Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Where have the liberties gone? Did we ever really have them?

We are legally required to where a seatbelt while driving, we can’t talk on the phone, and my four-year-old son must now be in a booster seat until he’s eight. Okay, perhaps those laws are for my safety, but isn’t my safety my business. How about this, in some areas we can’t fly our own flag, we can’t speak our minds, we can’t where a particular shirt, because we might offend someone. Oh, I’m sorry, but isn’t being offended a personal thing. When was “unless found to be offensive” added to the First Amendment?! Aren’t I entitled to my opinion? No, not anymore; being offensive is a matter of interpretation, but it’s also apparently illegal.

James Madison said, “It is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.“ Do we control the government?

We are being force fed a healthcare bill that at the least is unwanted by the majority of Americans, and at the most unconstitutional; we will be required to carry health insurance or pay a tax! Isn’t that my choice? I seem to remember another tax many years ago that taxed my choice – the poll tax! Oh, but the government cares, it wants to help us, it’s its duty to provide for the “general Welfare of the United States.” Remember Hillary Clinton’s, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Truthfully, it takes a family to raise a child, and a village to raise a village idiot. Government doesn’t want to help us; it wants to rob us. Alright, yes we elect our representatives every so often, and they campaign proposing to represent the electorate, but after taking the oath, it’s not about constituents anymore, it’s about staying in office. We don’t control the government, it controls us!   

Thomas Jefferson said, “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Wow, would Tommy be mad now. “Spending money to be paid by posterity” is the standard operating procedure for Congress today; everything has a ten or 20 year plan. How does the bill affect the deficit in 10 years; we will balance the budget by 2012; whatever. The problem is that each new session of Congress extends the “posterity.” The national debt is approaching $12 trillion; I would say we’ve been swindled on a large scale. What did Jefferson mean? Borrow it today, pay it back before the next election; anything is else is crooked accounting. Hmmm, I wonder if anyone is serving time for crooked accounting.

Thomas Jefferson also said, “On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them?” I wonder where the “angry [tea party] mob’; the “manufactured outrage” at town hall meetings, and Take Back American got their ideas? And, yet our rise in rebellion was squashed, silenced, or at least ignored by our representation.

John Adams said, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” It’s obvious to me we don’t live in a republic any more, and the democracy (majority rule) is only in DC. We can all hope that suicide transpires on November 2, 2010.

crossposted at ConservativeNC.