The events that have happened in Afghanistan this week are tragic and disheartening. I see people clinging to a transport plane risking their life in hopes of escaping a regime that they know is destined to oppress them. It makes no sense to most Americans as to why we allowed the Taliban to take over an area we have been occupying for over 20 years. The pundits say that twenty years is enough and nothing could be further from the truth. Our troops have been in Germany and SE Asia for over half a decade maintaining peace and order in those areas of the world. We left billions of dollars, equipment and weapons of war fall into the hands of people that attacked and killed thousands of Americans and caused terror all over the world.
I can’t even begin to imagine what our veterans are feeling, especially to those that served in Afghanistan. Hopefully they know that the majority of Americans, especially here in the 155th District, appreciate your service and sacrifice. We love this country and our state. Please know that as a member of the House of Representatives I will always fight for veterans.
This speech was given by Representative Dottie Bailey last session and I’d like to share it with you.
“History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. That statement from the legendary civil rights attorney and Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, is so very prevalent today.
Recently our republic has seen the seizure of private assets and shuttering of businesses without due process, calls from government officials for limiting news outlets or speech based purely on content, and suppression of viewpoints in government funded public academia.
The Constitution guarantees individual civil liberties believed by the founders to be inalienable. It is the highest calling of government to not only ensure those liberties but to err at all costs toward the side of defending and finding expansive the liberties of those we find disagreeable. The Constitution guarantees liberty. It does not guarantee a gentile society, it does not guarantee health, it does not guarantee safety.
As free natural human beings we are exposed to terrible things. Hunger, sickness, danger, death. We may be exposed to ugly ideas or vulgar expression. We may have our feelings hurt. But the Constitution protects us against our well-meaning selves. It protects us from domestication or worse becoming that safe, well fed, disease free creature that sadly stares from its pristine manufactured habitat in the zoo.
The Constitution was not authored for good times. It was a hedge against awful ones. It was written by people for the government, not the other way around.
The Second Amendment guarantees the liberty of self-defense and self-actualization. The firearm like no other tool equalizes weak and strong on an individual level.
It is the tool by which our forbearers beat back the foils of the frontier, by which they threw off the mantle of colonial rule, and by which they enshrined freedom. Certainly it is a tool that may be egregiously misused for evil and appalling ends. When Patrick Henry shouted his famous phrase “Give me liberty or give me death’, he said it because he knew that a life without liberty was no life at all. That the often unpleasant possibilities of living wild and free were far better than the protection of a prison.
Whether dying of exposure on their feet at Valley Forge, of sepsis at Gettysburg, of drowning at Normandy, or of lynching in Neshoba County, Mississippi, those brave souls who bought our freedom with their blood knew this as well and they paid willingly.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights was intended to ensure a federal government and its subordinate state governments would not usurp the individual liberties of the people. But now in a day when the powers of federal government seem unsure of their due under this contract the state must act. I am proud to live in a country where our founders foresaw that liberty would one day be wrongly assaulted by good people in the name of good intentions. I am proud that Missouri will be able step to aid the side of liberty. I am proud to speak for this legislative measure.
Where liberty dwells, there is my country. Where liberty dwells, there is my state. “
We are now in a time in which we must stand up against the mistakes and tyranny of our Federal Government. Please know that we will fight for your liberties in the capitol. God bless America and the State of Missouri.
Travis Smith
