What rights?

There was a time when the people of this nation, or at least an enraged few, cried out, "Give me liberty or give me death!" and they fuckin' meant it. They fought against the occupation of the reigning world super power, won, and wrote a constitution that expressly gave rights to the people. But the constitution is simply a piece of paper and no matter how important a piece of paper is, it alone cannot protect you. The defense of liberty is not a matter of laws it is an attitude, it is a commitment to stand up for what is right. Sometimes it means fighting a war, sometimes this means standing up for the rights of despicable people, sometimes it means telling the cops that they're breaking the law. There seems to be pathetically few people left willing to defend freedom. I'm not talking about soldiers, they are willing to risk their lives to protect freedom, although freedom has nothing to do with the risks they are taking these days. This country has sunk to the depths of apathy, today our cry is more like a whimper, "give me TV or give me pills." Where is Thomas Paine when you need him? He'd whip the shit out of our media folks. More likely he'd be working for mother jones, scraping by, unnoticed or ignored by the major media.

I pride myself on being reasonable, I don't much care for conspiracy theories. I saw a show about the moon hoax it asked interesting questions, then I went to Phil's site and found answers that were even more interesting, and sensible. The 9/11 conspiracies also ask interesting questions occasionally, but most of the answers are pretty damn obvious. So when people start saying how bad the country has gotten, I agree, but when they push too far I'm forced to say well, no it's not a fascist state yet. We don't live under martial law... well it would appear that MOST of us don't live under martial law. WTF?!?! Seriously we're trying to fix a neighborhood with M-16's? Are the dealers going to be a little more careful for the next few days? yeah. Is it going to solve a god damn thing? hell no. Especially because as the ACLU rightly points out, the searches are illegal therefore the arrest is illegal therefore those arrested are going to walk. This is part of why we are not yet in a police state. So its a stupid move because now these folks who were found with drugs and guns are going to end up back on the streets. Far far more importantly this must be challenged on the fundamental principle of the matter. People, even poor people, have fucking rights. The asshat in charge of the town may think that,

"As far as I'm concerned, at 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law," Councilman Eugene "Red" Johnson said. "Anyone out at 3 o'clock shouldn't be out on the street, unless you're going to the hospital."

But he obviously fails to see that whither or not someone has a good reason to be out has no bearing on whither or not they have the RIGHT to be out. Not to mention that some people work late shifts and shit, something this guy probably isn't familiar with. I still don't think we live in a police state, but they are inching their way towards it every chance they get. We must fight back, we must not allow our great nation to implode, we must fight all enemies foreign and domestic, and right now I don't see any foreign threats that are even close to the threats I see domestically.