John Whitehead is pretty sure we are just a single incident away from martial law.
I’m familiar with Whitehead’s writing; I’ve read a couple of his books and some of his articles over the years. While I don’t agree with some of his theological positions (he’s too Western-rationalist for me), I believe he’s got this prediction right.
Thus, the groundwork was laid for an imperial presidency and a potentially totalitarian government — a state of affairs that has not ended with Barack Obama’s ascension to the Oval Office, despite hopes to the contrary that President Obama would fully restore the balance between government and its citizens to a pre-Bush status quo. As Charlie Savage reports in the New York Times, “Signs suggest that the administration’s changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped or feared — prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies.”
The fact is that the problem is bigger than Obama or any individual who occupies the White House. Indeed, once the government assumes expansive powers and crosses certain constitutional lines, it’s almost impossible to pull back.
Just consider some of the lines that have already been crossed.
He goes on to delineate what he feels are the strongest indicators for the high probability.
Let’s stop for a moment and think this through philosophically. Never mind my assertions about government legitimacy under the Covenant of Noah; consider the most obvious implications here. A certain amount of cyclical movement of a given economic system is expected by anyone with brains. The vagaries of human fashion and passion alone will account for that. Add in the cyclical flux of the natural order which contributes to economic shifting (droughts, plagues, etc.) and you cannot possibly keep things smooth. That’s the way it goes.
When governments seek to dampen the natural swings in economic shuffling, it will inevitably go wrong. No human government is capable of understanding anything so well as to avoid unintended bad consequences. Our current economic malaise would be tolerable were it not for regulation which has magnified it beyond all bounds. In fact, it’s fair to say the whole thing is the result of government regulation creating a wholly unnatural condition. Our government is a major player in the economy, and bureaucrats, being human, cannot resist shifting the game in favor is those they regard as their “in-group”.
So what we have here is something which is totally the fault of our government. Not just Obama, as Whitehead notes, but the whole range of activity since very early. Setting aside my suspicions voting has been fixed for over a century, it’s clear once these various political offices are taken, the people change completely. The system itself is so badly broken, it’s valid to call it a miracle when anyone in public office actually carries out the best interests of the people who put them there. Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court have not, as a whole, done us much good for a very long time. Our government is quite obviously broken, and does not in any measure deserve our support.
Do you expect anyone in that government to acknowledge this? Only as a means to currying our favor would any of them give so much as lip service to such a notion. I can count on one hand the people I trust in our federal government to bother being honest with us. Yes, they are liars at the very least, and many are frankly traitors in the fullest sense of the term, traitors against the people. We are most certainly not the government; the government is made up of an elite closed group who inevitably act in their own group interest. So it is altogether natural and correct for them to fear us.
The government has failed. It deserves to die. The system cannot be fixed, and those in the system don’t want anyone trying to fix it. Further, let me assure you, those in power will hardly shy from the idea of seeing many of us suffer, starve, even be slaughtered to maintain their position. At the same time, they know instinctively we will riot, and it will be altogether justified. These provisions for a coming martial law were put in place only because the government people know the government as a whole has failed. We are not by national character a rebellious folk. We tend to put up with far too much evil, which is how we got in this mess. When we finally do start rioting, it will be well past deserving.
It will not come in every part of the land, so the provisions of martial law may not be fully used in every place. If you live in an area where fundamental economics are pretty good, you’ll experience relative peace and calm. Which means those who aren’t the rioting kind will crowd into your area, if they can, to flee the turmoil. That in itself will create some disruption of your every day life. It’s hard to guess on what scale this will happen, but there surely will be some.
We are cursed with living in interesting times.
