Posted by
Jim Hunt on Monday, December 15, 2008 8:00:00 AM
Most of us, at one time or another, have complained about nanny government trying to run our lives. Most of us are guilty of deciding it isn’t worth fighting about as we watch our rights get slowly chipped away. Maybe, just maybe, someone is fighting back. You’ll never guess who it is.
In upstate New York and in Michigan nanny governments are suing some individuals for building their own houses on their own property. They are complaining that the owners did not get proper building permits, did not use “approved” lumber and the houses do not have proper smoke detectors. All this may be true, but it would be very difficult for these houses to have smoke detectors because they don’t have any electricity. Nor do they have indoor plumbing. Yet these homes are not eyesores, we are not talking about shanty town shacks. These are beautifully built traditional homes.
The problem is that the owners are Amish. They do not use electricity and they will not apply for a building permit because to do so would require them to lie to obtain one. Another challenge is that the Amish believe in non-violence and no conflict which means that they will not even stand up for themselves in court. However people are stepping up to fight on their behalf.
As I have discussed in previous entries, the 1st Amendment to the Constitution is very clear. It says, among many other things, that there shall be no law regarding “an establishment of Religion or the prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Clearly it would be a violation of the Amish faith to require them to put smoke detectors (and therefore electricity even if only batteries) in their homes.
These are not commercially built homes for sale to an unsuspecting buyer. Several Amish homeowners have been fined thousands of dollars for failing to meet building codes. Enough is enough. How can we sit here and let local, county, state and federal governments dictate every aspect of our daily lives. In some towns, landscape inspectors will fine you if you do not mow your lawn or fertilize your trees often enough (Sunrise, FL for example). The federal government dictates to the states what the speed limit on state roads must be (and use extortion to enforce their mandates).
If I were to list all of the regulations that the various governments have imposed in order to “protect” us from ourselves, I would probably be typing for the rest of my life and then some.
When did we Americans stop believing in our own Freedom? Two hundred thirty-five years ago, Americans said NO to a tiny tax on a pound of tea. They stood up and said NO MORE. When are we going to do the same? When are we going to follow the direction given in these words in the Declaration of Independence?
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
It is time to make sure that we elect new Guards for our future security. It is time that we put a stop to this madness. If you want to read more details of the persecution of the Amish click here. Please, it is time to stop letting the government interfere in everything we do. Freedom is a vanishing commodity that is as precious as the air we breathe. Don’t let it continue to be destroyed.
God Bless America