by John M. Allison III: In his first Independence Day message to his supporters, the President demonstrated his fundamental misunderstanding of what is probably the most well known sentence of the Declaration of Independence. That's giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, because the alternative is he's intentionally misinterpreting the intent of the founders to manipulate the people and consolidate power.
From the Declaration of Independence:
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.President Obama's interpretation seems to ignore that little word wedged between 'the' and 'of'--pursuit.
Now, it's important to remember this document wasn't put together in a day. It wasn't something Jefferson put together in one sitting on a cafe napkin. Jefferson and the other founding fathers carefully chose their words to ensure their message to the King and the world was communicated effectively. The phrase "pursuit of happiness," survived the editing process and became permanently etched in the final document that initiated the formation of what would become the greatest nation on Earth.
From the President's 4th of July message:
Our country began as a unique experiment in liberty -- a bold, evolving quest to achieve a more perfect union. And in every generation, another courageous group of patriots has taken us one step closer to fully realizing the dream our founders enshrined on that great day.Read that paragraph carefully.
The first sentence references the lead phrase in the US Constitution. Our founding fathers sought to form a more perfect union, but the current President seems to interpret this as the dream of the perfect union. Our wise founders, by inserting that little adverb "more" into this sentence, recognized that perfection is unachievable. Some may have believed such an achievement is unattainable due to the fallibility of man, others may have based their belief on the understanding that each man has a different definition of the "perfect" state. But one thing is clear--the editors of Jefferson's draft would have struck the word 'more' if they wished to communicate that they sought the perfect union.
Our founding fathers made clear their belief that the guarantee of personal freedom was the most important role of government. These great patriots recognized that the freedom to excel must be complemented by the freedom to fail. Their acknowledgment that man has an inalienable right to pursue happiness rather than attain happiness seems incomprehensible to our current President. The President and his Democratic lackeys in Congress believe the founders had it all wrong. In their minds, your personal freedom creates inequities in society that can only be corrected by regulation and legislation.
Where the founders believed in an individual's right to the fruits of his labors, Obama and his ilk would have you believe the role of government is to equalize the distribution of those fruits among the populace. In their world, the man who works overtime or even two jobs to afford a larger house, a newer car, better health insurance, or even to treat his family to a vacation once in a while should be brought down to the same economic status as the man who chooses to work part-time, or not at all, so that he can sit on the sofa and watch Oprah or Dr. Phil. Rather than allow each individual to strive for his definition of economic success, Obama and his Socialist pals want to define success and, through regulation and legislation, force all Americans to fit that mold.
Another paragraph from the President's message:
As free people, we must each take the challenges and opportunities that face this nation as our own. As long as some Americans still must struggle, none of us can be fully content. And as America comes ever closer to achieving the perfect Union our founders dreamed, that triumph -- that pride -- belongs to all of us.There it is again--the perfect union. This is repetitive I know, but it seems our President can't grasp such a simple concept so I'll go on.
I don't know about you, but I'm not acquainted with anyone who hasn't struggled at some point in their lives. I'm sure they exist, but they're few and far between. Again, the founders' understanding that no such "perfect union" could exist is evidenced in the Constitution by the little adverb "more." They didn't dream of a perfect union in the Utopian sense, they dreamed of a "more perfect union"--meaning better than the one that existed at the time. To create a perfect union would require the existence of a perfect human being(s) and I believe the Bible when it says there is no such thing.
The President has described the Constitution as a document of "negative liberties" and he's right, if you believe the Constitution was written to guarantee rights to our federal government. However, the fact is the Constitution wasn't written to secure the rights of government, but the rights of the governed. It follows then, what the President views as "negative liberties" granted the federal government become simply "liberties" enjoyed by citizens.
Those liberties, especially the right to be as successful as one chooses, are precisely what allowed the United States to become the greatest nation--the most charitable, the most innovative, the most powerful--on Earth in less than 200 years. Remove those liberties, through taxation, legislation, or regulation, and we may well achieve economic equality for all. But at what price?
The cost of such equalization will be borne by all Americans. Innovation will evaporate. When the prospect of reaping the financial rewards for building a better mousetrap is stripped from our society, we'll be stuck with the mousetraps of today. Our health care system may be expensive, but we're paying for the innovation that continually increases the lifespan of our citizens. The President and his cronies are currently hyping a government system that will eliminate the financial rewards for such innovation and result in the stagnation of medical discoveries, thereby stifling advances that would continue to increase longevity in the future.
Obama's 4th of July message implies that his reforms will move us closer to a "perfect" union, one in which all our countrymen are guaranteed an equal share of the nation's economic pie. The end result of such ideology will be a reduction in the size of that pie so that all Americans will have a smaller portion, but they'll all be equal. This was not the founders' intent.
The system envisioned in 1776 rewarded hard work and personal responsibility. The President and Democrats in Congress seek to reward the opposite by punishing those traits so valued by our founding fathers. It seems the founders, or at least Benjamin Franklin, knew this day would come.
"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."--Benjamin Franklin
Tags: 4th of July, Barack Hussein Obama, constitution, Independence Day, John Allison III, liberty To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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