And you can quote "THEM" on that!Some Thoughts for Upcoming Elections"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force, and like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
"The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is the only legitimate object of government. When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny."
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his
abuses in return for protection to his own."
"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry."
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt,...we [will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. And this is the tendency of all human governments."
"The United States Of America is definitely NOT founded upon the Christian religion."
Let true "...Government of the people, by the people, and for the people..." not perish from the earth!
The "Defense Of Marriage" AmendmentWhy it is an extremely DANGEROUS thing to considerThe original 13 colonies were reluctant to endorse the New Federal Constitution unless the rights of the individual citizens were guaranteed, hence, the "Bill Of Rights." Since then, every amendment, save one, has either further defined or limited the scope of government, or further defined or expanded the rights of the individual. Only ONE amendment took away individual freedom, and it was the ONLY amendment ever to be repealed...that was the 18th Amendment, or "prohibition." Most important of the amendments following the Bill Of Rights are the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments which abolish slavery, guarantee equal rights, and give ALL citizens, male and female, the right to vote. With these amendments, the last vestiges of inequality that had been written into the original Constitution were clearly and permanently abolished. As far as the Constitution now reads, everyone in this country is considered equal in every way. The "conservative right" worked to defeat the so-called "equal rights" amendment on the ground it was unnecessary with the 14th amendment already guaranteeing equal protection. With our Constitution now, by their own reckoning, guaranteeing full and equal protection to all, why back a move to write a real and explicitly defined SECOND CLASS status of citizenship BACK INTO our Constitution? This is an extremely dangerous "slippery slope." If we citizens allow second-class, less-than-equal protection to be written BACK into the Constitution, we set precident which will make further intrusions into personal freedoms, privacy, and equality much easier to accomplish, and what will be next? Will we declare Islam to be a subversive religion? Will we deny due process of law to those merely suspected of terrorism? It can happen so easily. German citizens of 1930 could probably never conceive of the Germany of 1939-1944, but it happened because gays, Gypsies, and Jews were "dangerous to the state!" Look at our own country. We once burned "witches." Have we become enlightened since then? Well, in 1942 you could LEGALLY be thrown into an internment camp merely for being of Japanese ancestry, and only 50 years ago, a person's life could be ruined by Sen. Joe McCarthy calling them a "Communist" without any proof whatsoever. Just 5 years ago, who could have conceived that before boarding an airliner, all of your luggage, even your shoes could and would be searched without "probable cause" yet we now accept this as "necessary for security." This new millenium, defined by the terrorist, has made our citizens all too willing to surrender their rights and worse, it has made our Government all too eager to take them away. Does this sound far-fetched to you? It shouldn't. In the news over that past several years we have seen attempts and/or successes to regulate smoking in our own homes, cell phone use, auto alarms, CD song lyrics, and personal body odor. Yes, one town tried to make it illegal to smell bad! Think long and hard about this amendment, whatever your personal feelings about gays and lesbians. Today YOU may jump on a bandwagon that finds certain things unacceptable, and tomorrow, something about YOU is now deemed unacceptable by yet another bandwagon! "...when they came for my neighbors, I said nothing.
Feel free to post this link on any web site, or make it part of your e-mail signature. |