Back in October of 2010, with Greek unrest and riots in France, I forecast that lawlessness was likely to get worse throughout the West’s welfare states and we’ve seen this summer’s anarchy in Great Britain with widespread looting and rioting. In London, and here in America, we have also seen criminal flash mobs organizing through social media, converging upon certain pre-designated locations to loot, rob and destroy private property, as police across the country are imposing new curfews and crackdowns. Several new government restrictions have been imposed by the cities of Philadelphia and Chicago and in Maryland. This week, a new curfew is being considered in Kansas City and, as roving mobs, gangs, and anarchists continue to strike using social media, the city of San Francisco declared a total shutdown of cellular service in certain parts of the city, which had been targeted by protestors against the city’s government-controlled transportation system, during rush hour.
With reports of new outbursts of coordinated criminal activity popping up all over the country—from attacks on an Apple store in Connecticut and a Walgreens in Chicago to a 7-Eleven in Maryland and a local sheriff’s emergency communications system in Los Angeles County besieged by a rapper’s coordinated telephone attack—we can expect harsher measures from local, state, and federal government. This is the implosion of the welfare state; as government improperly expands its role into our lives, regulating light bulbs, plastic bags and every aspect of existence, government fails to perform its proper function, such as defense of the nation and private property through the courts, police, and military. Law and order breaks down while individual rights are wiped out. It’s not enough that the nation’s travel infrastructure has been turned into a government-controlled maze of dictates under a Department of Homeland Security bureaucracy known as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); the entire country is heading toward some form of lockdown. The welfare state becomes the police state.
Curfews as a temporary measure while police investigate crimes are one thing and I don’t see why police shouldn’t monitor social media for evidence of criminal activity. Curfews as a permanent way of life are not consistent with a free society. Tyranny begins with restrictions on free travel and association and tyranny begins in earnest with censorship, including shutting down technology and cell phone service in certain places, at certain times, in certain contexts. From the President singling out a broadcaster for attack to dozens of examples of censorship in recent years, free speech, as with property rights, is under siege. Recently, a government school board banned a Sherlock Holmes book in Virginia on the grounds that author Arthur Conan Doyle offends religion. History shows that such violations of man’s rights end with people in chains—or worse.
Americans should not tolerate censorship, including shutdowns of cellular service. Americans should demand that police show zero tolerance for criminals who disrupt public safety and threaten lives and property. But by allowing government to control every aspect of their lives, Americans have put government in a position to shut down free speech, which is why we must demand that government end its monopolies on roads and transportation, education and the economy and let people make choices in a free market. We should not tolerate permanent curfews in our cities, towns and counties. But we should not have tolerated dictates from the Department of Homeland Security, with its obscene TSA, (or the Department of Education, et al) in the first place.
Crackdown by crackdown, while government types blame criminals for damaging their race when they should arrest them for damaging lives and property, freedom in America is coming to an end. With every crime wave and act of war, the government increases its controls and shuts down man’s rights. So, Americans must stop passively standing in line at the airport, Department of Motor Vehicles, and everywhere else that government does not belong and speak out against this incremental, permanent paralysis. We must speak out and insist upon a secular, capitalist republic based on individual rights. While we can.