Death of the US Bill of Rights

This is a excellent essay on the demise of the US Bill of Rights; IMO it’s well worth reading. It seems the Russians are more likely to be reading about America’s erosion of freedoms in Pravda than we American’s are in our own news papers...a damn sad state of affairs.


>>The Death of the Bill of Rights in America (Part II)
10/28/2004 12:44
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, once said: "When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty."<<
As a former university professor, I have consistently been dismayed by the number of college students who know almost nothing about the Bill of Rights. While some may argue that this lack of knowledge is attributable to the apathy of today"s youth, it is evident that public school systems are not emphasizing the Bill of Rights in their curriculums.
But how can they? How do you teach students they are entitled to "the right to be left alone," which Louis Brandeis described as "the right most valued by civilized men," when they can be summoned from their classrooms at will and forced to submit to "random drug tests." How do you expand upon William O. Douglas"s words that "[r]estriction on free thought and free speech" is "un-American," when the ones being censored and castigated as un-American are those who exercise free speech through dissent? How do you emphasize the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights when opportunistic politicians vote to destroy them, and America"s economic sector demands materialistic cogs, not free-thinkers? How do you discuss the "right to privacy" when technology exists to classify people according to their genetic makeup, when computer chips can be inserted under people"s skin to monitor their movements, when omnipresent video cameras constantly record daily activities, and when all but the most reclusive cannot survive without sacrificing their privacy on a daily basis?
At the close of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin, one of America"s founding fathers, was asked: "What have you wrought?"
He replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it."
The Republic has not always been kept, but it has always been restored. But now, as fear is increasingly exploited as a political strategy, as the erosion of basic rights and freedoms is concealed in deceptively appealing garments of beneficence, and as America"s children are indoctrinated into believing the Bill of Rights is more mythical than real, the end of the Republic may indeed be near.
David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of PRAVDA.RU<<

Another view on the relationship between the constitution, politics, and the financial markets. The momentum continues to fracture the essential ingredients to wealth creation. Why the mobile dollar is leaking Russian gas.

Poor thing was dead and buried long ago. What a shame that such a masterpeice would be buried by alive by we the people...for whom it was written to protect.