mick silver
22nd February 2015, 07:31 AM
: John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead's concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute (http://www.rutherford.org/), a nonprofit civil liberties and human rights organization internationally headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia. Whitehead serves as the Institute's president and spokesperson, in addition to writing a weekly commentary (https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/) that is posted on The Rutherford Institute's website and distributed to several hundred newspapers. The author of numerous books on a variety of legal and social issues (his most recent is A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (http://www.amazon.com/Government-Wolves-Emerging-American-Police/dp/1590799755)) as well as pamphlets and brochures providing legal information to the general public, Whitehead has also written numerous magazine and journal articles.
Daily Bell: Thank you for talking with us today. We know you're rushed so let's jump right in. Tell us about the Rutherford Institute, your nonprofit civil liberties organization. You describe your mission as twofold: "to provide legal services in the defense of religious and civil liberties and to educate the public on important issues affecting their constitutional freedoms." How has that expanded in practice since your founding, in 1982?
John Whitehead: The mission's expanded because the central problems with the government – surveillance, swat team raids, innocent citizens getting shot – all those things have expanded. Most of those issues, when the Rutherford Institute was founded some 30 years ago, didn't exist. Many of the cases we get involved in are school cases where, for instance, four-year-old kids are arrested and taken to a police station have leg shackles put on them. Naturally, because of the issues of people who come to us and ask for help, that's expanded our mission.
Basically, it's been expanded by the fact that these people have not found any help through other groups or whatever so they come to us and we help them. That educates us. I write a weekly commentary (https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/) that's on almost all the big blogs where I talk about these issues, and some of them are related to the clients we handle. So our mission's expanded because the violations against civil liberties have expanded.
Daily Bell: How are you able to provide your legal services at no charge?
John Whitehead: I raise money. It's very difficult. It's not easy. The kind of cases we handle are cases that, like I said, a lot of groups don't see as important. There was a case we had in Florida about six months ago where a single mom, on a sunny afternoon, was making dinner and her son wanted to go play at the playground about half a mile down the road. She told him he could and he road his bicycle – which he did every day to school, by the way – to the playground. Police saw him, grabbed the kid, threw him in the back of the car, went home and arrested the mother on the front porch, handcuffed behind her back, for child neglect. We got involved in the case and got the charges dismissed. She's extremely grateful still, six months later, for what we did for her. She was facing five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Those are the kind of cases we get involved in. They expand the mission. I would say that our basic focus is to make sure we provide the services that the little folks out there need, not just take on the big issues – NSA surveillance or Department of Homeland Security, all the things in this country like that. I want to make sure that, if we can do it, we provide those services. Again, we have to raise money to pay the legal expenses, and find lawyers that will donate their time.
Daily Bell: While you originally intended to encourage Christians to "play a more active role in the courts and society" you have consistently stood up for religious rights irrespective of religion, haven't you?
John Whitehead: Oh, yes. We've defended everybody – Muslims, Jewish people, people I don't agree with, some very hateful people who do things on public sidewalks I wouldn't agree with. But we have a First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech. Like I always say, if someone's on the street corner speaking and they have a right to be out there, I don't have to agree with their message; if they have the right to speak, surely I'll have the right to speak. So I support people. If they have a right to say it, I'll support them no matter what they believe.
Daily Bell: Has that caused backlash?
John Whitehead: Yes. People assume if you're a lawyer you always identify with your client or you agree with them. I don't a lot of times. I've had clients that have told me they think I'm despicable for basically what I believe but I've defended them anyway. These are religious clients, by the way.
Daily Bell: Do you find it's harder to raise money because you don't limit your clientele to a narrow ideological or religious bent?
John Whitehead: It makes it much more difficult, yeah. Again, I'll have people say, "How could you agree with something like that?" I have to write them back and say, "I don't agree with what they're saying or what they're doing, necessarily, but if they don't have a right to say it ..." – and I always quote James Madison, who wrote the First Amendment. He said the First Amendment was written to protect the minority against the majority. He wasn't talking about racial minorities; he was talking about that person who was out there and offends everybody.
That's what the First Amendment in our country is designed to protect, that person who people think is a weirdo or whatever. But that person, he or she, should have a right to speak, in my opinion. We can be judgmental; we can want to put them down. I don't want to do any of that. I want to see freedom flourish and the only way it can flourish is if we are extra tolerant.
Daily Bell: The schools are certainly less tolerant these days, and you've written a good deal on that as well as the more general authoritarian (http://www.thedailybell.com/definitions/params/id/2606/) state. Why, in particular, does the school issue concern you so much?
