By John & Nisha
Whitehead
June 24, 2026
“The
people are the only legitimate fountain of
power.”—James Madison
This is a year of
strange anniversaries.
Two hundred and fifty years
ago, a band of revolutionaries declared their independence
from a king.
America’s founders rejected
concentrated power. They denounced standing armies. They
distrusted government secrecy. They risked their lives to
escape a ruler who could tax without consent, wage war
without accountability, and govern without meaningful
restraint.
Twenty-five years ago, after the attacks of
September 11, 2001, America embarked on a very different
journey.
The federal government claimed extraordinary
emergency powers. Surveillance expanded. Wars multiplied.
Executive authority grew. Constitutional safeguards were
weakened in the name of security.
One anniversary
marked a revolt against empire. The other marked the
normalization of it.
Now, as America prepares to
celebrate 250 years of independence, we are confronted with
a bitter irony: the republic born in rebellion against
empire has become an empire in everything but
name.
Worse, the U.S. government is violating the very
principles that justified the American
Revolution.
Graft, grift and corruption. Endless wars.
Profiteering. Trillions squandered abroad while the nation
sinks deeper into debt at home.
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A government that
governs increasingly by executive order and emergency
decree. A government that wastes taxpayer money with
impunity, rewards political loyalty over constitutional
fidelity, installs loyalists in positions meant to serve the
public, dismantles safeguards against corruption, shields
insiders from scrutiny, and treats accountability as an
inconvenience.
National states of emergency that never
seem to end. Efforts to nullify constitutional guarantees
such as birthright citizenship. Expanded death penalty
powers. A growing willingness to bypass Congress, sidestep
constitutional restraints and rule by
fiat.
Surveillance programs that track where we go,
what we buy, who we know, what we say and what we believe.
Fusion centers, facial recognition, license plate readers,
AI-assisted monitoring, financial tracking,
intelligence-sharing agreements and a sprawling security
apparatus that treats privacy as a loophole and dissent as a
threat.
Military action undertaken without
congressional authorization. National Guard deployments that
blur the line between civilian government and military
authority. The militarization of policing. Federal agents
arresting people at courthouses. Protesters treated as
security threats. Legal residents threatened with
deportation because of their political speech and
associations. Immigrants and asylum seekers swept up in
raids, detained, deported or disappeared into a bureaucratic
maze before courts can fully review the legality of what has
been done.
Whistleblowers, journalists, activists and
critics targeted for speaking truth to power. Expanding
“extremist” classifications that increasingly encompass
lawful speech, political dissent and ideological opposition
rather than criminal conduct.
This is not
freedom.
This is the architecture of a police
state.
Nor is this merely the accumulated rot of past
administrations.
Republican and Democratic presidents
alike helped build the machinery of permanent emergency.
They expanded the surveillance state, normalized undeclared
wars, empowered the military-industrial complex, deferred to
intelligence agencies, and taught Americans to accept
secrecy, suspicion and fear as the price of
safety.
Donald Trump inherited that
machinery.
Then he weaponized it.
No modern
president has done more to expose the danger of allowing so
much power to accumulate in one office.
Trump did not
invent the imperial presidency, but he has shown what
happens when a president treats constitutional limits as
obstacles, dissent as disloyalty, the courts as irritants,
Congress as irrelevant and federal power as a personal
weapon.
Nor has he hidden his intentions. From efforts
to consolidate authority within the executive branch to the
installation of loyalists whose allegiance appears directed
more toward a president than the Constitution, the Trump
Administration has tested the limits of executive power in
ways that would have alarmed the generation that fought the
Revolution.
We have also witnessed growing efforts to
sideline due process protections, weaken the ancient
safeguard of habeas corpus, expand detention powers, and
normalize the notion that constitutional rights can be
suspended whenever government officials invoke national
security, immigration enforcement or emergency
necessity.
This is what happens when a government
built for emergencies never leaves emergency mode.
The
danger is no longer hypothetical.
The tools of
authoritarianism exist.
The police state machinery
exists.
The surveillance apparatus exists.
The
permanent war powers exist.
The question is who
controls them—and what remains to stop them.
The
American Revolution was not fought over minor policy
disagreements. It was fought over the danger of
unaccountable power. The colonists objected to a king who
could deploy troops, impose taxes, conduct searches, punish
dissent and wage war without meaningful consent of the
governed.
The Declaration of Independence was not
merely a list of grievances.
It was an
indictment.
King George III had made the military
superior to civilian authority. He had maintained standing
armies without consent. He had cut off trade, imposed taxes,
obstructed justice and transported colonists overseas for
trial.
Time and again, the Declaration returned to the
same central complaint: concentrated power had become a
threat to liberty.
The Revolution was not fought over
a tax on tea.
It was fought over the danger of a
government that had placed itself above the
people.
When the framers later gathered to draft the
Constitution, they did so with those lessons fresh in
mind.
