Liberty requires Sanity
I am worried about the latest round of so called Town Hall debates concerning health care reform. Once again in the name of freedom and liberty, first amendment rights are being used to promote mob rule. Air headed right wing robots who answer to the commands of El Rushbo 'the EIB pill popper' and Glen 'bat shit crazy' Beck, are taking their obnoxious and clueless vitriol into the public forum. This hateful and demeaning activity largely created by the corporate political puppet masters that brought us the Florida recount fiasco has only one purpose, to stop representative government from working.
Democracy is about respectful public discourse. Reasoned debate was our founders idea of freedom of speech the right to disagree was never meant to include screaming anger. The right to assemble was never portrayed as the right to hooliganism. How can democracy survive when these basic rights are stretched to include mob rule. They can't.
This same scenario is being played out by the right to bare arms crazies. Almost weekly some twisted shooter takes his guns to schools, churches, universities, business' and gyms and unloads his automatic weapons into the bodies of innocent bystanders. The right to bare arms was never intended to mean the right to own and use advanced weapons as tools of psychotic release. Many, rightly believe the founders had militias in mind when they put this right in the Bill of rights. The NRA continues to lobby against any restriction on this right so that the crazies can buy any size, quantity and quality of weapon they want. Again a basic right is stretched to the breaking point as more guns are sold to those whose insanity ultimately leads to more bloodshed.
When our founders met in Philadelphia in 1776 they never imagined how their words could be used to tie up courts, governments and bring chaos to civilization in the form of presumed liberties.
Thomas Jefferson said, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."
Mohandas Gandhi said, "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
This mad destruction is being brought about by those zealots who forget the primary reason for liberty. Sanity must be maintained when determining whose rights come first.
Jefferson also said, "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
Abraham Lincoln explained it best. "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty." Liberty requires sanity.
Democracy is about respectful public discourse. Reasoned debate was our founders idea of freedom of speech the right to disagree was never meant to include screaming anger. The right to assemble was never portrayed as the right to hooliganism. How can democracy survive when these basic rights are stretched to include mob rule. They can't.
This same scenario is being played out by the right to bare arms crazies. Almost weekly some twisted shooter takes his guns to schools, churches, universities, business' and gyms and unloads his automatic weapons into the bodies of innocent bystanders. The right to bare arms was never intended to mean the right to own and use advanced weapons as tools of psychotic release. Many, rightly believe the founders had militias in mind when they put this right in the Bill of rights. The NRA continues to lobby against any restriction on this right so that the crazies can buy any size, quantity and quality of weapon they want. Again a basic right is stretched to the breaking point as more guns are sold to those whose insanity ultimately leads to more bloodshed.
When our founders met in Philadelphia in 1776 they never imagined how their words could be used to tie up courts, governments and bring chaos to civilization in the form of presumed liberties.
Thomas Jefferson said, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."
Mohandas Gandhi said, "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
This mad destruction is being brought about by those zealots who forget the primary reason for liberty. Sanity must be maintained when determining whose rights come first.
Jefferson also said, "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
Abraham Lincoln explained it best. "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty." Liberty requires sanity.
posted by CLS | 2:54 PM
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