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What are the fundamental principles we are governed by and expected to live by?
Because when you lose clarity on that, everything else collapses into confusion. Personal life. Home life. Civil engagement. Without a moral compass, you do not know where to go.
That is why I keep coming back to the Bill of Rights. The founders wrote constraints into the Constitution to govern how we interact with each other and what kind of state we live in. When you boil it down through all the nonsense, all the points of view, all the slants and twists, the outline is fundamental, clear, and true.
And right now, we are losing that clarity.
Narratives Are Winning Because Truth Is Getting Rebuilt
I am watching people obsess over individual incidents and treat them like the whole story. Zooming in on videos. Rewinding. Picking apart frames like it is courtroom evidence.
At the same time, I am already seeing AI reconstruct those same videos in different ways, packaged for propaganda and political slants.
If you let your beliefs be built from isolated clips, and those clips can be rebuilt by for an agenda to match whatever story someone wants to sell, you are not thinking anymore. You are being guided.
The answer is not to pretend the slants do not exist. The answer is to anchor back to the founding principles of what governs us and how we want to be governed.
We Are Losing Our Way
I have been saying for a long time that we have been losing our way. Political slants and jockeying have made us more confused, not more informed.
I believe the Bill of Rights is deep-seated in the consciousness of Americans, so much so that many people think it is universal truth. As if it is not specific to one nation.
But it is.
It is universal for us, but not for other nations. That is part of what gives this country strength. It creates a unique individual sense of identity and governing rules that are supposed to be unbendable.
But they are being bent.
And when those rules become flexible, the idea of what it means to be American becomes hazy. It becomes a costume instead of a civic identity and responsibility.
Rights Are Not Always Convenient, and That Is the Point
We have to get back to understanding that these rules will not always serve your political purpose in the moment. They will be uncomfortable. They will hurt some people and benefit others at certain times.
They are a building block that everyone has chosen to participate in. I emphasize chosen because I have said before why I criticize America. I criticize it because I choose to live here. That choice is conscious. It comes with obligations. It is not just passive residency.
Over the years, we have watched a dismantling of constitutional rights, slanted for political purpose, slowly eroding the fundamentals of what it means to be American and in the USA.
And the idea of being American is something we have to hold dear and reinforce fervently, so everybody can understand why we are here, what we are working for, and what we are working toward.
Like everything. If you do not use it, you lose it.
If you do not teach it, you forget it.
If you do not practice it, it is lost.
Our rights work the same way. Rights that are only theoretical are rights that are already halfway gone.
That is why I talk about them like muscles, because the moment the habit disappears, the erosion starts.
The First Amendment Got Turned Into a Subscription Service
The First Amendment has been debated differently ever since we gained the ability to broadcast to the masses. There have always been debates about what is acceptable in public and what is not.
Freedom of speech has always been contested.
What does it mean? Is it only about government? Is it about escaping consequences? Is it about what can be on television? What can be on radio? What counts as “adult,” what counts as “appropriate,” and can be broadcast over the airwaves?
And then there is speaking out against your government. Questioning so-called conventional wisdom. That has also been under debate.
But the internet changed the structure of the debate.
Because speech moved from the halls of Congress, the public squares, and the laws of the Supreme Court into the terms and services of corporations. Into privately held walled gardens. Into communication lines that run on subscriptions and monetized distribution.
Pay to play.
Pay to speak.
Speech costs money now. And the more money you have, the more speech you get. Citizens United [ [link removed] ] sits right inside this reality. You buy ads and push them through the same rails and walled gardens.
The incentives to speak up or stay quiet are monetized. Certain words get discouraged. Certain words get beeped. People self-censor. And we now debate consequences of speech more than the freedom we are supposed to be protecting.
People repeat the phrase “freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences,” and sometimes it is true. But consequences are now used as a tool to get around the freedom itself.
That is not principle. That is control.
The Fourth and Fifth Amendments Got Quietly Rewritten by Data
The Fourth and Fifth Amendments have always been fascinating to me because they are supposed to protect against overreach.
Search and seizure.
Due process.
The right to plead the Fifth and not incriminate yourself.
But have they been bent too? I do not think everybody noticed.
Data is a new form of self-incrimination that people did not anticipate.
Search and seizure used to be your house and your car. Now it is opening your phone. Now it is looking through your data. Mining your emails. Training AI with content you created.
And it is all treated as acceptable because terms and services exist, and people clicked “agree.”
Sure, we can nitpick the letter of the law and say the state still needs a warrant to enter your home. Which for some reason that is up for debate. [ [link removed] ] But the real fight is what “unreasonable” means now, and what power can justify as normal.
The Patriot Act after 9/11 opened the door to expanded definitions. What is reasonable? What is terrorism? Who counts as a terrorist? How flexible is that label when someone wants to make you feel safe?
Safety becomes the justification for bending the rules.
And this is why that old line matters: Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The constitution did not protect you so that your data could become an evidence locker. So that your phone could be opened. So that you could be monitored, tricked into saying things without representation, incriminated by something you wrote 10 years ago in a text message drunk at 2am and used against you even if you did not understand the contract you supposedly entered.
