05/18/2015
In this potent follow-up to A Government of Wolves (2013), Whitehead, a constitutional attorney and the president of the Rutherford Institute, continues to investigate what he sees as an increasingly aggressive, fascistic America that the founding fathers would find offensive. Whitehead's scathing tone—matched in the foreword from former congressman Ron Paul—can be heavy-handed and strident, but he presents the U.S. government as "a hyper-militarized, twitchy, easily offended, suspicious, locked down, paranoid, all-seeing bureaucracy" that uses fear and paranoia to reduce civil liberties in a calculated post-9/11 scam of terrorism and national security. He uses the responses of heavily armed police forces to recent incidents—including the Boston Marathon bombing and the protests in Ferguson, Mo.—as indicators of an occupying army, but his constant comparisons to Hitler's Germany fail in terms of making a coherent argument against Big Brother's dismantling of basic freedoms. Whitehead scores points when addressing needed reforms in the court system, education, and individual rights to privacy. Following his literary forebears such as Orwell and Huxley, he warns: "Either we gather together now and attempt to restore freedom or all will be lost." Detailed and provocative, yet repetitive, Whitehead's call to take the U.S. back before civil liberties vanish mostly rises above boilerplate rhetoric and hysteria. (Apr.)
Battlefield America: The War on the American People
Narrated by Eric G. Dove
John W. WhiteheadUnabridged — 8 hours, 1 minutes
Battlefield America: The War on the American People
Narrated by Eric G. Dove
John W. WhiteheadUnabridged — 8 hours, 1 minutes
Overview
In Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the follow-up to his award-winning book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead paints a terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself and which is on the verge of undermining the basic freedoms guaranteed to the citizenry in the Constitution. Indeed, police have been transformed into extensions of the military, towns and cities have become battlefields, and the American people have been turned into enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.
Yet this police state did not come about overnight. As Whitehead notes, this shift into totalitarianism cannot be traced back to a single individual or event. Rather, the evolution has been so subtle that most American citizens were hardly even aware of it taking place. Yet little by little, police authority expanded, one weapon after another was added to the police arsenal, and one exception after another was made to the standards that have historically restrained police authority. Add to this mix the merger of Internet megacorporations with government intelligence agencies, and you have the making of an electronic concentration camp that not only sees the citizenry as databits but will attempt to control every aspect of their lives. And if someone dares to step out of line, they will most likely find an armed SWAT team at their door.
Editorial Reviews
"I challenge anyone to read this book and then try to sleep. I found that impossible."
Hon. Andrew P. Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News Channel, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School
John Whitehead is freedom's defense lawyer. He'll never give up, and neither must we.—Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., author and chairman of Mises Institute
In his compelling book Battlefield America, John W. Whitehead describes the danger posed to liberty and humanity itself by the control impulse of government and technology.—Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary, US Treasury, and former Wall Street Journal columnist and editor
Once again, John W. Whitehead shows himself to be a thorough reporter, an insightful scholar and a tireless defender of the Constitution. Battlefield America is the most penetrating, eye-opening proof to date of the imperialist government’s desecration of our constitutional personal liberties.—Nat Hentoff, syndicated columnist and historian
Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead makes a compelling and urgent case in Battlefield America for Americans to unite under one common goal: the defense of our freedoms.—Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU and constitutional law professor at New York Law School
The very fact that books like this can still be written and published shows that we have not lost all our freedoms. John Whitehead’s work should motivate us all to redouble our efforts to reclaim our freedoms.—from the foreword by Ron Paul, twelve-term U.S. congressman and former presidential candidate
05/15/2015
Attorney Whitehead (A Government of Wolves), founder of the civil liberties and human rights not-for-profit Rutherford Institute, offers here commentary on various ways in which the government is encroaching upon our rights. Describing everything from police no-knock raids to the enormous data-gathering machine revealed by Edward Snowden, Whitehead makes many valid points (as does the foreword by Ron Paul) that are backed up by examples and extensive notes. Some readers will find his tone too strident and his examples one sided, however; for example, while some elderly victims of mistaken police raids are named, references to Ferguson, MO, fail to mention Michael Brown and focus instead on citizen protests. The book's conclusion, too, is overblown. Describing how German citizens claimed not to know what was happening as the Nazis came to power and ultimately developed horrors such as the gas chambers, Whitehead, referring to the current state of our country, finishes with "The path to the baths, so to speak, is being constructed." VERDICT Most citizens will find something here to agree with and that will spur them to further vigilance about their civil liberties, but the book's tone will work best with very conservative patrons.—Henrietta Verma, Library Journal
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169643213 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Brilliance Audio |
| Publication date: | 07/07/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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