Paul Ryan (R-WI), the architect of VoucherCare that seeks to rob the elderly of the medical care they have earned, claims that government cannot be a source of human rights that come only from "God and Nature."
Today, we will all unite and celebrate our freedom and our Declaration of Independence.
Tomorrow, we will return to fight the 2012 election that is shaping up as a clear contest between those who support the 99 percent versus those in the pocket of the one percent. A sub-theme will be the proper role of government in our society.
Today, we will all proudly proclaim our Founders' vision, that we "are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights," and that "among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
"Life" seems to bear some relationship to health care, does it not? If one has an attack of asthma, for example, and cannot breathe without a little shot of epinephrine (adrenalin), or a few puffs of inhaled steroids, does that not connect this inalienable right to health care? Or is this link just me being overly arrogant as a physician?
Or, take the "pursuit of happiness." If medicine can prevent a woman from her bones being riddled with breast cancer, isn't she more able to "pursue happiness" pain-free and with strong bones?
So, if we are indeed endowed by our Creator with rights to life and the pursuit of happiness, does that not tell us that one of the primary rights we need to secure is the health of each and every one of our citizens?
Ah, one says, but what about "liberty?" Suppose one prefers being ill or in pain. Is that not one's Creator-given right? OK, but that just means that no one should be able to force one to be treated, not that the right to be treated should be denied.
How is all this done? Actually, the Declaration tells us that too, but some elements of society choose to ignore it.
The very next sentence in the Declaration of Independence proclaims that "To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed." Governments? Please, say it ain't so.
Sorry Tea Partiers, but it is. The Founders, you see, were not opposed to all governments, just the one run by an absolute monarch.
And so, after the success of the revolution, they created a very weak central government. Now the Tea Partiers can rejoice.
Well, not exactly. That very weak central government under the "Articles of Confederation" did not work very well. Some idea of how poorly it worked can be gleaned from watching the European Union, also a weak central government of formerly independent states.
So, our Founders created a stronger central government, under the Constitution. The Preamble to that Constitution, the one that we have all signed up to live under, says that its purpose is to achieve defense, domestic peace, the preservation of liberty and justice and the general welfare.
The Declaration, it should be noted, did not think that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" defined the universe of our rights, but included the little qualifying phrase, "among these." So, the Founders, some of whom were also signers of the Declaration, undertook to create a government to "secure" other rights such as justice and the general welfare.
When we rejoice today about our independence, we should also celebrate our founders who had the good sense to recognize that, just because an absolute monarch does not enable "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," did not mean that they rejected all central authority and, when they found too weak of a central authority to be insufficient, they created a stronger one.
Two hundred twenty-five (225) years before Why Nations Fail was written, our brilliant Founders realized from experience that too weak a central authority did not create more prosperity or freedom, but instead a failed state.
In neither the Articles nor the Constitution did the founders stray from the principle, "deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed". Citizens United and the voter suppression laws pursued by Republican state legislators are not in that spirit.
Note that the signers of the Declaration claimed that it is the "powers" of the government being derived from the consent of the governed, not from a Creator, that make their exercise in specific actions "just."
Let us, today, celebrate both our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that to secure these rights we need government whose powers are based on the consent of the governed.
To do that we need fight to against the exclusive forces in society so that we can continue the strong central government that sets up inclusive political and economic institutions that has served us so well since World War II.
The signers of the Declaration would know exactly what that means.
Happy Independence Day to one and all!
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I am not a TPer but the above is a LIE. The founders sought something far from a monarchy. Try to make a decent argument without eclisping the idiocy of the opposing view you are trying to argue against. Good lord my forensics prof would have lit you up for such a faulty premise.
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We wouldn't need what we call "welfare" today if we didn't have rising economic inequality and an aristocracy that takes 11 cookies out of every dozen before they're even finished cooling.
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No. Negative (natural) rights allow us the pursuit of happiness, requiring others to take NO ACTION that violates those rights. Positive (economic) rights allow us receive goods or services that may help provide happiness, requiring others to take SOME ACTION to produce those rights. Pursuit of happiness is different than provision of happiness.
