January 30, 2013
I write to you today out of a sense of duty to the citizens I serve. It seems that the media is ablaze with half truths and misleading information when it comes to certain rights of every citizen recognized in our United States Constitution – rights, which our Declaration of Independence recognizes were given to us by God and are “unalienable.” Our founders considered the existence of these rights to be self-evident. When these words were penned, they were not new ideas. Rather, they brought to memory ideas that, even 236 years ago, were of such great antiquity that they were easily forgotten or disregarded by governments and men.
I believe that the world today is, for the most part, the same as it ever was. Throughout time immemorial, there has been a struggle in the human experience – a battle between two opposing forces. Through the ages, there have been those who would give all authority over to a central form of government, and those who believe in liberty. Our English heritage records this struggle as it waged in the thousand years prior to our declaring independence. To say that the Constitution, or any portion of our Bill of Rights is outdated, is to say that mankind is outdated, because the arguments for and against freedom have been with us from the start.
The bedrock of freedom is recognizing the rights each human being is given by their creator and, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The words of our Declaration and of our Constitution were chosen very carefully by our founders. They were chosen carefully because words have meaning and their purpose is to convey thought. It is most unfortunate that we live in an age in which misguided and often self-serving politicians twist the meaning of words for the purpose of misleading the well-meaning and law-abiding average citizen.
A Jersey City man was arrested after police found an assault rifle in his home similar to the one used in the massacre of 20 students and six teachers in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, officials said.
