Freedom Under Fire | The Rutherford Institute
156 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 32 ratingsFreedom Under Fire with John Whitehead™, available free of charge, provides listeners and radio stations alike with insightful, relevant and provocative commentary on popular culture and constitutional issues.
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Episodes
The Christmas Baby Born in a Police State: Then and Now
December 22, 2021 13:00 - 7 minutes - 10.4 MBThe Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one. Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later? What would Jesus’ life have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?
You'd Better Watch Out: The Surveillance State Has a Naughty List, and You’re On It
December 15, 2021 13:00 - 8 minutes - 12 MBSanta’s got a new helper. No longer does the all-knowing, all-seeing, jolly Old St. Nick need to rely on antiquated elves on shelves and other seasonal snitches in order to know when you’re sleeping or awake, and if you’ve been naughty or nice. Thanks to the government’s almost limitless powers made possible by a domestic army of techno-tyrants, fusion centers and Peeping Toms, Santa can get real-time reports on who’s been good or bad this year.
The War Over Life, Liberty and Privacy Rights
December 08, 2021 13:00 - 8 minutes - 12.1 MBHow do present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies? Caught up in the heated debate over the legality of abortion, we’ve failed to think about what’s coming next.
The Road to Fascism: Paved with Vaccine Mandates and Corporate Collusion
December 01, 2021 15:00 - 8 minutes - 11.3 MBThis has long since ceased to be a debate over how best to protect the populace at large against an unknown pandemic. Rather, it has become a massively intrusive, coercive and authoritarian assault on the right of individual sovereignty over one’s life, self and private property.
The Empire of Lies Breaks Down
November 23, 2021 20:30 - 8 minutes - 11.9 MBAmerica is breaking down. This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, racism, classism, fascism, fear-mongering, political correctness, cultural sanitation, virtue signaling, a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing government corruption and brutality, a growing economic divide that has much of the population struggling to get by, and militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment)—is manifesting i...
COVID-19 Detention Camps: Are Government Round-Ups of Resistors in Our Future?
November 17, 2021 15:30 - 9 minutes - 12.5 MBIt’s no longer a question of whether the government will lock up Americans for defying its mandates but when. This is what we know: the government has the means, the muscle and the motivation to detain individuals who resist its orders and do not comply with its mandates in a vast array of prisons, detention centers, and FEMA concentration camps paid for with taxpayer dollars. It’s just a matter of time.
The Metaverse Is Big Brother in Disguise
November 11, 2021 15:58 - 9 minutes - 12.6 MBWelcome to the Matrix (i.e. the metaverse), where reality is virtual, freedom is only as free as one’s technological overlords allow, and artificial intelligence is slowly rendering humanity unnecessary, inferior and obsolete.
Predators with Badges: The Sex Traffickers on America’s Police Forces
November 03, 2021 14:44 - 8 minutes - 12.3 MBWhile it is easy to be distracted by political theater, distressed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and divided over authoritarian lockdowns and mandates, there are still darker forces afoot that cannot—should not—must not be ignored. Here’s a news flash from constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead: there are sexual predators on America’s police forces. Indeed, when it comes to sex trafficking—the buying and selling of young girls, boys and women for sex—police have become both predators and pimps.
Mayhem & Madness: Authoritarian Monsters Wreak Havoc on Our Freedoms
October 28, 2021 14:49 - 9 minutes - 12.6 MBWe are living in an age of mayhem, madness and monsters. Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.
Freedom from Fear: Stop Playing the Government’s Mind Games
September 30, 2021 17:17 - 9 minutes - 12.7 MBAmerica is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other. This plague on our nation is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live and the constantly shifting crises that keep the populace in a state of high alert. This is how free people allow tyrants to prevail
Constitution Day 2021: It’s Time to Make America Free Again
September 14, 2021 23:49 - 9 minutes - 12.4 MBAlthough the Bill of Rights--the first ten amendments of the Constitution--was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, post-9/11 and in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic.
Bring All the Troops Home | Freedom Under Fire with John W. Whitehead
September 06, 2021 19:11 - 8 minutes - 11.7 MBIt’s time to bring all our troops home. It’s not enough to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, America’s longest, bloodiest and most expensive war to date. It’s time that we stop policing the globe, stop occupying other countries, and stop waging endless wars.
Authoritarians Drunk on Power: It Is Time to Recalibrate the Government
July 28, 2021 14:45 - 8 minutes - 11.5 MBWe are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs. We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law. It is time to recalibrate the government.
