Page 28 - Fruits from a Poisonous Tree

12 Fruit from a Poisonous Tree

a choice of limited or unlimited government. Because it is a necessary evil, it
is necessary to vigilantly limit government’s disruption of citizens’ lives.
We the people delegated to ourselves the responsibility as the ultimate
protector of the Constitution. We the People are the ultimate court. When
our government is unwilling or refuses to abide by the constitutional mandates
we required, it is our sacred duty to stand up against that government and to
either alter or abolish it.
But oppression remains an evil that must be minimized in a free society.
The ideal is not to abolish all government, but to structure it so as to achieve
the greatest respect for citizens’ rights and the least violation of their liberty.
The question is not whether Americans have lost all their liberties, but
whether the average American is becoming less free with each passing year
– with each session of Congress – with each new shelf row of Federal Register
Publications.
American liberty can still be rescued from the encroachments of
government. The first step to saving our liberty is to realize how much we
have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose our liberties
unless fundamental political changes occur.
I would propose that the Constitution be amended to require that the
entire House of Representatives be composed only of females and the Senate
be composed only of males. That would be a natural balance of power. It
works in families; why not Congress and the American family?
The most recent example of congressional action and loss of liberty can
be found in the new PATRIOT Act (short for “Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism”).
This act of Congress primarily expands existing law, giving federal law
enforcement agencies greater intelligence-gathering power, and has the effect
of curtailing or eroding constitutional protections for citizens. In the wake
of September 11 , most of us believed that the law might be reasonable in
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granting enforcement agencies these expanded powers. But the facts as have
been revealed by Congress do not support that contention. That tragedy
occurred not because of inadequate anti-terrorism law, but because of the
federal intelligence agencies’ own internal procedural failure.
The PATRIOT Act does not, therefore, help us to fight terrorism better.
What it does do is:
1. It upsets the balance of power in our government, putting unnecessary
power in the hands of the Executive, and brings us one step closer to what
Chancellor Hitler achieved in pre-war Germany.
2. Increases the administrative burden on presently overburdened
intelligence agencies; making terrorism more difficult for them to fight.