independence? when rights become privileges; 

 

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”—Thomas Jefferson

What exactly are Americans celebrating this Fourth of July?

Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all people possess inalienable rights, we now live under a government that increasingly behaves as though rights belong to the government to distribute, restrict and revoke as it sees fit.

Freedom has become conditional.

Equal justice under law has become selective.

Constitutional rights have become political bargaining chips.

Government now claims the authority to decide which religious beliefs deserve accommodation and which may be excluded—a clear violation of the First Amendment’s warning against both establishing a religion and favoring or disfavoring one religion over another.

It insists that some speakers deserve constitutional protection while others may be censored, surveilled or punished—a violation of the right to free speech............more...........