To the editor
When I was a college student in my late teens, I encountered a challenging book, The Rights of Americans. It noted that the original Constitution, unlike its English counterpart, contained no provisions to protect the rights of ordinary people. The result was the Bill of Rights—the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.
These rights comprise the personal assets of every American:
The right to worship if and as we choose—not as the ruler of the day decides.
The right to speak out in public, private, in print, or online without government interference.
The right to have my rights read to me if arrested, to have a trial by a jury of my peers, a speedy trial, and appropriate punishment.
The right to own firearms, among other provisions.
As we know in the financial market, there’s always risk to our stocks and savings. We are warned that past success does not guarantee future gains.
If that warning prompts us to watch over our material assets, how much more should we cherish our rights as Americans and protect ourselves from the liability of losing them?
A 1959 movie starring Jimmy Stewart and directed by Otto Preminger, Anatomy of a Murder, explored the elements of crime. Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny (available as a picture book and a traditional one) analyzes the 20 steps a ruler might take to transform a democracy into an autocratic tyranny.
I believe it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “Don’t be ashamed of wisdom just because it comes late.” It would be a catastrophic irony to ignore present harbingers of future chaos and to gamble on supporting a regime that does not cherish the Constitution.
We must morally and financially support the legal experts and civil organizations striving to protect our rights as Americans.
Sincerely,
John Coleman Walsh, Esq.
Lynn
