Few of you know that I have been actively involved in the authorship of a very important libertarian book project being written by a man who has become a close friend of mine, Verl Engel. Of Personal Liberty was written to address one of the many avenues that the government is routinely violating our rights. I would highly encourage all of my U.S. readers to buy and read this book. It is an essential piece in the fight to defend our freedom as Americans.
I am going to repost my foreword here because it is the most impassioned plea that I can make for you to read this book:
Imagine lights flash behind you, red and blue, and in the moment of surprise and incrimination, you begin to pull over. The officer in blue walks up after you dutifully stop, according to seemingly countless years of custom. She immediately inquires as to your velocity, seeking to use her aura of authority to back you into confessing to a perceived crime. You relinquish your documentation when impudently requested, and in return receive a citation obliging your remittance for a state-ordained wrongdoing.
What if you didn’t have to stop? What if the law was actually on your side? The author of this book is going to convince you that this is the case. The Constitution of the United States of America is explicit in its limitations on governmental power and authority. You—as a citizen of the United States of America—are the beneficiary of the trust that is the United States Constitution. The government—as the trustee—is forbidden from depriving people of their freedoms and unalienable rights without due process. Since the signing of the Constitution, the intervening centuries have quietly eroded the liberties of American citizens.
The government, particularly in the new millennium, has been accelerating this process of depriving Americans of liberties. The War on Terror has overseen the greatest of deprivations, from dismantling privacy of communications to banishing the right to a fair trial—rights guaranteed in the Constitution—all under the guise of necessity and security. The specter of an omniscient state divested of any trust in its citizens and void of any duty to protect their rights is not a distant nightmare. This is the waxing reality of the twenty-first-century police state. A reality often ignored by the average man or woman on the street, who lives happily in his or her fishbowl, always under the watchful eye of the government.
Our government, at this critical juncture, does not yet have full control of citizens’ actions, but it seeks to corral people into ill-fitting but easily definable “safe” and “dangerous” categories. The following years will testify whether history turns this intrusive government into a tyrannical government or—if the people demand—into a government that deals respectfully and honestly with its beneficiaries.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and with the continuing consolidation of power in the hands of the government, the future of the United States of America as the land of the free is in jeopardy. The crux of the matter lies in how much the people are willing to concede before they stand up and say, “Enough.” If the government can keep the apathetic populace adequately anesthetized to avoid questioning the accumulation of centralized power, then the transformation can continue undeterred. The government may then, and only then, fully take on the role of provider, controller, and dictator of not only what its citizens may not do, but also of what its citizens must do. This is the goal of a secure state, to dictate “good” behavior to its citizens and extirpate any residual resistance.
This book seeks to awaken people to the emergence of this totalitarian state. Will America return to being the land of the free, or will it manifest itself as the latest echo of authoritarian regimes proudly arrayed throughout history? As Ben Franklin has said, “Those who trade liberty for security deserve neither and lose both.” Liberty depends on the responsibility of people to see and to act to thwart tyranny.
As one of “We the people,” I humbly implore you not only to read this book but also to spend time comprehending its implications. As Thomas Jefferson said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, they expect what never was nor ever will be.”
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