MK3 BLOG

MKitch3|Sept. 23,2325

“When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”  
 -Thomas Jefferson

Every generation of Americans swore it would never happen here. Tyranny was something our ancestors fought to throw off, not something we’d ever embrace. But here we are, surveilled and regulated, treated like suspects by our own government. What changed? Everything. And it didn’t happen overnight. This is a post that came out of my white paper on the subject.

The Founders’ Blueprint

America was born in rebellion against a king who taxed, surveilled, and sent soldiers to knock on doors. The Bill of Rights was supposed to keep that nightmare from returning. Free speech, private property, the right to bear arms, the guarantee that no soldier or bureaucrat could barge into your life without cause—those were meant to be permanent guardrails.

It didn’t take long to start breaking them. The Alien & Sedition Acts (1798) literally made criticizing the government illegal. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, locking up Americans without trial. Cracks formed almost immediately.

Government’s Growth Addiction

Crisis became the permanent excuse. The Civil War gave us income tax and centralized federal power. The Progressive Era gave us the IRS, Federal Reserve, and FBI. FDR’s New Deal locked in a federal managerial state that never shrank back. Each step was sold as “temporary.” None of it was.

Birth of the Police State

Prohibition turned ordinary Americans into criminals. Federal agents stormed homes, raided bars, and perfected surveillance tactics.

By the 1960s, the FBI was running COINTELPRO, spying on civil rights leaders and antiwar activists. Martin Luther King Jr. was wiretapped and harassed by his own government.

Then came the War on Drugs. SWAT teams, civil asset forfeiture, mass incarceration—it all became normal. The courts shrugged and gave police qualified immunity, making them nearly untouchable.

The 9/11 Jackpot

If you were in Washington on September 12, 2001, you had a golden ticket. Politicians rushed the Patriot Act into law, and suddenly secret courts, mass surveillance, and indefinite detention were standard operating procedure.

The Department of Homeland Security was created, the TSA became permanent, and the NSA quietly built a surveillance system that made East Germany’s Stasi look like amateurs. Local police got armored vehicles and battlefield rifles. By the time Ferguson erupted in 2014, America’s cops looked more like an occupying army than public servants.

COVID and the Emergency State

If 9/11 built the hardware, COVID-19 installed the software. Americans were confined to their homes under threat of arrest. Businesses were shuttered by decree. Speech questioning the rules was censored online. Vaccine passports and contact tracing apps were rolled out like beta tests for a digital permission system.

For the first time, it became obvious: government no longer needed war or terrorism to justify emergency powers. Public health worked just fine.

From Liberty to Permission

The cultural shift might be the most dangerous part. The founders assumed government must always justify its power. Today, the expectation has flipped. Citizens are forced to justify their freedom. Want to travel, work, or even speak online? Prove you have permission.

The Timeline of Tyranny

• 1798: Alien & Sedition Acts criminalize dissent.
• 1861: Lincoln suspends habeas corpus.
• 1917: Espionage Act punishes antiwar speech.
• 1933: New Deal locks in permanent bureaucracy.
• 1971: War on Drugs militarizes policing.
• 2001: Patriot Act launches mass surveillance.
• 2020: COVID lockdowns confine Americans in their own homes.

Where We’re Headed

America has become what it once resisted: a heavily surveilled, heavily policed society where the rule of law is too often the rule of fear. The infrastructure for tyranny already exists—databases, cameras, drones, militarized police forces. All it needs is the next “emergency” to tighten the screws.

The choice now is simple. Reclaim the founder’s suspicion of government, or learn to live inside a digital cage disguised as democracy.

MKitch3|Sept 20,2025

This post continues the thread I began in an earlier article, Principles of Tyranny. Part of the inspiration for this addition comes from the Tenth Amendment Center. I’m going to keep hammering on the theme of tyranny, because it’s not a subject that can be brushed off in a single essay. Future posts will dig even deeper, each one adding more detail and context.

It’s an essential topic—one that every American should be well-versed in and ready to call out wherever it rears its head.

The Partisan Road to Tyranny: George Washington’s Fatal Prediction

George Washington’s Fatal Warning and Prediction

“A frightful despotism.”

George Washington knew what was coming. His Farewell Address, published on September 19, 1796 in the American Daily Advertiser, wasn’t just a retirement notice. It was a dire warning against things like skyrocketing debt and entangling foreign alliances.

But his sharpest, most prophetic warnings were about political parties and the constant fight for power they would unleash, a fight that could only end in total tyranny

A WARNING FOR THE AGES

Washington saw political parties as such a great threat because they were the most dangerous expression of a deeper poison: the mindset of putting party loyalty above all else.

“Let me now take a more comprehensive view, & warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party, generally.”

He argued this partisan instinct, while a universal human trait, gets supercharged in a republic where it grows to its most extreme and destructive form.

“This spirit, unfortunately, is inseperable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human Mind. It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controuled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.”

This mentality inevitably turns politics into an endless cycle of weaponized power and revenge that creates a “frightful despotism.”

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

This chaotic warfare between factions is just a temporary phase, a prelude to something far worse: a stable and permanent tyranny.

“But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”

Washington saw the endgame clearly: a population suffering from constant strife will see a dictator not as a threat, but as a welcome relief.

“The disorders & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”

THE DAILY DAMAGE

Washington saw two threats: immediate and long-term. Permanent despotism lay far ahead in the future. But the daily rot of partisanship was the immediate disease paving the road to get there.

“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common & continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to discourage and restrain it.”

He laid out the specific consequences: a government that can’t function (don’t threaten us with a good time!), a public poisoned by paranoia, and mobs in the streets.

“It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot & insurrection.”

Worse, he warned that these internal divisions act as an open invitation for foreign enemies to corrupt the entire system.

“It opens the door to foreign influence & corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country, are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

FUEL FOR THE FIRE

Washington conceded a critical point: under a king, political factions can act as a useful check on absolute power.

“There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true—and in Governments of a Monarchical cast Patriotism may look with endulgence, if not with favour, upon the spirit of party.”

But in a republic, he argued, that same spirit is not a check on power; it’s gasoline poured on a fire.

“But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate & assuage it. A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.”

He then connected the dots. The partisan firefight inevitably tempts the winners to ignore the Constitution and consolidate power.

“It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution, in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism.”

WEAPON AGAINST FREEDOM

Washington built his case for the Constitution’s design on a brutally honest assessment of human nature: people are addicted to power and gladly abuse it.

“A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”

Because of this, he argued that guarding these boundaries is just as important as drawing them.

“The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power; by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, & constituting each the Guardian of the Public Weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient & modern; some of them in our country & under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them.”

Washington pointed to the amendment process as the legal way to change things. Don’t like how power is divided? Use the process. It’s also a reminder that the people are in charge, not the government.

“If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.”

But he warned that ignoring the rules to achieve a short-term goal – no matter how noble it seems – is the classic tool of tyrants: a weapon to destroy freedom.

“But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

THE BRUTAL TRUTH

The largest government in the history of the world loves it when the people fight among themselves.

This creates a vicious feedback loop. The bigger the power in government, the more vicious the fight to control it. And the more vicious the fight, the more power people demand the government take to restore order.

It’s the exact cycle Washington warned would produce a “frightful” and “permanent despotism.”

The end result? “The ruins of public liberty.”

These are George Washington’s farewell warnings that almost everyone ignores today – and if we don’t heed them, the worst is yet to come.