Liberty, as we have known it in America, is hanging on an increasingly bare thread.

Slouching toward a military junta

Exclusive: Joseph Farah warns of growing federal influence over local law enforcement

  Joseph Farah 

Liberty isn’t usually lost overnight.
More often, it is compromised away in small pieces.
Maybe that’s the way it will happen in America.
There were no screaming headlines last February, for instance, when a new Department of Defense instruction altered U.S. law to allow the U.S. military to quell domestic “civil disturbances” without so much as presidential authorization.

In and of itself, an action like this may seem insignificant to some.
But for those who have followed the long-term trend of militarizing of civilian law enforcement over the last few decades, this law-key action is alarming. While most Americans weren’t paying much attention, over the last several decades, America has been moving down the slippery slope toward becoming a police state:

• The federal government has been seducing state and local law enforcement into partnership with and subservience to Washington by providing training programs, subsidies and military-style equipment.
• The federal government has been cavalierly creating more and more armed police forces in agencies ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Internal Revenue Service.
• The federal government has routinely blurred the lines of jurisdiction with the creation of multi-agency task forces, almost always headed by the FBI or other federal cops.

And then there was Boston.
Did Americans notice what happened in the wake of the marathon bombings? Did they see how a city was shut down by a military-style occupation? Did they care how difficult it was to distinguish between U.S. soldiers and civilian police forces? Was there any difference?
And before that came Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to create a “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military.

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