Opinion: Veterans’ Day is a day to remember why we fight

By MARK BALLARD
Guest columnist

MARK BALLARD

Monday, Nov. 11, 2013, 10:20 p.m. — Our Founders’ reasoning for creating the Bill of Rights was to safeguard a body of natural rights as off-limits to government regulation and interference. One of the keys to a free society is the ability to be able to actively protest your government to make change or at least have your voice heard.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”

Do you Mr. Mayor and Councilmen, and any other office holder having taken oath, remember these words: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of this Commonwealth, and the Constitution of the United States…” as part of the oath you took upon entering office? To you, was it just a formality for you to go through to get your name plate placed in front of your chair? If you have, or if you ever do vote for, or support, any legislation, ordinance, or tax that infringes, suppresses, or ignores either of these documents can you say you meant the words you have spoken in oath?

Citizens around the world are in fear of their lives when they speak out against government tyranny. Are we to be afraid for our lives in America for trying to address the City Council? My Lord no, but neither were they to begin with. Every little chipping away of our constitutional rights makes the protections guaranteed us slowly, but surely, wither away.

I ask the Mayor and Councilmen to remember what their oaths stand for, and to look at how their legislation, taxes, and ordinances affect everyone’s freedoms, not only now but in the future.

Too many veterans fight for, have fought for, and have died for the protection of these rights for them to be wiped away by the stroke of a pen.

-30-