There’s a reason the Trump Administration is consulting with John Yoo, the Bush-era attorney notorious for justifying waterboarding torture-tactics against detainees. They’re not looking to understand how to follow the law and abide by the Constitution. Rather, they’re desperately seeking ways to thwart the Constitution. As Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe recognizes, “The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable. This is how it begins. This is how it always begins. Don’t be fooled into thinking any of this will change when the next election rolls around.

“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status.

“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.” — Thomas Paine
 “When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.” — Marquis De Lafayette
 

Had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, res

“Violence creates many more social problems than it solves….
“What’s been most striking to me is just how one-sided the rules are when Americans take on their own government…. It has been dismaying to learn the extent to which rules and laws shield the government from accountability for its abuses—or even lawbreaking…. It’s been a long and frightening lesson…. The rules seem rigged to protect government lawlessness, and the playing field is uneven.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana

Watch and see: This debate over police brutality and accountability is about to get politicized into an election-year referendum on who should occupy the White House.

Don’t fall for it.

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you — pull your beard, flick your face — to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you.” — John Lennon

Brace yourselves.

“The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.” — Étienne De La Boétie, The Politics Of Obedience

“You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business… And if you refuse to be vaccinated, the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor's office and plunge a needle into your arm.” — Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor

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