Comment on President Obama To America - STFU!

In the comments to President Obama To America - STFU!, C. Watford of My Variables Only Have 6 Letters wrote the following -

The Constitution has been put up onto such a high pedestal that both sides treat it like their Good Book(tm). Just like other Good Books, both sides cherry pick meaning from it. Nobody is reading it, rather saying what they want and pointing to the Good Book as proof. Yay!

The big difference between those Good Books(tm) and the Constitution is that the Constitution was intentionally written to protect citizens from governmental abuse. None of the Good Books(tm) were.

The British coolonists, who committed treason against their King, were aware of the many ways that governments abuse power. After winning their freedom from one abusive government - thousands of lives for those freedoms - the American people refused to agree to a Constitution without some specific protections from any new government. Other Americans objected that any specific enumeration of rights would only lead the government to usurp the power to legislate every freedom not enumerated in the Bill of Rights. That is exactly what has happened.

America was in a bit of an awkward position, with some demanding that the Constitution be approved immediately, while others wanting to hold out for a more perfect document with better protections for the citizens.

As Alexander Hamilton wrote at the very beginning of the Federalist Papers -

AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.^[1]

We have a bunch of Supreme Court Justices, who have been engaged in a continual expansion of their power to oversee and authorize/revise/expand federal regulation.

The government has demonstrated a willingness to use any excuse to restrict these few essential rights. It is considered acceptable to become more and more like the Taliban in an attempt to fight the Taliban. That was a big win for bin-Laden and psychiatrists everywhere. Not that we have not been heading for a less and less free America for a long time.

The term Nanny State is not wrong. We are drowning in laws that are sold to voters as a way to protect us from ourselves. We have legions of bureaucracies telling us what risks we may take. We have had many prohibitions including an infamous Constitutional Amendment to restrict the rights of citizens. All of these prohibitions have been abysmal failures.

We have attempted to protect our children from the possibility of making bad decisions. Such attempts are much worse decisions. The result of the prohibition of alcohol was just an increase in the power of organized crime, the power of the bureaucracies that were created to enforce the law, and the number of Americans willing to break the law. Americans punished by laws that we pretend are to protect the people most harmed by these laws - Americans. The punishment continues with the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), organized, crime, and terrorists - all profiting off of these laws, at the expense of Americans.

We have become so insane, in the enforcement of these laws, that we have even started convicting property of crimes.

We have the DEA determining what is appropriate medical care. We punish the most vulnerable people in the country, just so we can pretend that we are protecting people. Police telling doctors what is acceptable medical care. Of course, there is no evidence to support these restrictions on medical care.

If you have a family member with untreated/undertreated pain, thank Congress and our Presidents and the Supreme Court. They consider it more important to keep Americans in their place, than to allow patients to receive ethical treatment.

At least we have protected dying Americans from demon rum - Oops, I was singing the wrong party line - demon morphine.

As a nation, we have been pampered and pandered to so much that we are willing to agree to pretty much anything if only some politicians liars will tell us that this will make us safe.

Imagine if somebody had told the American colonists that they would be safe - if only the would stay as part of Britain. Imagine that.

But you do not have to imagine that, because that is exactly what those treasonous rebels rejected by opposing King George. The Founding Fathers treasonous rebels risked everything. Their property. Their freedom. Their lives. And the lives of their family members.

For freedom.

Not for safety.

They were not worried about protecting some whining victims' feelings.

We can have politically correct rules. We can silence those, who express dangerous uncomfortable ideas. We cannot have safety.

The closest we can come to safety is by abandoning freedom. All personal freedom includes risks. Of course, abandoning our freedoms to the government, is no different from urinating and defecating on the graves of all of those who have died to defend America. America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Not the land of the empowered victim.

I know. I know. The world is much different today. Freedom is not as important as safety. I should just STFU! Americans should just STFU!

We should respect others, but respect is earned. There is no reason to respect someone willing to restrict our rights. Respect is not earned by the color of our skin, or our sexual orientation, or our job titles, . . . . Respect is earned by people with the freedom to take responsibility for their own actions. Without freedom, we are just following orders. Many people feel that we should just follow orders and STFU!

Not me.





PS - This should not apply just to Americans, but I write it from an American perspective. This is not because other countries are unimportant, but because I am not familiar with their laws. There is the occasional exception, such as the libel suit by the BCA (British Chiropractic Association), just because Simon Singh used the word bogus in a description of the dangerous fraud that the BCA promotes.


^ ¹ Federalist No. 1
General Introduction
For the Independent Journal.
Saturday, October 27, 1787
Alexander Hamilton
Gutenberg.org
Federalist No. 1


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