It's a Matter of Choice

Author: Ron Fitzwater
Source: The Mountain Times

I have been banging around a constitutional issue with friends, family, co-workers and anyone else who got cornered by me for several days now. The exercise, along with several recent national and local news issues, has caused me to ask the question of myself, and now you loyal reader; 'When are we as a people going to make the powers that be tow the line on our rights as citizens? What is it really going to take before we say enough is enough?'

Just look what people think are rights and what rights the government permits us to enjoy and you might find that of the 10 given to us in the Bill of Rights, we really don't really get many in practice.

For example, people don't think you have the right to bare arms, but really only if you are part of a militia. People think that you have a right to a driver's license, or free healthcare, when you don't. However, even though they think these things are rights and will raise holy cane over their perceived denial of them, they don't seem to care that the government has given itself the right to look into every tiny aspect of your life and not inform you.

The PATRIOT Act and warrantless wire-tapping program that both came about from the Bush 43 administration attacked our Fourth Amendment rights with the tenacity of a Highway Patrolman at a license check.

Speaking of highway stops, ask yourself this while we are on the subject: If they can stop your car today and ask you for your papers without cause or a warrant, how long until they begin stopping you on the street and asking for your papers? It's all right to think I sound conspiratorial; I'm sure there were many citizens of Berlin who thought that people who said it was a bad idea in 1939 were off the rail too.

Another attack on the Fourth comes every time we want to take a flight somewhere. And now, thanks to the Christmas Undie-bomber, they are working toward being able to electronically strip-search us.

So much for "the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects."

Freedom of speech is under attack as well, which if lost would be the death of the real press. Which, by the way, is the press that comes to you without corporate sponsors. Not advertisers, we need them, but sponsors are different.

For instance, even now, if you speak out against the President or his policies, you must be a racist. Trust me on this, I get the e-mails. If you speak out against the speaker of the house or the Governor of North Carolina, you must be a sexist and don't get me started on Latino women on the Supreme Court. I've taken enough lumps over that one already.

Employers are forced to hire by quota at times, and even forego more promising applicants so as not to be tagged as a racist, sexist, ageist or whatever-ist.

Were the Founders able to see what we are doing to their plan, they would throw all of us over board in disgust.
The corporate world is no better; Employees with some public and private jobs are now forced to take sensitivity classes, random drug testing, workplace harassment classes and all because the whole world seems worried they will get sued over some trivial issue.

Some companies have gone as far as to censor personal items in their employees work spaces like calendars and faith-based items. Never know whose feelings might get hurt, so lets all just look the same with no personality or individuality. Making things uniformed is a great way to exert passive control. Works with school uniforms; that is why most educators like them.

It is easy to understand why leadership, be it governmental, academic or corporate, all want to make us easier to control, because a controlled citizenry is an easily led citizenry.

But you let it happen, every one of you that sits quietly, never rocking the boat, never writing an elected official, never attending a commissioner or aldermens' meeting.

You help the ones in power get more powerful; when you keep sending the same people back to Washington and Raleigh and Jefferson over and over again. You complain nothing ever changes but the only time you make changes is when the person in the office has a term-limit. Why else did Bill Clinton and George W. Bush each get two terms?

And what do you get for your trouble? Fewer jobs, higher debt, deeper recession and the privilege of watching the enemies of this country being brought to U.S. soil, given the rights of a citizen, as ours are steadily robbed from us.

I once swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of this country. That oath did not come off my back with the uniform I no longer wear. I just traded an assault riffle for a pen.

Now it's time to choose your weapon, use the pen, use the voting booth. If you want change, make that chage.

Because if we do not stop the steady eroding of our personal rights, it will not be too long before they will all be gone. Unfortunately, the real press won't be around to tell you about it, as we shall all have been jailed for treason by then.

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