The Right to Be Let Alone: What to Do When COVID Strike Force Teams Come Knocking
July 19, 2021 16:21 - 8 minutes - 11.7 MBA federal COVID-19 vaccination strike force may soon be knocking on your door, especially if you live in a community with low vaccination rates. Will you let them in? More to the point, are you required to open the door?
George Orwell’s 1984 Has Become a Blueprint for Our Dystopian Reality
June 30, 2021 17:10 - 9 minutes - 12.5 MBTread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state. It’s been more than 70 years since Orwell depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism in 1984. Yet what once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
Financial Tyranny: Footing the Tax Bill for the Government’s Fiscal Insanity
May 06, 2021 14:00 - 7 minutes - 10.8 MBThe U.S. government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones who will be forced to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity.
The Global Deep State: A New World Order Brought to You by COVID-19
April 29, 2021 14:00 - 7 minutes - 10.9 MBFor good or bad, COVID-19 has changed the way we navigate the world. It is also redrawing the boundaries of our world (and our freedoms) and altering the playing field faster than we can keep up. We have entered into a new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations. This powerful international cabal, the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threa...
Comply or Die: The Only Truly Compliant Person in a Police State Is a Dead One
April 23, 2021 16:26 - 8 minutes - 11.1 MBAt a time when growing numbers of unarmed people have been shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, even the most benign encounters with police can have fatal consequences.
The State of Our Freedoms After a Year Under Lockdown
March 26, 2021 13:26 - 8 minutes - 11.5 MBWhat started out a year ago as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including our own) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, it remains to be seen whether our freedoms will survive the tyranny of the government’s heavy-handed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Digital Trails: How the FBI Is Identifying, Tracking and Rounding Up Dissidents
March 17, 2021 13:58 - 8 minutes - 11.6 MBDatabit by databit, we are building our own electronic concentration camps. With every new smart piece of smart technology we acquire, every new app we download, every new photo or post we share online, we are making it that much easier for the government and its corporate partners to identify, track and eventually round us up. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is what it means to live in a suspect society.
Home Invasions: All the Ways the Government Can Lay Siege to Your Property
March 04, 2021 15:44 - 8 minutes - 12.3 MBAmericans are not safe in their homes. Not anymore, at least. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting home invasions in order to pursue traffic violators, seize lawfully-owned weapons, carry out knock-and-talk “chats” with homeowners in the dead of night, “prevent” in...
When the Government Acts as Judge, Jury and Executioner
February 24, 2021 15:10 - 8 minutes - 11 MBThe government should not be in the business of killing its citizens. Nevertheless, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, the U.S. government continues to act as judge, jury and executioner over a populace that have been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence.
Techno-Censorship: The Slippery Slope from Censoring ‘Disinformation’ to Silencing Truth
February 19, 2021 18:34 - 8 minutes - 11.6 MBIt’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act. This week's podcast from constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead
Don’t Impeach Trump. Impeach the Deep State for Its Conspiracy to Kill the Constitution
February 10, 2021 15:56 - 8 minutes - 11.6 MBWhile the nation allows itself to be distracted by yet more bread-and-circus politics, the American kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians and corporate thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of the people) continues to suck the American people into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against government ag...
Pure Evil: The Boys and Girls Being Sold for Sex During COVID-19 and the Super Bowl
February 04, 2021 19:15 - 8 minutes - 11.2 MBChild rape has become Big Business in America. Yet as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, this is not a problem found only in big cities. It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.
Enemies of the Deep State: The Government’s War on Domestic Terrorism Is a Trap
January 27, 2021 17:00 - 8 minutes - 11.6 MBWe are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts. In the wake of the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, “domestic terrorism” has become the new poster child for expanding the government’s powers at the expense of civil liberties. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead warns in this week's podcast, we are all about to become enemies of the state.
The Deep State’s Stealthy, Subversive, Silent Coup to Ensure Nothing Changes
January 20, 2021 20:10 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBAs constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State’s tune.
A Nation Imploding: Digital Tyranny, Insurrection and Martial Law
January 14, 2021 17:09 - 11 minutes - 16.2 MBThis is what we have been reduced to: A violent mob. A nation on the brink of martial law. A populace under house arrest. A techno-corporate state wielding its power to immobilize huge swaths of the country. And a Constitution in tatters. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we are imploding on multiple fronts, all at once.
