No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law
Now in today’s world and to be honest for well over a hundred years this has not been a problem in the USA. Yet I think we have to look a little beyond the words to their meanings and their intention to understand what the American Bar Association calls the runt piglet of the Constitution.
At first glance we understand that a standing army cannot seize property to house troops for almost any reason and this is a direct result of the British kicking colonists out of their homes before the American Revolution. Yet it would seem odd for a nation who has kicked the British out and lives by this code to feel a need to make this the third amendment in a list of rights of citizens, a list we call the Bill of Rights.
Unless of course the idea of why this is necessary is brought into the argument, this amendment has a vast effect on two ideas that seem to be the bedrock of the American society.
1. Ownership, no one has a right to tell an owner of property what to do with his property
2. Privacy, one cannot arbitrarily take a walk through another person’s possessions.
These ideas are sacrosanct to the American Ideal and in today’s society we watch as the Federal government takes them away one little piece at a time in the name of security, I might argue we need as much security from our own government as we need from the enemies of our national ideals. Recently President Obama spouted off on the idea of civil liberties and how they are so important but as he went on not as important as security and one will always be sacrificed to the other, as an American I think this is exactly what the third Amendment is about and the verdict of this amendment is a resounding No, you cannot take from the citizens in an attempt to make them safer.
Justice William O. Douglas (1965) while giving the Majority opinion of Griswold Vs Connecticut seems to agree with me. Justice Douglas stated in this opinion that the Third Amendment is implying a belief that an individual’s home should be free from agents of the State. Then only 36 years later we the American people and the government we have elected forget this and create the Patriot Act. This act although created with the idea of keeping Americans safe violates the very idea of privacy that is a protected civil liberty. This makes Obama’s notion of less Privacy an abomination of the Constitution and the current and previous administrations and it needs to be corrected.
If this country has a need to be safer and I believe it does, I believe that should come from having an armed citizenship that makes any attack on our country a dangerous proposition which is also in alignment with the 2nd Amendment. I find it interesting that Liberals believe taking weapons away from good people will make them safer, in the history of the world this has never been true and yet even Churchill stated during World War II that when the Nazi’s come to our nation we will each individual fight them on the beach and historically we know that statement and the fact citizens had weapons to do so was a deciding factor for Hitler not to invade a nation.
The point I am trying to make is this, if we read with an open mind the Constitution as it is we will find a set of rules that both protect us from evil in the world and the evil in our own government, it is not until we forget this document that we see corruption and deception creep into our government and our way of life. I might remind the American people that Obama is a scholar of this document and he is fully aware of the crime he is perpetrating on the American people by making them weak and divided.