John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute, whose writings frequently appear on LewRockwell.com was recently interviewed by Rich Sanchez on RT America. He discussed the disturbing trends taking place in America, trends that are eerily similar to the cases of using forced psychiatric hospitalization as a tool against any individual who criticized the government, as detailed in this Mises article, “Soviet Dissidents and the Weaponization of Psychiatry” and also in this article “The totalitarian government in Soviet Russia invented a mental illness to lock up resisters.” The terrible irony is that the more the Oligarchy that controls the government hates Russia and careens towards conflict with it, the more it is becoming a mirror image of the former Soviet state in its intolerance, use of force and persecution of any who dare dissent.

As Whitehead notes in the RT America interview, “What I see in the American government today, there is a bit of paranoia about American citizens and people who are opposed to government. Anyone who says, ‘I don’t like the way the government is operating, I don’t like the president, I don’t like Congress’ automatically goes on a watch list and we’ve had cases [at the Rutherford Institute] where the police show up with the Department of Homeland Security and drag people out of their homes for doing a Facebook post.”

Whitehead discussed, as he has written about in the past, “Operation Vigilant Eagle” in this piece, “Casualties of War: Military Veterans Have Become America’s Walking Wounded” and he discussed the case of Brandon Raub: Battlefield America: T... John W. Whitehead Best Price: $10.95 Buy New $18.80 (as of 10:15 UTC - Details)

Raub, a 26-year-old decorated Marine, actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys…

Outraged onlookers filmed the arrest and posted the footage to YouTube, where it quickly went viral. Meanwhile, in a kangaroo court hearing that turned a deaf ear to Raub’s explanations about the fact that his Facebook posts were being read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further confinement in a psychiatric ward.

Thankfully, The Rutherford Institute came to Raub’s assistance, which combined with heightened media attention, brought about his release and may have helped prevent Raub from being successfully “disappeared” by the government.

Even so, within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.

Rutherford has written about the ludicrously titled totalitarian federal “Operation Vigilant Eagle” on his site in this piece, “Operation Vigilant Eagle: Is This Really How We Honor Our Nation’s Veterans?” published in 2013. What is chilling is that Rutherford’s statement in the interview that as many as 1.5 million Americans are being “disappeared.”

Whitehead concluded in “Casualties of War”:

Eventually, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we all suffer the same fate.

It stands to reason that if the government can’t be bothered to abide by its constitutional mandate to respect the citizenry’s rights—whether it’s the right to be free from government surveillance and censorship, the right to due process and fair hearings, the right to be free from roadside strip searches and militarized police, or the right to peacefully assemble and protest and exercise our right to free speech—then why should anyone expect the government to treat our nation’s veterans with respect and dignity?

Here’s a suggestion: if you really want to do something to show your respect and appreciation for the nation’s veterans, why not skip the parades and the flag-waving and instead go exercise your rights—the freedoms that those veterans swore to protect—by pushing back against the government’s tyranny.

It’s time the rest of the nation did its part to safeguard the freedoms we too often take for granted.

Freedom is not free.

Of course, that’s true—freedom is not free, we have to be willing to fight for it. But the federal government has an answer to those with the courage to criticize and to stand up to it, and it’s that old Soviet technique: forcibly incarcerate anyone who dares oppose its most egregious actions, no matter which political party is allegedly in charge, and that’s to target and eliminate all opposition. I do have hope that there are courageous defenders of our First Amendment rights like John Rutherford. However, that so few Americans seem to care about the truth or realize the extent of the deceptions, much less oppose them, is disheartening to say the least.

In the end, these actions by governments are actions of weakness. They may try to try treat all critics like Assange but I believe, like the Soviet state, all the oppressive regimes will self-destruct in time; I think there are too many men and women of conscience to incarcerate them all. In the meantime, it doesn’t hurt to be aware that most likely if you are reading these words, you are already on the “enemies” list John Whitehead talked about.

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