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During the early years of American history, Benjamin Franklin remarked that our nation is a republic "if you can keep it." His statement seems to imply a rueful understanding of the danger that underlies our system: it's all well and good, until someone like Obama or Clinton or Lyndon Baines Johnson takes office and spends four years - maybe even eight - redefining the very foundations of our two hundred and thirteen year-old republic.
The cornerstone of our republic, the Constitution, is currently being challenged on the grounds of free speech. Mayor Daley of Chicago is preparing to sign into law a restriction against pro-life activity within fifty feet of the entrance to any abortion clinic. In a city where buildings are close to the streets, this bubble zone could easily cover ground that does not belong to the building itself, therefore restricting a person's right to free speech on public property.
A fifty-foot bubble around a private establishment - this is so emblematic of everything that liberals have ever done. For one, it reminds us of the "drug-free school zone" signs that you see driving down the highway. If only words were that magical; if only drug lords were idiots. That's a bubble any dealer can pop.
I'll bet a liberal thought of that one, so high up in the upper echelons of bureaucracy that he's lost what Mr. Obama calls a "common touch," something Mr. Obama never had. Maybe bureaucratic liberals should enforce a fifty-foot bubble around school zones as well. That ought to keep the Colombians away!
Speaking of bold-faced people, isn't it obvious by now that pro-lifers aren't afraid of going to jail? For God's sake, these people chain themselves to the front door; impersonate a staff-member to gain access; go limp as the police officers carry them away.
They break the law fifty ways sideways, never mind a fifty-foot bubble. They will walk right through it. Could bureaucracy be any less creative? As long as pro-lifers can create a scene, business will not carry on as usual, since the average person avoids a scene of conflict.
This new development in the history of bureaucratic incompetence is somewhat reminiscent of the Law of the Sea Treaty, a proposal by the U.N. to make large portions of the oceans off-limits to entrepreneurs who might like to harvest the minerals on the sea floor, unless they pay an exorbitant fee to the U.N.; a bubble-zone, of sorts. The objective of this treaty was control over large territories of the ocean.
When you consider the chain of cause and effect, however, it's impossible to maintain that bubble. What people do on the rivers and on land indirectly affects the ocean territories as rivers flow into the ocean and emissions float across the surface. Unless the U.N. also controls activity on land and rivers, the water regions are not completely under their control.
Likewise, unless the advocates of abortion can control what happens outside of their bubbles, there is really no point in having the bubble in the first place. Would a pro-life billboard five hundred feet away from the clinic also violate their privacy, since it can be seen from the bubble zone?
Unless pro-aborts can devise a way to regulate all pro-life activity, their bubbles will be burst again and again. And only by bursting these anti-Constitutional bubbles can our Republic maintain its integrity.