The United States Constitution Is IRRELEVANT

I actually heard someone deliver this line on a talk show a couple of days ago:  The Constitution of the United States is irrelevant.  After my initial unbelief that someone uttered this statement, I thought about it, and asked "irrelevant to what?"  In answer to my unspoken question, the person who held this particular opinion went on the explain that with all the changes in society, technology, and the changes in the world after 9/11, the piece of paper guaranteeing that no government could take away our freedom just was no longer usable in our current situation.

For starters, said this person (whom I hope was not representative a very large portion of society) our GOVERNMENT can no longer keep us safe under the legal constraints outlined in the Constitution.  But I cannot convince myself that the person on the news show was the only person who felt this way.  For one thing, someone else voiced the very same opinion, backed by the power of the United States Congress.  Representative F. James Sensenbrenner (Republican - Wisconsin) sponsored USA PATRIOT, backed by such prominent members of Congress as Senator Orrin Hatch, oddly enough acting in "cahoots" with Senator Dianne Feinstein.  Strange bed partners, for certain.  Like the "ordinary citizen" on the television talk show, these Senators had decided that the Constitution was no longer relevant to the "post-9/11" world.  In other words, the "Government" was powerless to "protect the people."

So, these "prominent individuals" took it upon themselves to "protect" US by "strengthening" the powers of various federal agencies.  For the past two hundred years, police agencies had done a very good job of protecting us, even though they operated within the boundaries framed by the Bill of Rights.  Some terrorists plots were thwarted, others were completed successfully.  People for the most part felt that the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, the freedoms enjoyed here in the United States, were worth the possibility that occasionally we would be endangered by criminals, or even terrorists.  After 9/11, however, many people were understandably shaken, even fearful.  In this climate, the "prominent individuals" mentioned above, with the blessing of President George W. Bush and the US Department of Justice, drafted (here I use the term "drafted" loosely, because I am of the opinion that much of USA PATRIOT had been "drafted" well before 9/11) the bill that would become known as Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act. 

This bill passed into law in 2001, and was titled in such a way that the acronym USA PATRIOT was used to identify this very Unpatriotic, treasonous law.  With the passage of this bill, the Bill of Rights was tossed out the window; indeed, it was trampled into the ground by the full weight of the now out of control United States Government.  We, as a nation, have learned after two hundred years government agencies needed to be held at bay by law, by such ideals as freedom from unreasonable search, no unwarranted arrest, and the need for probable cause before criminal charges could be filed.  The truly sad thing was that many congressmen and senators knew that USA PATRIOT was a bad law, and not only that, but a totally unconstitutional law, but were afraid to vote their beliefs in the face of the anti-terrorist fervor that had swept the nation.  Few, if any, lawmakers knew the true extent of USA PATRIOT in the destruction of our free society.  Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act with less than ten people of either house voting against it.  Many of our lawmakers were not "for" this terrible law, but most were afraid to oppose it. 

Now, over a decade later, USA PATRIOT has been challenged many times in federal court.  Many parts of the law have been stricken down by the Supreme Court, yet our Congress refuses to rescind this law, to throw it out like the refuse it is, and to stand and publicly proclaim their unqualified support for the United States Constitution as the law of the land.  The United States Constitution kept our nation whole and our freedoms alive through a terrible "civil" war, two world wars, the Cold War, and the first Gulf War.  If we follow this Law of the Land, even in the face of terrorists and international criminals, we will prevail as a nation, and we will remain free citizens of a truly free United States of America.  And if our elected officials truly believed and followed their oaths of office, they would immediately act as one united government and remove USA PATRIOT as a blight from the landscape of freedom.  For, you see, when we know that our rights are granted us by the Creator, not by "the Government," when we know that the world is full of risks as well as happiness and that no "Government" can guarantee our safety, and that only in our freedom are we secure, then we will no longer tolerate those who shout and cry out that the Constitution is no longer relevant.  Freedom is not free, and is never without risk.  But the biggest risk of all is the loss of freedom when the people become so afraid, and so dependent on the "Government," that they follow along like sheep, bleating out the chorus that the United States Constitution is No Longer Relevant.  My friends, usually when sheep follow along in a line, there is an executioner with a sharpened axe at the head of that line.