Stumble it!Time to Choose Sides
posted in Politics, Society, War by themaiden |One of my favorite people on the web has a powerful post up on his site. First he quotes from a Reddit comment thread…
Then suddenly, water hits your head, streams into your mouth and nose, icy cold as if it’s come from a freezer. You can’t breathe, breathe anyway, cough hard, convulse, but your body can’t bend over and the pain in your stomach is unbearable. Your retch but nothing comes up, and more water hits your face while someone laughs at you. You try to breathe but swallow water and then, finally, you throw up, the taste of your own stomach smeared over your face, running into your eyes inside the bag over your head. The water stops and all you do is scream and scream and scream for mercy, your own sick all over, your piss running down towards you while the world spins and spins and spins.
What is this about? Well, whatever it is, it…
… is now legal in our country. And not only against convicted terrorists, but against anyone suspected of being a terrorist.
Read the whole thing, but especially note the following:
Men are all equal. We all have unalienable rights inherently. They do not come from the government. The government exists to secure those rights. Rights do not come from the government. If I hear one more Republican claim that Democrats want to give terrorists more rights, my head is going to explode. The government cannot give what it has no right to possess.
I’ve made the point myself.
Jefferson’s famous words do not read “All citizens…” but “All men are created equal.” Sadly, it is the former version that seems to have gripped large swathes of the country. Jefferson did not use citizenship to argue for an individual’s rights. Such an argument would imply that governments grant rights, and this idea Jefferson rejected. Jefferson instead argued that simply being human lends one certain rights. Governments exist not to create, or grant, those rights, but to protect them. Our judicial system is the means such protection is to take.
In several places…
The phrase “all men are created equal” should come to mind. Jefferson did not write “all US citizens are created equal”– there were no US citizens. The US did not exist. Jefferson wrote “men” because this essential equality of humanity is the foundation which justified the revolution and upon which the nation was subsequently built. Equality and human rights do not descend from our government, they supercede it.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…
The Declaration of IndependenceThis flipping of values, this suggestion that laws don’t apply so rights don’t exist is the anti-americanism to which I refer in the headline to this post. The Declaration puts tears in my eyes everytime I read it. Perhaps Mark should spend so time with it as well.
It is time to choose sides, folks.
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