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.

Recent findings reveal that the FBI's claim that only 3.7 percent of active shooters are stopped by law-abiding gun owners is entirely false.

The FBI failed to properly record instances where law-abiding citizens stopped violent shooters, leading to false reports that "good guys with guns" have no effect on stopping violent criminals, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center.

The FBI's data, which claimed that only 14 of 374 active shooters were stopped by armed citizens between 2014 and 2024, undercounted shootings by a staggering 561 incidents. When those excluded cases are applied to the dataset, it reveals more than 202 instances where law-abiding gun owners stopped an active shooter.

This updated dataset takes the FBI's original statistic—which claims only 3.7 percent of active shooters were stopped by armed citizens—and raises the real number to 36 percent. If "gun-free zones," a misguided policy that assumes criminals will obey a metal sign, are excluded from the data, over 52 percent of active shooters are stopped by law-abiding gun owners.

Cooking the Books or Just Plain Old Incompetence?

The large disparity between the Crime Prevention Research Center's data and the FBI's statistics raises major concerns, as accurate information is essential for shaping policy and providing a true picture of gun ownership in America.

After all, gun control remains a central issue in many political races, and the policies implemented directly affect the Second Amendment rights of everyday Americans.

"The cascading effect is incredibly deleterious," said former U.S. Justice Department official Theo Wold. "When the Bureau gets it so systematically wrong, it shapes the entire national debate."

So why is there such a large disparity?

Alongside the 561 omitted incidents and the inclusion of "gun free" zones, the report found the FBI mislabeled numerous events, and in many cases, simply listed civilians as "security guards." 

For example, the FBI had classified the 2019 church shooting in White Settlement, Texas—where a parishioner shot and killed the gunman—as an incident where the shooter was apprehended by a security guard.

The Crime Prevention Research Center further noted that the FBI excluded some cases it labels "domestic disputes" or "retaliation murders" from its data about civilians stopping active shooters. The group also found that armed bystanders who thwarted attacks were not counted if the suspect fled the scene.

Shaping the Narrative with Bad Data

A simple Google search about active shooters being stopped by law-abiding gun owners brings up numerous studies claiming to “debunk” the idea that honest citizens can play a role in protecting society—but the real data shows they are completely wrong.

These studies, funded by "progressive" donorsand promoted by gun control groups, also ignore evidence showing that gun control has little to no effect on criminals. Instead, it creates an environment that restricts responsible citizens while giving violent criminals an easier playing field.

In recent years, the Left has weaponized fear about firearms to mobilize concerned voters. Regardless of the real data, it is imperative that they control the narrative while they push towards total disarmament—or as they tell everyone "gun violence' prevention.

Alongside "progressive" studies, mainstream media outlets continue to label the "good guy" as an uncommon occurrence.

Headlines show this framing: 

• "Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander" (Associated Press); 
• "Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting" (Washington Post); 
• and "After Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence" (New York Times).

Only You Can Prevent Active Shooters

Policies such as "gun-free zones" assign blame to the firearm itself rather than the individual responsible for pulling the trigger. These policies create defenseless environments, allowing large groups of citizens to gather without any means of protection—and voters know this.

According to a 2022 Trafalgar Group poll, 42 percent of voters said that armed citizens were the best defense against mass shootings, while only 25 percent said it was local police. 

The Crime Prevention Research Center study confirms that such areas are prime targets for active shooters. Recall that excluding "gun-free zones" from the data raises successful defensive action by gun owners from 36 percent to 52 percent.

Other forms of gun control—such as purchasing restrictions, background checks, and magazine capacity limits—also place a heavier burden on law-abiding gun owners, as the FBI’s own data confirms that criminals do not obtain firearms legally.

A 2019 FBI study showed that only seven percent of crimes committed with a firearm involved legally purchased guns. Half of all offenders had stolen the firearm, while 43 percent had purchased it from underground or black-market vendors.

The results of gun control leave law-abiding citizens open to senseless violence, but they also turn our schools into major targets. Allowing teachers to carry firearms adds a layer of rapid protection that children deserve. 

The FBI reports that most active threat events—including mass shootings—are over within five minutes. Yet it takes law enforcement betweenfive and 10 minutes (at best) to respond to a shooting. 

The situation is even more dire for rural schoolsthat could be left stranded for over 20 minutes waiting for police response. 

Honorable, well-trained, law-abiding teachers can effectively fill that gap and save countless lives—but it's important that Americans know the true statistics if protective policies are going to be implemented.