The founders understood that power is inherently
expansive. Given enough time, every government seeks more
authority, more secrecy and more control.
That is why
they created a constitutional system in which power was
divided. The branches were intended to restrain one another.
No person was to be trusted with too much
authority.
Yet history shows how quickly
constitutional restraints weaken in times of
fear.
John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts
and criminalized political dissent.
Abraham Lincoln
suspended habeas corpus.
Woodrow Wilson prosecuted
anti-war activists.
Franklin Roosevelt ordered the
internment of more than 120,000 Japanese
Americans.
Richard Nixon weaponized federal agencies
against political opponents.
Each expansion of
executive power was justified as necessary.
Each left
constitutional scars.
Then came September 11,
2001.
In the months and years that followed, Congress
passed the USA PATRIOT Act, vastly expanding government
surveillance powers. The Department of Homeland Security was
created. Military tribunals were revived. Warrantless
surveillance became commonplace. Watchlists multiplied.
Fusion centers spread across the country. Indefinite
detention became normalized.
War abroad justified
surveillance at home.
Terror threats justified
government secrecy.
National crises justified
executive emergency powers.
What began as a response
to a terrorist attack gradually became a governing
philosophy.
Twenty-five years later, the emergency
state has become embedded in the architecture of
government.
Every crisis expands executive
power.
Every war contracts liberty.
Every
emergency leaves behind powers that rarely
disappear.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom
falls.
Presidents of both parties have inherited
extraordinary powers and expanded them further. Congress has
repeatedly surrendered responsibilities it was meant to
exercise. Courts have increasingly deferred to executive
claims involving national security, immigration and
emergency authority.
The result is a government that
often functions by executive decree rather than
representative self-government.
Executive orders
increasingly substitute for legislation. National
emergencies become permanent governing authorities.
Constitutional guarantees such as birthright citizenship are
challenged by presidential decree rather than constitutional
amendment. Congress is bypassed. Courts are treated as
obstacles. Separation of powers becomes a formality rather
than a safeguard.
The presidency has evolved into
something the framers would scarcely recognize.
What
Donald Trump has done is expose the fatal flaw in the system
Americans allowed to be built after 9/11: once government is
handed the machinery of permanent emergency, all that
remains is for the wrong person to seize the
controls.
For decades, Americans were told not to
worry.
We were told surveillance powers would only be
used against terrorists.
We were told emergency powers
would only be invoked during genuine crises.
We were
told national security authorities would remain subject to
constitutional limits.
We were told the
Constitution’s checks and balances would hold.
We
were told no president would ever be allowed to exercise
such powers without meaningful restraint.
They were
wrong.
And we were wrong to trust power to restrain
itself.
The lesson is the same one the founders
learned from bitter experience: power granted in the name of
necessity rarely remains confined to necessity.
Every
emergency becomes a precedent.
Every precedent becomes
a power.
Every power becomes permanent.
The
founders also warned against standing armies and perpetual
war.
Having lived under military occupation, they
understood that governments organized around war inevitably
become organized around power.
What they feared was
not merely the presence of soldiers but the rise of a
permanent warfare state—a government that uses conflict,
fear and national security as justification for expanding
its authority.
Today, those dangers extend beyond
foreign battlefields. National Guard units are increasingly
federalized and deployed domestically. Military tactics,
equipment and personnel continue to flow into civilian law
enforcement. The line separating the soldier from the police
officer grows fainter with each passing crisis.
Look
around.
The United States has spent much of the last
quarter century engaged in military operations somewhere in
the world. Wars are launched without formal declarations.
Emergency powers become permanent. Defense budgets swell
while domestic needs go unmet. Intelligence agencies operate
with extraordinary secrecy. Technologies developed for
foreign battlefields migrate into local police departments
and domestic surveillance programs.
Today, even as the
Trump Administration and its so-called War Department
continue to pound the war drums, Americans are once again
being told to trust government officials operating behind
closed doors, often with little public debate and even less
accountability.
The founders understood a simple
truth: governments that prepare constantly for war
eventually begin treating their own citizens as potential
enemies.
That is the logic of empire.
Enemies
abroad justify surveillance at home. War powers abroad
justify police powers at home. National security becomes the
excuse for secrecy, militarization, censorship, detention
and control.
Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than
in the rise of the surveillance state.
Long before
shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, colonists were
outraged by writs of assistance—general warrants that
allowed British agents to search homes, businesses and
personal property without meaningful
justification.
Those abuses helped inspire the Fourth
Amendment.
Today, government agents no longer need to
kick down your door to invade your privacy.
Your cell
phone tracks your movements. Your vehicle reports your
location. Your purchases reveal your habits. Your social
media activity exposes your associations. Your digital
footprint creates a detailed record of your
life.
Government agencies can access location data,
financial records, license plate readers, facial recognition
databases and vast stores of personal information, often
with little transparency and even less
oversight.
