When we celebrate the 4th of July, lets take a moment to remember the forefathers for freely passing the individual freedoms of humans when they wrote the CONSTITUTION OF THE U.S.A.

Geez, all of this hyperbolic, over-inflated, public, patriotic-posturing by so many of you rigthies is getting kind of boring. Do you all really believe it was "our brave soldiers" who protected "our rights" and "secured our freedoms" over the last 200 years?

Tell me, what American "rights" were being secured by sending "our brave soldiers" to Europe to fight in WWI, or WWII? Which of our rights were "secured" by sending Americans to die in Korea, or Santo Domingo, or Nicaragua, or Vietnam, or currently in Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Somalia? Generally, throughout our history, when "our brave soldiers" have been sent out to kill and die in foreign lands, our personal liberties have been regularly curtailed in the interests of "national security."

You cite above the Bill of Rights but who really fought to make them apply to all Americans, not just the rich and well connected? Who put their asses on the line to make this country respect the rights of black people, brown people, Native Americans, poor people, people accused of crimes who had no connections to high-priced lawyers? Who was it who fought to secure a semblance of equal rights for women?

Ir sure as hell wasn't the US Army, or the Marines, or the Navy, or the Air Force. Nor was it many people from the right wing of the political spectrum. In truth, it was those from the left who did all of the fighting for our precious rights guaranteed under that brilliant document you all claim to revere so much: The Constitution.

Take the first line of Article I: Until the late 1950s and early 60s this Article was routinely violated in virtually every public school in the US by forcing every child - no matter their own religious affiliation - to pray to the Christian god. And who, pray tell, fought to stop this? The much hated by the right wing American Civil Liberties Union.

Take Article IV: How many of you know that prior to several of the Warren Court's rulings in the 1950s and 60s, few police departments ever bothered to get a warrant before invading a person's private home (needless to say, they rarely invaded the homes of the rich and well-connected), or informed the accused of their right to remain silent? The Warren Court created a special court sanction against local, state and federal law enforcement agencies who routinely violated our precious Article IV protections, it was known as the "Exclusionary Rule," and it prevented law enforcement agencies from using illegally obtained "evidence." Guess who it was (and is) who fought so hard to eliminate the exclusionary rule and consistently water down the requirements necessary for police to obtain a warrant to the point that today courts can issue blank warrants, 'en masse,' with no names, addresses, or even specific offenses required to be listed on the warrants? Those from the right wing.

Take Article VI: The last few lines lay out our rights in regards to being put on trial by the state: "to have compulsory process for obtaining Witnesses in his favor: and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." Do any of you realize that prior to the Warren Court's rulings on this in the late 60s the majority of prisoners in this country had been put through trials without benefit of any legal defense (in Florida the numbers were as high as 95%).

Between the early 1950s (Earl Warren was appointed to the Supreme Court by president Eisenhower) and 1970 the Warren Court did more to enforce our Constitutionally protected Rights - and apply them to all Americans, not just the white and rich ones - than any other Supreme Court, Congress, or White House either before or since, in the history or our country. And yet, throughout his tenure on the Court, he was subjected to more hatred, more vitriolic attacks, more accusations of treason and more calls for his impeachment - all coming from the right wing - than any other Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

So all of you self-proclaimed Constitution-lovers should try to keep in mind that it was almost always the lefties, the progressives, yes, even the liberals, who have regularly fought the most to force the local, state and federal governments of this land to respect our precious Constitutional Rights.

And that includes fighting to save the lives of so many of "our brave soldiers" sent off to kill and die in useless, pointless, wasteful wars, by opposing them. While the right has almost unanimously supported every idiotic military adventure thought up by some moronic president, no matter how stupid, since the end of WWII.