What to Expect in 2021: Madness, Mayhem, Manipulation and More Tyranny
January 06, 2021 15:12 - 9 minutes - 13.3 MBWhether red ants will really fight black ants to the death is a question for the biologists, but as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, it’s an apt analogy of what’s playing out before us on the political scene and a chilling lesson in social engineering.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Psychological Warfare Disguised as a Pandemic Threat
December 10, 2020 15:02 - 8 minutes - 12.1 MBThe nation is being overtaken by an alien threat that invades bodies, alters minds, and transforms freedom-loving people into a mindless, compliant, conforming mob intolerant of anyone who dares to be different, let alone think for themselves. However, as constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead explains in this week's podcast, while Invasion of the Body Snatchers—the chilling 1956 film directed by Don Siegel—blames its woes on seed pods from outerspace, the seismic societal shift taking pla...
Warp Speed Ahead: COVID-19 Vaccines Pave the Way for a New Frontier in Surveillance
December 03, 2020 16:25 - 9 minutes - 12.5 MBThe COVID-19 pandemic with its veiled threat of forced vaccinations, contact tracing, and genetically encoded vaccines is propelling humanity at warp speed into a whole new frontier—a surveillance matrix—the likes of which we’ve only previously encountered in science fiction.
End the Government’s War on America’s Military Veterans
November 09, 2020 14:46 - 8 minutes - 11.9 MBIt’s time to end the government’s war on the American people, and that includes military veterans. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, more than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, even more than the perceived threat posed by any single politician, the U.S. government remains a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government...
America After the Election: A Few Hard Truths About the Things That Won't Change
November 05, 2020 10:28 - 8 minutes - 12.2 MBNothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people. Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to tr...
Something Wicked This Way Comes: Anarchy Is Being Loosed Upon the Nation
October 29, 2020 17:09 - 8 minutes - 12 MBThings are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in a constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is being loosed upon the nation. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we are witnessing the unraveling of the American dream one injustice at a time.
Don’t Vote for a Psychopath: Tyranny at the Hands of a Psychopathic Government
October 23, 2020 19:46 - 8 minutes - 12.2 MBThere is no difference between psychopaths and politicians. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans. Once psychopaths gain power, the result is usually some form of totalitarian government or a pathocracy. In other words, electing a psychopath to public office is tantamount to national hara-kiri, the ritualized act of self-annihilation, self-destruction and suicide. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead points out in this week's podcast, it signals the d...
The 2020 Election Bamboozle
October 18, 2020 16:46 - 8 minutes - 11.1 MBThis is not an election. This is a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle. In this carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, we are victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.
The Election Has Already Been Hijacked
October 01, 2020 19:06 - 8 minutes - 11.7 MBRepublicans and Democrats alike fear that the other party will attempt to hijack this election. President Trump is convinced that mail-in ballots are a scam except in Florida, where it’s safe to vote by mail because of its “great Republican governor.” The FBI is worried about foreign hackers continuing to target and exploit vulnerabilities in the nation’s electoral system, sowing distrust about the parties, the process and the outcome. John W. Whitehead, on the other hand, is not overly worri...
Justice Sleeps: No, the U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Save Us
September 27, 2020 15:22 - 8 minutes - 11.7 MBThe U.S. Supreme Court will not save us. It doesn’t matter which party gets to pick the replacement to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The battle that is gearing up right now is yet more distraction and spin to keep us oblivious to the steady encroachment on our rights by the architects of the American Police State. As constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes clear in this week's podcast, Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice.
Mile Markers of Tyranny: Losing Our Freedoms on the Road from 9/11 to COVID-19
September 10, 2020 16:20 - 8 minutes - 11.9 MBYou can map the nearly 20-year journey from the 9/11 attacks to the COVID-19 pandemic by the freedoms we’ve lost along the way. The road we have been traveling has been littered with the wreckage of our once-vaunted liberties, especially those enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. The assaults on our freedoms that began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act laid the groundwork for the eradication of every vital constitutional safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abu...
Since 9/11, the Government’s Answer to Every Problem Has Been More Government
September 07, 2020 19:29 - 8 minutes - 12.3 MBThe history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts. To the police state, this COVID-19 pandemic has been a huge boon, like winning the biggest jackpot in the lottery. Certainly, it will prove to be a windfall for those who profit from government expenditures and expansions. Given the rate at which the government has been devising new ways to sp...
