posted on Oct, 11 2009 @ 09:02 PM
If you think about it, our "freedom" is whatever the people with guns tells us we can do.
Just a case in point. The Fourth Amendment protects my freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. That's all well and good, but when armed men
kick down my door and tell me to lie on the floor while they search my place for drugs (or weapons, or immigrants, whatever), my rights don't exist.
I can make a "Constitutional" issue out of it and I'll likely be dead right. That is, I'll be right, and I'll also be dead. If not dead, then
beaten and arrested.
If a cop stops me on the street and demands that I prove my citizenship, I have the legal right to refuse the demand. The stop was not reasonable.
But if I refuse, he'll just arrest me and take me into the station, where he will have the right to check my identity. Again, my "rights" depend
on what people with guns allow me to do.
If my rights are violated, and I somehow survive the experience, I can go to court and sue. If I do that, I might win. Then people with guns will
tell other people with guns to cut it out, let folks exercise whatever right it was they violated. All well and good. Sometimes it works; other
times it has no effect. Despite repeated lawsuits against the police in major cities, there are still people being pulled over for the crime of DWB.
That's "Driving While Black".
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are remarkable documents. They are a great idea. But they are basically without much power. People with
guns determine who can do what.