Patriot Acts

When King George's government elected to tax tea and limit the choice of what kind of tea the colonies could obtain, patriots dressed up like Native Americans, stormed boats in the harbor that were importing tea, and dumped the tea into Boston Harbor. That act was illegal, by law. The patriots broke the law to prove a point, to stand up for their basic civil rights, later documented in the Declaration of Independence and later, in the United States Constitution.

A few years later, the local elected leaders (note: farmers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) in the colonies, true "representatives" of their constituents, signed a document that formalized their intent to commit treason. Yes, treason. Treason against the royal government that enacted law after law without appropriate representation from the colonies. We as modern day Americans, applaud that signing, that document and that day. Have we forgotten what they did? They committed treason. And for that act, they could have been hanged.

And a few years later, many of these same leaders created a government that was based on preserving the rights of every individual, not as a collective. But each and every individual, even those that wanted to speak out against the government.

Fast forward to 2001. Shortly after one of our country's darkest days, September 11th, 2001, our government, still operating under our same Constitution, voted to violate rights of every individual. The "Patriot Act" was passed, under the guise of protecting us. Yet this very act was one of the greatest inhibitors to the very freedoms sought so fervently by the true Patriots during our country's birth. This act granted our government the rights to listen to our phone calls, to entry into our homes and to monitor our internet usage. For a country governed by a Constitution that is supposed to protect its people FROM the government, we passed an act called the "Patriot Act" that now puts the government in control of its people. We used to fight wars against governments that did this to its people. Now, we've done it to ourselves.

I applaud our current administration for eliminating our country's recent practice of torturing people who have been neither convicted nor indicted of any crime. Torture is what we wage wars against. We should never use it as a tactic. When we use terrorism to fight terrorism, we have become our own enemy. So kudos to this administration for turning back some of the measures that made us no better than the people we are fighting.

I hope our elected officials go further. Much much further. Let's take the Patriot Act off our books. Let's preserve the Freedom of Speech and allow my cell phone calls to occur without Big Brother listening. Let's preserve each and every individual's right to succeed or fail. If I fail, it's on my watch. If I succeed, don't take the fruits of my labor to reward the failures. If you do that, you incent me to fail, too.

Without swift changes, we are moving towards the need for another Declaration. It will probably look a lot like the first one. Maybe we should rewrite the words and pretend it's a new idea. Is it treason if we all re-sign the original?