Quote:
Originally Posted by Fishpart
NY Times=Pravda
Looks like some "scholar is Pole Vaulting mouse turds. Even as a stand alone sentence the meaning is not that different..
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,.... " Which means We The People tell the government what to do not the other way around. Applying it to modern times, Congress is closest to the people therefore, Congresses' "obstructionisim" is clearly communicating to our monarch the People's wishes.
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Yup. But even with the minimal ability required to jump those small turds, their leap is so weak that the "scholar" and those who hail abolishing the period as the means to make "you guys have it all wrong," can't get off the ground and fall face down on the droppings. I think, according to their view, that removing the period is not supposed to make that which follows it a stand alone sentence, but a connected qualifying clause of equal importance to what goes before it. That is, it is supposed to stress that without government "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" would not be possible. That government is co-equal to those rights, or even precedent to them in importance. And the next step would be the progressive one that not only is government more important than those rights . . . it grants them. That is, it creates them. Therefor, government is supreme, not rights. And, of course, the straw man is then created that constitutional conservatives devalue the importance of government, or accuse government of being an evil, or at best an obstacle to freedom and rights.
But the slightest rational scrutiny of what conservatives believe finds no such view of government. On the contrary, they concur with those who wrote the Declaration and formed the GOVERNMENT described by their Constitution and by all of the collateral documents they left for posterity. Their view is that government is necessary, but not co-equal to their unalienable rights, nor certainly not the creator or granter of those rights. Conservatives of a constitutional stripe are not anti-government. They cherish the government derived from the Declaration and the Constitution. They are against government which would destroy the one they cherish and replace it with an all powerful central authority which recognizes only those rights it creates.
As you say, period or no period, the meaning is not changed. The Declaration makes it clear that it is not government which grants those unalienable rights, but a Creator--that Creator clearly not being the government since it says ". . . all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . ." Unless government can create "all men" it cannot be the creator, and if it did create unalienable rights, then it could not alienate them, which would be a contradiction. It is clear that those rights endowed by a Creator were meant to be free, most importantly, from government usurpation.
The secondary importance of government re our unalienable rights is established, as you say, by the words following the phantom period: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . ." That is, people create governments, not, as you say, the other way around. And, in our founding, government was created mainly to protect already existing rights, which could not be usurped or alienated by that government. And further, government derives its ". . . just powers from the consent of the governed . . ." Again, as you well say, We the People are not dictated to or regulated against our consent. And that is further ordained by limitations placed on government in the Constitution which is a plan for government created by We the People.
And if all that still leaves some doubt as to which is more important, our unalienable rights or government, consider the next words that follow the above quotes: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it . . ." Does this leave any doubt about what was intended to be most important--unalienable rights or government?
And yes, on the Federal level, Congress was meant to be the people's voice, not the President. Congress was meant to be the most powerful and influential branch of the Federal Government. And originally congressional power was mainly to rest in the House of Representatives. The Senate was meant to be mostly an advisory appendage of Congress and to presidential appointments and treaties. As such, it was appointed by state legislatures, not by direct vote. That was done intentionally so as not to weaken the power of Congress by a competing section of longer duration in its own branch. And to secure the power that States possessed at the founding by preventing a major portion of the Congress from aligning with the central Federal political establishment against the will of the people as expressed by their own state governments. The Senate was a throw in to appease some who worried about a too powerful House of Representatives, and, to some extent, a transfer of the bicameralism in the Articles of Confederation and the English Parliament. So now, instead, we have a too powerful Senate and a weak House. It was not really necessary to even have a Senate in the first place. It became one of the Trojan Horses used by progressives to weaken federalism and advance to an all-powerful central government. That was accomplished by their 17th amendment.
The Senate now regularly opposes House legislation. And it protects the President in his unconstitutional endeavors. And the Senate/President coalition rams through regulations and rhetorically demagogues the House painting it as do nothing while they don't allow it to do things, and further demonize any "conservative" efforts perennially painting them as the racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-middle class, for the rich, anti-environment, anti-progress, etc., etc., etc., very little of which can be rationally demonstrated, but most of which is very effective as The People are progressively dumbed down on political and historical awareness.
And yes, we are closer to an elected monarchy than a constitutional republic. And NO, we who oppose this do not have it all wrong.