Meanwhile, Congress continues to renew and
expand surveillance authorities while intelligence agencies
deepen information-sharing arrangements with domestic and
foreign partners. Americans are increasingly monitored not
because they are suspected of wrongdoing, but because
technology has made mass surveillance possible and
government has found it useful.
The surveillance state
has no borders. Nor does it have clear
limits.
Government agencies increasingly rely on broad
and elastic “extremist” classifications that often
extend beyond violence or criminal conduct to encompass
lawful speech, political dissent and ideological
opposition.
What begins as a tool to identify
dangerous actors inevitably expands into a mechanism for
monitoring unpopular viewpoints. Information collected for
one purpose is shared for another. Data gathered abroad
finds its way home. Intelligence systems built to monitor
foreign threats are repurposed to watch domestic
populations.
King George’s agents needed boots and
battering rams to search your home.
Today’s
government can search your life without ever leaving its
desk.
And then there is the matter of
accountability—or rather, the lack of it.
The
Declaration of Independence repeatedly condemned a
government that had placed itself above the law.
That
grievance remains painfully relevant.
Government
officials who violate constitutional rights are frequently
shielded from accountability by doctrines such as qualified
immunity. Secret courts authorize secret programs.
Bureaucrats operate behind layers of classification and
administrative complexity. Government agencies routinely
fail audits, lose records, misuse surveillance powers and
exceed their authority, yet meaningful consequences remain
rare.
Meanwhile, ordinary Americans face an entirely
different standard.
When government officials make
costly mistakes, taxpayers foot the bill.
When
unconstitutional policies trigger lawsuits, taxpayers foot
the bill.
When unlawful detentions result in
settlements, taxpayers foot the bill.
When militarized
raids, wrongful arrests, surveillance abuses and
civil-rights violations generate years of litigation,
taxpayers foot the bill.
Even now, Americans are being
asked to absorb the financial costs of government misconduct
on a staggering scale—from unlawful enforcement actions
and unconstitutional executive orders to politically
motivated spending schemes and settlements designed to
shield those in power from scrutiny.
The public pays
for the government’s mistakes while those responsible
often walk away untouched. In some cases, public office
itself has become a vehicle for private gain, with
self-enrichment schemes, conflicts of interest and insider
favoritism blurring the line between public service and
personal profit.
The pattern is impossible to
ignore.
Profits are privatized. Power is centralized.
Accountability is deferred.
The bill is sent to the
American people.
Whether it involves unlawful
surveillance, unconstitutional arrests, retaliatory
investigations, speech-based censorship, ICE raids that
terrorize communities, warrantless tracking, civil asset
forfeiture, the targeting of whistleblowers, journalists and
activists, endless wars or political corruption, the pattern
is the same: power protects itself.
The founders did
not risk their lives because taxes were too high.
They
risked their lives because government had become detached
from the people, insulated from accountability and convinced
that power justified itself.
Sound familiar?
The
uncomfortable truth is that many of the abuses that sparked
the American Revolution have returned, only this time they
arrive wrapped in the language of national security, public
safety, emergency management and administrative
necessity.
The faces have changed. The technology has
changed. The rhetoric has changed.
The danger remains
the same.
Which brings us back to this strange
anniversary year.
The 250th anniversary of American
independence should have been an opportunity to renew our
commitment to limited government, constitutional
accountability and the principle that no one is above the
law.
Instead, the lesson of 9/11 is being repeated in
a different form.
Twenty-five years ago, fear became
the pretext for permanent emergency.
Today, patriotism
is becoming the backdrop for presidential spectacle,
military pageantry and the celebration of the very
concentration of power the American Revolution was fought to
resist.
Much of the celebration has been transformed
into a spectacle of power: military displays, patriotic
pageantry, strongman politics and the elevation of political
leaders into larger-than-life figures whose authority is
expected to be admired rather than questioned.
Yet the
founders did not launch a revolution so Americans could
celebrate authoritarian power.
They launched a
revolution to remind future generations that power is
dangerous, liberty is fragile and no ruler should ever be
elevated above the Constitution.
For 250 years,
Americans have treated the Declaration of Independence as
the nation’s birth certificate.
What we have failed
to recognize is that the Declaration of Independence was
also a warning: freedom is fragile, power is relentless, and
no generation remains free simply because a previous
generation fought for liberty.
As America approaches
its 250th anniversary, the most important question is not
whether the nation survived. Nations survive. Empires
survive. Governments survive.
The real question, as I
make clear in Battlefield
America: The War on the American People and its
fictional counterpart The
Erik Blair Diaries, is whether the principles that
inspired the American Revolution survived as
well.
Thus, the question is not whether America
survived 250 years.
The question is whether the
principles of 1776 can survive the American police
state.
WC: 2570
Constitutional attorney and
author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The
Rutherford Institute. His latest books The
Erik Blair Diaries and Battlefield
America: The War on the American People are
available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at
johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive
Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The
Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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