Are we citizens or are we subjects?

Last year Paul Begal wrote that April 15th is Patriots Day.

Begala seems to have the idea that patriotism means that the individual serves the state. How wrong he is and how far we have fallen. The purpose of the state is to protect individual rights; to protect the social contract namely: "I promise not to kill you and take your stuff if you promise not to kill me and take my stuff."

Now we have people who want to flip this ideal on its head: that the government is not here to secure your individual rights but is instead here to protect you from yourself.

Government should be as big as it needs to be to do what it has to do. If there are no limits then there are no individual rights, no individual liberty. Therefore the questions of the day are: "what is the purpose of government?" and "what are the limits placed on what government can do?"

It seems to me, Paul Begala, that these questions were answered over 200 years ago with the writting of the US Constitution. It is you, and those like you, who have forgotten this and are trying to, slowly but surely, subvert the founding ideals and the US Constitution.

This is what people are protesting.

We must all ask ourselves: are we citizens or are we subjects?