Washington Post appreciates the words of the Declaration of Independence, but appartently miss their meaning

The Declaration of Independence’s still stirring words

       by the Editorial  Board of the Washington Post

“I am a BRITON,” Benjamin Franklin declared proudly and in capital letters. If that sounds a bit odd coming from the man whose face now adorns the $100 bill, you have to consider the times. It was 1763, and Great Britain had just won a long war against France for dominance in North America, a victory which, historian John Ferling writes, “quickened the colonists’ pride in being part of such a great and noble empire, one with a reputation for being the most religiously tolerant and enlightened of the great powers.” Yet only 13 years later, Ben Franklin and many of his compatriots were in open rebellion against this same benignant empire, and they weren’t calling themselves Britons anymore. They had become Americans, in many cases with a vengeance.

The anger that took hold in those years can be difficult to understand today, as it was even then to a sizable part of the American population. It stemmed above all from taxes of various kinds (the war had to be paid for), and also from trade restrictions by the mother country, and from British policies that frustrated ambitious, expansionist colonials. And liberty was in the air, fostered by British political philosophers and other figures of the European Enlightenment as well as homegrown agitators who talked boldly of republican government.

When the war came, the moral arguments weren’t all on one side. One action that triggered fury in the southern colonies was Britain’s offer to give freedom to slaves who fought on the British side. But on July 2, 1776, when the Continental Congress voted for independence, it wasn’t in a position to be too evenhanded; the Declaration was to be a justification for the break, heavy on grievances.John Adams, who had introduced the motion for independence, didn’t have time to write it and assigned the task to Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Adams “never imagined that anyone would remember the Declaration of Independence,” writes Mr. Ferling. Even someone as astute as Mr. Adams could hardly have foreseen the mystical and enduring power of words in a republic that came to see itself as founded upon them. The most stirring words in the Declaration that was adopted by the Congress on July 4 are of course its statement of the “self-evident” truths “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.” But these truths clearly weren’t evident to hundreds of thousands of enslaved people from Africa, and in less than a century the new country was torn apart by a contradiction that could no longer be ignored.The power of words was illustrated again last week in the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the health-care act. In the past two centuries, written constitutions have sprouted all over the globe, and in far too many cases they sound good and mean nothing. (“The state is at the people’s service.” — Article 12 of the Syrian Constitution.) No matter what one might think of the outcome of the health-care case, the spectacle of crowds demonstrating, judges arguing and the people and media going at one another furiously over the meaning of a brief passage in a document written more than 200 years ago makes for a pretty good show. Let the fireworks continue.”

 Comment:  It is an historical relic according to the policies and politics of today’s Washington Post.   Notice that they do not refer to the Declaration of Independence, but merely marvel at the words.

 

The stirring words occur at the opening of the Declaration itself.   It won’t take long, so I shall reprint them here:

 

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the LAWS OF NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD, entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should delcare the causes which impel them to the seaparation.

 

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…..”

 

And as Dennis Prager emphasized today in his broadcast, in the Declaration, “the founders  declared the Right of the pursuit of Happiness, NOT the right of happiness itself'”……..which Obama Marxist disciples intentionally and unintentionally regularly misconstrue and miseducate and lie about.

 

Worse, in my view, these Obama Marxists and others who have plotted  the  Obama-Marxist  ascendancy, ignore and/or  ridicule the Declaration’s atatement that these Rights are the “Laws of  Nature and Nature’s God”.

 

These Rights are as Permanent, as man is Permanent, the call declares  despite the devious and dishonest preachments made daily by Barack Hussein Obama and his fevered presently in power……

 

Both the Declaration and our Federal  Constitution were dedicated to  a Faith in Nature’s God as the foundation for the purpose of the Nation itself to be exercised individually without a state church….(including Marxism!)

 

 

Happy 4th of July and America’s battle with Obama’s Crony Capitalism

 by Paul Mirengoff  of Power Line, in Crony capitalism

Crony caplitalism, American capitalism,

and the Fourth of July

From Elizabeth Spahn at the FCPA blog:

Highly intelligent, sophisticated, successful. I think he was of Indian ancestry, or maybe Pakistani? A modern Canadian citizen; executive of a Fortune 10 corporation responsible for North American operations for the British based corporation, first in its market position. He is a major player.

“Crony Capitalism.” Isn’t that what American capitalism is? We were into our third glass of very fine red wine at the banquet following the training session. He was absolutely sincere. I was horrified. . . .

Cronyism is not capitalism, I replied. Cronyism is the opposite of capitalism. American capitalism is about markets, competition. “Rational” markets in which sellers compete; purchasers decide based on price, quality, service, brand. Cronyism, nepotism, elites reserving the goods for themselves — This is the opposite, the antithesis of American capitalism. This is why we revolted in the first place.

He looked at me. I looked at him. Ah, he said.

Happy Fourth of July

Joe Williams “suspicions’ confirmed, his Twitter Account ‘ravaged’, career in Jeopardy, by The Right Wing Noise Machine

Joe Williams: how I became a victim

of the ‘right wing noise machine’

by  Joe Williams    at   the Grio:

As soon as the words escaped my lips, live on national television, I suspected I might have a problem.  I’d used the phrase trying to explain why Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spent so much time chatting with Fox News, why he’s kept the mainstream press at bay, and why he seemed so awkward and stiff around minorities.

