Lockdown

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom." -Ike Eisenhower

It is no secret many places in the US and abroad are starting to resemble the old Soviet Union. Legalized theft is not merely for well-connected firms, nor has been for a while. Warrantless surveillance expands into domestic law enforcement due to 'mission creep' and post hoc justification. Combining this with a predatory prison industrial complex, political momentum can easily lead to an open air gulag that easily surpasses North Korea.

When everyone is an outlaw, the most ruthless tend to dominate. Interestingly, there was a part of the (long dead) US Bill of Rights known as the Tenth Amendment. The 10th Amendment was intended to allow states and individuals rights that were not officially stated under the 'standard' Bill of Rights. Today, some activists have considered using "nullification," against policies they consider illegal. They were employed by civil libertarians, drug legalization activists, gun activists, and so on in various ways.

The fundamental theory, however, is a solid one for a free society. Instead of "Why should we let you," the question was "Why shouldn't we let you?" The idea of WHY NOT instead of WHY would you need something (applied from drugs to weapons to automobiles to other things) appears largely alien to the politics of the 1970s through the present. Perhaps the Boomers were used to bureaucracy, and hoped to create a system to prevent individual suffering. There are cases where it is understandable (particularly dealing with, say, radioactive materials and handling dangerous pathogens), but some where it gets rather arbitrary. Some laws are often drafted in ignorance of the subject matter at hand, but others are not. The problem of a security state where EVERYTHING is banned by default is that anyone can go to jail for spontaneous behavior, and it is not particularly conducive to creativity. It is, of course, a boon for those who wish to make the world into a prison with themselves as the warden.