The Price of Freedom – Vigilance
Americans chose a new President on November 4th along with a number of new members of Congress. The Democrats have an undeniable lock on power in Washington for at least the next two years. With this turn of events many are rejoicing and singing the praises of change. While this is certainly a time of change, it should also be a time for reflection on the times in the past when one party has held power over the nation.
Whether your political leanings are to the left, right or center, now is not a time to stop paying attention to Washington DC. Voting is only one small part of the process of democracy. There is an old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Unfettered power allowed Republicans to push forward a socially conservative agenda that has disenfranchised many Americans, stripping them of many fundamental rights they once had, and a fiscal policy that has left our nation on the verge of economic depression. Their unchecked power went to their heads and they stopped listening to the other side. They pushed a minority agenda forward and hurt the majority. As long as we were not hurting personally, we as a nation didn’t pay attention. That lack of attention allowed them to stay in power longer than they probably should have and has now cost all of us valuable time and resources.
As we welcome the left into power we cannot afford to make the same mistakes of the past. We must follow the bills they propose, find out what they actually do, and let them know if we think they do or do not support our needs and ideals. This is imperative if we are to truly reclaim our nation as being of the people, for the people and by the people. Leaders will tend to take as much leeway as their subjects give them to accomplish the things they think are important. Sometimes those things are not the things that we need or want. If we aren’t paying attention they don’t know we don’t think we need or want them and thus they do them without fear of repercussion.
This new President will likely put at least two new members on the Supreme Court. This also impacts us as the court decides the legality of the laws that govern us and we must therefore live by. We should pay attention to who is nominated and what they stand for. We now have a conservative leaning court with a likely agenda to undo some of the previous decisions that guide our laws today as they disagree with them. If we allow the court to move further to the conservative side, we will likely see the shifting of laws to take away freedoms as opposed to increasing them.
You may be opposed to Roe v. Wade but you need to understand the implications of it being overturned. Overturning that decision would open the door to other body control legislation. What if a law were passed outlawing contraception in a very conservative Christian area? If the Supreme Court determines that the law can tell people what to do with their bodies such as banning abortion, they could say that contraception kills the unborn before they can be conceived. Laugh if you will but there are some Catholics, including the Pope, who believe strongly contraception does just that. What next? Does masturbation become a crime in some rural area? Maybe that could be constitutional as well. Let’s take it a step further. Tattoo ink can cause health issues. Banning tattoos might be in the public interest from a health perspective. Well, if we can pass laws to protect the unborn by controlling people’s actions with their own body why not pass laws that protect them from themselves? Tattoos are out and it’s constitutional.
Protecting our freedoms requires that we pay attention and cry foul when anyone regardless of their political bent tries to limit them for questionable reasons. Government should always err on the side of increasing freedoms not curtailing them. If we don’t pay attention, they are left to their own judgments on what is reasonable or not. We already know that there are some extremists in Washington DC on both sides of the aisle. If they come to control the agenda it is not good for us or our children. Our vigilance and resolve is all that stands between them and their one-sided agendas.
The election is over and that battle has been won, or lost depending on your point of view. Now we must trudge on because the war is by no means over. The enemies of freedom come from within as well as from without. We must never blindly trust that anyone will do what is in our interest over their own. We cannot afford to think that just because the election is over that we are done. We have more work to do and it will never end if we truly do cherish freedom and democracy as we claim to do. The price of freedom is vigilance and it falls to us to be the eyes and ears of freedom for ourselves, our children and our future.
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