You can flex your rights

Flexyourrights.org Guide to Surviving Police Encounters reaches half a million viewers at places like youtube, Google vidoe, etc. It’s an interesting video. The aim is trying to teach you what rights you have when dealing with the police, and how to correrctly exercise them.

The message seems sound, even though some of the situations are a bit heavy — perhaps I just think that because law enforcement in other parts of the US act differently than here.

I am an immigrant into the US and where I grew up the police had unquestionable rights. They still have. Few police officers carry individual name or number tags, for example, so they cannot be easily identified. This is of course used to its full potential. Everyone has their own horror story dealing with the police.

It appears many Americans (and I am a proud American) somehow have forgotten that rights are not given for ever. These rights are under constant attack from all wings of the political spectrum, and little by little, like any relationship that isn’t properly nurtured, these rights start to erode. This happened under several hundred years in Europe and England. Finally, people had enough and went west to found a new country.

The foundation of the United States with its constitution and amendments guarantee an unrivaled ability for each individual to pursue his or her own life. This is the main reason people want to come to this great country. We need to stand up for what we believe in and make sure this continues to be a possibility.

If we don’t, well then there is no more undiscovered continent to which we can run when we want to have those constitutional freedoms back.