1) The PATRIOT Act- warrantless wiretapping on everyone, through the NSA.
Why would a government that trusts its citizens even enact such legislation? We were told it was to fight terror, but al Qaeda has only grown in strength and this wiretapping program completely fails to stop all forms of domestic terrorism. Even when the shooter uploads youtube videos telling what he plans on doing hours in advance.
2) Increased militarization of the police.
(Come on, you don't think this is for weed and prostitution busts do you?)
3) NDAA
(An act which authorizes the government to indefinitely hold people up without trial or due process. It has already been passed and signed into law)
4) Off shore prisons that circumvent US laws against cruel and unusual punishment
(Bradley Manning is alleged to be held in Kuwait, I'll leave the readers to find details out for themselves)
Sarcasm aside, it should be obvious what the US government is doing. Citizens or allies which are happy don't need constant watching or military police. Whether you come from the right or left, by now you should be aware that you can't trust the people we have in power.
It's likely the US is heading down the path of skepticism against its own citizens that many empires before it have gone through. Secret police, lack of habeaus corpus, and a declining middle class are all signs that oligarchy has taken over, and don't care or are incompetent to protect the middle class from themselves. It shouldn't be a surprise then, that in this sort of society we have people going around shooting cops.
I'm sorry, but that's natural law. When you have a society in which people hate their leadership, have guns, have been pissed off for years, you are going to get dead cops. Let me put that in a mathematical equation.
Poor people + guns + really bad leadership = dead cops
Therefore it should also come as no surprise that we're going to have some people that advocate killing cops as a clear message to Washington that the people of America are not to be trifled with. It's not just the libertarians. Communists, religious radicals, and even government officials themselves can have a bad habit of killing cops when things just aren't going their way. It's part of the job for cops, to enforce the will of the nation state even if that puts their life in danger.
With the recent shootings in Canada and Las Vegas being perpetrated by individuals that have libertarian-ish ideals about government, conservatives and pro-gun advocates in general are slowly being transformed into the nation's next "hated group". For a long time, this group has been Muslims. Despite the fact that Muslims often hold different beliefs, the government felt comfortable treating them as a giant group of terrorists that might be working on something nefarious at any given moment. The same sort of suspicion is being applied by government to libertarians and conservatives today, and ironically everything conservatives supported doing to Muslims after 9/11 will probably be done to them, but I digress.
Soon after the shootings, Facebook pages such as Copblock, FilmingCops, and other libertarian pages began to take blame for these shootings. It wasn't long before Christopher Cantwell's articles on shooting cops was also found, along with Larken Rose's video which asked the question about when it was acceptable to shoot at cops. Cantwell's blog became widely read to represent the views of libertarians and Adam Kokesh (a libertarian podcaster) also declared the shootings "not necessarily unjustified violence", citing police killings and enforcement of the drug war as indefensible. Soon posts such as this began to spring up, attempting to shame and ridicule Kokesh and Cantwell away from any association with the libertarian movement.
There is a serious problem though, with shaming people like Cantwell and Kokesh for expressing their honest opinions. Their opinions are not being subjected to logical scrutiny at all. Reactions against them range from "Isolate him now" to "He's fat/ stupid/ lazy". All of these are grounded in fear. When the mind can't figure out a real argument, this is the only option the fearful mind sees. They're likely not even expressing their honest views, these are a strategic move against the government or NSA from associating them with anyone violent. That strategy ignores the fact that the government isn't that sloppy and if it really wanted to cleanse society of radicals, there is probably a treasure trove of evidence against them in their digital footprints.
The shaming of people for expressing opinions others don't want to hear is quite telling of their anxiety. Nobody shames a Muslim radical for saying "death to America", nobody takes crazy Muslims seriously anyway. But if average white guys start saying things like that, it causes anxiety because they're not religious fanatics and reasonably credible as "regular guys". Therefore, truly having to confront this question causes fear and dread in people. This fear-based reaction is worrying for multiple reasons though. For one, it discourages people from ever raising a voice against the state.
When is too far? At what point do we consider the corruption in Washington and the lack of accountability within police departments to be "too much"? This is the elephant in the room within our ex-free society today, we are all left to decide where this line needs to be.
It's a perfectly fair question, and by shaming people against asking it, we inadvertently squash the will of others to voice themselves. This is the only way it's possible for people to be taken in trains to concentration camps where they know they'll be killed without any struggle or whimper. People only do that when they know that their fellow civilians will not support them in resistance anyway. By shaming people who ask the question about limits to the people's forgiveness of the government, we also give way and encourage the government to continue doing what it's doing.
I'm not saying everyone now has to agree with Cantwell and Kokesh, but their question is a valid concern and can be responded to without discouraging the question itself.
For example, "Mr. Cantwell I respectfully disagree but I don't think escalating violence is going to be good for the liberty movement."
For the record, this author thinks peaceful evolution and nonviolent parenting is the way to progress society out of this mess. (Or do I? Am I saying this under duress?)
Violent overthrow of the state is probably impossible by untrained and ill equipped militias, it would take a military coup to change anything real. This is exactly what led Rome out of being a republic as well. My general rule is to look at Roman history to find out what's going to happen next for America.
