The increase in government power is like a political arms buildup against the citizenry -- a vast expansion of the pretexts that the governing class has to attack the governed. A massive military buildup by one government can often subdue its foreign enemies without a fight. Similarly, contemporary statute books convey sufficient punitive power that citizens surrender without a fight in most potential conflicts with the government.

Americans should heed Wolfe and Zelman when they urge people to practice "living resistance" -- which means "committing your life to making sure that you never, through choice or inertia, help lay the bricks that build the police state."

People must summon the will and resolution to drive politicians out of their own lives. What is needed now is the same passion and outrage over political and bureaucratic aggrandizement that existed towards chattel slavery 140 years ago. We must recognize that possession of government office does not confer ownership rights over human beings....

If contemporary Americans can cease idolizing the State, a rebirth of the spirit of freedom will begin and the threat of America becoming a Police State will become far less foreboding.

-- From the Introduction by James Bovard