Can we survive the assault on our Bill of Rights?

There is an old adage that if you want to boil a frog, you can't just drop him into a pot of boiling water else he will just hop out as soon as he feels the heat. However, if you place him in a pot of tepid water and slowly raise the temperature, he will never notice the change and happily sit there until he is cooked.

Our rights under the Constitution are slowly being undermined and we are sitting there like the frog, allowing special interests and the courts to slowly take them away.

Political correctness has become the destroyer of the First Amendment. Don Imus lost his job because he used a derogatory term to describe the Rutgers women's basketball team. We, as individuals, are now censoring ourselves least we say something "insensitive."

The Second Amendment has been under attack for decades. While "the people" clause in the other amendments in the Bill of Rights are viewed as individuals, hoplophobics insist that the Second Amendment is a collective right.

The facts are clear that the thousands of restrictive gun laws on the books have failed to reduce violent crime, yet there are cries for even more laws.

The Fourth Amendment has been eroding away as law enforcement and Homeland Security have been given ever-increasing powers to search our homes, cars and person and to seize our property. "No knock" warrants have become the tool of drug agencies, sometimes with tragic results.

The Sixth Amendment has been watered down by legal systems unable to keep up with the work load. "Speedy trial" no longer has a meaning.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments seem to have lost their meaning as the federal government has taken control of more and more of our lives. What rights are still "Retained by the people" and what powers are "Reserved to the states?"

If this insanity continues and the Bill of Rights becomes more narrowly defined, we will find ourselves living in a nation with no individual liberties and a government of "Big Brother."