by James Glaser
May 31, 2002

I don't want you to think that I have joined "Posse Comitatus" or the "Freeman," nor have I started a militia, but by today's standards, I have been doing some subversive reading. I have been reading our United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. Tell that to some friends and see what kind of reaction you get. Most Americans get visions of Tim McVeigh or Waco and Rugy Ridge. People that start reading the Constitution are regulated into the far right class or maybe even thought of as people that want to over throw our government.

The truth is that our government, our United States of America is still based on these documents and all of our elected officials in Washington and those in the Armed Forces take a oath to defend and uphold this Constitution. The Constitution should be taught to every American, so that they know what our country stands for and what freedoms we have.

It might surprise you to find out that the Constitution does not grant any rights to us. No the Constitution is designed to impede and restrict government officials in the exercise of political power. Our founding fathers recognized the truth expressed in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence that peoples rights preexist government

Read the First Amendment and you will see it doesn't give people the right to express their thoughts. No it prohibits Congress from enacting any law that interferes with a person's (preexisting) right to express his thoughts. Our Founding Fathers realized that we all had rights before the government was formed and what was needed, was a way to keep any government from taking those (God given) rights away.

If America wants to defeat terrorism, what better way than to show the rest of the world our Constitution and only back countries that adhere to principals that some what resemble ours. If we believe that we had rights before a government was formed, then don't all people have those same rights? How can we as a people support Monarchies and Dictatorships that deny any rights to their people, let alone pour billions into these regimes. Either we believe all people have rights or no one does. How can it only be people living in North America that have these rights?

Now that we are the only super power, what better time to lead by example and help those in the rest of the world get the rights we hold so dear. Terrorists didn't attack us because we have all of these rights and freedoms. No terrorists attacked us because we help the despots of this world keep their people under the heel of oppression.

It is a fact that many of these truly oppressive countries have oil and markets for our arms sales, but for a lasting peace we must free those that live in squalor or when they rise up to throw of their shackles (and they will) we will be the ones that they are attacking. Those that attacked us in September were telling us what is to come if we continue to oppress the masses through their local governments. Even the man in the mud hut with no education or any hope for the future can see that it is America that really calls the shots in this world today.

We can kill tens of thousands of terrorists every year for ever, but we have to start seeing that a man oppressed on the other side of the world is no different that those patriots of 1776 that threw of the oppression of England and that people world wide want a future for their children. To deny them that, is to invite them to attack us again and again. We wouldn't stand for it back then, why would we think they will now?