The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

Jim Babka at DownsizeDC.org posted today to remind me that the Bill of Rights was ratified 217 years ago today.

It isn’t democracy or representative government that made America unique. The Greeks, the Romans, and the British had those things. The Roman Republic even had divided powers, with checks and balances which our Founders knowingly copied. But as far as we know the United States was the first country to incorporate such specific, individually-oriented limits on government power into its supreme law.

Of course, this protection only works if our politicians obey the law, and this obedience is something we must demand; it will not be given freely.

(Click here to read the whole article.)

I for one tremendously appreciate DownsizeDC and others who serve as the Conscience of America, always watching, always demanding that our politicians protect our rights, always working to make freedom a reality. Because if they didn’t do the work they do, we would have no hope of fair treatment from our rulers.

Always watching!
-TimK

P.S. Why not celebrate Bill of Rights Day by supporting the American Freedom Agenda Act, which repeals some of the egregious violations of our civil rights that the federal government has perpetrated.

P.P.S. I post about a lot of civil-rights abuses on this blog. It’s fortuitous that I closed this morning’s post with the thought:

Before we had a strong federal government, when the Constitution was being debated, there were the Federalists, who were in favor of having a federal government, and there were the Anti-federalists, who were against having a federal government. As you know, the winner writes the history. And today, in a government-school history class, you’ll hear that the Federalists wrote the Federalist Papers, a series of editorials which laid out the reasons why our system of federal government works. A little-known fact, not usually taught in government schools, is that the Anti-federalists also wrote a series of editorials, now known as the Anti-federalist Papers. You can find copies of The Federalist almost everywhere, in numerous bookstores, published in numerous editions; but you have to search for The Anti-federalist. It seems the Anti-federalists got the short end of the stick.

This is a blight on us. We should always remember the wisdom of the Anti-federalists and never just trust that our government will always work. Because the Federalist Papers were written by men who gave us the Constitution. But the Anti-federalist Papers were written by men who gave us the Bill of Rights.

A reviewer of The Conscience of Abe’s Turn called it “a fairly overblown story that my mind could not completely wrap around… I can’t understand why a group of professionals who are supposed to be so brilliant are holding protests and playing hippy saboteurs rather than just contacting the Feds and getting their problems solved.” Here’s the real-life analogue, and the real-life reason: because the Feds create problems, not solve them. Just ask Yolanda Madden’s father, interviewed in this new civil-rights video from KopBusters.  read more »

Brian Wilson on his radio show at WSPD yesterday talked with Jim Bovard about a recent Washington Post article about sending U.S. troops to the U.S. “The U.S. military,” according to the Post, “expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe.”

Domestic emergency deployment may be “just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority,” or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.  read more »

When I referred to Helena-West Helena, Arkansas as a “police state,” because of the 24-hour-a-day curfew it had imposed on all its citizens, and because of the current mandate of the police force there to question citizens while they’re taking a walk or to pull them over for driving down the street, I noticed the usual spate of comments. Many people who read the post sympathized with my position. At least one reader took the attitude: don’t be such a wimp; if they have crime like that, they deserve a police state. The most interesting opinion, however, is what I want to talk about here, that maybe Helena-West Helena isn’t a police state.

The argument is basically this: Citizens there are being hassled by the cops. That’s good to report, but we shouldn’t whine about it being a “police state,” because that only undermines our case. Real police states are totalitarian. Real police states don’t just hassle people who break the curfew; they arrest curfew-breakers. Real police states have soldiers, not cops, patrolling the streets, armed with machine guns. Real police states outlaw free speech. The very fact that the ACLU is complaining proves that it’s not a police state. And in a real police state, situations like the one in Helena-West Helena aren’t repaired. Helena-West Helena is not a police state.

I admit, this argument makes sense to me. It’s very convincing. I can sympathize with that point of view. Except…  read more »