Holding the FBI Accountable

The FBI should be a trusted source of information, but time and time again the data it presents to the public fails to reflect the reality of what is truly happening in the United States.

In 2024, Restoration News conducted a deep dive into crime across the country and found that the FBI had severely underreported the surging crime wave—even making it appear as though crime was trending downward. States like California, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Virginiasaw major increases in murder, violent assault, and human trafficking between 2019 and 2023—but the FBI said all was well.

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

— Voltarine de Cleyre

Definition of tyranny

Tyranny is usually thought of as cruel and oppressive, and it often is, but the original definition of the term was rule by persons who lack legitimacy, whether they be malign or benevolent. Historically, benign tyrannies have tended to be insecure, and to try to maintain their power by becoming increasingly oppressive. Therefore, rule that initially seems benign is inherently dangerous, and the only security is to maintain legitimacy — an unbroken accountability to the people through the framework of a written constitution that provides for election of key officials and the division of powers among branches and officials in a way that avoids concentration of powers in the hands of a few persons who might then abuse those powers.

Tyranny is an important phenomenon that operates by principles by which it can be recognized in its early emerging stages, and, if the people are vigilant, prepared, and committed to liberty, countered before it becomes entrenched.

The psychology of tyranny

Perhaps one of the things that most distinguishes those with a fascist mentality from most other persons is how they react in situations that engender feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Both kinds of people will tend to seek to increase their power, that is, their control over the outcome of events, but those with a fascist mindset tend to overestimate the amount of influence over outcomes that it is possible to attain. This leads to behavior that often brings them to positions of leadership or authority, especially if most other persons in their society tend to underestimate the influence over outcomes they can attain, and are inclined to yield to those who project confidence in what they can do and promise more than anyone can deliver.

This process is aided by a common susceptibility which might be called the rooster syndrome, from the old saying, "They give credit to the rooster crowing for the rising of the sun." It arises from the tendency of people guided more by hope or fear than intelligence to overestimate the power of their leaders and attribute to them outcomes, either good or bad, to which the leaders contributed little if anything, and perhaps even acted to prevent or reduce. This comes from the inability of most persons to understand complex dynamic systems and their long-term behavior, which leads people to attribute effects to proximate preceding events instead of actual long-term causes.

The emergence of tyranny therefore begins with challenges to a group, develops into general feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, and falls into a pattern in which some individuals assume the role of "father" to the others, who willingly submit to becoming dependent "children" of such persons if only they are reassured that a more favorable outcome will be realized. This pattern of co-dependency is pathological, and generally results in decision-making of poor quality that makes the situation even worse, but, because the pattern is pathological, instead of abandoning it, the co-dependents repeat their inappropriate behavior to produce a vicious spiral that, if not interrupted, can lead to total breakdown of the group and the worst of the available outcomes.

In psychiatry, this syndrome is often discussed as an "authoritarian personality disorder". In common parlance, as being a "control freak".

The logic of tyranny

In Orwell's classic fable, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the protagonist Winston Smith makes a key statement:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Following the trial of the surviving Branch Davidians in San Antonio, Texas, in March, 1994, in which a misinstructed jury acquitted all the defendants of the main crimes with which they were charged, but convicted them of the enhancements of using firearms in the commission of a crime, the federal judge, Walter F. Smith, first dismissed the charges, correctly, on the grounds that it is logically impossible to be guilty of an enhancement if one is innocent of the crime. However, under apparent political pressure, he subsequently reversed his own ruling and sentenced the defendants to maximum terms as though they had been convicted of the main crimes, offering the comment, "The law doesn't have to be logical."

No. The law does have to be logical. Otherwise it is not law. It is arbitrary rule by force.

Now by "logical" what is meant is two-valued logic, which is sometimes also called Boolean, Aristotelian or Euclidean logic. In other words, a system of propositions within which a statement and its negation cannot both be true or valid. One of the two must be false or invalid. The two possible values are true and false, and every meaningful proposition can be assigned one or the other value.

A system of law is a body of prescriptive, as opposed to descriptive, propositions, that support the making of decisions, and therefore its logic must be two-valued. It is a fundamental principle of law that like cases must be decided alike, and this means according to propositions that exclude their contradictions.

It is also a fundamental principle of logic that any system of propositions that accepts both a statement and its negation as valid, that is, which accepts a contradiction, accepts all contradictions, and provides no basis for deciding among them. If decisions are made, they are not made on the basis of the propositions, but are arbitrary, and that is the definition of the rule of men, as opposed to the rule of law.