Providing positive rights can be problematic, because: 1) the line on what is "needed" to provide happiness can only be arbitrarily and subjectively drawn, and; 2) providing positive rights to some generally means violating negative rights of others.
If I have the right to be healthy and am in need of a kidney, don't I then have a right to have that kidney provided by a fellow citizen who can continue leading a healthy life with only one kidney? After all, if I have the right to have food, shelter, and medical care provided to me by the use of government force (the taxing/taking from others the means of purchasing food, shelter, and medical care), then why can't government force be used to provide me my "right" to a healthy kidney?
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To "promote the general welfare" would be to act as wise lawmakers, not subjecting the citizenry to conditions that would lead to a generalized impoverishment and social decline. This was still the age of monarchy, you know, and many monarchs had driven their countries into the ground with their personal wars against other monarchs.
The government indeed has betrayed its duty to promote the general welfare, but not because the social safety net is weak. It has betrayed that duty through 30 years of public police that increasingly favored the 1% at the expense of the 99%.
What are the responsibilities of the citizens of our country?
You haven't answered my last question yet, so here are two new ones.
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Thomas Jefferson wrote that the only legitimate purpose of government is to make life as good as possible for all of its citizens (that's a paraphrase, not a precise quotation). That objective necessarily implies an activist government of substantial power, not a passive government small enough to "drown in a bathtub" as Grover Norquist desires - he's the guy who's getting all those Conservatives to sign the "no taxes" pledge.
To make life as good as possible for all citizens, it is certainly rational to adopt laws and policies to ensure that all citizens are able to get medical care when they need it.
It is also rational to adopt laws and policies to ensure that all citizens go to good schools, and that there are enough jobs to keep every able bodied person employed, even if the government has to create jobs, as FDR did with the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Cops.
It is also rational to adopt laws and policies to ensure that the wealthiest 1% don't roll over the rest of us in their pursuit of ever-greater wealth and political power.
Here's another, "Government should be judged by how well it meets its legitimate objectives. Good government is that which most effectively secures the rights of the people and the fruits of their labor, promotes their happiness, and does their will."
Notice the "rights" and "fruits of labor"? Government under Obama is doing neither!
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"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
Thomas Jefferson, written to the citizens of Washington County, Maryland, March 31, 1809
"The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it."
Thomas Jefferson, to Francis A. Van Der Kemp, March 22,1812
In "The Quotable Founding Fathers" pp. 148, 148, ed. Buckner F. Melton Jr., JD, PhD, prof. of history, Duke University, law, University of North Carolina (Fall River Press 2004).
Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan, November 12, 1816.
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
Abraham Lincoln, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, November 21, 1864.
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of Labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Abraham Lincoln, message to Congress, Decmeber 3, 1861
"The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do for themselves."
Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of A. Lincoln, 1953
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On the issue of "Life", I'll guarantee you a conservative will argue the "Life" as described in the Constitution is your personal "Life", not your neighbor or someone you've never heard of. As long as their "Life" is secure, that's all that matters. If you have a "Life" issue, it's your problem so either you deal with it or live with the consequences. Ive had this discussion many timers with them and know they're only concerned with themselves and vent because they believe their hard-earned tax dollar is benefiting someone who isn't working as hard as they are and is cheating the system at their expense.
As for the Articles of Confederation, a very weak central government means state governments are more in control over their destinies. If you listen to conservatives, especially Congress critters, they're pushing the envelope in all directions back to the AoC allowing state legislatures to operate as they see fit while the federal government takes care of other issues not related to state's business.
Sad fact is, there is close to a slim majority of the public almost demanding a weaker federal government in favor of state governments calling all shots.
Sadly, we don't have enough critical thinking courses and our children are generally taught rote memorization instead. And so we get a populace that doesn't know how to think through the issues and look objectively at history, to see that a weak central government really doesn't work, that corporate controlled government really doesn't work, and that the only government that does work is one beholden to an informed citizenry.