Am I about to succcumb to someone elses flame bait? Perhaps...

It strikes me, again just my opinion, that you really don’t understand the true meaning and in fact the beauty of our Constitution, in particular the first 10 Amendments.

The Constitution is a living document that is able to exceed any sort of temporal constraints with regards to the specifics of the time that it was written in. No, it is not perfect and aberrations such as a lack of language to prohibit slavery become the exception that proves the rule. For instance, contrary to your misunderstanding, the amendment prohibiting unlawful search and seizure was written specifically to apply to commercial airline travel in that the Founding Fathers knew that specific situations that they could not foresee would arise. Their intention was that the state should never have an opportunity to engage in this kind of behavior, that it is fundamentally contrary to the ideals upon which they established this nation. Even in a post-9/11 world that they could not specifically envision.

Also, forgive me for shattering your Victorian naiveté with regards to behavior but people today behave no differently that they did 200 years ago. Yes, there are far more people around today so you do see more numerical instances of 'bad behavior' but people aren’t doing anything that people haven’t always done. There has always been prostitution and prostitutes, rape and rapists, and murder and murderers. No, people in the 18th Century didn’t have CNN beaming such things instantly into their living rooms 24/7 but they still happened none-the-less. Evidence even of serial killers can be found as far back as B.C. 500.

In short, your irrational fear does not give you the right to take away any of my freedom or anyone else’s freedom.




[This message has been edited by anrkitec (edited 08-05-2002).]