By John W. Whitehead
“First
they came for the Socialists, and I did not
speak out—Because I was not a Socialist. Then
they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not
speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak
out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for
me—and there was no one left to speak for
me.”—Martin Niemoller
May 06 2014 "ICH"
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Despite what
some may think, the Constitution is no magical
incantation against government wrongdoing. Indeed,
it’s only as effective as those who abide by it.
However, without courts willing to uphold the
Constitution’s provisions when government officials
disregard it and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to
be outraged when those provisions are undermined, it
provides little to no protection against SWAT team
raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of
unarmed citizens, indefinite detentions, and the
like.
Unfortunately,
the courts and the police have meshed in their
thinking to such an extent that anything goes when
it’s done in the name of national security, crime
fighting and terrorism. Consequently, America no
longer operates under a system of justice
characterized by due process, an assumption of
innocence, probable cause and clear prohibitions on
government overreach and police abuse. Instead, our
courts of justice have been transformed into courts
of order, advocating for the government’s interests,
rather than championing the rights of the citizenry,
as enshrined in the Constitution.
Just recently,
for example, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals
ruled in U.S. v. Westhoven that driving too
carefully, with a rigid posture, taking a scenic
route, and having acne are sufficient reasons for a
police officer to suspect you of doing something
illegal, detain you, search your car, and arrest
you—even if you’ve done nothing illegal to warrant
the stop in the first place.
In that same
vein, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in a 5-4
ruling in Navarette v. California that
police officers can, under the guise of “reasonable
suspicion,” stop cars and question drivers based
solely on anonymous tips, no matter how dubious, and
whether or not they themselves witnessed any
troubling behavior.
And then you
have the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Hedges
v. Obama, a legal challenge to the indefinite
detention provision of the National Defense
Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), thereby affirming
that the President and the U.S. military can arrest
and indefinitely detain individuals, including
American citizens, based on a suspicion
that they might be associated with or aiding
terrorist organizations.
All three
cases reflect a mindset in which the rule of law,
the U.S. Constitution, once the map by which we
navigated sometimes hostile terrain, has been
unceremoniously booted out of the runaway car that
is our government, driven over and left for road
kill on the side of the road. All that can be seen
in the rear view mirror are the tire marks on its
ragged frame.
What we are
dealing with, as I document in my book A
Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police
State, is a run-away government hyped
up on its own power, whose policies are dictated
more by paranoia than need. Making matters worse,
“we the people” have become so gullible, so easily
distracted, and so out-of-touch that we are ignoring
the warning signs all around us and failing to
demand that government officials of all stripes—the
White House, Congress, the courts, the military, law
enforcement, the endless parade of bureaucrats,
etc.—respect our rights and abide by the rule of
law.
The Supreme
Court’s refusal to hear the NDAA indefinite
detention case—which challenged whether the
government can lawfully lock up American citizens
who might be deemed extremists or terrorists (the
government likes to use these words interchangeably)
for criticizing the government—is one such warning
sign that we would do well to heed.
The building
blocks are already in place for such an eventuality:
the surveillance networks, fusion centers and
government contractors already monitor what is being
said by whom; government databases track who poses a
potential threat to the government’s power; the
militarized police, working in conjunction with
federal agencies, coordinate with the federal
government when it’s time to round up the
troublemakers; the courts sanction the government’s
methods, no matter how unlawful; and the detention
facilities, whether private prisons or FEMA
internment camps, to lock up the troublemakers.
For those who
can read the writing on the wall, it’s all starting
to make sense: the military drills carried out in
major American cities, the VIPR inspections at train
depots and bus stations, the SWAT team raids on
unsuspecting homeowners, the Black Hawk helicopters
patrolling American skies, the massive ammunition
purchases by various federal agencies such as the
Department of Homeland Security, the Department of
Education, the IRS and the Social Security
Administration.
Viewed in
conjunction with the government’s increasing use of
involuntary commitment laws to declare individuals
mentally ill and lock them up in psychiatric wards
for extended periods of time, the NDAA’s provision
allowing the military to arrest and indefinitely
detain anyone, including American citizens, only
codifies this unraveling of our constitutional
framework.
Throw in the
profit-driven corporate incentive to jail Americans
in private prisons, as well as the criminalizing of
such relatively innocent activities as holding Bible
studies in one’s home or sharing unpasteurized goat
cheese with members of one’s community, and it
becomes clear that “we the people” have become
enemies of the state. Thus, it’s no longer a
question of whether the government will
lock up Americans for First Amendment activity but
when. (It’s particularly telling that the
government’s lawyers, when pressed for an assurance
that those exercising their First Amendment rights
in order to criticize the government would not
be targeted under the NDAA, refused to provide one.)
History shows
that the U.S. government is not averse to locking up
its own citizens for its own purposes. One need only
go back to the 1940s, when the federal government
proclaimed that Japanese-Americans, labeled
potential dissidents, could be put in concentration
(a.k.a. internment) camps based only upon their
ethnic origin, to see the lengths the federal
government will go to in order to maintain “order”
in the homeland. The U.S. Supreme Court validated
the detention program in Korematsu v. US
(1944), concluding that the government’s need to
ensure the safety of the country trumped personal
liberties. That decision has never been overturned.
