An unflinching look at our Constitutional "rights"

[Parisle]

--- There is currently a tidal wave of discussion, disillusionment and sanctimonious outrage about what has been happening to our sense of "rights" under our Constitution, thanks to the usurpation of the dictatorial-minded Bush administration. And we are definitely losing ground,.. no doubt about it. America is at a crossroads such as we have never seen before,... and our "rights" are the focus of most or all of our present consternation.

--- Rights,... civil liberties,...call them what you will. Brilliant as he was, Thomas Jefferson may have gotten us off on the wrong foot by referring to "inalienable rights" with which we were "endowed by the Creator." And thanks to 200 years of relative stability, and the happy tenor of 4th grade textbooks, we believed it. No such thing exists.

--- Our "rights" are an artificial creation,.. an invention of the spirit of human cooperation and perception of the greatest good,.....and influenced to a considerable degree by Christian theology. But how did we get them? From Jefferson, Adams and Madison? Nope. From God? Uh-uh. From that "goddamned piece of paper" (as our president is fond of calling the Constitution)???? Wrong again.

--- America obtained its unique stance on the rights of the individual.... by killing British soldiers. We killed them more efficiently and in greater numbers than they could kill us,.. while simultaneously bleeding the British Empire economically, as well. And we would have continued killing them as long as it took. I'm afraid that's how it is with "rights." You make somebody pay a price in death and destruction until they agree to leave you alone. It works the same way with high school bullies, as with struggles of national liberation. And it is the only way when the other side insists that it be so.

--- Contrary to Bush's continual rhetoric about islamics "hating us because we love freedom," there are really no nations on earth who give a rat's ass about the US Constitution or Bill of Rights. What they dislike about the US is our "de facto" foreign policy conducted by giant corporations. Interestingly enough, it is the elitist American corporatist class,... perhaps a thousand families all told,... who are currently at odds with our time-honored perception of individual liberty. The only people who are anxious to curtail those marvelous inventions in the Bill of Rights,.... are other Americans.

--- Do what you will.