John Whitehead: Schools issue is key because the schools form the next generation. In this country we have really strident zero-tolerance policies. We've had some very, very strange cases. I'll give you an example or two.
We had a fourth-grader in Louisiana who had an uncle who was fighting in Iraq. While he was home one night after dinner, he drew a stick figure of his uncle carrying a rifle. It was a very crude drawing; he was a fourth-grade kid. He tucked it into his lunchbox and took it to school and while he was showing kids at lunch, a teacher saw it. He was removed from school for violating a zero-tolerance policy against weapons. This is a piece of paper and a drawing. But we get those kinds of cases. Crazy. To me, again, that's freedom of expression. He wasn't bringing it to school to blow anybody up and everybody knew that but they cited him with a weapons violation anyway.
We had another case in Pennsylvania about a year and a half ago where a young man went up to the teacher's desk, another fourth-grader, to get a paper from the teacher. When he turned to walk back to his seat one of his best friends silently pointed his finger like a gun and silently went "Pow." Made no noise. The kid we were helping, Johnny Hill – and you can look up the case – did an imaginary bow and arrow back, just one arrow, and sat down. He was pulled from class and cited with violating a weapons policy. Now, of course, he didn't have a weapon; he was using his fingers. He had seen the movie "Brave." He was taken out and was going to be removed from school. We fought that and got his record cleaned up and got him put back in school.
The problem with a lot of these violations, too, is with the records now. If they keep it on the record, that's a weapons violation. That's going to pop in the future so we try to get their records cleaned.
I think what we're teaching kids today in the schools, in this country especially, is to put their heads down, don't debate, you can't be yourself, you have to fit in really well. To me, that's not education; that's indoctrination. I've studied history. I've written over 30 books, my last one being A Government of Wolves where I talk about this some. All of the regimes that have emerged, where they formed a compliant citizenry was in the public schools, where everybody was going. We have to be careful we don't repeat those mistakes.
Daily Bell: Given that the United States is at war and has been throughout these kids' lives-
John Whitehead: The country has been at war since 1917, continual wars, but go ahead.
Daily Bell: Well, yes. Where are kids able to process the emotional aspects of war that really hits home, like this kid whose uncle was fighting in Iraq? They're not allowed to do it in the schools, with their friends. What does that lead to, in a country that's so militarized?
John Whitehead: It's called a public school. It's a state-governed facility. Again, our Constitution should apply to basic freedoms. If a kid's merely expressing himself normally ... Let me give you another case. We had one case where a kid put toy soldiers on his hat, the little plastic ones that lay down. He was cited for a weapons violation. Again, if you go to our website, our cases are legion of kids saying the wrong word or this or that.
What it leads to is what I've said before – it leads not to a system of education. Education should be debate. It should be where you're allowed to disagree, to read a controversial book if you want to read it in class. That's certainly not been the case for people who have worked for me.One young guy who came in, a top graduate at a major university. He said to me one day, "I feel cheated." I asked why. He said, "I was never able to read 1984 by George Orwell (http://www.thedailybell.com/definitions/params/id/2636/). It was banned in my school." I said, "You're kidding me." It is in this country. He said, "I never could read Mark Twain, either."
That type of system is one that is only going to breed one kind of person and that is basically people who are uninformed, not allowed to debate or read great literature because someone might find an offending word in it, those kinds of things. You can't dance around the truth. If you do allow state institutions to enforce that mentality then that becomes the new normal. That's what Hannah Arendt wrote, by the way, in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism (http://www.thedailybell.com/definitions/params/id/1924/), a book I impress people to read. She wrote it right after the holocaust. She referred to the "banality of evil." The state makes the abnormal normal and then people go about doing abnormal things in their normal life, which in that case would be rounding people up for disagreeing. The Nazis did that, by the way. Those people were called asocial and were put in concentration camps because they did not agree with what was going on in the government.
I'm fearing ... To be honest with you, and I'm not a conspiratorialist, but the way I see things moving in America, especially, we're on the verge of doing those kind of things. When you're pulling kids out of class and handcuffing them, like in some of the cases I've detailed, it makes absolutely no sense except you're rearing up some kind of regime facility that's going to try to produce a uniform citizenry.
To me, freedom is not uniformity. It's diversity. It's debate. It's getting out there and disagreeing with the government, the schoolteachers or whoever's doing something you don't like, and not getting punished for it and certainly not put in jail for it.
Daily Bell: To what do you attribute this increased authoritarianism in the US?
John Whitehead: Princeton and Northwestern University did a study last year where they looked at all the policies for the last 20 years and came to the conclusion that, in America, we don't really live in a democracy (http://www.thedailybell.com/definitions/params/id/1862/) anymore. We live in an oligarchy. Government is run by an oligarchical elite. This is a university study, as I said, by Princeton and Northwestern.
