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All government workers, whether civil, military, or elected, are excluded from all types of voters. Anyone who is receiving money from the government should have no say in how that government is run, or how its funds are appropriated.
The Bill of Rights is a partial list of rights that are inherent to the people and cannot be negotiated away. The purpose of the list is to protect the people from the government and its civil servants; the civil servants themselves are NOT the people and are not entitled to all of its protections. When they voluntarily accept a government paycheck, they must give up part of their otherwise inalienable rights or not accept the paycheck. No one forces them to do this, they are selling their rights for money. Their loss of rights is only effective when they are doing (or pretending to do) official duties under color of law.
This is similar to the loss of rights we all accept when we accept employment. We accept a form of servitude for money. Who would claim that we have the right to preach our religion during the time our employer is paying us to do something else? Your employer can read your e-mail at work because he owns the computer system; if you want freedom from arbitrary searches you do your e-mailing at home.
Civil servants lose more rights during their employment because they are servants of the people. Everything they do on the job should be public knowledge. (There would be exceptions for national security, etc, but a grand jury would have to rule on these on a case by case basis, with a sunset on the security date). We are not paying them to do things behind our back. For this reason, they are not entitled to claim protection from the 5th amendment when giving testimony about something they did under color of law. Those who refuse to testify should be fired on the spot (with no pension or even loss of citizenship if a death was involved); the same should hold for those who commit perjury.
While the people have the right to keep and bear arms, civil servants forfeit that right on the job. They are NOT part of the militia, the writings of the Founding Fathers make that clear. It is up to the people to protect the government. If the people refuse to protect the government, the civil servants should not do it either. The army of course would have arms on their base, on foreign soil, or in arsenals but it would be foolish to allow them to bear arms against the people. The ancient Romans had a clear trip wire; crossing the Rubicon with an army was treason - we need clearly understood trip wires in the USA for the same reason. Note that I am speaking of civil servants here, not elected officials. Elected officials (Sheriff, Senator) retain their 2nd amendment rights. Unelected policemen should be unarmed; if they want to retain their arms they should be elected. There should be no problem with a neighborhood voting to arm their own policeman if they so desire. (This would authorize a named policeman to carry arms in their neighborhood for a specified term, say 2 years)
It would be foolish to allow civil servants the right to petition the govt for redress of grievances, or even to allow them to vote. They should be out of the political loop. Would you allow your servants to dictate to you? Let them work elsewhere if they don�t like the conditions. Civil service should be a short time job, not a lifetime of leisure.
In a free country, everything is permitted except for a few things that are forbidden, while in a slave country everything is forbidden except that which is required. If we are to be free, our government must be our servant. They must be forbidden to do anything except that which is required. Likewise, they have very limited rights and cannot lay claim to the entire Bill of Rights.
Nick Hull, < [email protected] >
Secretary, Committees of Correspondence
2702 Kimbrell Road, Lenoir City, Tennessee 37772
865-856-6185
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