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comment by hootsbox
hootsbox  ·  4597 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work
The Declaration sets the tone for the Federal Government's span of control:

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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

Notice it says it is government's role to "secure" those unalienable rights by "promoting the general welfare" as the Constitution states.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

What it does NOT state is" it is the government's responsibility to "provide" the general welfare - there is a difference between promoting and providing. In the Constitution’s case, it speaks more to securing the avenue of being able to attain individual (not collective) happiness, protecting the "opportunity" and to secure individual property rights (real, intellectual, fruits of one's labor and the like). It is about protecting the individual's right to "pursue happiness" and not the collective’s right to provide that happiness. This is the fallacy of modern day interpretations that have "bastardized" the original meaning of the phrases almost beyond their original intent (which is supported by 150 prior years of jurisprudence, educational records, inscriptions on public monuments and buildings, etc.). To say one's desire to return to original intent is to return to: no voting rights for women, a return to slavery, encourage poverty and sickness among the infirm and like statements is the most absurd, inane, demented postulate being bantered about in the press and other media forms. Nobody wants that? We have women's voting rights, abolition of slavery, and other such items because "we the people" amended the Constitution accordingly. If one wants to adhere to the "principles" in the original documents is in no way "backwards" and "Neanderthal-like" and only the most bigoted, biased, racist and self-aggrandized people with an inflated view of self-importance would say that.





thenewgreen  ·  4597 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Again: I am interested in what you would do to curb unwanted pregnancies?

    To say one's desire to return to original intent is to return to: no voting rights for women, a return to slavery, encourage poverty and sickness among the infirm and like statements is the most absurd, inane, demented postulate being bantered about in the press and other media forms. Nobody wants that? We have women's voting rights, abolition of slavery, and other such items because "we the people" amended the Constitution accordingly. If one wants to adhere to the "principles" in the original documents is in no way "backwards" and "Neanderthal-like" and only the most bigoted, biased, racist and self-aggrandized people with an inflated view of self-importance would say that.
-Who claimed this? Who on earth are you talking to? When did anything I wrote suggest this?