Posted by
Nebraska Sage on Saturday, September 05, 2009 8:18:02 PM
America is in trouble! Not just America but many of the institutions in and of America are ailing as well. We, as American citizens, can fix this problem. And the fix is fairly easy. A remedy left us by our Founding Fathers. It is called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The Constitution lays the basic framework for the setup and purpose of the Federal Government. A government designed for two purposes. One purpose is to keep it simple, direct and easy to operate or control. The other purpose is limit the scope of the government along with its ability to abuse the very citizens it was written to protect.
Then there is the Bill of Rights. This is the first ten amendments to the Constitution. They are not really amendments so much as direction to the Federal Government on what they are not permitted to do with the limited powers they were given. It was the basic definition intended to prevent the government from taking your ability to speak for yourself, your weapons, your religion, your property, your personal security. In general they cannot abuse their power when it comes to “controlling” us, the citizens they work for.
Too bad in the last four generations the citizens have not just willingly, but with great encouragement, given the very government this fine document was meant to protect them from permission to take an ever increasing amount of our freedoms away from us.
Due to our own greed, complacency, and uncaring personality we have given up much of our rights to not being unduly taxed. We’ve also given up many of our religious rights. To top that off we have sacrificed our rights regarding freedom of owning, using and handling weapons of many types. We have sacrificed the majority of these freedoms for the overtly admirable purpose of helping the poor, the environment, foreign Nations in trouble, and to spread Democracy around the world.
In reality it has not done anything that it was originally set forth to do. The poor not only exist still, but there are actually far more poor people per capita as there was before we attempted to help them. The churches did a better job than government has. Likewise, the environment is no better now than it was in 1900. And while all this is going on we have much higher percentage of people living free now than we did during the Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. There are no fewer Nations in trouble now than at the start of the Progressive movement in the late 1800’s.
The fix we need to make is to repeal many of the amendments between eleven and twenty seven. This would be the first step toward what I call “getting back to the basics”. That is exactly what we need to do as citizens, direct our government – at all levels – to get back to the basics the Founding Fathers gave us.
You, as I, know that we do not really want, need, or desire the government to force their version of retirement, medical care, environmental management, conservation, arts, and helping others for us. We know left to ourselves and our own ways and means we as a people can deal with these individually as communities far better than Washington D.C. The Founding Fathers never even imagined us encouraging the people in Washington to abuse us further. Let’s stop it now - simplify the operation, put personal responsibility back on the individual and take it back from government.
Sage Words from Nebraska