One vote away from losing our liberty

By JIM TAPSCOTT

America is one vote away from losing our liberty; U.S. Supreme Court narrowly upholds right to bear arms 5-4.

Ramona Tea’d Constitutional Forum to discuss Firearms = Freedom at Mainstage on July 31.

In June 2010, five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Second Amendment of the Constitution, affirming the right of the people to bear arms, a right that has been upheld for 234 years.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that four Supreme Court justices ruled to deny the citizen’s right of self-defense. This means that our right to bear arms is hanging by a thread, within one single vote of being abolished and of us resultingly losing our liberty. If we allow the liberal elitists to abolish the Second Amendment, we will soon lose every other right because we will have lost the ultimate ability to defend those rights and to defend ourselves.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution states: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” So on what basis of reasoning did four justices rule to infringe on the rights of the people and to deny that God-given right of self-defense? Don’t they understand the English language?

It seems they want to impose their personal liberal ideology onto the citizens rather than to defend the law. But most likely the progressive (totalitarian) left doesn’t want the people to be armed, because they know they can’t control an armed people. That’s exactly why the founders made sure that a self-governing people must have the right to be armed. We must understand that armed people are citizens in control of their government, while unarmed people will be reduced to lowly subjects (sad, but very true).

Ever since the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were adopted, the progressives, the liberals and the left have been trying to destroy our founding documents. They constantly clamor that the Constitution is a living document, subject to their interpretation. They don’t accept it as the foundation for our law.

Rather they want it to be whatever serves their purposes at any given moment. They sneer at the facts stated in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from God and wrongly hold that our rights are granted from their idol: the government.

The Bill of Rights is very clear in its meaning and intent. It was written in simple terms that any layman could understand.

It was intended as a limitation on government power; it’s all about what the government can’t do to the people, such as: “Congress shall make no law.” Because the Constitution can’t defend itself, it’s up to the people to make sure our elected representatives and justices’ respect and defend the Constitution. As a self-governing people we must realize that the Founders were wise men who knew they needed to make it difficult to make changes to the Constitution and that’s why our supreme law can only be changed through the constitutional amendment process requiring ratification by three fourths of the states.

The Constitution was never meant to be changed by a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. If we are not going to force the Supreme Court to live within its boundaries, our country and our freedom are doomed as we learned at our town hall forum on Judicial Tyranny!

But the progressives know they will never succeed at taking away our right to bear arms through a constitutional amendment, so they will continue trying to pick away at our right to bear arms bit by bit.

The road to serfdom is never attempted directly, but by one step at a time. For many years the left has been twisting words into pretzels trying to convince us the Constitution means something other than what it actually says. This is much like President Clinton who tried to convince us with his convoluted reasoning, “it all depends on what is, is.”

They know that to control the people they must also control the language. So here we are today living in the world of Orwell where the liberals say black is white and up is down and their deception and doubletalk goes unchallenged.

Progressives want us to believe that the Constitution is subject to “interpretation,” but they are wrong. It’s the responsibility and duty of our elected representatives and justices to understand and defend the Constitution as written, not to interpret it. Likewise it’s our responsibility to keep an eye on our representatives and make sure that they defend the law.

We must never forget that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and we must always remember that what the government gives, the government can take away.

We must remember that our rights come from our Creator and thus are inalienable rights. This is exactly why we must not believe the elusive and deceitful words of the progressive Pied Piper. We must not fall into their trap by taking “free” handouts, or to believe that our rights are granted by government or that government was established to be our nanny, because if we do so we will soon be enslaved and deprived of freedom and property.

Firearms = Freedom will be the topic of discussion at the monthly TEA’d constitutional forum held at the Ramona Mainstage on July 31. Please note: Program time will change for this event and will go from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Primary speaker will be Mr. Sam Paredes of Gun Owners of California. Also, Bob Seigel will be MC, and our own “Ranger Doug” Oliver will be part of the program.

For more information, go to: www.ramonatead.org.

Jim Tapscott is Ramona TEA’d Steering Committee chair.