The late great United States ~ By Patrice Lewis

By Patrice Lewis Posted: July 04, 2009 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 Ah, the glorious Fourth of July. The best possible time for a national day of mourning. I mean, really … what better day could you choose to lament the loss of what this nation once was? We led the world in nearly everything: independence, liberty, freedom, industry, wealth. We rose beyond the stain of slavery and Jim Crow laws. We embraced all nationalities of legal immigrants with remarkable smoothness and out of many, became one. But no more. Now we are fragmenting. We are reversing the motto of our country and out of one, becoming many. Some feel this persistent destruction of America is intentional. Whether or not you concur, the one thing you must agree is that the Nancy Pelosis and the Harry Reids of our government loath and despite everything Thomas Jefferson and John Adams ever stood for. That's because our Founding Fathers "remov[ed] the shackles from the people and plac[ed] them on the government," to quote Joseph Farah. Government hates that. In the past 70 years or so, it's been dismantling those shackles with increasing speed and placing them back on the citizens. Walter Williams wisely noted, "Why did the founders of our nation give us the Bill of Rights? The answer is easy. They knew Congress could not be trusted with our God-given rights." He points out that specific rights – freedom of speech and press, the right to own firearms, our rights to property, the right to a fair trial – could and would be usurped by a greedy and power-hungry government unless specifically told not to. "The Bill of Rights should serve as a constant reminder of the deep distrust our founders had of government … they rightfully saw government as the enemy of the people. ..." And sure enough, the fears of the Founding Fathers are coming to pass with sickening speed. "Americans have developed a level of naive trust for Congress, the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court that would have astonished the founders, a trust that will lead to our undoing as a great nation." Part of our collective problem is the two extremes of how people think our country should be run. On the right extreme are those (like me) who think our Founding Fathers were pretty smart guys, and we should keep our government within the constraints they so brilliantly laid out. On the left extreme are those who think the Founding Fathers were a quaint bunch of pansies in funny wigs whose writing no longer applies to us, and that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are "living documents" that should be modified whenever they wish. And never the twain shall meet. [CONTINUE READING]

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