You seem like an intelligent person. What has made you buy into the rhetoric coming out of DC, that the Constitution/Bill of Rights can just be set aside for a while and then when everything is better, it'll come back? I'm sure the German citizens thought so in the 1930s. I'm sure the Russian peasants thought so in the 1910s and 1920s. They thought giving up a little freedom would make everything secure and prosperous - little did either group of people know they were in for a decades long nightmare, that neither have fully recovered from.
To quote Thomas Jefferson, Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one. Are you sure you belong at FR, and not DU?
Just a quick question. If the police were allowed/forced to stop anybody and everybody constantly to ask for their papers, do you think the government would ever give us back our rights/freedoms? After all the illegals are long gone (or legalized, lol) do you think the government would give that chunk of the Constitution back to us.
You have brought up some very valid concerns. One thing that always stands out when I read about our founding fathers and how they went about drafting the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is that there was much debate over what would and would not be included in the final version. Debate raged over suggested text, paragraghs were written and rewritten, and sentances, phrases, and even single words were weighed for their intrinsic meaning. Even though our founding fathers didn't agree on everything that was to be included in the Constitution, they were still able to come to an agreement on a final version of it.
The reason that I enjoy reading and posting on Free Republic is because of the fact that we don't all agree on everything. Just think how boring that would be! Yes, we may all agree in general that illegal immigration is a serious problem and that something needs to be done about it, but we don't all agree on how to go about solving this problem. I believe in looking at a problem from every conceivable angle and considering all possible options no matter how radical or unorthodox they may be. Sometimes instead of a single idea being best, a combination of two or more ideas produces the best result. The most important thing is to keep the dialogue going, keep expressing our opinions, keep suggesting new ideas and possible solutions, keep debating the issues, and hopefully, in the end, figure out how to solve the problem of illegal immigration. I'm certainly open to any ideas, suggestions, and comments that anyone may have on this topic.