Battlefield America: The War on the American People

In this potent follow-up to A Government of Wolves (2013), Whitehead, a constitutional attorney and the president of the Rutherford Institute, continues to investigate what he sees as an increasingly aggressive, fascistic America that the founding fathers would find offensive. Whitehead's scathing tone%E2%80%94matched in the foreword from former congressman Ron Paul%E2%80%94can be heavy-handed and strident, but he presents the U.S. government as "a hyper-militarized, twitchy, easily offended, suspicious, locked down, paranoid, all-seeing bureaucracy" that uses fear and paranoia to reduce civil liberties in a calculated post-9/11 scam of terrorism and national security. He uses the responses of heavily armed police forces to recent incidents%E2%80%94including the Boston Marathon bombing and the protests in Ferguson, Mo.%E2%80%94as indicators of an occupying army, but his constant comparisons to Hitler's Germany fail in terms of making a coherent argument against Big Brother's dismantling of basic freedoms. Whitehead scores points when addressing needed reforms in the court system, education, and individual rights to privacy. Following his literary forebears such as Orwell and Huxley, he warns: "Either we gather together now and attempt to restore freedom or all will be lost." Detailed and provocative, yet repetitive, Whitehead's call to take the U.S. back before civil liberties vanish mostly rises above boilerplate rhetoric and hysteria. (Apr.)