By Steve Rossiter ——Bio and Archives--May 7, 2024
American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
The title is a quote from a letter by John Adams to his wife Abigail and is so, so profound considering where Americans find themselves in 2024. As I pointed out in my recent AFP/CFP series “Then and Now,” for at least the last 90 years the liberties established in the United States Constitution have been slowly, almost in perceptively, slipping away. I would say that 75% of the activities the 2024 federal government is engaged in are not enumerated in the U.S. Constitution for the federal government.
"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion." ~ George Washington
The federal government has usurped from the states and from the people things the federal government has no business being involved in. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution is abundantly clear that if it isn’t authorized (enumerated) in the Constitution, the federal government is to keep its hand off and cede authority to the states or to the people, period.
"Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people." ~ John F. Kennedy
Most people don’t even understand the number of liberties that have been stolen from the states and We the People during the last century. Everywhere government has assumed (stolen) activities that were once individual responsibilities, a liberty is lost. A liberty is lost because the individual no longer has total control of his/her freedom of action in that aspect of their life.
In 1937, the federal government took control of 1% of everyone’s pay check and called it “Social Security.” That 1%, which was “never to be exceeded,” is now 6.5% of your paycheck. Therefore, the federal government controls that portion of your pay check. You do not have the liberty to totally control your pay check. And in 2024, the government takes control of another 1.45% of your paycheck for Medicare. However, you do have some say about how much of your paycheck you cede control of to the government for Income Tax withholding. The bottom line is that you lost your liberty to control how your hard earned money is spent. As Jon Adams said, “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." ~ John Adams
"One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are." ~ Alexander Hamilton
"Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals." ~ Samuel Adams
Support Canada Free Press
Then there is the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism,” most often referred to as the Patriot Act. As well intended as this act was, like the U.S. Constitution, it is totally dependent on virtuous and moral people administering it. At least since 2009, there has been a major absence of moral and virtuous people in the Deep State of the federal government. The biggest abuse of the Patriot Act came to light because it was used in 2016 when the Obama administration used provisions of the Patriot Act against presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. Since then this act has been used and abused as much against political opponents of the Marxist Democrat and uniparty political machines as it has against terrorism. White conservatives and Catholics have been declared terrorists by Biden administration corruptocrats. That is all it takes when a criminal enterprise disguised as the government is in charge. And now, in 2024, the corrupt uniparty politicians just renewed the Patriot Act and expanded the worst theft of liberties in American history.
"When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither." ~ Thomas Jefferson
“Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” ~ John Adams
View Comments
After a 55 year career as a professional pilot in the military, in law enforcement, in the private sector, and in federal civil service, I am now retired.
In many of these positions I repeatedly took an oath to defend the United States Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.