If we were to build a new Constitution today, using the same principles and the same unchangeable God-given rights as were used when the Constitution was written in 1789, just how much different would it really be if you had that very same starting point?
The progressives think they can propagandize their way toward something radically new and different. Well, as long as they control pretty much every college campus in the country, they may have a point. But that's a topic for another day.
Ping............
Proving once again that when a headline asks a question, the answer is no.
This is what needs to be pounded into people's brains.
We don't have a right to self-defense because The Constitution says we do. We have it because we are alive.
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”Some writers” in the modern day call themselves “liberals.” Notice the use, decried by Paine in the first paragraph of Common Sense, of euphemism: “liberals” use the word “society” (and synonyms like “public”) as if they were synonyms for “government,” when in fact “society” and “government” are more nearly antonyms.Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Just as the modern “liberal” (I insist on scare quotes) appropriates the term “liberal” when in fact he advocates not for freedom/liberty but actually for the opposite, tyranny.
The problem with Jefferson is that he puts out two conflicting opinions on almost everything.
The Progressives always seek to deny the most basic right for which the generation of the founders sought to uphold, preserve and protect in the United States and that is Liberty.
It is from the essential right to Liberty that comes the right to life, and the pursuit of happiness. Life without Liberty is not a life of a human endowed with a free conscience and the ability to live and express it in their own life.
Progressive are always and forever attempting to truncate Liberty in the pursuit of their Utopian aims of rule by experts (the regulatory state as a permanent government presided over by a near unfettered executive power). The Progressives government is ever more like that King George’s government sought to impose on colonies - an imperial executive power. Who has done this? Congress by abdication.
Jefferson had great ideas.
Jefferson had goofy ideas, like all contracts should expire within the lifetime of the living.
Very good question, with over 20 trillion in debt we will see.
So-called progressives will NEVER be rid of their problems.
Bookmarked.