When the Obama administration’s IRS revealed that it had been targeting the President’s political enemies with unjust scrutiny, effectively weaponizing the agency for political purposes, it came as a great shock, even to some of Obama’s supporters. In the wake of the scandal, left-wing commentator/funny-man Jon Stewart took Obama to task for the damage he had done to the pro-big government narrative, saying that he had, “in one seismic moment, shifted the burden of proof from the tin-foil be-hatted to the government.” Continuing, Stewart said, “In a few short weeks, you’ve managed to show that when the government wants to do good things, your managerial competence falls somewhere between David Brent and a cat chasing a laser pointer. But, when government wants to flex its more malevolent muscles, you’re [expletive] IRON MAN!” Unfortunately for progressives like Stewart (not to mention the rest of us), the IRS scandal was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg for a lawless federal government. In addition to many other scandals in the Obama administration (one’s for which no official has yet to legally answer for), Washington has for years violated the Constitution and targeted the American people for a number of despicable schemes. In the following, we’ll take a look at just a few verified examples where the United States Federal Government targeted those it was created to serve.
Domestic Spying on Americans
Although this has always been strictly illegal and unconstitutional, federal agencies have at times engaged in spying on Americans without due process. In the 1960s, the CIA’s “Operation Chaos” targeted “as many as 7,000 Americans” for surveillance, and the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was legendary for using warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens, but I don’t think Americans really understood the scope of federal domestic spying until it was revealed during the Obama administration that the NSA was collecting data on millions of U.S. citizens. Initially, it was only known that the agency was collecting American’s telephone records, then it was shown that the NSA had tapped into the servers of multiple tech companies such as Facebook and Microsoft. Described by EFF.org as a “massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans,” the program has to some degree been on-going since the George W. Bush administration. Although NSA said they would discontinue such surveillance, it remains a shining example of the federal government’s disdain for the rights of Americans.
U.S. Government Poisoned Alcohol to Discourage Drinking
During prohibition, the federal government had a real problem on its hands: people were ignoring the law and producing/consuming alcohol, despite the new amendment. I imagine it was a tall order, to enforce a law most people find so overreaching it was frequently ignored, and their difficulty was certainly understandable. However, their solution was… unique. One of the geniuses in Washington came up with the novel concept of poisoning shipments of alcohol.
“The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking,” recounted a Slate article on this horrific law enforcement strategy. “Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.”
This wasn’t the first time Washington needlessly caused the deaths of many Americans, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
The Government Conducted Secret Experiments on Americans, Leading to Deaths
In October of 1995, President Bill Clinton made a formal apology on behalf of the United States government for conducting secret experiments on U.S. citizens. In his address, Clinton said:
Thousands of government-sponsored experiments did take place at hospitals, universities, and military bases around our nation… While most of the tests were ethical by any standards, some were unethical, not only by today’s standards, but by the standards of the time in which they were conducted… in too many cases, informed consent was withheld… these experiments were kept secret. And they were shrouded not for a compelling reason of national security, but for the simple fear of embarrassment.
Over the years, the U.S. has conducted a number of experiments on the unwitting. Some are more well-known while others sound straight out of the fever-swamps of conspiracy theorists, but they are nonetheless a matter of public record. For instance, hundreds of Americans from the rural South were recruited for what became known as the Tuskegee Experiment. Lured in with the promise of “free medical care,” instead, the U.S. Public Health Service gave men suffering from syphilis only a placebo. This was done so that researchers could observe the full course of the ailment, and so the subjects needlessly suffered despite treatment being available. According to a History.com article on the matter, “researchers provided no effective care as the men died, went blind or insane or experienced other severe health problems due to their untreated syphilis.” In the end, 128 of the participants died and the disease was also passed along to at least 59 other family members.
Also, In the 1970s, Congress revealed some of the first details about a 20 year secret CIA experiment that began in 1953, known as MK-Ultra. In order to “assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture,” the central intelligence agency decided to test these substances on readily available subjects: Americans. All the participants had no clue they were partaking in experiments that involved not only mind-altering drugs, but also paralytics, prostitution, laced-alcohol, and electroshock therapy. Due to the fact the government destroyed many of the records related to the program, details about it, such as a full accounting of who suffered or died under it (like CIA scientist Frank Olson), are scant. However, one person involved in the program perversely described his experience in running MK-Ultra as being fun, asking, “’Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill and cheat, steal, deceive, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?’”
Additionally, The U.S. government conducted radiation studies on human subjects without their informed consent. During these tests that took place for 30 years, subjects were exposed to life-threatening levels of radiation. An ATI article on practice said the following:
Children and pregnant mothers had been given radioactive food and drink, and soldiers had been marched over radioactive dirt at active [atomic bomb] test sites. In some cases, graves of the dead were robbed to secretly examine the remains of those killed by the studies. Virtually none of these actions were done with consent from the people involved.
As a result of all these medical atrocities, many Americans had their lives cut-short, murdered at the hands of a federal government that justified its actions by the tainted knowledge they hoped to gain. There is only one word appropriate enough to describe Washington’s actions here: evil.
Joint Chiefs Suggested Staging Attacks in America to Blame it on a Foreign Power
The word False Flag is a term that has been in growing use these days. The idea that the government engages in creating fake crises to create the conditions for preferred political change has as many believers as there are those that downplay the notion. However, in 1997, the real possibility of such scenarios was revealed when the government declassified a memo to President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense recommending that the U.S. stage attacks on Americans and American persons as a pretext to war with Cuba.
Under the 1962 plan, the government considered schemes such as faking an attack on U.S. assets at Gitmo, staging assassination attempts on Cuban exiles in the U.S. (with the goal of wounding them), sinking a refugee boat from Cuba, staging a Cuban airstrike on a U.S. passenger jet, and others besides. All of these propositions were risky to the life or safety of American persons in an unscrupulous bid to rally international and domestic support behind an invasion of the island. To his Credit, President Kennedy rejected the plan, but the fact that it was ever seriously suggested makes one wonder at what other federal criminal conspiracies have led to like suggestions. For that matter, how many similar plans were executed?
Conclusion
I could go on, but I think the point is clear. The United States government was founded by men who knew that a free people require a limited government to safeguard their liberty. Sadly, since that time, and occasionally with the myopic cooperation of the people of the Union, we’ve allowed Washington out of the box the founders created for it. Some had good motivations, others not so much, but the effect was the same: the power illegitimately created would eventually be used against us.
Unfortunately, the cancer of the federal government is so metastasized that it’s impossible to cut it out. Under this blanket of secrecy and unaccountability, such things will continue to happen. In fact, it’s become so bad that polls now hold that only 18% of Americans “trust the government in Washington to do what is right.” Under such a state of distrust and sordid history of abuse, it’s time to admit that Washington has outlived its legitimacy along with its purpose: to safeguard the life and liberty of its citizens. Now, it represents one of the biggest threats to the same.
Each American State needs to carefully re-examine its relationship with the Union to determine whether their needs are best served as a member or else declare Washington in breach, and the social-contract void. However, in the light of the systemic horrors perpetrated on us by our federal government, in a long corrupt history, it’s difficult to imagine that the informed conclusion would be anything other than the imperative need to separate.
