Nashua resident Beth Scaer pleaded with Schmidt in the Nashua Politics group on Facebook to end her assault on the First Amendment by withdrawing her bill HB 1159, a bill which would silence political dissent. “Jan, how about you stop trying to take away our God-given and Constitutionally-protected rights?” she asked.
The idea that we have God-given natural rights is hilarious to NH House Rep. Jan Schmidt.
“God wrote the Constitution? Wow!,” Jan responded, both mocking the idea that we have God-given, inalienable rights and bravely slaying a strawman with her impeccable logic and lightning wit. “Oh my, Hahahahah, oh good grief…get a grip. What kind of God advises you to abuse people? Where is your brotherly love?”
She uses the NH Constitution to justify her petty tyranny: “Read Article 3 of the NH Constitution. And no, the founding fathers did not use the bible or any religious document to write our Constitution. These are the laws of people. Article 3 will help you understand.”
Article 3 states, “When men enter into a state of society, they surrender up some of their natural rights to that society, in order to ensure the protection of others; and, without such an equivalent, the surrender is void.” Apparently, Rep. Schmidt believes that gives her and her comrades the power to remove any right she finds embarrassing or inconvenient.
If Rep. Schmidt could find someone to read her the rest of our constitution, she might notice that Article 2 states that “All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights” that she can’t take away.
She might also stumble across Article 22: “Free speech and liberty of the press are essential to the security of Freedom in a State: They ought, therefore, to be inviolably preserved.”
There’s no reason to worry, says Schmidt. “If you have done nothing to worry about, you have nothing to worry about.”
If those words sound familiar, it’s because they’re eerily similar to those of Adolph Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
