England has a long history of offending the rights of its people. During the time of William Wallace, it was against the law for anyone in Scotland to own weapons of any kind. That, along with the thousands of troops patrolling the streets, shows not only that the King distrusted his Scotish subjects, but that he feared them as well. Wallace's rebellion reveals that government is not capable of completely removing all arms from the people and that the people can use arms to overthrow an oppressive government.

No truly free man will ever be debarred the right to bear arms. The right to bear arms is not just the right to own and carry an object, its the right to defend one's own life, liberty, and property from any force that wishes to remove them. That includes foreign enemies, unlawful citizens, and even one's own government. The founders passed the second amendment so that the government has to respect all the others. If the government becomes destructive of our rights we must alter or abolish it and establish new guards for our future security. That means that the last ultimate check We the People have on our government is the ability to destroy it. When the government no longer respects the rights guaranteed to us by God, the only thing you have left to defend your life and your liberty, is your own two hands. And I don't know about you, but when that day comes, I prefer mine to filled with a gun.

Waffler, the "solution" to the health care problem passed by Obama and his Congress is a socialists act enforced by a big government. This entire bill is unconstitutional. The Constitution does give Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, but in no way does it give them the power to enforce commerce. The government has no right to require any citizen to purchase anything, including insurance, from any private entity. Since this power is not granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution, it resides to the States and the People respectively (10th Amendment). The unconstitutionality of this bill makes it an illegal act that betrays the will and interest of We the People and strips the rights guranteed to every American. Yes, they did attempt to fix the problem. But their solution is not lawful; it does not fall within the boundaries clearly expressed in the Constitution, which is the everbinding contract of power between the government and the governed. The failure of this Congress is that they completely ignored the Constitution and proceeded only in their own ideas, disregarding the ideas of the opposing party and the will of the People. Those who offered their vote for this criminal act, did so not to the best interests of their constituents but to aggrandize themselves at the expense to liberty and justice. They have betrayed the most solemn trust in human society for which they are accountable to God and the people. May God have mercy, because the people won't.

RBESRQ, I must agree with Carlton's comment that there are NO benefits to socialism. The one so-called benefit is an equal distribution of wealth. History shows that the citizens of every socialist state obtained not an equal level of wealth, but an equal degree of poverty. To take the prospect of a self-made fortune from an economy is to remove the ambition from every individual within that economy. If the citizens of a nation are unable to obtain a higher degree of wealth and property than their peers, they will have no ambition to create ground breaking products or come up with new innovative ideas. They will have no reason to form a business, invest in already existing businesses, or even further their education. As a result, growth will decline, and if a society is not growing, its dieing. As far the USA being at the bottom in quality of life, there are more people in this country dieing of eating too much than there are dieing of starvation.The average American has more disposable time (time not spent working) than they ever have in history. Thousands of Americans stand in long lines to purchase the newest iPhone, iPad, video game, or whatever other disposible devices that are unecessary for life. Thousands pay a hefty price to pack in football stadiums every Saturday and Sunday, and nearly everyone in this country pays monthly bills for cell phones and cable or satellite TV. If our quality of life was as low as you claim it to be, we would not invest so much time and money in such arbitrary things.

J Carlton, in your first comment, you spoke of your happiness that people are waking up and taking back this country. I too share that happiness. But we must remind ourselves that the fight has only begun. The government, like a precious metal, is refined by fire. It takes heat and time to raise the impurities to the surface where they can be removed. We have begun to apply heat, now we need time. And of course, MORE HEAT.

RBESRQ, you have commented here that democracy would implode on its own without socialism. I agree, in a democracy, measures are too often decided not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. Such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. A democracy is nothing more than two wolves and sheep voting on what their having for lunch. Socialism also disregards the rights of the individual citizen in effort to please a higher percentage of the people, at severe cost to liberty and justice. In each system, the limitation of your liberty and property is dictated by an overbearing political power rather than your own rights, labor, skills, and brilliance. Luckily, we do not, nor have we ever, lived in a democracy. We live in a republic that was founded to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, PROMOTE (not ensure, not control) the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. Nowhere does democracy or socialism fit in.

There are governors, there are warriors, and on rare occasions one can be both. But not Sherman. He is only a warrior. He is not the carpenter, he's the hammer. And probably the worst kind of hammer, one thats heavy, swings hard, and doesn't care which nail it hits.

The principles of liberty and justice are the threads that make up the moral and social fabric of well-being for America. Through the ages opposing parties within the government have tugged at each end of this fabric, tearing a number of it's threads. These government officials are continually degrading our society into a state of tyranny, but they were chosen by We the People from among ourselves. So We the People are equally responsible, for it was us who handed them the scissors. It is our responsibility to protect the principles that this nation was founded on. Each fundamental abandoned is a crack in the foundation that will inevitably spread and lead to more cracks until the entire embodiment of our nation is sinking in the sand instead of resting on the Rock. We must fill these cracks and mend this fabric by adhering to the advice of our forefathers, researching the events of the past and the issues of the present, and selecting for ourselves governors that will lead in the direction of our best interest. A government can only be as good as its citizens. So we the citizens must be good. We must be advocates and defenders of all the American fundamentals. We must protect them from foreign enemies, from our government, and from each other. If we do our duty then one day we can pass this responsibility and its blessings to posterity. But if we neglect it, our children will be born wearing the shackels of tyranny.

