9/11/2001 – An evaluation  two years later:

Our way of life and the fundamental principles on which our great nation was founded ARE UNDER ATTACK.

Suppose someone told you that an organized group of thugs is trying to take away our right to assemble in a picket line of union strikers or in protest of a government policy we dislike ?   Suppose that same group of thugs wants to bust into your home and search or seize your private property without any lawful review or the due process guaranteed by the Constitution that our founding fathers and generations of our soldiers have fought and died to protect ?  Suppose that your local library and bookstore were to keep and make known a record of what books, records or videos you choose to buy or borrow and use in the privacy of your own home ?   Or that every time you use your computer a record is made of who you talk to and what subject matter you look up ?

If we were threatened with this kind of thuggery, we might be tempted to think that some bunch of towel head scum suckers were trying to destroy our way of life and wreck the very freedoms that have made this the greatest nation on earth in which to live.  Well folks, all of those things HAVE HAPPENED -- they are here now, and it wasn’t  Osama Bin Laden  and some band of foreign radicals, but “our” own government in it’s ceaseless craving for more power that has done it to us.  All of the above have already come to pass as part of our government’s “war on terrorism”.   And the worst part is that use of these extraordinary powers has not allowed them to catch a single terrorist in this country.

We can’t blame the Republicans or the Democrats for this – both sides are equally to blame and both sides equally at fault for letting these attacks on the freedoms we hold dear be slipped through without protest.  Ours is the best form of government history has ever seen, in terms of allowing each individual to grow and prosper to the extent that they are able and to enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” each in their own way.  But our founding fathers recognized that ALL governments are basically flawed.  All governments, whether they be democratic, communist, or dictatorships are basically bureaucracy and the inherent nature of a bureaucracy is to constantly strive to grow and accumulate more power unto itself.  Recognizing this, and in an effort to prevent just the kind of abuses that we see today, our founding fathers gave us the Constitution.  A major intention of the Constitution was to protect people from the excesses and abuses of their own government.   It was ratified by a majority of individual voters in this country after they had just fought a war of freedom against a government which imposed taxes which did not go to benefit those taxed, had a policy of warrantless searches and seizures of private property, and which used the military against it’s own citizens.  (Sound familiar?)

From time to time our Constitution has come under attack: by the fascist dictators who sought world domination in the world war era, by the world communist union that envied our prosperity in the cold war era, and in the last 20 years by the corporate fat cats and one-worlders who use their money and influence to buy our elected representatives and use our government to serve their own personal ends. A free people able to meet, communicate among themselves without fear of snooping, and voice their opinions in the public arena are a source of great fear to these greed heads, so they attempt to block those freedoms at every opportunity.  As a result, the way of life that we have come to enjoy is in danger of being extinguished. 

Every man and woman in this country who has ever served in the military or held a federal job and every naturalized citizen has sworn an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic”.  Nobody ever told veterans when they were discharged from military service, “OK, now you can forget about your oath to protect and defend the Constitution.”   RIGHT NOW it is time for every veteran, every naturalized citizen, and anyone else who values their freedom to take a stand and protect our Constitution against these domestic enemies.  If it is not done soon we will have no more freedom; and our children will be walking around with numbers tattooed on their foreheads and will need to apply for a government permit to change jobs or move to another town.