September 1, 2009 – What is one to do when they have been backed into a corner? Is one to just lay down and whimper, or are they to fight their way out? Two hundred and thirty three years ago our nation faced such a predicament. The King of England had imposed so many unjust laws and taxes that our nation’s founders were left with no recourse but to take up arms and fight to regain their liberty.

It was our founders belief that we were born with certain unalienable rights, that these rights were a gift to us from our Creator, and that the purpose of government was to secure, or safeguard if you will, those rights.

How history repeats itself. Our Declaration of Independence states, “… all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security”

Once again our nation finds itself in the position in which their government has enacted unjust laws, and imposed unjust taxes upon the people. Just as did our founders, we, the freedom loving people of this country, have petitioned our government for redress in the most humble terms. And just as were those petitions of our founders, ours have been ignored and answered by repeated injury.

The people of this country today just cannot fathom what it means to be free of governmental interference. Thomas Jefferson provided the best definition of liberty that I have come across in all my research. He stated that, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

I would like for you to ponder that statement for a moment. I mean really think about what it means. What do the following words mean to you, “…unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others?”

As long as your actions do not prohibit me from enjoying my rights, you are free to do as you wish, and vice versa.

How then can a child be prohibited from praying in school when by their doing so they are not prohibiting other children from doing so?

How can my owing guns prohibit you from your right to own them, or not to own them if you so choose?

It matters not that a majority of the people find a person who exercises their rights offensive as long as in doing so they do not infringe upon their rights. Public opinion, no matter how strong, has no right to cause one single individual to be restricted from enjoying their individual rights.

Or, as James Madison said, “There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”

Author Ayn Rand was once quoted as saying, “Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”

Sir William Blackstone was a noted English Judge and commentator on Common Law. In his writings he stated, “The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual’s private rights.”
Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once said, “The right to be left alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.” He is also quoted as saying, “The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen — a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.”

Many people in this country feel that nothing has changed, that they still retain all their rights and liberty. They couldn’t be more wrong. You see, as our nation’s first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, once said, “The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.”

How can this be? Benjamin Franklin explained how this could happen, “A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”

When you do not know what your rights are, it is an easy task for those in power to take them from you, and that is exactly what has happened.

Former President Clinton went so far as to say, “When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly…. [However, now] there’s a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there’s too much freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it.”

If our elected representatives had understood the importance of individual liberty, Clinton would have said that when personal freedom is being abused, the individual who is abusing their freedom should be punished. Instead, our government has decided that the inherent right of all individuals needs to be limited.

There are those of us who are sick and tired of our government interfering in our lives. We are fed up with their non stop attempts to strip us of our God-given rights. As William O. Douglas said, we just want to be left alone.

We, those of us who just want government off our backs, and out of our lives, feel as though we have been backed into a corner, betrayed by those who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. These individuals have trampled upon our individual rights, and we feel, as did our nation’s founders, that our petitions for redress have been ignored and we have been labeled terrorists, radicals, and fringe elements.

Yet all we are asking for is what is rightfully ours according to law. How would you feel if you were slowly being backed into a corner and there appeared to be no way out? Would you just give up and surrender your remaining rights? Or would you choose the path described by Alexander Hamilton, “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense?”

All I, and many others, want is to be left alone. Slowly but surely we are being forced into that corner where those who still value their rights will have no choice but to say enough is enough.

Our founders took their stand 233 years ago. Please, don’t force us to take ours now.

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?“

~ The Author ~
Neal Ross can be reached for comments at bonsai@syix.com. Visit Neal’s Blog at http://www.zombie-slayer.com/neal