Have you as a child played with forbidden fruit? Perhaps you made lead toy soldiers that are now forbidden. Maybe you played with mercury and created Santa Claus whiskers with aluminum foil. This is also a no,no! Just maybe you spoke on the street corner and claimed you were going to be the next president of the USA. If so you would continue to blab and hardly a soul would listen to you. Maybe you would be taken to a looney bin.
Today, right wing Democrats and Republicans will probably jump up and down and shower you with accolades of support, if you insist that our Constitution and Bill of Rights and all amendments are ill conceived and require rewriting or elimination to permit all actions to kill suspected terrorists,round up suspected illegal aliens, and incarcerate anyone else who our government believes is a threat. Wow, what is forbidden fruit today?
Sadly, our Constitution is under attack even by those who are sworn to uphold the the very same Constitution they want to ignore or abandon. I suggest that each of you read our Constitution and all amendments to it and ask yourself what the words mean. An excellent book on the subject, "Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution--We Hold These Truths", by Mortimer Adler, is brief, to the point, and very readable. Read it and think as you do. Dig in as a citizen of of this country and ask what each word means to you.
Remember our Constitution and Bill of Rights was written and enacted by individuals from all walks of life who wanted to break free from the British Monarchy and create an independent country. Most of the 39 people who were involved in its development, over 200 years ago, were educated by reading classic literature. Few of us do that today. The ubiquitous computer, iTouch, iPhone, and 3G and 4G mobile devices continually mesmerize hundreds of millions of semi-illiterate people who have never read the Constitution, and who further care less as to what it says or means. Everyone is a critic, but few have intelligently read our Constitution and digested its significance. Our educational system is geared for producing quasi-literate people who can't understand the words that our founders wrote. Instead we have become lemmings of the right or left, willing to follow scatterbrained leaders who have little sense of history or our Constitution.
As our Constitution gradually slips away under the belief that too much protection of individual liberty is itself evil we will see more decay and outright abandonment of our Constitution and morph into a Orwellian nation where Big Brother is always checking our every action and words! We are gaining on that eventuallity daily so hold on to your seats as our Constitution slips, slides, and dissappears before our very eyes. Better to be blindfolded, deaf, and speechless since we essentially act that way even if were not.
We often are irrationally spooked by ghosts and allow reality to be buried beneath the words and actions of fools who have never read a word of our Constitution, or if they have ignore every word they have read. Enjoy our slide into anarchy or worse as we tumble into the 21st century helter skelter and gleeful in our ignorance all the way. Enjoy your 3G and 4G devices as we become more ignorant of the real meaning of liberty and our Constitution. Continue to be distracted by B.S. on the tube and elsewhere, and gobble up all froth as the protection of our Constitutional rights evaporate.
Today we are told by our President, Attorney General, and many members of Congress, as well as aspirants to elected office, that our Constitution is basically no good. The Bill of Rights are particularly cited as being harmful and inadequate.
The First Amendment has been rattled by the Supreme Court after they made a decision that gave rights to corporations that were intended for the protection of individual's freedom of speech. Now, a corporation that spends millions of dollars lobbying Congress for legislative hand outs can also spend any amount of money , under the guise of free speeh, to influence the outcome of an election or a favored piece of legislation. All this is now legallized by the recent Supreme Court decision. Do the Justices of the Supreme Court really comprehend our heritage?
President Obama has ordered and/or allowed secret agents to execute individuals suspected to be terrorist agents/masterminds without trial. Never mind that our Constitution and many amendments assume individuals are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Members of the Senate and House of Representative also support these secret actions by saying or doing nothing or by encouraging even more of the same.
Furthermore, the Congress is considering junking the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments because they get in the way of executive actions to incarcerate or kill individuals or subject them to questioning without access to a lawyer. Better to eliminate some Constitutional rights than let a possible bad guy hurt us.
Piece by piece our Constitution is decaying such that some day in the near future we will have the form of Government and lemming population that our Founding Fathers hoped to avoid.
The relevance of our Constitution is becoming lost in this era of political showmanship and ignorance, fear mongering, blatant lies, and corporate influence/corruption. If we do not awaken soon our Constitution will evaporate under the swelling tide of irrational blame and fear of Government "By, of, and for the people"--we are the Government!. "We the people" are responsible for intelligent and reasoned action to assure the preservation of our Constitution, or alternatively its ultimate demise if we so allow. Do you care? If so speak out and tell your elected political leaders what you think. But first read our Constitution and analyse what it means to you and your family. Then speak out and demand that our basic Constitutional rights as individuals must be preserved. If you elect to say or do nothing enjoy your future under Orwell's vision. Big Brother will be there with you assuring that you only know what, and act only according to Big Brother's orders.
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