It’s a terrible thing to fear your government. For the past 65 years, we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that our government is a benign entity which only has the best interests of its citizens at heart. After all, our government is all about freedom, civil liberties, justice, and constitutional rights… right?
We’ve turned a blind eye to Washington’s increasing isolation from the rest of the governed. We’ve ignored Congresses that have enacted laws from which those very members were exempt. We’ve immersed ourselves in mindless games and Hollywood drivel while presidents have signed executive order after executive order, consolidating power within centralized bureaucracies in ways our forefathers never imagined.
And when our judicial branch issues verdicts and rulings so out of the mainstream of society and against the Constitution, we simply shrug our shoulders and cluck disapprovingly to ourselves. After all, what can we do?
That complacency has created a monster that has come back around, reared its ugly head, and has bitten us on our collective rear ends.
On December 31st, 2011, President Barack Obama “reluctantly” signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act into law. He said in the signing statement (that has no legal validity, but is just a statement of intent) that although the Act does give him the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely, without charge, his administration “will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.”
In essence, the Bill of Rights died on December 31st, 2011, and no one mourned its passing. The American citizenry, as a whole, are acting like dumb sheep, not even so much as bleating as we’re led away to the slaughter.
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