Only One Blasting Cap Away From Tyranny

Americans fought itself free from England based on a fundamental rejection of the heavy hand of big government. In defining our rights as free human beings, the Bill of Rights was an unambiguous message for all ambitious future government officials. We wanted there to be strict limits on the power of government. And those ten basic principles, written in the clearest possible language, spelled out precisely what sort of RESTRICTIONS we wanted to always be imposed on our government.

More than anything else, the language used in the Bill of Rights provides protection against the worst elements of human nature. In breaking away from King George III, Americans were unwilling to give government an inch, because instinctively our founders knew it would try to take a mile. They knew why they fought and they knew what was won.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The Bill of Rights is supposed to protect us from all human beings who would dare to use government as a tool to deny freedoms. Specifically we are promised free: speech, press, religion, and assembly. We are also guaranteed the right keep and bear arms. Unreasonable searches and seizures by people in the government are prohibited. Our freedom is guaranteed by a due process guarantee in a court of law.

Elena Kagan

And we are also protected from our government through the requirement of speedy hearings, and trials by jury. Excessive bail, fines, or punishments are also prohibited. Most important of all we are provided with the specific guarantee that any authority not explicitly granted to the government, is reserved to us, as individuals. Make no mistake, the Bill of Rights is an irrevocable CAN’T DO list for ambitious elected officials. It is based on the assumption that one of the great failing of all human beings is the tendency to use the machinery of government to dominate life and usurp individual choices.

Sonia Sotomayor

Let’s turn our attention to the legal community. For most of the 225 years since the U.S. Constitution was adopted, a parade of crafty lawyers, acting as wordsmiths, illusionists, and legal magicians, have tried to convince the courts to countermand the fundamental protections of the Constitution. The latest effort came earlier this week when the Obama administrations lawyers tried to convince a majority of Supreme Court justices that the federal government has the authority to require all citizens to enter into private commercial contracts or face fines for not doing so.

John Paul Stevens

The questions offered by some of those lawyer-judges sitting on the Supreme Court shed light on just how precarious our constitutional protections have become. We can assume that as many as four of the nine Supreme Court justices are now ready to provide blasting caps to those who argued that the "mandate" provision contained in the Affordable Health Care Act is constitutional. The Obama administration has already placed legal explosives underneath the constitutional foundation of our country. All this president needs is one more lawyer-judge to give him a perverse "opinion." George III must be smirking somewhere.

Only One Blasting Cap Away From Tyranny