I walk out onto the streets with lantern, like a modern-day Socrates, searching for our Rights, but I find none under the shadow of the Constitution – whatever is left of it, of course, now riddled with holes, and smeared with Tipp-Ex.

I search the halls of decency, but nobody is there. I’m told that the few who were left were taken away under the Patriot Act for disagreeing with the current leadership, like so many people under so many dictatorships of the past (Russia, Portugal, Spain, Myanmar, etc.)

I search the Colleges and Universities, the once great brooding ground for the young who would one day lead business and nations, but as spy cameras on every street corner trace my lonely steps, I find only chains, and books twisting the facts of the past, and an overbearing police-like figure, telling people they shouldn’t congregate, with a life-size cutout of His Most Worshipped Leader, behind him. The sign that reads Hope is obstructed by the man’s steel baton.

Under his heavy boots, I thought I’d find something, but only tooth and nail marks of now forgotten Rights.

I search the White House. Here surely some remnants must be found, even if only in the antique artifacts that line its walls. But the walls are no longer covered with relics of historical significance, and only symbols of idolatry remain. Autographed pictures of an adored leader, glitter, and a trail of people bowing down and stabbed in the back.

I despair to think our Rights have been absconded, leaving only this immense darkness, and no tools to aid us in navigating the seas of Big Money greed and avoid the rocks of depersonalization as we become cogs in the machine.

But lo and behold, as I look around, with heart almost sunk, I see a tiny spark in that great and empty dark. As I come closer, I see it’s a spark in someone’s Heart. In there, of all places, I find the First Amendment and our right of Free Speech.

I quickly glance around and see another spark. This one contains our Second Amendment and our safety from usurpers and violators.

Another spark, and more of our First Amendment. The Right to petition government for redress of wrongs, and hints of the days when people had a right to withhold their money and thus communicate to the government their displeasure.

And as I look further, I see oh so many sparks everywhere. Individually they seem like nothing, just mere hopes of forgotten days, but together, they are a bright Sun, burning forever with the flames of Freedom, and in there I found all our Rights – even those not written down in pieces of paper by men seeking to protect us from enslavement, those that are Divine.

All along they were there. In our hearts. How hard they’ve struggled to divide us, and make us forget to look in there, and believe they were doing it all in our best interest. That they knew better, and we should support them blindly, and not ask questions. No dissent. No individual thought. Just a common, widespread agreement, enforced by force, and fear.

How long before those sparks go out? Only you and I can tell.