The Modern day "Liberty Tree" is being chopped down

In 1765 the British government imposed the” Stamp Act” on the American colonies. All legal documents, permits, contracts, newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards in the American colonies were required to carry a tax stamp. Because the Act applied to papers, newspapers, advertisements, and other publications, it was viewed by the colonists as a means of censorship, or a "knowledge tax," on the rights of the colonists to write, read and speak freely.

In the summer of 1765 the citizens of Boston began demonstrating against the Stamp Act. Then in August of that year, a group of men calling themselves the “Sons of Liberty” gathered in Boston common under a large elm tree near Hanover Square to protest the hated Stamp Act. The Sons of Liberty concluded their protest by hanging two tax collectors in effigy from the tree. The tree became known as the "Liberty Tree." The tree was often decorated with banners and lanterns. People would post their grievances anonymously on it. Assemblies were regularly held under its branches to express their views and vent emotions. A flagstaff was raised within the Liberty Tree's branches and when a yellow flag was raised, the Sons of Liberty were to meet.

When the news of the Boston Liberty Tree spread throughout the colonies, local patriots in each of the 13 colonies formed local chapters of the Sons of Liberty and identified a large tree or erected a pole to be used as their meeting place. In those times, holding an unauthorized assembly was dangerous and against the King’s law and carried threats of imprisonment or even death. The casual appearance of a group of people chatting beneath a tree was much safer.

In the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, the British made the Liberty Tree an object of ridicule. British soldiers tarred and feathered a man named Thomas Ditson, and forced him to march in front of the tree. During the siege of Boston, about the last day of August 1775, a party of Colonial British Loyalists led by Job Williams defiantly cut the tree down in an act of spite, knowing what it represented to the colonists, and used the tree for firewood. This act only further enraged the colonists. As resistance to the British grew, flags bearing a representation of the Liberty Tree were flown to symbolize the unwavering spirit of liberty. These flags were later a common sight during the battles of the American Revolution.

When the Revolutionary War was won and the Founding Fathers set out to establish the Law of the new nation, they envisioned that the rights of the citizens to have the freedom of speech and of the press were the very foundation of this country that when they created the Constitution, they put those rights and freedoms as the very first one in the Bill of Rights.

Fast forward to the present day…We have taken the fact that the freedom of speech and of the press for granted for over 220 years. We believed that there was nothing that could threaten those liberties. In the era of the internet, Liberty Trees is no longer a necessity. Websites in the virtual world have taken the place of where the people can go to post their grievances anonymously and assemble to express their views and vent emotions. Just like my "blawg" site you are reading now...

This fundamental right is being threatened not from a foreign country, but from within our own government. A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cyber-security bill that some have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet for up to 4 months. Its called the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” The bill creates and gives the new “National Center for Cyber-security and Communications” "significant authority" over critical infrastructure, but doesn't define what critical infrastructure is covered. Without a definition of critical infrastructure, it includes elements of the Internet that Americans rely on every day to engage in free speech and to access information. This is the very definition of tyranny…controlling the people's means of communication. Regulating their right to free speech and press. This legislation and ones like it must be stopped if this country is to survive intact for future generations to live in freedom as the Founding Fathers intended.

"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (Thomas Jefferson)

http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-can-shut-down-internet-for-4-months-under-new-emergency-powers.html