Living in a representative republic means that each person has the right to take a stand for what they think is right, whether that means marching outside the halls of government, wearing clothing with provocative statements, or simply holding up a sign. That’s what the First Amendment is supposed to be about.

Truth is rarely comfortable. Nor is it palatable, or polite, or politically correct. For that matter, John Lennon, born on October 9, 1940, was rarely polite or politically correct.

Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Big Brother (and his corporate partners in crime) is getting even creepier and more invasive, intrusive and stalker-like.

In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, “we the people” have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse, all the while convincing ourselves that the prison walls enclosing us within the American police state are there for our protection.

We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document. The reality we must come to terms with, however, is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

Life in a post-9/11 America increasingly feels like an endless free fall down a rabbit hole into a terrifying, dystopian alternative reality in which the citizenry has no rights, the government is no friend to freedom, and everything we ever knew and loved about the values and principles that once made this country great has been turned on its head.

Nowadays, as a result of the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, weapons and terrorism, students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but they are being punished with suspension, expulsion, and even arrest.

Vigilantes with a badge—the growing squads of militarized police armed with weapons of war who are allowed to operate above the law and break the laws with impunity—have not made America any safer or freer. Don’t take my word for it.

This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough. This isn’t just happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It’s happening all across the country. America has been locked down.

Be warned: these lockdowns are just a precursor to full-blown martial law. These are the hallmarks of a military occupation.

If Americans don’t learn how to get along—at the very least, agreeing to disagree and respecting each other’s right to subscribe to beliefs and opinions that may be offensive, hateful, intolerant or merely different—then we’re going to soon find that we have no rights whatsoever (to speak, assemble, agree, disagree, protest, opt in, opt out, or forge our own paths as individuals).

While there are many films to choose from, the following 10 classic war films touch on modern warfare (from the First World War onward) and run the gamut of conflicts and human emotions and center on the core issues often at work in the nasty business of war.

There are those who would have you believe that President Trump is an unwitting victim of the Deep State. And then there are those who insist that the Deep State is a figment of a conspiratorial mind. Don’t believe it. The Deep State—a.k.a. the police state, a.k.a. the military industrial complex, a.k.a. the surveillance state complex—does indeed exist and Trump, far from being its sworn enemy, is its latest tool.

Given the preponderance of news-as-entertainment programming, it’s no wonder that viewers have largely lost the ability to think critically and analytically and differentiate between truth and propaganda, especially when delivered by way of fake news criers and politicians. While television news cannot—and should not—be completely avoided, the following suggestions will help you better understand the nature of TV news.

The U.S. government is operating under a New World Order government—a power elite conspiring to rule the world—and it is being brought to you by the Global-Industrial Deep State, a powerful cabal made up of international government agencies and corporations. This is not the stuff of conspiracy theory, I promise, although I have lived long enough to see many so-called conspiracy theories turn into cold, hard fact.

Every so often, the justices toss a bone to those who fear they have abdicated their allegiance to the Constitution. Too often, however, the Supreme Court tends to march in lockstep with the police state. The Court’s 2017-18 term was a particularly mixed bag. Here are some of the key rulings and non-rulings handed down by the Court this term...

No document better states their grievances than the Declaration of Independence, which seethes with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens. We could use a little of that outrage today. Indeed, read the Declaration of Independence for yourself and ask yourself if the abuses suffered by early Americans at the hands of the British police state don’t bear a startling resemblance to the abuses “we the people” are suffering at the hands of the American police state.

First broadcast in America 50 years ago, The Prisoner confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of humankind to meekly accept their lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of their own making.

While illegal immigration is a problem that must be addressed, forcibly separating migrant children from their parents, transferring custody of them to the U.S. government, and caging them indefinitely in dog kennels cannot be the solution. There comes a time when law and order are in direct opposition to justice. It’s time to draw that line in the sand.

Someone needs to alert Donald Trump: there is no “Get Out of Jail Free” card just for being president. Long before the DOJ issued its 1974 memorandum, which soundly refutes Trump’s claims to legal immunity, America’s founders issued their own proclamation—the Declaration of Independence—denouncing the tyrannical dictates of an imperial ruler. Unfortunately, we’ve been backsliding ever since.