Do We the People Really Have any Rights at All?

by S. Paul Forrest

AmericaRevealed.org

If you missed the discussion on Breaking Taboo  Newdissidentradio.com  7:00 PM EST - Be sure to listen to it HERE

We the People are currently being inundated with CISPA, SOPA, CIA deals with FaceBook and Google search engines designed to engineer our interests.  We have been sold phones, highway toll counters and automobile assistance mechanisms that can all be used to track us and record our activities.  All of these wonderful items of technological ingenuity are prying into our lives and actively dictating our allegiances to everything from purchases to political party affiliation. These weapons of mass manipulation have been questioned by Libertarians, Liberals and even Conservatives who all have become concerned whether our Rights to Privacy are being erased.  At the end of the day, the question is not whether our rights are being erased but whether we had any to begin with.

Everyday, many of us contemplate our freedoms as if we have any choice in their existence, implementation or deletion.  After all, the government allows us our rights and it is the government which stands poised to take them away without our participation.  From Women’s Rights, Civil Rights, the Right to Vote and even the right to Assemble have all come to the forefront in our discussions and to the negating floors of Legislative Halls. Many of these rights are currently being challenged by governmental players (or is it puppets?). The only question which comes to mind in the argument over our rights and the seeming rush of governmental “leaders” to deprive us of thoe provisions of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”, is a simple one: Have we ever truly had any rights?

Even though the concerns are warranted for the ongoing erosion of our freedoms stemming from the Patriot Act and National “Defense” Act (which more appropriately be called the “Offensive” Act), the fact remains that any rights or liberties we have been given were placed there by government and it is that same government which can take them away. One must also consider the definition of what “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” are.  Those favoring the actions of SOPA , TSA body groping or the ever expanding body of Laws allowing government to pry into our lives, will say the Laws are there to protect us from terrorists.  In this same way, Occupy Wall Street protestors are assaulted and their right to assemble, deprived because political based media states they pose a nuisance to business thereby depriving proprietors of their Pursuit of Happiness or society their ignorance of the problems at hand.

Rights are a simple concept; you may have as many as you want as long as you follow the system’s definition of them, obediently.  As an example; I have the "right" or as some will contest, "privilege", to drive down the road as long as I have a license, insurance, go the speed limit, etc…Likewise, I have a right to speech, assembly, etc as long as I follow the rules or Laws that apply to their exercise.  The problem though is when the rules keep changing and the road becomes a route through a myopic spectrum where how you dress, how you look or what your age, sex, ethnicity or class association is determines which laws apply to you.  We all should have the equal right to own a car and drive down the same roads but as this nation continues to channel its xenophobic angst against those who do not fit the mould of the day, the road becomes a rail and control takes the place of our freedom leading some of us into a tunnel where we quickly face a collision with the speeding locomotive called injustice.