Now to tick everybody off.

The USA is not a free country, never has been. Freedom sounds good, a great rallying cry, but is rarely used as it was actually meant. Lately I have seen it spelled freedumb, and that is so true, dumb. “I don’t have to “whatever”, ‘cause it’s a free country!” is not what this country is about. The constitution does not give you freedom to do whatever you want. It actually gives you no rights to do anything. The rights granted in the constitution are the rights of protection from other people doing things to you. The right to life, (no one has the right to endanger your life) liberty, (no one has the right to imprison you, not even the government, without due cause.) and the pursuit of happiness (no one can tell you what to do for fun, as long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s rights).

Everyone seems to think it is all about them, but the constitution is actually about everyone else, because along with the rights of protection come a long list of responsibilities. Responsibilities to every other American. Responsibility to not just honor everyone else’s rights but to actively pursue equal rights for all. Yet this is not a open invitation to allow any form of ideology, no matter how horrible, to have free run. Allowing groups whose entire ideology is one of violence and subjugation of others based on ethnicity, to be given validity by any government official, to be allowed open discourse in public conversation, is in itself a violation of the rights of protection guaranteed to everyone else in the constitution.

And while silence is bad enough, to actually enable these monstrous groups is unthinkable. Preaching tolerance is a great thing, but the one thing even the most tolerant of ideologies insists on is the intolerance of the ideologies of intolerance. To give them equal footing is asking them to follow their ideology to its horrific conclusion. White Supremacists, KKK, and the Nazi party’s end goal is the elimination of all non white people from the human race. They may soft sell it and say it is just their opinion that there is a difference when in public, when talking to media, but be assured if they thought they had enough people agreeing, or at least enough ignoring them, they would not just restart, but expand upon the “cleansing” they started during WWII.

No one should be surprised that there were protests to the intolerance. But some are saying it has gone to far with the tearing down of statues of historic figures. But even many saying this agree some of the statues should be taken down. There seems to have been an outcry against Grant’s statue (Union Civil War hero) being attacked. But the fact is he did not release his slaves when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He was actually one of, if not the, last prominent person in the US to free his slaves. Perhaps some people should study history before opening their mouths, or perhaps we should stop putting up monuments to people, after all they were only human, and start erecting monuments to ideas and results. I mean, bottom line, not one of these statues has any rights. The time is well past when we should have done something. And had something been done a long time ago, It would have never gone this far.

For those that actually pay attention to history it is no surprise that the analysis of the protests and riots in Chicago in 1919, has the same reasons for it happening and suggested solutions as the analysis of the unrest in Minneapolis this year. Namely make justice equal. This is proof that for over 100 years the people running this country have known what is wrong, what to do about it, and have not only ignored it, but lied about not knowing problem. And their answer was to create a police state. With less than 4% of the world’s population we now have 25% of world’s imprisoned population. Really, we have six times as many criminals per capita as the rest of the world? No we don’t, we have a government subsidized prison for money system, that incarcerates people for not only ,non violent crimes, but for ridiculously minor offenses. And this is just one of many problems with this country because of the people we have allowed to run it.

This is a call to arms for everyone to stand up for everyone else, to accept your responsibilities to the constitution, to put an end to oppression. Stand up and say something, donate to groups that fight for equality, and just stop tolerating intolerance.