In John Whitehead’s chilling new book, “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,” there is a photo of a young Rev. Martin Luther King being arrested by two police officers. The photo is not unusual for the era of the Civil Rights Movement, and we are now decades removed from the incident.
Yet it is jarring when one thinks on it for a moment: An American citizen, peacefully protesting legitimate injustice, is hauled off to jail. In the classic human justification, it happened to “him.”
This is the essence of Whitehead’s book, and the fairly famous libertarian exposes a growing police state in this country that is flat-out scary. That doesn’t mean we should avert our eyes, however – just the opposite.
An interesting quote that opens Chapter 10 (“Dominate. Intimidate. Control.”) comes from passengers’ rights advocate Kate Hanni: “They’re trying to scare the pants off the American people that we need these things. … Fear is a commodity, and they’re selling it. The more they can sell it, the more we buy into it. When American people are afraid, they will accept anything.”
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