Are things really getting worse? Was: [pct-l] Mad Monte goeson the War Path again!!

[brick@webrooster.com (brick@webrooster.com)]

At 09:30 AM 11/27/01, Reynolds, WT wrote:
>"Land of the free" is and has been history for some time. I make it about
>1960. Others make it much earlier. What has changed is that the majority now
>tell the minority what to do.

"The Land of the Free" never has, and never will stand unchallenged.

Remember the 50s, with "black-listing" and Senator Joe McCarthy? How free 
was that?
"Are you now, or have you ever been....."

The majority hunted down a minority (the Mormons) in the 1800s under and 
"extermination order" from the Missouri Governor
http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/stu/dcann/exterm.htm Congress passed a law (The 
Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887) confiscating Mormon property without due 
process - and the Supreme Court upheld it!

This was 1860, not 1960!

Things are not "going down hill" an more now than they were 25, 50, 200 
years ago. In many ways things are more free now than they ever have been. 
As we get older, it just seems that things are getting worse. Some probably 
are, but some are not. Sometimes we need to take action to stop what we 
don't like.

Freedoms will slowly erode an will need to be reclaimed from time to time, 
or are threatened by outside attack and will need to be defended. This is 
not a new concept. Thomas Jefferson wrote both of the following quotes. 
Both are still true today

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of 
patriots & tyrants."

This second quote is from a letter where T.J. seems to be worried about 
loss of freedom due to the gov't of the USA in  1787 !! Read it yourself at 
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96oct/obrien/blood.htm