“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

—First Amendment of the Constitution

Once upon a time, our civil liberties as enumerated in the Bill of Rights were like the plumbing under the house: necessary underpinnings of our existance, but not really something to which we gave a lot of thought. If something seemed broken, we called in the “experts” and trusted them to deal with the problem appropriately, without the necessity of ever getting our own hands dirty. Then our circumstances changed. The rapid growth of the Internet, combined with the repercussions of a terrorist attack on our soil, threw many of us into a tangible awareness of our rights and the realization that if we didn’t learn a little about how to protect and maintain them ourselves we were going to wind up, well, knee deep in sewage. For the last six years, there has been increasing awareness and involvement, and looking around the web and at our own government it is clear that lines which were once nearly invisible are being etched deeply into the sand. On some level, we all know that the next battle to be fought on our soil will not be one of “us” fighting “the terrorists”. It will be us fighting for which version of ourselves we want to become. Continue reading