- 10. The “Two Party System” is not democratic. Democrats and Republicans work hard together to keep additional parties from gaining momentum, even to the point of staging presidential debates themselves to lock other candidates out (ask anyone from the League of Women Voters, they’ll explain it). Any party which operates over a long period of time becomes irreparably corrupt, as do the individuals who come from those parties.
9. The War on Drugs is unjust. First and foremost, the full text of the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” If the Constitution doesn’t call for something as a specific function of the federal government then it can’t get involved. Anyone locked up on a federal drug charge is well aware of their actual status as political prisoner. Besides being an absolute violation of the Constitution itself, the War on Drugs is largely unjust because it is the primary tool by which people are commoditized for use in the prison system, which brings me to my next point.
8. Your prison system is random and for-profit. Based on the existing laws, more than half of all Americans are already criminals. Obscure, rarely-enforced, and sometimes unjust laws are used to maintain a massive prison population for the sole purpose of generating continuous profit for the bloated justice system and corporations which supply and maintain penitentiaries. Your government has put capitalism above human rights by regulating crime as a lottery system where you are the ticket and prison is the prize.
7. The illusion of safety. The Constitution outlines only a few legitimate functions of the federal government, one of which is to “provide for the common defense.” Instead of providing this Constitutionally-mandated function, however, your federal government makes you take your shoes off and steals your deodorant before you can board an airplane.
6. The government is intentionally keeping you stupid. Not that it matters anymore, but the federal government does not have the Constitutional power to mandate or involve itself in any way with education. Why is it that children are not provided the most basic education, that the United States continues to fall behind in science, and that very few of you even recognize the flagrant criminality in your own “elected” officials? An uneducated population is a docile population, at least on the political front. Eighty percent of you probably couldn’t tell me what a federalist is, but that’s not your fault.
5. The Internet. The most functional tool for the spread of Democracy in the history of mankind (perhaps excepting the Maxim gun) is under assault by communications companies attempting to remove its core neutrality, and your government is barely resisting. In fact, some might go so far as to suggest that your government is actually complying in this effort. Given the government’s track record with education, insurance, and finances, I’d say the Internet in its current state has about six months to live. As a side note, China also imposes federal controls in the Internet.
4. Your government spies on you. If you told General George Washington that the federal government of the United States of America was tapping phones, snatching emails, and laying down more complex infrastructure to collect the daily lives of Americans he would join Al-Qaeda. The 4th Amendment makes it extremely clear that personal privacy is not to be violated by any level of government. There is no excuse for this type of behavior.
3. You could get arrested for even reading this. Voiced dissent has always been critical to the democratic process, but ruminations unsupportive of the political status quo will always be something of a target to those wield the dual blades of power and corruption. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.” To quote George Bush, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” I am deservedly a little scared, as you also should be.
2 . Your politicians are criminals. One of the early tenets of the United States of America was “no taxation without representation.” Politicians accept huge wads of cash from corporations and interest groups to pass laws which benefit only the top few men (and a couple of women) in industry. Sometimes they store this cash in their freezer. Sometimes they have the corporations make a “donation” to their private charities. Even when you, The People, reach a frenzied consensus your demands are ignored, but only because you didn’t bring a suitcase full of Benjamins.
1. Because you’re supposed to. The United States was born of rebellion and maintains that its citizens cannot be disarmed. You are a nation of checks and balances, one of which contains the dual assertion that The People are armed and that poppycockery should not be tolerated. The founding fathers wanted you to use your voices to keep your government from becoming corrupt and unconstitutional, but left you a loophole in case they managed to seize power regardless. Loophole, meet the present; The present, allow me to introduce the 2nd Amendment.
