Inalienable Rights in an Age of Tyranny: The Government Is Playing God
“When a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”—Declaration of Independence (1776)
We are now struggling to emerge from the wreckage of a constitutional republic, transformed into a kleptocracy (government by thieves), collapsing into kakistocracy (government by the worst), and enforced by a police state algogracy (rule by algorithm).
This week alone, the Trump administration is reportedly erecting protest barricades around the White House, Congress is advancing legislation that favors the wealthy, and President Trump is grandstanding at the opening of a detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Against such a backdrop of government-sponsored cruelty, corruption and shameless profiteering at taxpayer expense, what, to the average American, is freedom in an age when the government plays god—determining who is worthy of rights, who qualifies as a citizen, and who can be discarded without consequence?
What are inalienable rights worth if they can be redefined, delayed, or revoked by executive order?
Frederick Douglass posed a similar challenge more than 170 years ago when he asked, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?”
His question was a searing indictment not just of slavery but of a government that proclaimed liberty while denying it to millions—a hypocrisy that persists in a system still governed by institutions more committed to power than principle.
Every branch of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—has, in one way or another, abandoned its duty to uphold the Constitution. And both parties have prioritized profit and political theater over justice and the rights of the governed.
The founders of this nation believed our rights come from God, not government. That we are born free, not made free by bureaucrats or judges. That among these rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—none can be taken away without destroying the very idea of government by consent.
And yet that is precisely what’s happening.
We now live under a government that has become judge, jury, and executioner—writing its own laws, policing its own limits, and punishing those who object.
This is not what it means to be free.
When presidents rule by fiat, when agencies strip citizenship from naturalized Americans, when police act as both enforcers and executioners, and when courts rubber-stamp the erosion of basic protections, the distinction between a citizen and a subject begins to collapse.
What do inalienable rights mean in a country where:
- Your citizenship can be revoked based solely on the government’s say-so?
- Your freedom can be extinguished by surveillance, asset seizure, or indefinite detention?
- Your property can be taken, your speech censored, and your life extinguished without due process?
- Your life can be ended without a trial, a warning, or a second thought, because the government views you as expendable?
The answer is stark: they mean nothing—unless we defend them.
When the government—whether president, Congress, court, or local bureaucrat—claims the right to determine who does and doesn’t deserve rights, then no one is safe. Individuals become faceless numbers. Human beings become statistics. Lives become expendable. Dignity becomes disposable.
It is a slippery slope—justified in the name of national security, public safety, and the so-called greater good—that leads inevitably to totalitarianism.
Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this devil for far too long, and now, the mask has come off.
This is what authoritarianism looks like in America today.
Imagine living in a country where government agents crash through doors to arrest citizens merely for criticizing government officials. Where police stop and search you on a whim. Where carrying anything that resembles a firearm might get you arrested—or killed. Where surveillance is constant, dissent is criminalized, and loyalty is enforced through fear.
If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong.
But this scenario isn’t new. It’s the same kind of tyranny that drove American colonists to sever ties with Great Britain nearly 250 years ago.
Back then, American colonists lived under the shadow of an imperial power and an early police state that censored their speech, surveilled their movements, taxed their livelihoods, searched their homes without cause, quartered troops in their towns, and punished them for daring to demand liberty.
It was only when the colonists finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant’s fetters.
The Declaration of Independence—drafted by Thomas Jefferson and signed on July 4, 1776, by 56 men who risked everything—was their response. It was more than a list of grievances. It was a document seething with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens, a call to arms against a system that had ceased to represent the people and instead sought to dominate them.
Labeled traitors, these men were charged with treason, a crime punishable by death
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
