By Jeffrey Tucker

There are occasions in American life — and they come too often these days — when you want to scream: “what the heck has happened to this country?!” Everyone encounters events that strike a particular nerve, some egregious violations of the norms for a free country that cut very deeply and personally.

We wonder: do we even remember what it means to be free?

You hear slogans about the “land of the free” and we still sing patriotic songs at the ballpark and even at church on Sunday, and these songs are always about our blessed liberty, the battles of our ancestors against tyranny, the special love of liberty that animates our heritage and national self identity. The contrast with reality grows starker by the day.

And it isn’t just about our personal liberty and our freedom to move about with a sense that we are exercising our rights. It hits us in the economic realm, where no goods or services change hands that aren’t subject to the total control of the leviathan state. No business is really safe from being bludgeoned by legislatures, regulators, and the tax police, while objecting only makes you more of a target.

Few dare say it publicly: America has become a police state.

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By Tara Servatius

Americans must to decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags. And they better decide quickly.

Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.

A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security Administration screeners perform at our airports. Canine teams sniffed their bags and the buses they rode. Immigration officials hunted for large sums of cash as part of an anti-smuggling initiative.

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By John Pugsley

Driving from California to East Texas, my daughter and grandson were 90 miles into the Lone Star state when traffic was stopped at a road block just outside the little town of Sierra Blanca.

Drug-sniffing dogs worked down the line of cars. Under treatment for a medical condition for which her California doctor prescribed medical marijuana, my daughter had a small amount in her luggage in the trunk. The dogs immediately sniffed it. She showed the police her medical authorization, but California law didn’t apply in Texas. She and my grandson were arrested, taken to jail and put into a holding tank with a dozen or more men and women who had been arrested for the same crime.

A few days later, singer Willie Nelson was arrested at that same checkpoint. My daughter was fined $550. Perhaps Willie got off just signing a few autographs.

A short time later my grandson and I drove back to California. A dozen or so miles after crossing into California, we were suddenly funneled into another roadblock … only this time it was manned by half a dozen armed Border Patrol agents.

We were asked to state our citizenship, and then carefully scrutinized by an unsmiling officer who finally waved us through.

An even more sobering surprise awaited us…

We were stopped at a second roadblock 20 miles later … and yet again 15 miles after that. Three roadblocks between the California border and San Diego!

Never in six decades of driving in the United States had I ever experienced being stopped at even one checkpoint. My only prior experience was in Nicaragua in 1956 when that country was under the strong-arm dictatorial rule of Anastasio Somoza. Every few kilometers my companions and I were stopped by armed soldiers, questioned and required to show passports. We were all grateful to be from the “land of the free,” where such things couldn’t happen…

The rise of checkpoints in America, as well as the indignities we suffer at the hands of airport TSA agents, is merely outward evidence of a much deeper net being cast around individual liberty.

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By Simon Black

Some consider the latter idea of expatriating to be akin to ‘running away.’ I recall a rather impassioned comment from a reader who suggested, “leaving, i.e. running away, is certainly not the proper response.”

I find this logic to be flawed.

While the notion of staying and ‘fighting’ is a noble idea, bear in mind that there is no real enemy or force to fight. The government is a faceless bureaucracy that’s impossible attack. People who try to do so usually discredit their argument because they become marginalized as fringe lunatics. Violence is rarely the answer, and it often has the opposite effect as intended, frequently serving to bolster support for the government instead of raising awareness of its shortcomings.

Unless/until government paramilitaries start duking it out with citizen militia groups in the streets, this is an ideological battle…and it’s an uphill battle at best.

Government-controlled educational systems institutionalize us from childhood that governments are just, and that we should all subordinate ourselves to authority and to the greater good that they dictate in their sole discretion.

You’re dealing with a mob mentality, plain and simple. Do you want to waste limited resources (time, money, energy) trying to convince your neighbor that s/he should not expect free money from the government?

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The United States by every measure is hanging on by a thread to its First World status. Saddled by debt, engaged in wars on multiple fronts with a rising police state at home, declining economic productivity, and wild currency fluctuations all threaten America’s future.

The general designations of the ranking system for world status date back to the 1950s, and have included countries at various stages of economic development. Since the Cold War, the definition has come to be synonymous with repressive countries where a wealthy class of ruling elites segment society into the haves and have-nots, many times capitalizing on the conditions that follow an economic crisis or war.

While much of the world is still mired in poverty, the reduced cost of innovative tools such as computing and connectivity ironically puts traditional Third World countries at the forefront of a new lean-and-mean economy that is based on ideas of empowerment for the disenfranchised. For better or worse, the world is leveling due to Globalism. However, America and other over-leveraged countries face this re-balancing of the globe at a time when they have dwindling resources. We can speculate about who and what is to blame for America’s fantastic fall, but for the purposes of this article we shall focus on the obvious signs that the United States is beginning to resemble a Third World country.

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By John Whitehead

Democratic government is breaking down, and we are reaching a crisis point in American society. Increasingly, America resembles a police state. Everywhere we go, we are watched as the government amasses massive data files on us. We are plagued by a faltering economy and a monstrous financial deficit that threatens to bankrupt the country.

Black oil continues to poison the Gulf, devastating the environment and those who depend on it for their livelihood. Overtaxed Americans are losing their jobs and homes. Small businesses are preparing to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare of red tape arising from Congress’ health reform legislation. State governments are struggling to remain operational. Partisan politics has put a stranglehold on any real hope for governmental reform. The Supreme Court has adopted a pro-business, pro-government, pro-political correctness mindset that bodes ill for individual freedom. And to top it all off, our elected representatives in Washington DC are jetting around at taxpayer expense, enjoying perks the likes of which the average American will never experience.

This is more serious than a government that is simply malfunctioning. These are symptoms of a government that is out of control, and a government out of control is one that won’t listen to its people.

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By Wendy McElroy

Although it is often viewed as a benign or annoying process, the census can be used as a powerful tool of social control and social engineering.

The U.S. government recognizes that power. It is currently engaged in an unprecedented push to count the people, citizen and noncitizen alike, living in the country. In preparation for the 2010 census, state employees even took GPS readings for every front door in America so that individuals can be located with computer accuracy.

The Census Bureau draws on constitutional authority but the questions have little connection with the original intention, which was to apportion representatives and direct taxes. Critics ask why the government needs to know if they rent or own. They claim the census is not an expression of the Constitution but the creation of a bloated government abusing a limited mandate.

Instead of the “natural harmony of interests” that comes from all people minding their own business, the census establishes a situation in which everyone is encouraged to police everyone else at the behest of the State; indeed, many are paid to do so.

The census in a welfare state, then, creates a dynamic in which the exercise of one person’s rights ostensibly damages the interests of others. It thus has become a powerful symbol of social control over civil society.

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