By the people, for the people, where?

Being a child of the seventies I have never known a nation not belittled by the childish antics of modern politics. Men and women who are elected by a system that seems like but somehow is not democratic or even representative. I know there are people out there that say that if you vote that your vote counts and that the representative elected are your representatives. Why do I not buy that? Oh yeah, because the power brokers in the two main parties do their level best to quash any third party candidate. They have the market pretty well cornered on fundraising because who ever heard of a serious third party candidate. Since they are our elected representatives they get to write laws about how the elections are held, who can contribute to whom and who gets to be included in the debates. The media in this country also plays a part in this two party monopoly of power. Who is going to vote for a person who you have never heard of? How do you hear about people? From the media. I have hope however. With the advent of the World Wide Web and the blogosphere the word is getting out that there are viable alternatives to the status quo in Washington. I was raised by my mother who is in the Democrat camp in just about every area except gun control. Then I went off to college and learned something about economics. I was converted to conservatism, but not entirely. I backed Perot the two times he ran. When 2000 came around I had just graduated from the Colorado School of Mines, and with the limited number of choices available to a conservative in that election I voted for W. I had not discovered the Libertarian movement at that time and was hell bent on not voting for a Democrat who was set on prying into my wallet after I finally had some money in it. To my great surprise however, I had not voted for a fiscal conservative, just a social conservative, I had screwed myself in the worst possible way. W has no problems with a “be thy brothers keeper” state of affairs. He has allowed the Democrats to continue their spending spree on social engineering programs that in reality only benefit the government employees who administer the programs. Then 9-11 happened. The politicians went into full "we have to do something!" mode. Viola! The Patriot Act was born and that on top of years of deterioration of our civil liberties pretty well sealed the deal. Now you are saying, "You're writing this blog right now so you still have all of your civil liberties, what are you complaining about?" I'm complaining that the paving is being laid for the superhighway to Hell. Do you think the Germans still thought they were in good shape after Hitler got a firearms registration passed. Some of them may have been nervous but it wasn't until the government started using those registration rolls to start gathering firearms that people started to realize they weren't in control anymore. Thomas Jefferson said that "the price for liberty is constant vigilance." Without exaggerating, this literally is a mandate for paranoia when it comes to everything our government does. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are just a listing of the base rules our government is supposed to follow. These two documents do not protect our civil liberties they merely define them. Defending our civil liberties falls squarely on the shoulders of those who would not live without them. H.G. Wells once said that "History is a race between education and catastrophe." I wonder if he understood how deeply true that quote is. Most people today just equate education with reading, writing, arithmetic, and science. I would say that the race more specifically applies to civil education. Without a thorough understanding of the civil liberties our founders meant for us to have, we have no idea what we have lost. We have no appreciation for how important it is to stop the government from encroaching on the liberties that make the people free and make the country great. People need to be taught a fundamental truth. Our country was founded with the idea that each person is endowed with certain inalienable rights. Inalienable means cannot be taken or SURRENDERED. The concept of living in a free country must include the idea that you have to be free to do anything that does not infringe on the rights of another citizen. Another basic tenet of living in a free country if that the economic system must be based on voluntary interactions between buyers and sellers. We currently live in a country where inalienable rights might be confused with alien rights and being an alien anything will get you arrested. The economy is hardly voluntary with all of the government controls there for your "safety".