What if?

What if?
The Judge ponders whether elections are simply means of social control and what “public opinion” actually tells us about what free people think.

What if Freedom Were Temporary?

What if our rights didn’t come from God or from our humanity, but from the government? What if the government really thinks we’re not unique individuals with immortal souls, but just public property? What if we were only entitled to our natural rights if it pleased the government? What if our rights could be stripped away whenever the government considers us to be its enemy?

What if this could all be accomplished with the consent of the people? What if the people’s own representatives subverted the Constitution? What if the people were so afraid that they accepted the subversion? What if the government demonizes an external enemy and uses fear of that enemy to suppress our freedoms? What if people are afraid to protest?

What if the government knows this, and thus chooses enemies that are easily demonized, whether they pose real threats or not? What if threats become imminent dangers precisely because the government allowed them to happen? What if government scapegoating of an external enemy is as old as the government itself? What if the government has used scapegoating again and again to scare people into giving up their freedoms voluntarily? What if the government has relied on this to perform the same magical disappearing-freedom act time and again throughout history?

What if the government could lock you up and throw you in jail indefinitely? …. What if the government’s goal was to be rid of all who disagreed with it? …. What if the real war was a war of misinformation? What if the government constructs its own reality in order to suit its own agenda? What if civil liberties don’t mean anything to the government? … What if the government is always the greatest threat to freedom because only the government can constitute a monopoly on the use of force? What if, in fact, at its essence, government is simply a monopoly of force? … What if those who traded liberty for safety ended up in internment camps? What if the greatest threat to freedom was not any outfit of thugs in some cave in a far-off land, but an organized force here at home? What if that organized force broke its own law