The Left’s Assault on the Bill of Rights

Hard though it might be for some to realize it, there is in the second decade of this century, a war on the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The war on the Bill of Rights is being waged by the political left, whether they are referred to as “progressives,” “liberals,” “socialists” or “Democrats.”

Take a stroll through each of the Constitution’s first ten amendments, passed in 1798, and one can easily see that these rights are under perpetual assault by those very same politicians and political activists who claim to be the voices of tolerance. In reality, however, they are anything but tolerant.

For instance, the First Amendment guarantees the freedoms of speech, religion, the press and free assembly. A visit to most institutions of higher learning in 2018 reveals the imposition of speech codes, proscription of religious activities, censure of conservative writings and the attendant restriction of conservative groups to assemble in protest. It is often stated that what begins in academia today, will be in the larger scope of society tomorrow, and this trend of intolerance against conservative expression on university campuses should sound an alarm to all of us who cherish these rights.

With regards to the Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, it is obvious which side of the political equation seeks to either repeal the Second Amendment outright, or severely restrict this right, altogether.

The Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure has been eroding for decades, but this erosion has been most recently facilitated by activist judges who seek to legislate from the bench what they cannot get representative government to enact. One needs look no further than the early morning raid on the president’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the pre-dawn raid on Paul Manafort to know that a politically-activated FBI can obtain warrants from sympathetic judges to pursue political inquisitions at the behest of partisan interests. The same holds true for the Fifth Amendment rights to due process and how these rights are selectively protected for certain people, namely Hillary Clinton, and not others- essentially anyone remotely connected to Donald Trump.

Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights which guarantee due process, individual protection against excessive bail, fines or cruel and unusual punishment were most notably violated when the maker of an internet video, falsely blamed for instigating the raid on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was arrested and imprisoned for more than two years without trial, all because the Obama Administration lied about the circumstances which led to the attack in an effort to cloak their own culpability during Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that year.

Ninth and Tenth Amendment rights relegated to the people, or those rights which are otherwise reserved to the several states comprising the union, have long been under siege by the creeping and steady growth of federalism- most notably in the realm of social engineering on issues of abortion, education and regulation of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. Federal guarantees of abortion rights since Roe v Wade (1973), federal control of education curriculum since the passages of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) and the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and the medical insurance dictates of ObamaCare (2010) have signaled the encroachment of the federal government on those respective areas that previously were reserved to the several states. It wasn’t conservatives who promoted this encroachment- it was the fruits of political activism on the left.

As the mid-term elections of 2018 approach, followed by the general election of 2020, voters should be well aware as to which national party seeks to preserve their constitutional rights and which party seeks to further erode these rights, prior to casting their ballots. They won’t be correctly informed about this comparison by a biased national mainstream media, which has effectively become a propaganda vehicle for the left, but perhaps this is all part and parcel of an agenda to wage a larger war on freedom, independence and representative government- the very antithesis of state-ism, socialism and totalitarianism which are the pursuits of “progressives,” “liberals,” “socialists” or “Democrats.”

Failure to recognize these truths imperil this nation beyond any and all else.

 

-Drew Nickell, 16 May 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2