{"id":123823,"date":"2014-06-11T15:14:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T15:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=123823"},"modified":"2014-06-11T15:14:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T15:14:07","slug":"anyone-trust-government-kills-maims-tortures-lies-spies-cheats-treats-citizens-like-criminals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/anyone-trust-government-kills-maims-tortures-lies-spies-cheats-treats-citizens-like-criminals\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Should Anyone Trust a Government That Kills, Maims, Tortures, Lies, Spies, Cheats, and Treats Its Citizens Like Criminals?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #000000;\" align=\"left\"><em>John W. Whitehead <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\" align=\"left\">Why should anyone trust a government that kills, maims, tortures, lies, spies, cheats, and treats its own citizens like criminals? For that matter, why should anyone trust a government utterly lacking in transparency, whose actions give rise to more troubling questions than satisfactory answers, and whose domestic policies are dictated more by paranoia than need?<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\" align=\"left\">Unfortunately, \u201cwe the people\u201d have become so trusting, so gullible, so easily distracted, so out-of-touch, so compliant and so indoctrinated on the idea that our government will always do the right thing by us that we have ignored the warning signs all around us, or at least failed to recognize them as potential red flags.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\" align=\"left\">As I point out in my book\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1590799755\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1590799755&amp;link\"><em>A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State<\/em><\/a><\/span>, the consequences of this failure on both our parts\u2013the citizenry\u2019s and the government\u2019s\u2013to do our due diligence in asking the right questions, demanding satisfactory answers, and holding our government officials accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law has pushed us to the brink of a nearly intolerable state of affairs. Intolerable, at least, to those who remember what it was like to live in a place where freedom, due process and representative government actually meant something. (Remember that the people of Stalin\u2019s Soviet Union and Hitler\u2019s Germany also failed to ask questions, demand answers, and hold their government officials accountable until it was too late, and we know how that turned out.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\" align=\"left\">There\u2019s certainly no shortage of issues about which we should be asking questions of our government representatives, demanding truthful answers, and subsequently insisting on changes within our government. Keep in mind, however, that the government has mastered the art of evasion. Thus, it\u2019s not enough to ask the questions. We need to demand answers, and when those answers aren\u2019t forthcoming\u2013either because a government official claims to not \u201cknow\u201d or because it\u2019s outside his or her jurisdiction\u2013we need to demand that they find out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\" align=\"left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rutherford.org\/publications_resources\/john_whiteheads_commentary\/why_should_anyone_trust_a_government_that_kills_maims_tortures_lies_sp\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John W. Whitehead Why should anyone trust a government that kills, maims, tortures, lies, spies, cheats, and treats its own citizens like criminals? For that matter, why should anyone trust a government utterly lacking in transparency, whose actions give rise to more troubling questions than satisfactory answers, and whose domestic policies are dictated more by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-123823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}