Constitutional Change

I find it interesting that liberal thinking folks pride themselves in being so open minded, and yet I find they are most often the least open minded people I know and the least interested in considering other opinions (or even other facts.)  If you try to bring a point of view or information to them that contradicts their world view, they at best marginalize you as a crackpot and more often get angry with you and demand that you don’t tell them your view on a subject.  Maybe I just have an unusually poor sample of acquaintances who exhibit these qualities.  I hope so.

I think we are seeing a lot of that in congress these days.  Oh I know conservatives can do the same thing, but it seems to me that liberals are the ones paying lip service to meaningful discussions and taking all viewpoints into consideration.  They are the party in power and feel they have a mandate to do whatever they want…in many cases regardless of what the polls of the American people say they want.  Right now they are looking seriously at second amendment changes on firearm ownership and more frightening still, first amendment restrictions, as well, in order to stop the movie and video game producers from creating violent productions that they feel are the cause of gun violence (which I suspect in certain individuals may be true...even news coverage of violent events may be causing this.)  We already have fourth amendment and fourteenth amendment changes as a result of the Patriot Act that abridge our constitutional rights.  To me the big question is are these all necessary, will they even be effective against perceived problems, and what long-term effect will they bring to our country and our personal lives?

If free speech can be limited, can freedom of religion then be controlled as well.  It doesn’t take much of a leap in this day and age to realize that politicians could decide that churches that hold against abortion or gays are bad and must be arrested for what they say.  We are on the brink of that right now with the demand that abortion be provided by organizations that hold against it under the Affordable Health Care Act.  The trouble with all this is that these abridgements are coming without the process of constitutional amendment by three-quarters of the states as was required by our founding fathers.  This country was formed on the basis of complete freedom of religion.  It appears that that may soon be a thing of the past, and very few really know or care.