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| The Global Freedom Institute |
| Social Order: The killing of Individual Freedoms in America (page 2) Government trying to maintain social control over people linked to religion, whose job it is to control thought, leads to the perfect political machine. Government can do what it wants and there is no one to question it. That is why it is the First Amendment. Free thought is the most important tool to freedom. Some have said guns are the most important freedom, but guns without the thoughts of how to use them and when to use them, lead to failure in any fight against government control. This leads us to the Second Amendment. The �right to bear arms�, as many call it. Some have said that the Second Amendment deals with arms only within an organized militia. Others have said that it gives a blanket right for all citizens to bear arms. While the intent has been debated for years and will continue to be debated for years to come, if we accept the latter interpretation, it would be consistent with the idea of fear of government tyranny. Many have argued that an armed population is the greatest fear of government because it allows for less government control of people. It keeps people armed so they can revolt against a tyrannical government, thus checks government abuse. It seems that the Bill of Rights was designed more to prevent abuses by the government over people than to give rights to people. However, in preventing government abuse, it implicitly gives individuals those rights. If government cannot take away freedom of speech, then in fact, freedom of speech becomes a right to the people. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments continue this cause by preventing government from using criminal prosecution of individuals in a careless manner. The Fourth Amendment is designed to prevent government from arbitrarily searching people and their property without probable cause to do so. Meaning if there is no reason to search for something, they are not allowed to search and hope something gets found. The government needs to have an idea of what and why they are looking for something and have probable cause they will find it where they are searching. It also prevents the seizing of people without probable cause. This allows freedom of movement for individuals until a time that there is probable cause that they have done something in violation of laws. It also prevents random abductions of individuals who may disagree with the group in control of the government. The Fifth Amendment is often referred to as the �right of self-incrimination.� However, it is much larger than that. It prevents government from forcing an individual into a confession. Therefore, it requires that the government, prove its case against someone since, confession cannot be forced by government. It also requires that a person cannot be deprived of life or property without due process. This means that one must be found guilty before life or property can be taken by the government. There are other parts to the Fifth Amendment, but the basic concept is clear: it is designed to check government abuses in terms of law. This shows a clear distinction. When individual freedoms come into conflict with social order, individual freedoms should prevail. If the constitution had been written in order to maintain social order over individual freedoms, then Amendments like the Fifth, would have promoted the taking away of those freedoms in order to maintain social order. Instead, it does the opposite by putting the burden on the governments to prove their cases and maintain individual freedoms for all. And only by having probable cause, and use of due process of law, can one�s individual rights be taken away. However, this has not been the case in terms of recent laws. Many of the current laws are simply attempts to control people and their thoughts. Hate crime legislation, while becoming more popular, is little more than an attempt to control thought. Most people don�t think that �hate� is a good thing. However, the crimes addressed by hate crime legislation are already illegal, and usually carry heavy penalties already. This means that a crime gets a double penalty based on the thoughts of the individual. While these have been prosecuted and found guilty by juries, this is merely speculative and cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If one things about it, the thoughts of an individual cannot be known by anyone but the individual. They can be speculated on based on information found, but cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. These laws are designed to control thought and emotion. Emotion, by definition, may not be rational, like thought, therefore is harder to control. What could be the purpose of charging someone for the same crime but a harsher penalty based on thought, except to deter certain kinds of thought. This was the type of control that the First Amendment was intended to prevent. It is hoped that people wouldn�t hate each other, however, one does have the right to love and hate whomever they deem worthy of such emotions. Similar to hate crime legislation is drug legislation. The foundation for drug laws is one of two premises. First, drugs promote crime to meet the addiction, so drug laws are designed to prevent crimes. Second, drugs are bad for individuals and those individuals need to be protected from themselves. The premise of the former creates the same flaw as hate crime legislation, and may even be worse. First, the crime is already against the law. Thus, one gets penalized for the crime and penalized for doing drugs. There is no proof that drugs �cause� one to commit crimes. It is possible, and amazingly even happens, that some use drugs for long periods and never violate any law other than drug laws. Without any causal links between drugs and crime, there is no justification for using the rationale that it prevents crime. The question becomes: who has their rights infringed by someone using drugs? The answer is no one. If they choose to violate another law, those actions are already illegal. This justification is designed to do little more than get a segment of the population out of society because they do not deem this behavior as acceptable. One must wonder why considering we have elected a president who admitted smoking marijuana in his youth, and another who dodged questions about cocaine use in his �youth�, while other candidates admitted marijuana use. This only shows the hypocrisy of our government. Why do they pass laws that they themselves have violated in their lives? 1 2 3 4 |
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