Opinion: US has its own political prisoners

Much of the American public is understandably stirred up over the suspicious prison death of Putin’s critic, Alexei Navalny.

Yet America’s anti-American prison industry is also filled with political prisoners. More than anywhere else in the world, by a wide margin. Including political prisoners like Ross Ulbricht.

This doesn’t even count heroes like Julian Assange, held by other governments to appease the U.S. government. Or those heroes living under asylum in other countries, like Edward Snowden, to avoid sure imprisonment, and probable suspicious death, in America. Heroes who are more American, by their dedication to truth and liberty, than the political criminals in the U.S. government who want to cage and punish them.

You might say heroes like this are too rare to inflate America’s political prisoner numbers by much. You’re right, if these are the only people you count.

Everyone held in a government cage because of convictions for drugs, guns, acts of consensual trade, or taxes (just to name a few “offenses” used to cage people) is a political prisoner. You might complain that these prisoners probably did other things -- actual crimes with an individual victim who was objectively harmed -- but it was just easier to get a conviction or a plea bargain on the charges they were ultimately imprisoned under. In this case government should have focused on the real crime, not the paperwork violation of arbitrary legislation. Legislation that would never be tolerated in a free country.

Looked at another way, everyone in any place ruled by a political government is a political prisoner. We just don’t realize it as long as the jailers let us have entertainment and say we are free. Even though there’s no human activity untouched by a number of nonsensical rules, the violation of any of which can result in us being sent to a physical prison. Or death at the hands of legislation enforcers.

Every political prisoner in American jails and prisons should be immediately released if only to void the crooked decision by government prosecutors to prosecute illegitimate, victimless “crimes.” It would be a way to force the prosecutors to clean up their act and do better from now on.

As soon as Americans force local and federal governments to release American political prisoners, we can focus, without hypocrisy, on those held by other governments. Free every political prisoner! No more political prisoners. Not in Russia, and not in America.

Farwell’s Kent McManigal champions liberty. Contact him at:

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