OPINION:
Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend, and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.
Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants.
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In the 23 years since the USA Patriot Act — a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA — was rammed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption, and abuse.
The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the 10 original amendments — the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments — and possibly the 13th and 14th Amendments, as well.
In fact, since Sept. 11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized, and our activities watched.
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The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time, but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
Here are some of the many ways our constitutional rights have been usurped since Sept. 11:
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble, and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault.
The Second Amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.
The Third Amendment prohibits the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces — complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc. — it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most: a standing army on American soil.
The Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers justified in the name of fighting terrorism.
The Fifth and the Sixth Amendments work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty, or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution, that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury. However, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions — and thereby help balance the scales of justice — is not to be underestimated.
The Eighth Amendment is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme.
As for the 10th Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state, and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, D.C., power elite — the president, Congress, and the courts.
Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.
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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books “The Erik Blair Diaries” and “Battlefield America: The War on the American People” are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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