A Nation of Law
‘You know? I
absolutely abhor being controlled. I may be wrong, but I suspect you do too. I
think we all do—it’s our nature. As a matter of fact, there are times when I
perceive that someone is trying to control me when I will purposely do just the
opposite even if it might not be in my interest—even if it hurts; my wife says
I’m stubborn. On the other hand, there is a “right and wrong” about things. I
don’t mind following rules that help us all to live together in peace and
harmony with one another if it is the “right thing” to do. I remember the
prosecutor on Law and Order, that
famous television program, saying
that your freedom ends and mine begins at the tip of our noses. For us all to
live in peace, and we must, we must never forget that. We need laws—all kinds
of laws; to provide rules of order that we may live our lives in liberty and
happiness with equal opportunity for all. We are a nation of law and we must
obey them if we want to survive.
There is a
beauty in this, at first, not readily apparent. We are a democratic republic
“of the people, by the people, and for the people”. Abraham Lincoln reminded us
of this in his speech at Gettysburg after the Civil War. In our democracy, all
of us—every qualified citizen— has a say in the creation of these laws through
our elected representatives. Today, we have a population approximating 320
million people with 320 million opinions differing in one way or another (You
have heard it said,”Even my wife doesn’t agree with me all the time”). The
beauty of our system is that, although the majority prevails, the minority is
protected from the tyranny of a majority by our Constitution and the Bill of
Rights contained within. The majority of us cannot oppress the minority. We
have a legislative branch of government to create the rules by which we are
governed, an executive branch to execute them, and a United States Supreme
Court to insure their adherence to our Constitution.
This is
absolutely wonderful! But there is a problem. The system is smudged and failing.
It is broken. We have an electorate which, for the most part, is either
misinformed or uninformed, complacent, fails to participate, and wants to stay
that way, and a legislative body, the majority of which has “sold out” to a
Shadow Government by the Corporatocracy
and Power Elite, aka an oligarchy of multinational corporations and the
very rich and powerful world elite, a president whose motives appear
questionable (the Democratic Party is touted as a party of the people—not Wall
Street), and a supreme court which certainly hasn’t helped, calling a legal
entity, corporations, people with the right of free speech. The result is that
we are losing our democracy and our sovereignty as a nation. Rather than a
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, we are going in
another direction and we won’t like it when we get there. We are on our way to
a world government by corporations and world elite.
This new world
trade agreement is just one more step. And how do I know? I know; You know; We
know, what they have done in the past. Now, it’s a secret. Although it’s
certainly understandable why negotiations of a trade agreement would be behind
closed doors, it is not understandable that we can’t read it (and amend if
necessary) before it is passed. We the people need to see this—no fast track,
no TPP, until we do. Really! It’s in our court—we the people. It’s past time for
us to stop “sucking our thumbs”.
In the mean
time, this is Ronald Miller, www.sageobserver.blogspot.com,
signing off. Email me at mtss86@comcast.net.
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