[Pharmboy]

Yes...but of course...they will go to any extreme to make the central government more important. Her thesis makes NO sense from a grammatical point of view, nor from an historical one. They were declaring their independence as free men from an oppressive government, why on God's green Earth would they emphasize happiness tied to government?

But nowhere is this discussed in this article. I urge my Freeper friends to please read the whole thing.

HAPPY FOURTH AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!!

[dagogo redux]

Hopefully, this idiot’s 15 minutes of infamous notoriety will be confined solely to this little bit of tortured conjecture, and she’ll just quietly drift along to her richly deserved obscurity once again.

Happy 4th!

[TheOldLady]

My copy of the Declaration of Independence from the Cato Institution has an em dash in that position, not a period or a comma.

[Eddie01]

Saw this on CBS News update this morning (wife watching some show). How absurd.

NYT author should get a Pulitzer for this. Could be invited to play golf with Obama.

[buridan]

“The logic of the sentence moves from the value of individual rights to the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights,” Ms. Allen said. “You lose that connection when the period gets added.”

No. “Secure” should be read in opposition to “destroy” (”destructive of these rights”). What is self-evident is that government is to secure rather than destroy rights. The logic moves to both the use and misuse of government.

[Albion Wilde]

The original contains a dash, which is used throughout to finish a sentence and provide a pause. The next sentence begins with a capital letter, as new sentences usually do. Where do people get these lunatic ideas?