An excellent rumination of the state of our country and our rights as individuals today, from Amy at Spiffariffic:
I hated my 8th grade Social Studies teacher with a passion, but she certainly did make one point very well: we are all supposed to be ‘Constitutional watchdogs’ (her exact choice of words). I wonder what she’s telling her mortified students now, about enemy combatants, the refusal to grant a marching permit for the peace protests in NYC, the Supreme Court upholding the ridiculous extension on copyright terms, the searching of cars at airports and the delivery of sensitive passenger data, roaming wiretaps and Carnivore, secret military tribunals for so-called ‘enemy combatants,’ the FBI investigation of people who ask for “something other than the flag” stamps at the post office and college kids who have anti-Bush posters in their dorms. Certainly the Constitution has never been followed to the letter, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating much when I say that our Constitutional rights are being removed or reduced, drastically, at an unprecended pace even, every time we turn around.
Last weekend, when Miranda was visiting, she asked me, “what’s up with all the political stuff on your site lately?” Well, Amy sums it up quite well — when this is the situation, I find it reprehensible for people not to care. To shrug their shoulders and turn away. To deem it “somebody else’s problem.” It’s in times like these that we must pay attention, and do what we can to prevent things from getting any worse, and to right the wrongs already in practice.
This may be somewhat new in my life — but it’s hardly a new idea…
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
(via Damien Barrett)