire.
Meanwhile, at the same time we’re ramping up government, we’re backing off of God.
In late 2013, an Ohio school district agreed to pay a $95,000 fine to stop the American Civil Liberties Union from pursuing a lawsuit about a painting of Jesus Christ that had hung for decades in one of its buildings.10 The painting, a gift from one of the school’s youth clubs, was part of the school’s “Hall of Honor” display of great historical figures.11 But a couple of students complained, and in came the ACLU to sue. The school was not only pressured to take the painting off the wall, but when administrators moved it into a closet for storage, the ACLU said that wasn’t good enough. The group’s civil rights attorneys said somebody might still see the painting – so the school had to move it completely off school grounds.12
Such attacks on all public shows of God have only increased in recent years. Yet our nation’s greatest asset is etched in the Declaration of Independence, as well as other Founding Father writings, as hailing from the Almighty.
Our rights come from God, not government.
That was the root of our greatness – the key facet that separated our country from all others. But that principle is slowly fading. If we aren’t careful, the next generation of Americans won’t have an inkling of what the Founding Fathers intended when they signed off on those most powerful of words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”