The phrase “Martial Law” strikes fear in most Americans’ hearts. Freedom-loving Americans have seen many rights hijacked over the past two decades as big government chips away at the constitution. What would America look like if Martial Law was declared (1)?

In February 2015, editor and host of The Common Sense Show, Dave Hodges, wrote how such a scenario might unfold (2).

Hodges discusses how the political issues of ISIS, Iran, Russia and North Korean have the potential to create World War III. He asks if a war weary America might be unwilling to take on such a war.

In Hodges’s scenario, this could easily lead to the government needing “compliance and unquestionable obedience” and he states the way to force this would be “through the control of food and labor.”

Continuing with this possible future scenario, anyone who is outspoken or rebels against the government’s demand for obedience will be quickly quelled. Hodges states that the fate of war dissidents would be quick “removal, or worse” thanks to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

To drive home his point, Hodges states, “…the NDAA is the single most draconian piece legislation in American history. The ‘law’ allows the President, or his designees, to indefinitely detain an individual without legal counsel or due process. It is life imprisonment or worse for political dissidents.”

Warning that the NDAA will be the platform for removing “members of the alternative media and others deemed to possess dangerous ideas,” Hodges says this is “one of the main reasons” American communications are monitored by the NSA (National Security Agency).

American Civil Liberties Union Fights to Regain American Rights

Following this same kind of concern for Constitutional rights, the ACLU’s (American Civil Liberties Union) evaluation of what has happened to the basic rights of Americans birthed the National Security Project. The objective of the project is to ensure the “US national security policies and practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human right” (3).

The ACLU states, “…after the attacks of September 11, 2001, our government engaged in systematic policies of torture, targeted killing, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and religious discrimination. It violated the law, eroded many of our most cherished values, and made us less free and less safe.”

Many of these policies, especially those of “extraordinary rendition” and “torture” have been condemned and officially “no longer condoned.” According to the ACLU, “…most other policies—indefinite detention, targeted killing, trial by military commissions, warrantless surveillance, and racial, religious, and other forms of profiling—remain core elements of U.S. national security strategy today.”