Open letter to the people

In every man's life, it comes a time to look at one's dreams, look at what is real, and what is not, look at one's history and one's condition, and determine what direction is necessary and proper for that man's life to go.

Such is the nature of nations, as well, a nature that, by the nature, and composition of humanity, is often usurped. Our nation stands clawing at the edge of the precipice. I know not if we can pull ourselves out, given the nature of the trap prepared before us.

Those that would steer the nation, in the opinion of this writer, have steered it wrongly. They have bound us, and riveted upon us chains no less binding for being simply paper and legal documents. We hold on, not from hope, but from the determined survivalism that is part and parcel of our very humanity.

Look around yourselves. Look beyond the news, beyond the sound bytes, beyond the blurbs that make up everyday television, and look at the core of our society. Prices rise every day, every day men, and women, more and more desperate to make ends meet. Our prison population rises by leaps and bounds, our nation crying out from its roots against what occurs.

The blood of the innocent and the guilty alike is on our hands. To wash ourselves free of this blood, what method might we use? Shall we imprison more men, claiming that it is not working to imprison few? Shall we imprison all? If registering a few works not, does it not follow that registering all might? With the government implementing plans for a national identification card, and implanted tracking chips, how long can we still exercise our rights?

How long until these devices are required to drive, to vote, to have medical care, to live? How long until they become so ubiquitous that nobody thinks anything of them, but there is no more security? When crime becomes a way of life for the nation, is it not a maxim that the crime will rise to the highest possible level, and that to surpress competition, that such crime will use any power to prevent both the revelation of their crime, as well as to prevent any others from becoming powerful enough to challenge them?

The government does not grant, or guarantee your rights. It cannot, those rights are innate, and subject to none other but God and your own soul and conscience. If you choose not to exercise them, that is your choice. But look around you, look at your children, look at your parents. Are we really so much better off? Are we really more free, or are the chains about us so tight now that we cannot see the freedoms we've lost?

When our nation is so blindfolded, so coddled, that its civilians cannot stand on their own, and are powerless to protect themselves against the predators and criminals of society, what guarantee do we really have? We have only one guarantee, the guarantee of all civil societies, the guarantee of the right to self-protection, self-actualization, and self-rule.

This is the right, ultimately, that we are giving up, and refusing to work toward. We are educated, bred, taught, to comply and fit in... if we do not, we are placed at the fringes of society, placed in prison, and ultimately banned from society even after we have paid the debt that was owed.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

And is there any peace in those chains?

When one has made an oath to the Constitution, can one stand and allow a constitutional crisis to continue? Can one close their eyes to that crisis and pretend that it does not occur? If I were to do so, I would be as guilty as those who created the crisis, guilty before not just myself, but my people, my society, and even the children that the legislature claims to attempt to protect.

What is the price of freedom? We give up security, ostensibly granted by the government, for the opportunity to create that security ourselves. We grasp back our rights, the rights to life, liberty, property, and freedom of choice, freedom of will, and all the pains and processes committant with it.

Our nation is one of free men... but how free are we now? Can we test the walls of our cells? Can we see the limits of our chains? When the bounds about us are bound tightly enough, can we even perceive what it is to be free?

Ladies and gentlemen of the nation... our constitution is in crisis, and the tearing apart of the document continues every day. It is our idleness, our idolatry for security, our zeal for punishment that allows it, without realizing that any right we deny others... we also deny ourselves.

Though my heart is full of fear, there is only one course which can, and must guide my footsteps, and that is the course of restoration of that constitution, and of the rights of the people. It is only in this manner that we can guarantee, and maintain the rights of the people for our children, and our children's children.

I cannot hold back my opinion, nor hold back the facts. The facts stand before a weary world, untrammeled, and unexplored by so many. Look at them, then look at yourselves. Is it really so great a stretch from where we sit until complete slavery?

Forbid it, Almighty God... I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty... or give me death.