We are living in terribly trying times, no doubt. And it is easy to become discouraged about the current state of our nation. However, there is a way out of this mess as spelled out in the Constitution.
This from americafirstreport.com.
We’re drowning under the weight of too much debt, too many wars, too much power in the hands of a centralized government, too many militarized police, too many laws, too many lobbyists, and generally too much bad news.
It is hard to imagine that change for-the-good is possible.
[We doubt] the system can be reformed, that politicians can be principled, that courts can be just, that good can overcome evil, and that freedom will prevail.
So where does that leave us?
Benjamin Franklin provided the answer. As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention trudged out of Independence Hall on September 17, 1787, an anxious woman in the crowd waiting at the entrance inquired of Franklin:
Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?
Franklin replied:
A republic. If you can keep it.
“What Franklin meant is that we get the government we deserve.”
Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend, and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. — Abraham Lincoln
Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting We the People against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.
We the People have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.
In the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
Examples include: the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, illegal immigration, the viral plandemic with vaccine mandates and lockdowns, government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, etc., etc.
What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago.
Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.
Below is a down-and-dirty laundry list of infringements to our Constitutional rights:
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak our mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, We the People should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.
However, increasingly, We the People are being persecuted for exercising our First Amendment rights and speaking out against government corruption. Activists are being arrested and charged for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.
The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government.
Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, We the People remain powerless to defend ourselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.
The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.”
With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that We the People now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.
Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.
The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge.
However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial.
Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears.
However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.
The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment.
However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment.
However, [this amendment] has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.
The Tenth Amendment outlines that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution.
[However] that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, D.C., power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.
Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this:
Our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.
It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.
– In other words, it is our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.
– We are supposed to be the masters and they—the government and its agents—are the servants.
– We the American people—the citizenry—are supposed to be the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.
We the People are over 330 million. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.
This current ongoing tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.
Final thought: We are at a time in our existence as a Nation that We the People must demand a Constitutional Convention to begin correcting abuses that have occurred. Many of us fear the alternatives.
