We're Losing Our Freedom and Our Choices: Has the Constitution Been Effectively 'Terminated'?

Statistics and polling show that your world is shrinking, and not in a good way. Not only are basic freedoms under siege, but economic choices that many of us took for granted are slowly being taken away.  

When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, there was a wave of optimism and excitement that freedom had been unleashed, and there would be no going back to totalitarianism. 

But along the way, something went wrong. 

The Stats Don't Lie: Freedom Has Been in Decline

Global studies show that for most of the world, freedom has been in decline for many years. Add to that an economy consolidating under larger companies with consumers seeing their purchasing choices restricted. 

There was once a sense that freedom was winning and expanding across the globe. Now the future is looking less free, with fewer rights and fewer choices about how we live our lives.

Christian civil liberties attorney John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute takes the radical view that the Constitution has been effectively terminated because so much of it is now regularly ignored.  

'SWAT Nation': A Standing Army on U.S. Soil?

He says the many heavily armed government agencies and local police forces constitute a standing army on US soil, ready to raid homes in violation of the fourth amendment.  

"The IRS has 4,500 guns, 5 million rounds of ammunition," Whitehead said. "The Veterans Administration has 11 million rounds of ammo. The Department of Health and Human Services, believe it or not, has 4 million rounds of ammo. The Social Security Administration has 800,000 rounds of ammo for their special agents and guns." 

Even NASA has a SWAT Team. Since 1980, SWAT raids have risen from 3,000 a year to 80,000. 

"Why do a lot of our police have to have grenade launchers and the MRAPs, which are tanks on tires, in communities of 5,000 people?" Whitehead asks," The Fourth Amendment's dead."

No Free Speech if Someone's Feelings Are Hurt

The First Amendment, which was intended to protect speech the majority doesn't like, no longer prevents people from being censored, canceled, de-platformed, or even de-banked.

A Qualtrics study found that most Americans under the age of 30 favor censorship if free speech hurts someone's feelings. 

"Freedom of religion, freedom of association, all the First Amendment freedoms, they are overwhelmingly intolerant of these freedoms, said Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option. "They do not want to support free speech, freedom of religion, or anything like that if the exercise of those freedoms stands to hurt a vulnerable minority."

And the FBI continues to illegally spy on Americans, including politicians, another violation of the Fourth Amendment. 

It's Not Your Imagination-Consumer Choices Are Being Restricted 

Not only is liberty under siege, our economic choices are narrowing. A study by the University of Chicago shows the growing dominance of large corporations over small businesses in many sectors of the economy.

Small business optimism is now at its lowest point in ten years. Nearly two in five small businesses could not pay their rent in May. 

Consumers are having choices taken away from them, especially if the product they want runs on fossil fuel, mainly because those in power support the belief in a man-made climate emergency.  

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Energy analyst Dr. Marlo Lewis accuses Washington of trying to regulate the fossil fuel industry out of the economy.  

"This has put a big damper on capital investment in oil companies and natural gas companies. it's also made it very difficult for a coal company in particular, but even for a natural gas company to get a substantial loan from the banks," Lewis said.

Driving energy costs up and the reliability of the nation's power grid, down. 

One-Third of Americans Would Like a Dictator

A Penn State poll found that most Americans believe they have lost more personal freedoms in the past 10 years than they have gained, while another survey found that one-third of Americans think having "a strong leader who doesn't have to bother with Congress or elections would be a good system of government." 

One of the forces behind the fall of the Iron Curtain and a leader of the Czech Velvet Revolution, Jaroslav Flidr, told CBN News he never expected the Free World to turn out like this, and said he's especially upset that many Americans seem okay with a loss of rights when it's used against their political enemies. 

Flidr said, "People whose rights are being removed, they really do not perceive it that way. That's why they sometimes actually almost see it as a benefit. It's a beneficial process because sometimes these rights are taken from people they don't like and they applaud it. And in situations like that I always tell them, 'Yeah, it might be actually pleasing now. Just wait until you are the object of this process when your rights are violated. When it's done to you, you won't find it as much fun as you're finding it now.'"

Whitehead warns, "The average American has basically given up their rights. I mean they're violated every way across. And unfortunately, because we don't exercise them, we're losing them."