Attack of the Tomato Killers: The Police State’s War on Weed and Backyard Gardens
August 28, 2020 13:29 - 9 minutes - 12.4 MBMerely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a greenhouse on your property, or shopping at a gardening store for gardening supplies—incredibly enough—could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by the courts. In this case, the make-work principle (translation: making work to keep the police state busy at taxpayer expense) is being used to justify sending police and expensive military helicopters likely equipped with sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devices on ex...
The Great Election Fraud: Will Our Freedoms Survive Another Election?
August 20, 2020 16:55 - 8 minutes - 11.7 MBIt’s possible that the next president might be better, but then again, he or she could be far worse. Remember, presidential elections merely serve to maintain the status quo. Once elected president, that person becomes part of the dictatorial continuum that is the American imperial presidency today. If we are to return to a constitutional presidency, “we the people” must recalibrate the balance of power. The only thing that will save us now is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constit...
This Is Amerika: Where Fascism, Totalitarianism and Militarism Go Hand In Hand
August 14, 2020 13:09 - 8 minutes - 11.6 MBThere’s a pattern emerging if you pay close enough attention. Civil discontent leads to civil unrest, which leads to protests and counterprotests. Without fail, what should be an exercise in how to peacefully disagree turns ugly the moment looting, vandalism, violence, intimidation tactics and rioting are introduced into the equation. Instead of restoring order, local police stand down. Tensions rise, violence escalates, and federal armies move in. Coincidence? I think not.
P Is for Predator State: The Building Blocks of Tyranny from A to Z
August 05, 2020 15:07 - 9 minutes - 13.1 MBThe COVID-19 pandemic has been a convenient, traumatic, devastating distraction. While America continues to fixate on the drama-filled reality show scripted by the powers-that-be, directed from the nation’s capital, and played out in high definition across the country, the American Police State has moved steadily forward. Nothing has changed. The American people, the permanent underclass in America, have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses b...
One Nation Under House Arrest: How Do COVID-19 Mandates Impact Our Freedoms?
July 30, 2020 15:59 - 8 minutes - 11.9 MBWe have become one nation under house arrest. You think we’re any different from the Kentucky couple fitted out with ankle monitoring bracelets and forced to quarantine at home? We’re not. Consider what happened to Elizabeth and Isaiah Linscott. Elizabeth took a precautionary diagnostic COVID-19 test before traveling to visit her parents and grandparents in Michigan. It came back positive: Elizabeth was asymptomatic for the novel coronavirus but had no symptoms. Her husband and infant daughte...
The Federal Coup to Overthrow the States and Nix the 10th Amendment Is Underway
July 24, 2020 14:18 - 8 minutes - 11.3 MBThis is a wake-up call. What is unfolding before our very eyes—with police agencies defying local governments in order to tap into the power of federal militarized troops in order to put down domestic unrest—could very quickly snowball into an act of aggression against the states, a coup by armed, militarized agents of the federal government. At a minimum, warns constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead in this week's podcast, this is an attack on the Tenth Amendment, which affirms the sovere...
America, You’ve Been Blacklisted: McCarthyism Refashioned for a New Age
July 16, 2020 14:42 - 8 minutes - 12.3 MBSeventy years after McCarthyism infected the nation with its vitriol, fear-mongering and knee-jerk intolerance, his totalitarian tactics are once again being deployed in a free-for-all attack by those on both the political Left and Right against anyone who, in daring to think for themselves, subscribes to ideas or beliefs that run counter to the government’s or mainstream thought. It doesn’t even seem to matter what the issue is anymore (racism, Confederate monuments, Donald Trump, COVID-19, ...
Tyranny Without a Tyrant: The Deep State’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy Is Working
July 09, 2020 13:01 - 8 minutes - 11.5 MBHow do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none? You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution. As constitu...
America’s Revolutionary Founders Would Be Anti-Government Extremists Today
June 30, 2020 12:00 - 9 minutes - 12.4 MBHad the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants. This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning. Just recently, in fact, Attorney General William Barr announced plans to target, track and surveil ...
Madness: The Summer of Hate Meets the Age of Intolerance
June 25, 2020 14:21 - 9 minutes - 12.6 MBWhat started as a movement to denounce police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of killer cops has become a free-for-all campaign to rid the country of any monument, literal or figurative, to anyone who may have at any time in history expressed a racist thought, exhibited racist behavior, or existed within a racist society. Censoring speech—toppling monuments—kowtowing to political correctness—is not the answer to what ails this nation. As constitutional attorney John...