reply to post by hinky
You need a license for several reasons.
First and foremost is safety. Some of these radios can and will kill you if you play fu** around with them. This in addition to climbing tall towers
if so inclined to buy one and install it. You have to have a certain amount of knowledge in safety to operate some of these rigs and there are
questions on the test in these regards.
Second, ham radio has the ability to reach around the world. Back in the good old days, even telephones didn't work like that for the most part. Hard
to believe, but true. The government wanted a record of people who had the ability to communicate partly for national defense, MARS nets are still
running, and who to "watch" in times of national emergency such as war. Ham radio was even shut down during WW2 for this very reason. If the
internet is shut down, expect licensed ham radio operators to be questioned or worse, their equipment confiscated.
Ham radio is an interesting choice for communications in dire times. It's worked in the past when everything else, much more modern, was not
available.
Yeah, I know why they license people, I just don't think they are valid reasons at all. First off, I don't need or want a "nanny state" telling me
what I can or can't do. I'm perfectly fine with evaluating my own risks and I surely don't trust the government to do that for me. The government
should be playing the absolute minimum role in our lives, at least in a society that touts itself as free and the beacon of liberty. Freedom and
liberty are nothing but "buzz-words" thrown out their to keep the people subdued and oblivious to what real freedom and liberty actually is.
In fact, our founding fathers and the pilgrims too, fought for/came to this country for the very idea of limited government and personal liberty. Once
the government gets into dictating our personal lives to protect us from ourselves, it is no longer a free government but rather a tyrannical
government. We then have let liberty escape us because a government is dictating what we can or can't do, as if they know better than you or I, how
to live our own lives.
As far as the second reason, I should be able to stay anonymous if I wanted to. The government is not supposed to own us, rather the government is
supposed to be by, for and of the people. This is not the case when the government is dictating our lives under the guise of safety & security and it
surely isn't the case when the government is keeping track of us.
In fact, we should never be scared of our own government, this was just not how it was intended to be, yet we are all scared of our government. How
many of us get nervous when we get a call or letter from the IRS? We automatically think "audit". How many of us get nervous when a police car is
behind us? It should simply not be that way at all, and had we actually held our government accountable and forced them to abide by the Constitution,
it wouldn't be that way.
You see, when our founding fathers created the American experiment, they knew exactly how tyranny creeps in. Because of this, they fashioned our
founding documents in a way to give Americans easy access to the tools needed to fight and defeat tyranny. All Americans had to do, was take this
responsibility seriously. We failed and the generations before ours failed. We completely ignored the simple responsibilities that were spelled out
for us, by the great men who sacrificed their lives to give us what we took for granted and lost.
We shouldn't need the government's permission to do anything. The government should be getting our permission to do things. Over the years this
order has been corrupted to favor an out of control government and our Constitution is meaningless now. The only thing that government is good for
these days, is keeping us subdued and in line, thinking that we have liberties, rights and protections but it's all a fassad. The 1st Amendment no
longer matters, as we have a corporate press corps and we need to get the government's permission to both communicate and assemble. This defeats the
purpose. Our founding fathers created the 1st through 10th Amendments to protect us from the government.
When the Constitution was first written, the Bill of Rights was not included. Many people were worried that the Constitution did not protect the
people from the government, so the Bill of Rights was created to ensure that not only could the people be able to easily replace a tyrannical
government, but they would also keep the government from overstepping its bounds.
The 2nd Amendment no longer matters either, as we are not allowed to arm ourselves in a manner relevant to overthrow a tyrannical government. you see,
the purpose of the 2nd Amendment, was as a last resort, to overthrow our government after organizing against them via the 1st Amendment. I could go on
and on about each individual Amendment in the Bill of Rights, but I won't because I believe the point is made.
In sum, we have allowed freedom and liberty to slip through our grasps and all of us have been indoctrinated to accept the government encroaching on
our lives. It's perfectly acceptable to many people that the government should dictate our lives to protect us from ourselves and this is extremely
scary because it is the very anti-thesis of freedom and liberty. For those who believe that the Constitution should be invalid because it was written
a couple hundred years ago, our brilliant forefathers had thought of that too. It's called the Amendment process. Things can be updated in the
Constitution through the Amendment process, only it's very difficult to do and rightly so. Because of this difficulty, our Constitution was just
subverted instead and then made irrelevant while still allowing the people to cling to it as if it provides some kind of safety net to our freedom.
So, just because our government wants to protect us from ourselves or because our government wants to keep track of us, that doesn't make it right
that we have to ask their permission to do anything, including Ham Radio operation. Please excuse my rant, it is just so bothersome for me that don't
find issue or anything wrong with the fact that liberty no longer exists in America. I find it treasonous and wholly un-American.
--airspoon