It didn’t take long for my suspicions to be confirmed. Within hours, my Blackberry was filled with racist hate mail, my Twitter account had been ravaged, I was on indefinite suspension, and my 28-year career was in jeopardy.

The Right Wing Noise Machine — a small cabal of self-appointed watchdogs on a perpetual hunt for perceived liberal bias — had struck again.

By now, my cautionary tale is familiar: after saying Romney, a millionaire businessman, is more comfortable with around people like him was like waving a red cape waving in front of a charging bull — namely, Big Media, an arm of the late Andrew Breitbart’s online empire, and DC Caller, a web site scandal sheet run by Tucker Carlson. After rummaging through some 3,000 tweets, they cherry-picked ones designed to prove their flimsy case: that I was biased against Romney, a racist against whites and a representative of my employer’s slant against conservatives.

At this point, I have to own my role in the story: I was careless on Twitter, ignored some warning signs, and realized too late that my followers weren’t the only ones watching me. Life on the business end of a scandal, is mortifying; an old friend told me I’d raced past the blues singer and the rock guitarist to become the lead result in a Joe Williams Google search, for all the wrong reasons.

Yet it’s easy to miss the larger lesson in my cautionary tale — that a tiny group of organizations with internet access, a money pipeline and next to no credibility can coerce powerful, independent news organizations that pride themselves on speaking truth to power. Rather than inform the public or operate as a legitimate check on the media, pointing out gaps in newsroom diversity or errors in coverage, members of the RWNM only care about their agenda: harassing, undermining, discrediting and embarrassing people who don’t agree with their view of the world.

Breitbart.com, the group that targeted me, is the same outfit behind the case of Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official who was fired after a video surfaced of her making racially inflammatory remarks — a video that was later shown to be heavily edited and taken out of context.  Another RWNM member: James O’Keefe, the conservative agent provocateur whose ham-fisted, out-of-context “stings” helped take down ACORN, an organization dedicated to registering minority voters, led to the firing of an NPR executive for making disparaging remarks about the Tea Party – and landed him in jail for tampering with the phones in the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) while trying to engineer another elaborate, phony set-up.

And Daily Caller, the group that posted embarrassing tweets of mine that had nothing to do with anti-Romney bias, employs Neil Munro, the reporter who harassed President Barack Obama by yelling out irrelevant questions during a White House press conference a few days ago.

Given that dismal track record — and the big “reveal” trumpeted by Breitbart himself, a decades-old video that showed Obama, as a law student, once said some nice things about Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell — it’s surprising that any allegations these groups make are taken seriously, and that major news organizations with solid credentials don’t tell these guys to take a long hike off a short pier.

Yet the specious claims and hollow arguments of the RWNM’s promoters somehow are still heard and accepted by those who have the power to change the dynamic. Too often, however, they don’t, with results akin to a kid forking over his lunch money whenever the schoolyard bully decides to shake his fist.

Just ask Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes.  For simply questioning whether the word “hero” is overused to desensitize the American public to perpetual war, he got a face full of shrapnel from “outraged” RWNM conservatives who publicly questioned everything from his patriotism to his manhood.  Hayes issued an apology days later, but the Right Wing Message Machine’s phony outrage had done its work, adding more ice to the chilling effect it’s layered on American journalism and critical thought.

Reporters and news organizations have always prided itself on being fearless, independent and intrepid, willing to push back on government and stand up for free speech. Now, in a hyper-kinetic, hyper-partisan age, it seems we’re not even willing to push back on our own critics, which doesn’t bode all that well for my colleagues.

I’d bet my last dollar that I’m not the only journalist in Washington who’s written, said, tweeted or done something that Breitbart.com and company would see as biased. To paraphrase an old adage, they see themselves as hammers, and journalists are the nails.

To my great regret, I wasn’t the first person to stumble into their cross-hairs, and I’m certain I won’t be the last. Unless journalists and their employers decide to stand up to the bullies, only one question remains: who’s next?

Comment:   Poor  Obamaman  Joe.   If the Joes of America were more honest, more dedicated to informing others rather than deforming them, folks might be a bit more interested in what he has to say.   That he got caught by a  Big Noise Machine, and,  we shall have to trust him when he claims his twitters were twittered against, for I am not a twitter type person, he  shoudl be proud that his nonsense about Mitt Romney got a response at all.

I do not trust strident Lefties to tell you the truth.   Their God is Marxism, a dynamic which teaches lying  gains  more power more quickly than any concept that resembles truth.    I would guess that most Americans who vote Lefty, do so because they want a piece of the government pie, rather than trying to run peoples’ lives.   That excites Leftwing Democrats as a group.   If they borrow and steal enough votes, their hope is to gain enough power to nullify all actions which might jeopardize their power.

They don’t give a damn about traditional American-JudeoChristian principles of decent human behavior which is the foundation for any government which truly allows its citizens the pursuit of  liberty and happiness.