I previously wrote a column how our country seems to have developed separate rules for the ruling elite and the rest of us. There is no better example than the lack of response of the Senate to the admitted perjury of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper before Congress. While the Justice Department has prosecuted people for the smallest departure from the truth, including testimony before Congress, no one in the Senate is calling for an investigation, let alone a prosecution, of Clapper. For his part, Attorney General Eric Holder is continuing his political approach to enforcing the law and declining to even acknowledge the admitted perjury of Clapper. Now, in a truly bizarre moment, Clapper has written a letter of apology like an errant schoolboy to excuse his commission of a felony crime . . . and it appears to have been accepted. What is curious is that we do not have letters from senators like Dianne Feinstein apologizing to doing nothing when they were all aware that Clapper was lying in his public testimony. Welcome to America’s Animal Farm. . . . . For its part, the media is cooperating. Few are addressing the obvious perjury or past cases prosecuted on far less. After all, Clapper is one of the ruling elite and not the great unwashed public. The result is perjury by permission, a new exception to criminal acts for the governing elite.

On this 4th of July, our nation's founders' words ring true--that "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," are among the rights which are unalienable from all of us. In a world of NSA spying, IRS harassment, and healthcare mandates, it is ever important to remember that government derives its power from the consent of the governed. We have the power, and also the responsibility to remain ever vigilant and protective of our freedoms.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others were cowards and hypocrites. They never had the courage to recognize their motives. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement—a world of fear and treachery and torment. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.” Orwell’s collectivist world of the future is doubtless a nightmare—but is it merely a dream? [Emphasis added.]

[T]here is no longer any meaningful limit to the power of the government over our lives. No line beyond which it may not tread. That it lies, spies and tyrannizes. We can admit to ourselves the shoddy – and frightening – reality bubbling up all around us. By so doing, we can shatter the illusion that this government operates with anything remotely approximating our consent. This is absolutely essential. The 4th of July pantomime requires that we deny the obvious – that we instead pretend we’re free people living in a free country; one in which the government is accountable to the people, one in which the government is limited by law. One in which people can’t simply be dragooned into prisons without due process, held incommunicado, tortured. A country with a president who doesn’t have kill lists – or use the instruments of state power to punish and intimidate his political opponents. One in which citizens must be suspected of a crimebefore their personal correspondence is filched through and recorded for later use against them. One in which a traveler is free from arbitrary and random searches of his person and effects. One in which the attorney general of the United States isn’t able to get away with providing guns to gangs or brazenly lie about his use of the power of his office to go after political “enemies” rather than pursue justice. All these things are everyday realities. And the reality is that the America we once celebrated on the Fourth of July is gone, replaced by something dark and ominous. It is painfully obvious – so why pretend otherwise?