While watching the news of the Ku Klux Klan, among other extremists groups, exercising their First Amendment rights at the Antietam National Battlefield, located in Sharpsburg, Maryland, I continue to wonder what some of the fathers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights would be thinking if they could somehow be raised from the dead.
Would George Mason be proud, or would he begin to question the written words of his lifetime struggle to protect the people from an overbearing government? Would he see the assembly of the Klan at a sacred battlefield, the New Black Panthers demanding to question Duke University students or the Westboro Baptist Church desecrating our military and their families in a time of war and mourning, as being for the common good of the people? Would he be appalled at the sheer notion of this hysterical representation of a church countersuing a family of a dead Marine from Maryland for violating their civil rights?
Would James Madison arise with more questions than answers as he searches for the Ten Commandments and Baby Jesus, only to find both hidden in a dusty closet covered by brooms and mops, as not to offend anyone by violating the establishment clause?
While our country’s founding fathers will not return to find their Charters of Freedom in disarray, maybe we should take this time to ask ourselves some simple questions. Let’s just get crazy and spring out of our reality bubbles into the make believe world of How our country was founded as if we were “raising our fathers”.
Has anyone under 50 ever read The Constitution or The Bill of Rights? I believe that back in the day, it just may have been required reading. I say anyone, since even those who are charged with securing our liberties and overseeing our justice system seem to be drafting their own versions, including the High Court.
As for me, I’m still looking for that “separation of church and state”. And while I’m at it, I may also scan all the way down to the Sixth Amendment and try to conjure up a “jury of my peers”. Please, someone help me through the muck.
Extremists groups are not intending to have peaceable assembly without a plethora of law enforcement guaranteeing it. Come on, wake up and iron the sheet. And the Panthers are no better, getting that “presumed innocent” thing all mixed-up again.
The original intentions of our country’s fathers are eroding more with every generation. Twenty years from now, will we be able to recognize the original documents that make the United States of America such a great country? Will we assemble for the common good of the people? Will we respect the men and women that serve our country and make it free today instead of tarnishing their memories at their funerals? Have we gone too far to turn back?
As Americans, we must vow to never stop asking questions. We have the right.
http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/bill_of_rights.html
Surrounded By Idiots 