I do not wish to be alarmist. I seek to always offer a quite balanced perspective. But, in reading the U.S. Constitution, and especially our Bill of Rights, I am increasingly alarmed at trends in our government that run directly counter to what the plain text of our Constitution reads.
One example, is that our Constitution protects American citizens from illegal searches of our property, effects, etc., yet if we make a phone call or even send an e-mail to anyone living outside of the United States, we the People of the United States of America can now have our phones (cell-phone and land-lines) monitored by N.S.A.
Or another example, in another part of our Constitutional protection against governmental tyranny is that excessive fines may not be imposed upon an American citizen (or excessive bails), yet judges routinely impose fines and bails in the range of tens of thousands of dollars. Even a fine of $500 is excessive, yet this is often a minimum fine/bail set by a judge. $500 for any hard-working middle class American is excessive.
Finally, regarding issues of Religious Freedom, although the Catholic group the Knights of Columbus lobbied Congress to adopt the "under God" clause to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, if one were ever to pray in an official governmental capacity in a non-Deist unitarian format (for example, a prayer to allah, a Hindu prayer to Vishnu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu), or a Christian prayer "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ Our LORD," then one could be censured.
So, there you have it. Government surveillance, excessive fines imposed by our judicial branch and finally a state-enforced restriction on freedom of religious speech while praying in an official capacity (e.g. a chaplain opening Congress with a prayer for example).
Tyranny. Read the Constitution. I did today at Starbuck's.
Blessings in Jesus (not Vishnu! :-)
Rob J. King, Protector of Constitutional Government in the United States of America (of course, I might have to end up becoming a Democrat to do this it seems . . .)
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4 comments:
ROFL!!! I read it, Rob. Thanks. :)
Chad,
Thank you for being on top of things . . .
Should be an interesting turn of events when the Evangelical "Right" and the "Conservative Catholic" political coalition suddenly, by necessity MUST vote Democrat . . .
What does the G.O.P stand for these days other than hating Mexicans? I read the leading Republican journals (e.g. National Review) and their perspective is increasingly warped and FAR from anything Christian . . .
The G.O.P. stands for one thing above all else, and that is the centralization of power and wealth. They claim to support Democracy while working on limiting speech. They claim to support small business while working on preventing any competition from threatening the large corporations. They claim to support family values while making it harder and harder for people to afford health care and education.
There is only one way for their views to have a place in our country. I have no problem with people making as much money as they can, as long as making that money does not interfere or prevent someone else from getting basic services that they need to survive. In order to reach for the stars, we need to be standing on a solid foundation.
Chad,
Yes, the Republican Party very often veers from its founding ideals. The Party that rightly opposed slavery, sadly and cruelly ironically, was the very party that supported apartheid South Africa in the 1980's.
Similarly, although George W.'s "compassionate conservatism" freed up money for good religious programs as part of the Faith-Based Initiative (stuff like Christian groups, churches, etc. working with recovering heroin addicts), this same G.O.P. then directly OPPOSES religious freedom in many instances, say for example state-enforced Deist-Unitarianism.
Ironically when the whole "Jesus-Name" Prayer controversy happened in 2005 (CH Gordon Klingenschmidt) it was a BI-PARTISAN centrist view of BOTH Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush who stated that Chaplains should have the right to pray in whatever language that is arising from their religious tradition (Allah, Vishnu, YHWH, the Trinity, et al), and NOT some state-enforced civil religion.
Thank Chad for standing FIRM for TRUTH.
Blessings in Jesus,
Rob J. King
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