In fact, the
creation of detention camps domestically has long
been part of the government’s budget and operations,
falling under the jurisdiction of FEMA, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. FEMA’s murky history
dates back to the 1970s, when President Carter
created it by way of an executive order merging many
of the government’s disaster relief agencies into
one large agency. During the 1980s, however, reports
began to surface of secret military-type training
exercises carried out by FEMA and the Department of
Defense. Code named Rex-84, 34 federal agencies,
including the CIA and the Secret Service, were
trained on how to deal with domestic civil unrest.
FEMA’s role in
creating top-secret American internment camps is
well-documented. But be careful who you share this
information with: it turns out that voicing concerns
about the existence of FEMA detention camps is among
the growing list of opinions and activities which
may make a federal agent or government official
think you’re an extremist (a.k.a. terrorist), or
sympathetic to terrorist activities, and thus
qualify you for indefinite detention under the NDAA.
Also included in that list of “dangerous” viewpoints
are advocating states’ rights, believing the state
to be unnecessary or undesirable, “conspiracy
theorizing,” concern about alleged FEMA camps,
opposition to war, organizing for “economic
justice,” frustration with “mainstream ideologies,”
opposition to abortion, opposition to globalization,
and ammunition stockpiling.
Now if you’re
going to have internment camps on American soil,
someone has to build them. Thus, in 2006, it was
announced that Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary
of Halliburton, had been awarded a $385 million
contract to build American detention facilities.
Although the government and Halliburton were not
forthcoming about where or when these domestic
detention centers would be built, they rationalized
the need for them in case of “an emergency influx of
immigrants, or to support the rapid development
of new programs” in the event of other
emergencies such as “natural disasters.”
Of course,
these detention camps will have to be used for
anyone viewed as a threat to the government, and
that includes political dissidents. So it’s no
coincidence that the U.S. government has, since the
1980s, acquired and maintained, without warrant or
court order, a database of names and information on
Americans considered to be threats to the nation. As
Salon reports, this database, reportedly
dubbed “Main Core,” is to be used by the Army and
FEMA in times of national emergency or under martial
law to locate and round up Americans seen as threats
to national security. As of 2008, there were some 8
million Americans in the Main Core database.
Fast forward
to 2009, when the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing
Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing
extremists as individuals and groups “that are
mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority
in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting
government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing
Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal
rights activist groups as extremists. Both reports
use the words terrorist and extremist
interchangeably. That same year, the DHS launched
Operation Vigilant Eagle, which calls for
surveillance of military veterans returning from
Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as
extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats
because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or
suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
These reports
indicate that for the government, so-called
extremism is not a partisan matter. Anyone seen as
opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right
or somewhere in between—is a target, which brings us
back, full circle, to where we started, with the
NDAA’s indefinite detention provision, whose
language is so broad and vague as to implicate
anyone critical of the government.
Unfortunately,
we seem to be coming full circle on many fronts.
Consider that a decade ago we were debating whether
non-citizens—for example, so-called enemy combatants
being held at Guantanamo Bay and Muslim-Americans
rounded up in the wake of 9/11—were entitled to
protections under the Constitution, specifically as
they relate to indefinite detention. Americans
weren’t overly concerned about the rights of
non-citizens then, and now we’re the ones in the
unenviable position of being targeted for indefinite
detention by our own government.
Similarly,
most Americans weren’t unduly concerned when the
U.S. Supreme Court gave Arizona police officers the
green light to stop, search and question
anyone—ostensibly those fitting a particular racial
profile—they suspect might be an illegal immigrant.
Two years later, the cops have carte blanche
authority to stop any individual, citizen and
non-citizen alike, they suspect might be
doing something illegal (mind you, in this age of
overcriminalization, that could be anything from
feeding the birds to growing exotic orchids).
Likewise, you
still have a sizeable portion of the population
today unconcerned about the government’s practice of
spying on Americans, having been brainwashed into
believing that if you’re not doing anything wrong,
you have nothing to worry about. It will only be a
matter of time before they learn the hard way that
in a police state, it doesn’t matter who you are or
how righteous you claim to be—eventually, you will
be lumped in with everyone else and everything you
do will be “wrong” and suspect.
Martin
Niemoller learned that particular lesson the hard
way. A German military officer turned theologian,
Niemoller was an early supporter of Hitler’s rise to
power. It was only when Hitler threatened to attack
the churches that Niemoller openly opposed the
regime. For his efforts, Neimoller was arrested,
charged with activities against the government,
fined, detained, and eventually interned in the
Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from
1938 to 1945.
As Niemoller
reportedly replied when asked by his cellmate why he
ever supported the Nazi party:
I find
myself wondering about that too. I wonder about
it as much as I regret it. Still, it is true
that Hitler betrayed me… Hitler promised me on
his word of honor, to protect the Church, and
not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also
agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews…
Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time…I am
paying for that mistake now; and not me alone,
but thousands of other persons like me.
John W.
Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written,
debated and practiced widely in the area of
constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead's
concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in
1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, a
nonprofit civil liberties and human rights
organization whose international headquarters are
located in Charlottesville, Virginia.
https://www.rutherford.org/
