{"id":46564,"date":"2019-06-08T05:54:33","date_gmt":"2019-06-08T10:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46564"},"modified":"2019-06-08T05:54:33","modified_gmt":"2019-06-08T10:54:33","slug":"youre-under-arrest-how-the-police-state-muzzles-our-right-to-speak-truth-to-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46564","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019re Under Arrest: How the Police State Muzzles Our Right to Speak Truth to Power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rutherford.org\/publications_resources\/john_whiteheads_commentary\/youre_under_arrest_how_the_police_state_muzzles_our_right_to_speak_truth_to_power\">You\u2019re Under Arrest: How the Police State Muzzles Our Right to Speak Truth to Power<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201cHistory shows that governments sometimes seek to regulate our lives finely, acutely, thoroughly, and exhaustively. In our own time and place, criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something. If the state could use these laws not for their intended purposes but to silence those who voice unpopular ideas, little would be left of our First Amendment liberties, and little would separate us from the tyrannies of the past or the malignant fiefdoms of our own age.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/casetext.com\/case\/nieves-v-bartlett-1\">The freedom to speak without risking arrest is \u2018one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation.\u2019<\/a>\u201d\u2014Justice Neil Gorsuch, dissenting,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/casetext.com\/case\/nieves-v-bartlett-1\"><em>Nieves v. Bartlett<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;(2019)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>What the First Amendment protects\u2014and a healthy constitutional republic requires\u2014are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don\u2019t talk back, don\u2019t challenge government authority, don\u2019t speak out against government misconduct, and don\u2019t step out of line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those who refuse to meekly accept the heavy-handed tyranny of the police state, the danger is all too real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We live in an age in which \u201cwe the people\u201d are at the mercy of militarized, weaponized, immunized cops who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to \u201cserve and protect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As such, those who seek to exercise their First Amendment rights during encounters with the police are increasingly finding that there is no such thing as freedom of speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019re Under Arrest: How the Police State Muzzles Our Right to Speak Truth to Power \u201cHistory shows that governments sometimes seek to regulate our lives finely, acutely, thoroughly, and exhaustively. In our own time and place, criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2703,6420,635,6300],"class_list":["post-46564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-free-speech","tag-john-whitehead","tag-police-state","tag-the-rutherford-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46565,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46564\/revisions\/46565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}