I truly weep for the future of America.
As I look at the responses to my various articles on CPS abuses, the VAST MAJORITY of replies indicate that, the joeuser community, at least, has contempt for the guarantees of the constitution.
Who cares that we have a constitutional right to confront our accuser? If you can gather information through anonymous tips, that's all you need to bust down doors and strip a mother's children from her breast! Who cares about due process? A mere allegation of abuse or neglect should be enough to remove a child from a parent until or unless the parent can substantially prove their innocence? The legal standard of innocent until proven guilty? Well, of course, if you're a celebrity, we're supposed to remember that, but if you're an innocent victim of government overreach, well, kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.
Never mind that, of the 500,000 children in foster care, only 18% of the parents will even be charged with abuse or neglect. Only 3% will be convicted. That means over 400,000 children in the system whose parents have not been charged with any crime...but who have to go to bed weeping every night because their children are beyond their reach. Only 44% of those children will see their birth parents again beyond the confines of a sterile room in a government office building. But we don't care.
We watched as the government stormed Waco, and, it was later discovered, torched the compound and accused David Koresh of burning his own people. We watched the lawsuit of Randy Weaver, whose wife and son were shot in cold blood by government agents at Ruby Ridge. And we watch as the government abuses the Amber Alert system to strip a child from her parents simply because the parents wanted another medical opinion.
There are those who dismiss my fears of the US becoming a police state as unreasonably paranoid. But I have 400,000 plus reasons to believe it is. And the sad truth is, most Americans don't CARE about their rights being violated.
If we allow the government to treat the Constitution as irrelevant, we all lose. For, you see, whether you agree or disagree with its protection, it is regardless the supreme law of the land until such time as it is replaced as such (a time I fear is fast arriving). If you allow the government to treat its protections as suspect, you allow a government that has no respect for the rule of law in any context, and can trample the rights of ANY citizen, without just cause. The rights of each American citizen as provided by the Constitution are interdependent; if you allow one to be jeopardized, you seriously endanger them all. Allow unreasonable gun control laws? Say goodbye to your free speech rights; they're equally jeopardized. Allow a child to be removed from their parents without due process? Well, prepare for the state to raise your children; that IS where we're headed. Allow the state to dictate terms of involuntary servitude? Then we might as well revert to slavery; the 13th amendment applies as much to whites as blacks.
I write because it's my opinion, but in the case of my CPS articles, I hope to convince people of the wrongness of the government's actions. I have failed miserably in that regard, it seems, as the responses run about 4 to 1 in favor of violating the Constitution "for the benefit of the child". But let me ask you; when the "child" steers his bicycle into a Mack truck at the age of 19 to remove themselves from the Hell they've known all their life, how can you tell me what the government did was for their own good?