Americans have the greatest freedoms on the face of the earth that are guaranteed by our countries founding fathers foresight in writing a bill of rights to protect every citizen’s rights from any man or government.
I ask every one of my readers today, “would you give up your right to free speech?” If your answer is no, I challenge you to ask one other person if they would be willing to give up their right to free speech.
Why is this question so relevant to the issue of gun control facing our nation at this present time?
It is legal to voice your opinion on any issue you may feel you need to. This right allows you to criticize political leaders, employers, teachers, neighbors, friends, total strangers, and yes even our government as a whole. In other countries, both past and present, you could face jail, prison, and even death if you embarked on this path of fee speech.
The right to free speech does have some limits. For example, a person could be criminally prosecuted for yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theater if some one was injured or died as a result of the crowd stampeding out the exits. A person who does this should be held criminally responsible for using their first amendment right of free speech to cause injuries or deaths. Imagine the amount of news coverage this incident would receive if it sparked a cycle of repeat crimes across the nation. The survivors’ families of the dead and injured would form a special interest group to prevent such events from happening again. In their efforts they would want to put limits and bans in place on every citizen’s First Amendment Right to Free Speech. These groups would justify the bans and limits put in place by saying “if they only saved one life it would be worth it.”
What is “it”? My fellow citizens of America, “it” is our loss of liberty. Our rights were not granted to us by anyone but God and ours at birth. Luckily in our country it is reinforced by The Bill of Rights.
These groups would continue with little or no resistance. Eventually they would push their agenda to the halls of Washington DC finding sympathetic politician(s) in positions of great power who take up their cause. When these politicians take up their cause to limit and ban Free Speech, they would be met with opposition. These politician(s) then threaten to use executive powers and privileges’ of their political office to circumvent other branches of government to expedite the process to restrict our rights and create the laws to enforce this.
Is it realistic an American Politician(s) could be sympathetic to this cause? Why would they threaten to use executive power and privilege of their office if facing opposition to the cause? Should we expect our leaders to create laws by circumventing the normal legal process? Until this week I would have told you these questions are the stuff of monstrous dictators of the history, novels, and movies. This week, I saw a very powerful politician go on the news and do just that. Not about the freedom of speech I have been writing about, although it could have been. Politician(s) or political parties who are willing to openly say they would violate the Constitution and our Bill of Rights, once this point is reached how fare are they willing to go? How many rights will they pick and choose to remove and leave for us? Weren’t these rights guaranteed to us by our founding fathers through the bill of rights? Why do these politicians feel so threatened by some of our freedoms? Do these leaders consider the Constitutions Bill of Rights as rights or as privileges? Privileges are what children are given, and can be modified by parents with or with out a good reason.
As an American citizen I should not have a reason to suspect our leaders would attempt to take away our rights granted to us under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. No American should suspect our leaders would create laws that single out anyone or groups of citizens that violate our rights as American Citizens. However, one of my favorite subjects in high school was history. Some figures come to mind. They disarmed their citizens after coming to power and they continued to take away rights at a rate that did not alarm their citizens. Eventually these leaders and their political parties committed some of the greatest atrocities known to history. History will remember Turkey’s Dictators – Mehmed Talaat, Ismail Enver and Ahmed Djemal and the genocide of the Armenians, Germany’s Adolf Hitler and the genocide of the Jews.
Sources:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/armenians.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution
