Thinking of the abuses of government being experienced on the Obama watch, one can think of the vaudevillian sketch “Slowly I Turned” as the assaults on citizen rights and constitutional liberties are played out front and center.
First, the commandeering of records of the press — even if national security may be an issue — infringes on freedom of the press whether explicit or covert. Who is to say that any one of us will not be next if we write a column or a book or give a speech that questions government actions?
Second, the assault on the Second Amendment granting citizens the right to own weapons is tilted to gain sympathy for the innocents killed by the mentally ill, terrorists without borders and individuals on their own personal crusades whether vigilantes or jihadists. But this same administration is willing to take aim at individual privacy and rights in the use of drones to spy on and attack citizens without due process or allowing them to face and know their accusers.

Third is the misuse of the Internal Revenue Service to limit access to tax exemptions for those groups with “tea,” “patriot” or “conservative” in their names. Forgotten is that this same effort to overly scrutinize has long been suspected as applying to civil rights leaders or those with views not in favor during their time of operation. But you haven’t seen nothing yet. If the use of the IRS to make citizens comply with Obamacare isn’t halted, as Sen. Tom Price and others are trying to do, havoc is going to be wreaked on individual bank accounts to pay for health insurance that some might not have chosen. What’s to say the money set aside for rent or other necessities isn’t that same money from your bank account the IRS will take to pay for government mandated health insurance?
Fourth is the unraveling of parental responsibility and authority. Do parents have a say in what their children are taught? Does a common core curriculum being proposed throughout the nation step across this line? Will the ability of minors to purchase the morning after pill as proposed by the Obama Administration’s Health and Human Services and the Food Drug Administration cause unexpected bleeding and possible complications in minors who don’t consult with physicians, parents or an adult before taking them?

Disturbing was and is the request to keep raising the national debt with no end in sight nor a willingness to reduce non-essential spending. Taxes being proposed for airplane passengers ignore the millions made in excess baggage fees or the government subsidies which should instead be removed. Increasingly more is being demanded of government than it can afford to give, and personal freedoms are being sacrificed on the altar of more government on the supposed notion of more security while individual responsibility loses ground to relativism, i.e., if it is important or relative to me then it most be important or relative to you.
Do you feel safer today than you did 10 years ago? At the price of my constitutional freedoms, I’ll take a lot less government and keep my gun for my personal security.

Dr. Ada M. Fisher of Salisbury is the N.C. Republican National Committee Woman. Contact her at DrFisher@GETDOCTORINTHEHOUSE.com