Surveillance Gets Sold as “If You Are Innocent, Shut Up”
Surveillance becomes “reasonable” the moment you frame it as catching bad people.
Cameras trained on AI on every city block and corner to monitor who comes in and out, sold under the guise of safety.
And then the line comes out.
If you are not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about. Just shut up and comply.
That is not the language of liberty. That is the language of a population being conditioned to accept monitoring as normal.
The Second Amendment Is the Moral Question America Cannot Avoid
Then we come to the Second Amendment which is one of the hardest to reconcile inside a country that deals with gun violence. But it sits deep within American culture, identity, and values.
To defend yourself.
To protect your family.
To protect your property.
And to protect against tyranny of government.
But in the wake of a country plagued with gun violence, that moral question that has sat with the United States since inception. One we wrestle with as a culture, as people, as communities, as families, as faith.
And it is easily spun for political purposes. Neither side is innocent.
The left asks, why do you need a gun? Why do you need to carry? People see a sidearm in a grocery store and panic. They judge. They label the person paranoid, stupid, or inciting violence.
But I go back to the earlier point.
If you do not practice and participate in your freedoms, you forget what they are, and they get taken quietly.
So I ask it directly.
Does the right to bear arms only apply when you feel safe and in a safe space?
Does it only apply when you are home alone?
Does it apply in a park?
In a grocery store?
At a protest?
Because if the Second Amendment was the fundamental amendment meant to keep a civilian populace armed against tyrannical government, then the entire point was that it matters most when things are unstable, not when things are comfortable.
And this year, 250 years after the founding of the United States of America, we keep referencing the question... When is the right time to have the firearm?
Was the right time to bear arms in a classroom to protect students from mass shooters, since the shooter has the right to bear arms in public?
Is the right time to debate mental illness and mental health and whether red flag laws are reasonable or an overreach?
Is the right time an armed civilian population coexisting with armed state-employed police and federal agents?
And if none of those are the right time, then I ask again. Why was the law created? Why was it written into the Bill of Rights?
If it only exists in theory, it is already being rewritten.
The Core Problem: Rights Are Being Treated Like Political Tools
This is what I think has happened.
The United States has gotten lost in interpretation of the fundamental beliefs we hold dear. Those beliefs are being treated more like political tools and debate topics for lawyers than the foundation of a culture, a civilization, a government, and the will of the people.
The gray areas and lines get crossed over and over again, pushing interpretation left and right to justify the erosion of said rights.
And when Congress cannot strip those rights away directly, because we do have a Constitution, corporations and terms of service and walled gardens pick up the slack.
That is the modern bypass.
The Constitutional Crisis Is Bigger Than One Date
The constitutional crisis does not start with say January 6, or 9/11 and end whenever someone wants to say it ended.
It did not end when social media proved it can manipulate speech through algorithms.
It did not end when it became obvious your data is being weaponized against you, not by accident, but by design.
And it does not end when Second Amendment rights are now in question, even though that is literally the scenario they were created for.
This is long-term erosion, dressed up as convenience, safety, and modernity.
Do Not Build Your Worldview From a Single Incident
I urge people not to form sweeping opinions off individual cases, individual incidents, and videos on the internet.
Dig deeper.
Analyze the fundamental building blocks of the nation, the culture, the government, and power as the people.
Then look at whether everything we are doing now, everything we have done up to this point, and the way everything is headed supports our core tenants and core beliefs.
If we are going to keep these rights, they have to be taught. In schools and at home.
Not just reading the words. Understanding what the words mean.
Understanding that freedom of speech is still freedom of speech when you are protesting in front of officers and federal agents.
Understanding that the right to bear arms is not a right you get only when the state feels comfortable.
Understanding that you cannot be searched unreasonably for walking down the street.
These things have to be internalized, not memorized.
Freedom Makes Everything Harder, and That Is Why It Matters
Here is the part people do not want to admit.
The laws of freedom make things harder.
They complicate law enforcement.
They complicate policing the internet.
They complicate messaging.
They complicate everything.
Freedom is not efficient. It is not cheap. It is not safe. It takes more time. It takes more education. It requires restraint and sophistication and tools that allow jobs to be done without infringing on rights.
That is harder. That is more expensive. That is slower.
And over and over, we are seeing it is worth it.
Because the easy way is always the same. You give up liberty for convenience. You accept surveillance for safety. You accept monetized speech because it is “private.” You accept erosion because it is gradual.
And then one day, you realize what you gave up is not coming back.
We must fight for these rights fundamentally.
It does not matter who allows them to be lost: the left or the right. Because when they are gone, they are gone.
That means practicing them, teaching them, and understanding them as constraints on power, not as political tools to be picked up and put down.
It means returning to the founding principles of what governs us and how we want to be governed.
And it means thinking with complexity, because complex problems require complex thought, and politics simplifies on purpose.
Stay Angry.

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