If only this problem were not pervasive at all levels of our government. The worst part of it is that only a tiny fraction of the people seem to care about freedoms which they personally don't have an interest in indulging. "I don't shoot, so what if you can't have a gun. I don't toke, so what if you can't have weed. I like sports and I don't like arts, I'm glad you have to give up your money to build stadiums, just don't make my tax money pay for an auditorium."

I was thinking Saturday about the birth of a nation which is no more. Once there was a nation called The United States of America, founded on the principle that each person is the sole arbiter of his own choices and morality, and the only functions of the state were to protect the citizens against foreign and domestic enemies, provide postal roads, maintain a common currency and standards of weights and measures and enforce contracts. This was to be paid for by tariffs. They pre-emptively nullified all laws the Congress might make which would impede your peaceful activities, movement, commerce, association, assembly, speech, printing (and by logical extension reading), religion, rights to lawfully gained property, and self-protection.

Our nation is still called The United States of America. The Constitution still exists in the National Archives. This is the only vestige of what was once a free nation.

I suppose all the oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution are read very literally as referring to the actual paper on which it is written, rather than it's use as a test of the validity of law. So I suppose as long as they keep it displayed upright instead of put in a shelf and it doesn't actually get physically damaged then they have fulfilled their oath.

Of course, since most people are not targets of government coercion then obviously it isn't really happening. It's never anything but the ranting of kooks until either rebellions break out, people are taxed so heavily they can't buy new flatscreens or pogroms are succesfully carried out and discovered by human rights watchdogs in foreign countries.