- See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/36103/Anthony-Wile-John-Whitehead-Combat-Federal-Authoritarianism-With-Human-Action-and-Local-Activism/#sthash.OpxfA5P7.dpuf
Daily Bell: Thank you for talking with us today. We know you're rushed so let's jump right in. Tell us about the Rutherford Institute, your nonprofit civil liberties organization. You describe your mission as twofold: "to provide legal services in the defense of religious and civil liberties and to educate the public on important issues affecting their constitutional freedoms." How has that expanded in practice since your founding, in 1982?
John Whitehead: The mission's expanded because the central problems with the government – surveillance, swat team raids, innocent citizens getting shot – all those things have expanded. Most of those issues, when the Rutherford Institute was founded some 30 years ago, didn't exist. Many of the cases we get involved in are school cases where, for instance, four-year-old kids are arrested and taken to a police station have leg shackles put on them. Naturally, because of the issues of people who come to us and ask for help, that's expanded our mission.
Basically, it's been expanded by the fact that these people have not found any help through other groups or whatever so they come to us and we help them. That educates us. I write a weekly commentary (https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/) that's on almost all the big blogs where I talk about these issues, and some of them are related to the clients we handle. So our mission's expanded because the violations against civil liberties have expanded.
Daily Bell: How are you able to provide your legal services at no charge?
John Whitehead: I raise money. It's very difficult. It's not easy. The kind of cases we handle are cases that, like I said, a lot of groups don't see as important. There was a case we had in Florida about six months ago where a single mom, on a sunny afternoon, was making dinner and her son wanted to go play at the playground about half a mile down the road. She told him he could and he road his bicycle – which he did every day to school, by the way – to the playground. Police saw him, grabbed the kid, threw him in the back of the car, went home and arrested the mother on the front porch, handcuffed behind her back, for child neglect. We got involved in the case and got the charges dismissed. She's extremely grateful still, six months later, for what we did for her. She was facing five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Those are the kind of cases we get involved in. They expand the mission. I would say that our basic focus is to make sure we provide the services that the little folks out there need, not just take on the big issues – NSA surveillance or Department of Homeland Security, all the things in this country like that. I want to make sure that, if we can do it, we provide those services. Again, we have to raise money to pay the legal expenses, and find lawyers that will donate their time.
Daily Bell: While you originally intended to encourage Christians to "play a more active role in the courts and society" you have consistently stood up for religious rights irrespective of religion, haven't you?
John Whitehead: Oh, yes. We've defended everybody – Muslims, Jewish people, people I don't agree with, some very hateful people who do things on public sidewalks I wouldn't agree with. But we have a First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech. Like I always say, if someone's on the street corner speaking and they have a right to be out there, I don't have to agree with their message; if they have the right to speak, surely I'll have the right to speak. So I support people. If they have a right to say it, I'll support them no matter what they believe.
Daily Bell: Has that caused backlash?
John Whitehead: Yes. People assume if you're a lawyer you always identify with your client or you agree with them. I don't a lot of times. I've had clients that have told me they think I'm despicable for basically what I believe but I've defended them anyway. These are religious clients, by the way.
Daily Bell: Do you find it's harder to raise money because you don't limit your clientele to a narrow ideological or religious bent?
John Whitehead: It makes it much more difficult, yeah. Again, I'll have people say, "How could you agree with something like that?" I have to write them back and say, "I don't agree with what they're saying or what they're doing, necessarily, but if they don't have a right to say it ..." – and I always quote James Madison, who wrote the First Amendment. He said the First Amendment was written to protect the minority against the majority. He wasn't talking about racial minorities; he was talking about that person who was out there and offends everybody.
That's what the First Amendment in our country is designed to protect, that person who people think is a weirdo or whatever. But that person, he or she, should have a right to speak, in my opinion. We can be judgmental; we can want to put them down. I don't want to do any of that. I want to see freedom flourish and the only way it can flourish is if we are extra tolerant.
Daily Bell: The schools are certainly less tolerant these days, and you've written a good deal on that as well as the more general authoritarian (http://www.thedailybell.com/definitions/params/id/2606/) state. Why, in particular, does the school issue concern you so much?
John Whitehead: Schools issue is key because the schools form the next generation. In this country we have really strident zero-tolerance policies. We've had some very, very strange cases. I'll give you an example or two.
