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Freedom Action of the Week
Email List Archive
Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m A c t i o n o f t h e W e e k
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Edited by Thomas L. Knapp. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and
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----- Featured Action of the Week -----
Second Week of February, 2002
Separate the Sheep from the Goats
For those of you who missed this feature last week, I apologize. I was
under the weather. Now, of course, it's back to business, and I'd like to
return to one of "Action of the Week's" recurring themes, Bill of Rights
Enforcement.
We've been over the concept before, so without belaboring the point, "Bill
of Rights Enforcement" is the concept that politicians who violate the
rights described in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution need
to pay a price.
That price could be, prospectively, prosecution for what is, in fact, a
crime (See United States Code, Title 18, Sections 241 and 242; as well as
the 14th Amendment). But, at a bare minimum, the price should be failure of
re-election and being held up to ridicule as dunces who couldn't
understand, or knaves who wouldn't keep, their oaths of office.
Let's face it, though: we have at least 546 U.S. politicians at the federal
level (435 U.S. Representatives, 100 U.S. Senators, nine Supreme Court
justices, the president and the vice president) to keep track of. And we
_do_ have to keep an eye on all of them. In the near future, I'll be
unveiling a web tool to help you do that, but for now, I want to offer a
more convenient method for at least beginning to tell who is, and who is
not, on the right side.
L. Neil Smith, the progenitor of the Bill of Rights Enforcement idea,
recently collaborated with artist Scott Bieser in designing a Bill of
Rights Enforcement button; these buttons are now available from Eric
Pavao's RKBABang! site, at a price that won't kill anyone's wallet. They
come with a wallet card explaining -- in the form of a brief essay by Smith
-- the idea of Bill of Rights Enforcement.
I've personally already ordered two of these buttons and had them sent to
the White House -- one for President George W. Bush, one for Vice President
Dick Cheney. I have commitments from friends to provide one for each of the
Supreme Court's nine justices as well.
What I'd like _you_ to do, if you live in the United States, is commit to
ordering a button and having it sent to your U.S. Representative or U.S.
Senator; and, furthermore, to sending a note to that Representative or
Senator by email, explaining that you'll be watching.
You'll be watching the news, and you'll be watching C-SPAN. And you expect
to see that button on your pet politician's lapel every time he or she
appears in public. Period.
If the button is there, you still need to keep an eye on your politician,
of course. He or she could be just humming the tune without knowing the
words to the song. But if the button is _not_ there, you're free to
conclude that the politician has no intention of honoring his or her oath
of office by upholding and enforcing the Bill of Rights.
Mr. Pavao is helping me make this easy for you. The RKBABang site will be
maintaining a list of the officeholders in question, highlighting the ones
who have had a button ordered for them. If your Representative or Senator
has already been provided for, you could do worse than to pick one at
random. The goal is that every member of Congress (in addition to the
already-covered Supreme Court, President and Vice President) be afforded
the opportunity to come out in favor of (or, by omission, in opposition to)
the Bill of Rights.
If you live outside of the U.S., these buttons can likewise serve a
purpose. Many nations do not have a charter delineating the rights that no
government has the legitimate power to violate. Every nation _should_ have
such a charter. Send one to your favorite politician and give him or her
the opportunity to publicly display a dedication to the notion that _your_
nation should have a Bill of Rights.
It's time to start separating the sheep from the goats in our institutions
of governance. If we don't, we'll wake up one day to find that sheep and
goats alike have become wolves -- and that they're going for our throats.
Here's a step-by-step list of links for getting the button into the hands
of your U.S. Representative or Senator:
1. Find out who your U.S. Representative or Senator is at:
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.htm
2. Following the link you get from that page, find the address for your
Representative or Senator under his or her "Contact Information" link.
3. Find out if your Representative or Senator has already received a Bill
of Rights Enforcement button at:
http://www.rkbabang.com/congress/
4. Order the button, to be shipped to "The Honorable (insert name of
Representative or Senator here)" at the correct address, here:
http://www.rkbabang.com/products.html
5. Email your Senator or Representative to let them know that it's on the
way -- and what you expect them to do with it:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Action of the Week archive:
http://www.free-market.net/features/list-archives/activism/maillist.html
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J.D. Tuccille
Senior Editor
Free-Market.Net
http://www.free-market.net/
email: jdtuccille@free-market.net
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