REPLIES TO THE CURRENT QUESTION

Our question last week was:

Do you think the Obama administration is a threat to basic American freedoms, and why?

Here are your answers.  The name of a writer is included only if he or she actually placed a name at the end of the message.  Otherwise, we assume the writer wished anonymity and "name withheld" is inserted.

Do you think the Obama administration is a threat to basic American freedoms, and why?
 
I Do.
 
If our president bases a financial recovery on historical American capitalism, but changes the rules of finance at the same time, he should not expect financial markets to respond predictably. We are being promised that GM will recover, but GM is no longer able to make financial decisions based on its historical metrics. GM cannot expect the same amount of market share simply because GM is not the GM that owned a large part of the automotive market. It is now owned and operated by the people who contributed most to GM's drop in value. Plus, it has less borrowing power and fewer investment options based on the conflicting desires of its largest owners.
 
Then, we have Chrysler investors who have been cut off because the Obama administration circumvented the bankruptcy laws: What rules do we play by now? Who will ever invest in GM or Chrysler now?
 
Obama is either ignorant, or diabolical. He sounds ignorant. I would like to know who is whispering in his ear, though. It looks like George Soros. Soros is someone who understands how to destroy financial markets on a national scale. These are dangerous people and no one is speaking out. Obama breaks the law, but no one calls him on it.
 
Don't get me started on his Supreme Court short list members.
 
Rome is falling due to lack of interest.
 
 
Michael Smith
Seattle, WA

One of the freedoms that we have as Americans is the freedom to be ignorant. This particular freedom is the one that has been increasingly exercised by the electorate.  Concomitant with that freedom is the freedom to benefit from the consequences of our ignorance.  So, in that sense, President Obama is simply the beneficiary of our freedom, not a threat.  Someone much smarter than me once said, "Beware of what you ask for, as you might get it."  This is simply another way of saying what was said in Galatians, "As a man soweth, that shall he also reap..."  Pretty clever, those guys who wrote the good book.

The encroachment on our other freedoms, or fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution is another subject entirely.  As we all know, the right of privacy, the right to an abortion anytime, anywhere, the right to marry anyone or anything we choose, the right to a welfare check, etc.,  These are all totally safe.  Some of the lesser rights not necessarily guaranteed by the 9th Circuit Court but thought to be significant by our founding fathers such as:

Freedom of religion and the prohibition of state sponsored religion
Freedom of the press
Freedom of assembly
Freedom to keep and bear arms
Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure
Freedom from double jeopardy
etc.

These are at risk.  One of the reasons is that the Tenth Amendment is being trampled by the Obamaites in Washington.  It states succinctly:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

One doesn't have to be a Constitutional law professor to understand the meaning of that sentence.  It is a clear statement about the limitations of the federal government.  It is not the right for the federal government to start building cars or to grant home mortgages.  Until we start exercising the rights guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment and stopping the encroachment of the federal government of every political stripe into the rights of the states and individual citizens guaranteed by that amendment, we are going to continue to see erosion of individual freedom and increasing supremacy of the federal government in all matters.  

Don Newell
Vancouver, WA

It is certainly true that the current administration is a threat to American
freedoms. It does not have respect for them and its whole frame of mind
defines opponents as worthless people. As a consequence, it is very possible
that the American freedoms of freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom
from want, freedom from fear, of Franklin Roosevelt discourse (and Norman
Rockwell paintings) are under attack.

But the core of the problem is not in the Obama administration. In my
opinion, the core of the problem is American indebtedness, the eroding of
the American family, the trashing of the American school system.

I understand that Americans might recoil at bailing out AIG, which sold
insurance on American mortgage debt, which was sold to the rest of the
world. It gives power to the powerful and weaken ordinary people. But that
is exactly what a policy of debt always and everywhere does. It puts the
wealth under the control of people in the know.

The destruction of the school system and family are more subtle effects. But do
people really imagine that such things do not have large consequences?
Sometimes, the presentation of American history looks strange: You have the
puritans coming there and at some point have a revolution and then a great
country without apparently any relation between those events. I think that
America became a free country because it was puritan, that is was self-reliant
and moral and that it becomes less free because it is less puritan.

Mathieu Dutour Sikiric
Zagreb, Croatia