We had a fourth-grader in Louisiana who had an uncle who was fighting in Iraq. While he was home one night after dinner, he drew a stick figure of his uncle carrying a rifle. It was a very crude drawing; he was a fourth-grade kid. He tucked it into his lunchbox and took it to school and while he was showing kids at lunch, a teacher saw it. He was removed from school for violating a zero-tolerance policy against weapons. This is a piece of paper and a drawing. But we get those kinds of cases. Crazy. To me, again, that's freedom of expression. He wasn't bringing it to school to blow anybody up and everybody knew that but they cited him with a weapons violation anyway.
We had another case in Pennsylvania about a year and a half ago where a young man went up to the teacher's desk, another fourth-grader, to get a paper from the teacher. When he turned to walk back to his seat one of his best friends silently pointed his finger like a gun and silently went "Pow." Made no noise. The kid we were helping, Johnny Hill – and you can look up the case – did an imaginary bow and arrow back, just one arrow, and sat down. He was pulled from class and cited with violating a weapons policy. Now, of course, he didn't have a weapon; he was using his fingers. He had seen the movie "Brave." He was taken out and was going to be removed from school. We fought that and got his record cleaned up and got him put back in school.
The problem with a lot of these violations, too, is with the records now. If they keep it on the record, that's a weapons violation. That's going to pop in the future so we try to get their records cleaned.
I think what we're teaching kids today in the schools, in this country especially, is to put their heads down, don't debate, you can't be yourself, you have to fit in really well. To me, that's not education; that's indoctrination. I've studied history. I've written over 30 books, my last one being A Government of Wolves where I talk about this some. All of the regimes that have emerged, where they formed a compliant citizenry was in the public schools, where everybody was going. We have to be careful we don't repeat those mistakes.
Daily Bell: Given that the United States is at war and has been throughout these kids' lives-
John Whitehead: The country has been at war since 1917, continual wars, but go ahead.
Daily Bell: Well, yes. Where are kids able to process the emotional aspects of war that really hits home, like this kid whose uncle was fighting in Iraq? They're not allowed to do it in the schools, with their friends. What does that lead to, in a country that's so militarized?
John Whitehead: It's called a public school. It's a state-governed facility. Again, our Constitution should apply to basic freedoms. If a kid's merely expressing himself normally ... Let me give you another case. We had one case where a kid put toy soldiers on his hat, the little plastic ones that lay down. He was cited for a weapons violation. Again, if you go to our website, our cases are legion of kids saying the wrong word or this or that.
What it leads to is what I've said before – it leads not to a system of education. Education should be debate. It should be where you're allowed to disagree, to read a controversial book if you want to read it in class. That's certainly not been the case for people who have worked for me.One young guy who came in, a top graduate at a major university. He said to me one day, "I feel cheated." I asked why. He said, "I was never able to read 1984 by George Orwell (http://www.thedailybell.com/definitions/params/id/2636/). It was banned in my school." I said, "You're kidding me." It is in this country. He said, "I never could read Mark Twain, either."
That type of system is one that is only going to breed one kind of person and that is basically people who are uninformed, not allowed to debate or read great literature because someone might find an offending word in it, those kinds of things. You can't dance around the truth. If you do allow state institutions to enforce that mentality then that becomes the new normal. That's what Hannah Arendt wrote, by the way, in her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism (http://www.thedailybell.com/definitions/params/id/1924/), a book I impress people to read. She wrote it right after the holocaust. She referred to the "banality of evil." The state makes the abnormal normal and then people go about doing abnormal things in their normal life, which in that case would be rounding people up for disagreeing. The Nazis did that, by the way. Those people were called asocial and were put in concentration camps because they did not agree with what was going on in the government.
I'm fearing ... To be honest with you, and I'm not a conspiratorialist, but the way I see things moving in America, especially, we're on the verge of doing those kind of things. When you're pulling kids out of class and handcuffing them, like in some of the cases I've detailed, it makes absolutely no sense except you're rearing up some kind of regime facility that's going to try to produce a uniform citizenry.
To me, freedom is not uniformity. It's diversity. It's debate. It's getting out there and disagreeing with the government, the schoolteachers or whoever's doing something you don't like, and not getting punished for it and certainly not put in jail for it.
Daily Bell: To what do you attribute this increased authoritarianism in the US?
John Whitehead: Princeton and Northwestern University did a study last year where they looked at all the policies for the last 20 years and came to the conclusion that, in America, we don't really live in a democracy (http://www.thedailybell.com/definitions/params/id/1862/) anymore. We live in an oligarchy. Government is run by an oligarchical elite. This is a university study, as I said, by Princeton and Northwestern.
- See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/36103/Anthony-Wile-John-Whitehead-Combat-Federal-Authoritarianism-With-Human-Action-and-Local-Activism/#sthash.OpxfA5P7.dpuf