The end of 2014 brings us to a time of peril, when we are again facing fundamental challenges to our republic and democratic system of government. Indeed we are faced with the question of what happens when law enforcement, the military and other institutions of our government 

are demonstrating a lack of respect and refusal to submit to the authority of their direct civilian supervisors and thus are rejecting civilian control.

We have a history where our government particularly the police and military branches of our government have not only deferred to civilian authority but have embraced it.  However recently in two very illustrative and telling events these powers have demonstrated an unwillingness even a hostility to civil authority or control.

What happens when in a society the aspects of law enforcement and military fail to abide by and defer to civil authority, you have a Police State.

This may be where we are headed in the United States if citizens do not push back against two recent demonstrations of police disrespect for civil authority and the very representatives of the people that they are supposed to serve and protect.

In Washington, John Brennan, the head of the CIA, engaged in an act off insubordination against the president who hired him in his public responses to the Senate report on American torture practices during the Bush Adminstrtation. 

 In New York, the police led by the president of the NYPD Police Benevolent Association has engaged in an insolent and destructive course of conduct in the wake of the assignation of two New York two patrolmen, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

The NYPD is acting in open rebellion against Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, and the civil power he represents over them. This is an incredibly perilous time for democracy at the most basic levels. The actions of the head of the CIA and the officers of the NYPD are indicative of what I would expect of the security forces of Egypt and not the United States.  This behavior is anything but exceptional.

As has been stated by cautious and reasonable observers. 

"It is very simple. If the CIA is insubordinate to the president, whom the country elected, then it is insubordinate to all of us. If the NYPD runs a slow-motion coup against the freely elected mayor of New York, then it is running a slow-motion coup against all the people of New York. There is no exemption from this fundamental truth about the way this country and its system is supposed to work."