So what Winston Smith is saying is that freedom means being able to distinguish between a true proposition and a false one, and what his nemesis O'Brien therefore does to crush him is make him accept that "2 + 2 = 5", which cannot be true if the logic is Aristotelian. O'Brien represents the logic of arbitrary power, a "logic" we might call Orwellian, although Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, was strongly opposed to it.

The methodology of tyranny

The methods used to overthrow a constitutional order and establish a tyranny are well-known. However, despite this awareness, it is surprising how those who have no intention of perpetrating a tyranny can slip into these methods and bring about a tyranny despite their best intentions. Tyranny does not have to be deliberate. Tyrants can fool themselves as thoroughly as they fool everyone else.

Control of public information and opinion

It begins with withholding information, and leads to putting out false or misleading information. A government can develop ministries of propaganda under many guises. They typically call it "public information" or "marketing".

Vote fraud used to prevent the election of reformers

It doesn't matter which of the two major party candidates are elected if no real reformer can get nominated, and when news services start knowing the outcomes of elections before it is possible for them to know, then the votes are not being honestly counted.

Undue official influence on trials and juries

Nonrandom selection of jury panels, exclusion of those opposed to the law, exclusion of the jury from hearing argument on the law, exclusion of private prosecutors from access to the grand jury, and prevention of parties and their counsels from making effective arguments or challenging the government.

Usurpation of undelegated powers

This is usually done with popular support for solving some problem, or to redistribute wealth to the advantage of the supporters of the dominant faction, but it soon leads to the deprivation of rights of minorities and individuals.

Seeking a government monopoly on the capability and use of armed force

The first signs are efforts to register or restrict the possession and use of firearms, initially under the guise of "protecting" the public, which, when it actually results in increased crime, provides a basis for further disarmament efforts affecting more people and more weapons.

Militarization of law enforcement

Declaring a "war on crime" that becomes a war on civil liberties. Preparation of military forces for internal policing duties.

Infiltration and subversion of citizen groups that could be forces for reform

Internal spying and surveillance is the beginning. A sign is false prosecutions of their leaders.

Suppression of investigators and whistleblowers

When people who try to uncover high level wrongdoing are threatened, that is a sign the system is not only riddled with corruption, but that the corruption has passed the threshold into active tyranny.

Use of the law for competition suppression

It begins with the dominant faction winning support by paying off their supporters and suppressing their supporters' competitors, but leads to public officials themselves engaging in illegal activities and using the law to suppress independent competitors. A good example of this is narcotics trafficking.

Subversion of internal checks and balances

This involves the appointment to key positions of persons who can be controlled by their sponsors, and who are then induced to do illegal things. The worst way in which this occurs is in the appointment of judges that will go along with unconstitutional acts by the other branches.

Creation of a class of officials who are above the law

This is indicated by dismissal of charges for     wrongdoing against persons who are "following orders".

Increasing dependency of the people on government

The classic approach to domination of the people is to first take everything they have away from them, then make them compliant with the demands of the rulers to get anything back again.

Increasing public ignorance of their civic duties and reluctance to perform them

When the people avoid doing things like voting and serving in militias and juries, tyranny is not far behind.

Use of staged events to produce popular support

Acts of terrorism, blamed on political opponents, followed immediately with well-prepared proposals for increased powers and budgets for suppressive agencies. Sometimes called a Reichstag plot.

Conversion of rights into privileges

Requiring licenses and permits for doing things that the government does not have the delegated power to restrict, except by due process in which the burden of proof is on the petitioner.

Political correctness

Many if not most people are susceptible to being recruited to engage in repressive actions against disfavored views or behaviors, and led to pave the way for the dominance of tyrannical government.

Avoiding tyranny

The key is always to detect tendencies toward tyranny and suppress them before they go too far or become too firmly established. The people must never acquiesce in any violation of the Constitution. Failure to take corrective action early will only mean that more severe measures will have to be taken later, perhaps with the loss of life and the disruption of the society in ways from which recovery may take centuries.

The only honorable course for a citizen is to conduct his life as though the Constitution, as originally understood, is in full force and effect, and if and when that brings him into conflict with public agents, to take a firm stance in opposition to their usurpations, regardless of consequences to himself, to them, or to others. Maintaining the Constitution, in every particular, is more important than human lives, even millions of them, if it should come to a choice. Individuals die. The Constitution needs to live for as long as one human remains alive, and perhaps even beyond that. 

— Jon Roland, 2003