12/02 Our Liberties Stand Or Fall Together

Our Liberties Stand or Fall Together
by
Larry Pratt

I recently had the privilege of addressing a rally on behalf of embattled homeowners in Florida.

The Sawgrass Rebellion is attempting to forestall the deliberate flooding of the homes and farms of thousands of people living near Naples, FL in the Everglades.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been progressively flooding homes in this area in order to protect the habitat of a bird that turns out not to nest in the Everglades where the middle class homeowners are being threatened. Instead, the bird nests where the wealthy folks have built their beachside condos about 20 miles West of the Everglades homes.

Property owners are learning the same thing that gun owners have been finding out: there are a bunch of elitists who gravitate to where they can grab the leavers of government power. They are convinced that they know what is best for all the rest.

They believe that only government can be trusted, in their view, to protect property and keep the streets safe.

The Army Corps of Engineers decided that the Everglades needed to be restored, so they have been flooding the vast swamps that their predecessors drained. Too bad there are a lot of families and farms in the area. Earth first.

The same elitists believe that average folks cannot be trusted with a gun, so they have banned the guns they can and encumbered the rest as much as possible. Too bad if criminals take advantage of this and drive up crime. A necessary price for a “well ordered society.”

The other side of the total-control worldview of the elitists is their loathing of individual responsibility. These elitists tend to be very socialist, even totalitarian, in their thinking. Individual responsibility does not fit with such views. The elitists’ goal is to make us all dependent on government – for everything.

The rule of law goes out the window when the elitists are in control. Just because the government drained the swamp where your house was built should not lead anyone to think that the government would flood your house and your farm without warning. And when you protest, you are told by your public “servants” that it will be cold day in hell before your objections carry the day.

Well, gun owners are familiar with having the rules changed on them. Consider New York City which for years registered rifles and shotguns, all the while insisting that the data base would never be used for confiscation. Then, 25 years later, some of the registered guns were declared to be illegal. Too bad. Get rid of them or your door will be busted down.

Government says individuals cannot be trusted to own their own land without regulation and/or confiscation even as gun owners are told that they cannot be trusted to defend themselves and their families.

The facts are just the opposite. The raging forest fires of the summer of 2002 did not consume corporate forests. They burned out of control through the grossly mismanaged forests that are unconstitutionally owned by the federal government.

The most crime-afflicted jurisdictions of the United States are those areas where the politicians have most thoroughly disarmed the population. Such are Washington, DC, Chicago and Los Angeles. Safest are those jurisdictions were it is easiest to buy and carry a gun.

Government does have a role to play. That role is limited to catching bad guys who have harmed people and bringing them to justice. Our Constitution has left this to the states to deal with. A reading of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes it clear that if a delegated power has not been given specifically to the federal government, the government is prohibited from exercising such power.

Our country will be safer and more prosperous when we get the government out of the areas it has usurped. The only unpleasant aspect of getting there will be the whining of the control freaks. I’m ready to endure the noise.