I am torn on this issue. I realize the career politicians are among the greatest enemies of liberty. They know how to play games with the people and new congressmen who may be inexperience in politics. The most natural course to bring an elective government back within the will of the people is a change of men. However, ambition must be used to combat ambition. A congressman without the ambition of another term is not bound to the interest of the people. If another term is no longer an option, an official may turn his ambition to his own aggrandizement at the expense his constituents. Every president's approval rating plummets during his second term because he no longer cares what the people approve of. It's like when you give two weeks notice before quiting your job. Do you still work your hardest during those two weeks or do you just do whatever you want because you no longer have any ambition within that company? I'd hate for every senator's second term to be six years of a two weeks notice.

When Samuel Adams said this it was before the Revolution. In that time the colonies were bound to the British Government for which they had no representation. They elected no official among that government that could voice their approbation to any law it enforced. That's what taxation without representation means; they were taxed by a government in which they had no representative. Today the laws of this country are made by an elected congress. Our approbation comes from the representative we have chosen. Judges cannot make laws but they can determine a law already in affect unconstitutional. In Brown vs Board of Education the court found it unconstitutional for the states to pass any laws that do not provide equal education to blacks and whites and that segregation of schools based on race, did just that. Unfortunately, they often twist or ignore the text of the Constitution in a manner that benefits their own agenda. In Roe vs Wade they ignored the child's constitutional right to life, liberty and property ( Preamble & the 14th amendment).

Waffler, what credentials have you obtained that make you capable of insulting a man that the Founders believed to be the wisest among them? Do you have a greater understanding of the course of human events than Franklin? Can the volumes in which you have read or written on this matter fill a library, as is the case with Franklin? To consider yourself wiser or more intelligent than he is to claim yourself among the wisest and most intelligent of all mankind. If this be the case, then surely you can understand the injustice in stripping the fruit of those who have labored for it to provide for those who have not. Surely you can see how the people will and must distrust an arbitrary power whose ambition is to remove their labor and their wealth in the pretense of taking care of them. You must be able to see how governments throughout history have attempted to aggrandize themselves by appealing to the masses of the average and the poor with promises to redistribute the achievements of the rich. A person of your wisdom and intelligence must know that these promises are empty, for never in the history of our world has this feat been accomplished. Never has a people been willing to trade their dreams of self-made fortunes for the luke-warm equality of socialism. An unequal distribution of property is present in every State of liberty and justice. For it is liberty that allows every individual to work for a greater portion of property and it is justice that allows them to keep what they worked for. Your government and your people owe you no degree of wealth or charity. The only thing owed to you is the respect that God commands for every individual of His creation. Everything else you have to work for and earn on your own, by the sweat of your own brow and the strength of your own back.

It is the duty of every free citizen to distrust the government and keep it small because bad government arises from too much government.

Amen WMITN13, the Finger of that Amighty Hand was at work in the endeavors of our forefathers and they kept that in mind throughout their lives. As a result, the nation they formed is still alive today. If this generation continues its downward spiral away from the will of the Father, we will lose the foundation in which this country was formed. And no structure can stand without a strong foundation.

We the People have grown complacent of liberty, having never been without it. Too many of us go about our day seeking personal enjoyment without once thinking of the rights that give us the ability to do so. Too many of us disregard the course of human events and ignore the responsibility of choosing strong rightous leaders. If this continues We will awaken as slaves on the continent Our forefathers conquered. We must rise from Our seat of complacency and cry out in one voice that liberty will not go quietly into the night, that Our rights will not perish without a fight. This country was not founded by men whose mission was to stay alive and pay the bills. This country was founded by men whose perogative was liberty and justice and they sacrificed their lives, fortune and sacred honor to accomplish that mission and give us the liberty we take for granted. Liberty is always only one generation from extinction. It will perish from the earth if we don't stop taking it for granted and pay the price it requires. And that price is, unfortunately, blood, sweat, and tears.

"An unjust law is no law at all." St. Augustine Justice is the higher-calling for which the law is meant. Justice is nothing other than the will of the Lord God Almighty. If any law fails to fall within that realm of justice it must be opposed, rebuked, and ultimately abandoned. That is what our forefathers did many years ago and that is what we must do today. It is our duty as free citizens.

Every society gets the government it deserves. What that society deserves depends on the amount of opposition it has to what it doesn't want. If there is no opposition to unwanted ideas the People will deserve the "peace" that the unhonorable marx speaks of. But if We the People stand and fight, oppose the sinful doctrine of redistribution of wealth, and "eat our own bread", there will be no peace. But we will deserve, earn, and embrace something better, LIBERTY.

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet to be purchased at the price of chains and irons?"

"...pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." This sounds like Obama's universal government healthcare system. Tyrannical? Absolutely!